THE LOGIC OF THE LIVING PRESENT

ANALECTA HUSSERLIANA
THE YEARBOOK OF PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH

VOLUME XLVI

Editor-in-Chief:

ANNA- TERESA TYMIENIECKA

The World Institute for Advanced Phenomenological Research and Learning

Belmont, Massachusetts

Book Five of the

ORIENTAL/OCCIDENTAL PHENOMENOLOGY DIALOGUE

A sequel to:

Book 1 Japanese Phenomenology, Volume VIII

Book 2 Phenomenology of Life in a Dialogue between Chinese and
Occidental Philosophy, Volume XVII
Book 3 The Phenomenology of Man and of the Human Condition,
Volume XXI
Book 4 The Radical Choice and Moral Theory: Through Communi-
cative Argumentation to Phenomenological Subjectivity, by
Zhenming Zhai, Volume XLV
 THE LOGIC OF THE
LIVING PRESENT
Experience, Ordering,
Onto-Poiesis of Culture

Edited by
ANNA-TERESA TYMIENIECKA
The World Phenomenology Institute

Published under the auspices of

The World Institute for Advanced Phenomenological Research and Learning
A-T. Tymieniecka, President

SPRINGER -SCIENCE+BUSINESS, MEDIA, B.V.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

The logic of the living present experience. ordering. onto-poiesis

of culture oriental/occidental phenomenology dialogue / edited by
Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka.
p. cm. -- (Analecta Husserl iana ; v. 46)
"Published under the auspices of the World Institute for Advanced
Phenomenological Research and Learnlng."
Includes index.
ISBN 978-94-010-4207-9 ISBN 978-94-011-0463-0 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-94-011-0463-0
1. Phenomenology. 2. Rational ism. 3. Cognition and culture.
4. Philosophy. Co~parative. 1. Tymieniecka. Anna-Teresa.
II. Series.
63279.H94A129 voI. 46
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 TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS vii

THE THEME ix

PART ONE
CONSTITUTIVE ORDERING:
EXPERIENCE AND OBJECTIVITY

Y ASUHIKO TOMIDA / Idea and Thing: The Deep Structure of

Locke's Theory of Knowledge 3

PART TWO
THE lOGIC OF THE LIVING PRESENT

DANIEL 1. HERMAN / Translator's Introduction 147

TRAN DUC THAO / Dialectical Logic as the General Logic of
Temporalization 155

PART THREE
THE BASIC GRAMMAR OF INTERCULTURAL TEXTS

HWA YOL JUNG / Phenomenology, the Question of Rationality

and the Basic Grammar of Intercultural Texts 169

PART FOUR
THE CONSTITUTIVE FOUNDATION OF CULTURE:
CATEGORIES

TZE-WAN KW AN / The Doctrine of Categories and the Topology

of Concern: Prolegomena to an Ontology of Culture 243

INDEX OF NAMES 303

v
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

My thanks to Mr. Robert Wise for copyediting some of these pieces

and for proofreading the volume and preparing the Index of Names.

A-T. T.

vii
 THE THEME

Continuing the line of our "Oriental/Occidental Phenomenology Dia-

logue", we are particularly pleased to present four monographs by authors
from four different Oriental countries in which the reception of phe-
nomenological ideas and assumptions has led to original inquiry: these
contain inventive insights which contribute substantially to present-day
philosophical discussions.
As different as the titles of these four studies sound, they all deal,
in fact, with the foundations of rationality. Here we may delve with
Yasuhiko Tomida (Kyoto) into Locke's conception of the relationship
between idea and thing; we may explore the foundations of logic sought
in the Husserlian conception of the 'living present', as ingeniously inves-
tigated by the Vietnamese thinker Tran Duc Thao; we may seek with Hwa
Yol Jung (Korea/USA) the 'basic grammar' underlying all culture; and
we may wonder about the relation between the sort of categories accepted
by a cultural tradition and the specific existential "concerns" of its earthly
existence, following the succinct but penetrating investigation of the main
great cultures of humanity - Occidental (in its Kantian, Hegelian, as well
as contemporary Heideggerian inspirations), Chinese, and Hindu - by
our esteemed collaborator Tze-wan Kwan (Hong Kong). In all these
studies we are dealing with the underpinnings of rationality and human
experience; at the same time, these underpinnings are sought as being
simultaneously those of culture, of culture as such.
Here we find, indeed, the confluence of the two major preoccupa-
tions of present-day philosophical reflection: the one with rationality,
reason, foundationalism; the other with cultural differentiation and the
search for a basically human unity. Thus, the search for a basis of
rationality is transferred from the strictly cognitive realm to that of living
humanity, to the 'living present'.

A-T. TYMIENIECKA

ix
 PART ONE

CONSTITUTIVE ORDERING:
EXPERIENCE AND OBJECTIVITY
 YASUHIKO TOMIDA

IDEA AND THING

The Deep Structure of Locke s Theory of Knowledge

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PREFACE 6

PART I
THE DEEP STRUCTURE OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF IDEAS

INTRODUCTION 9
1. The Imagist Interpretation 9
2. A Viewpoint for Reinterpretation 11
CHAPTER I I BEYOND THE AMBIGUITY INTERPRETATION 15
1. The Distinction between the Sensible and the Intelligible 15
2. Suggestion and Conceptual Grasp: The "As"-Structure 16
3. Discerning 18
4. The Criteria of Simplicity 21
5. On "Partial Consideration" 23
6. The Distinction between the Sensible and the Intelligible Again 27
CHAPTER II I LOCKE'S THEORY OF GENERAL IDEAS, REVISITED 32
1. Berkeley's Misreading 32
2. Sensible and Simple General Ideas 33
3. The Meaning of "Representative" 36
4. General Ideas of Substances 38
5. Simplification and Abstraction 41
6. General Ideas of Modes 42
7. The Priority of the Intelligible 43
8. A Remaining Problem 44
CHAPTER III I HANSON AND LOCKE: A PROVISIONAL CONCLUSION 49
1. What Precisely Did Hanson Claim? 49
2. The Molyneux Problem 50
3. "Ideas of Sensation [Are] Often Changed by the Judgment" 51
4. The Synchronic and Diachronic Diversity of the Grasped Contents 53

PART II
THE HIDDEN LOGIC OF LOCKE'S REPRESENTATIVE THEORY
OF PERCEPTION

INTRODUCTION 58
1. The Veil-of-Perception Doctrine 58
2. Towards a Reinterpretation 59

A-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana Vol. XLVI, 3-143.

© 1995 Kluwer Academic Publishers.
4 Y ASUHIKO TOMIDA

CHAPTER I I PHILOSOPHY OF CHANGE 64

I. Idea-Formation and the Freedom of Mind 64
2. General Conditions for the Idea-Formation of Mixed Modes 64
3. Mixed Modes and "the End of Language" 66
4. "Manner of Life" 67
5. New Manners and the Creativity of Vocabulary 68
6. Complex Ideas of Substances and the Investigation of Natural
~~ @
7. Two Sorts of Ideas of Body 71
8. The Formability of the "Idea" of Things Themselves 71
9. The Creative Flight to a New View of Body 73
CHAPTER II I EXPERIENTIAL OBJECTS, AND THINGS THEMSELVES 75
1. Ideas and Things Themselves 75
2. Problems with the Representative Theory of Perception 76
3. A Clue Towards Reinterpretation: The Moment of Direct Realism 79
4. Examples of the "Mixture" of the Two Moments 80
5. The Commonsensical Stance and the Epistemological View 81
6. The First-Order Meaning of the Phrase "Perceiving Ideas" 82
7. Reasons for the Transition to a Representative Theory of Perception 83
8. From Experiential Objects to Things Themselves 85
9. The Inquiry by Hypothesis 87
10. The Stratified Structure of the Representative Theory of Perception 88
II. The "Mixture," and Lockean "Essentialism" Revisited 90
CHAPTER III I LOCKEAN NATURALISM 94
1. Husserl's Criticism 94
2. The Role of Physical Considerations in Locke's Theory of Knowledge 95
3. The Practical Interest of Locke's Essay 96
4. The Immanent Field of Consciousness and the Ordinary and Physical
Doxai 99
5. A Non-foundationalistic Theory of Knowledge 102

SUPPLEMENTS

A. LOCKE'S THEORY OF REFERENCE REVISITED: 107

AGAINST SCHWARTZ AND PUTNAM
1. Two Aspects of Locke's Theory of Reference 107
2. Locke as a Traditional Theorist of Meaning 107
3. Putnam's Criticism of the Traditional View 110
4. Complex Ideas of Natural Substances and the Knowledge of Co-
existence 114
5. The Difference between Locke and Putnam in their Historical
Contexts 117
B. THE LOGICAL SPACE OF LOCKEAN "LEGITIMATION":
AGAINST RORTY'S INTERPRETATION 121
1. Locke and Rorty 121
 IDEA AND THING 5

2. The Green-Rortyan Interpretation of Locke 123

3. Locke's Causal, Genetic Explanation 125
4. Problems of the Rortyan Interpretation 126
5. The Logical Space for "Legitimation" 128

BIBLIOGRAPHY 133
 PREFACE

Some might ask "Why Locke's theory of knowledge now?" Though

appreciated for his social philosophy, Locke has been criticized for his
work in the field of epistemology ever since the publication of the Essay.
It is even as if Locke serves only as an example of how not to think.
When people criticize Locke, they usually cite the hostile commen-
taries of Berkeley, Kant, Husserl, or Sellars. But, one might ask, are
they not all so eager to show the excellence of their own epistemo-
logical views that they distort and underestimate Locke's thought?
Russell aptly noted in his History of Western Philosophy that:
No one has yet succeeded in inventing a philosophy at once credible and self-consis-
tent. Locke aimed at credibility, and achieved it at the expense of consistency. Most of
the great philosophers have done the opposite. A philosophy which is not self-consis-
tent cannot be wholly true, but a philosophy which is self-consistent can very well be
wholly false. The most fruitful philosophies have contained glaring inconsistencies, but
for that very reason have been partially true. There is no reason to suppose that a self-
consistent system contains more truth than one which, like Locke's, is obviously more
or less wrong. (B. Russell, A History of Western Philosophy [New York: Simon and
Schuster, 1945], p. 613.)

Here Russell is uncommonly charitable with Locke. But in my view,

this is still insufficient, and its faint praise is heavily qualified with
charges of inconsistency and but partial truth. I will not counter with
the suggestion that the whole scheme of Locke's epistemological thought
is absolutely true, but I think much more of an effort should be made
to solve several problems which Russell, and others, have taken to be
inconsistencies.
In a theory-shift or revolution in philosophy, it is to some extent
inevitable that older thinking is forced into fixed molds and distorted,
and this makes it all the more important that we assume a more chari-
table attitude toward that thinking when we attempt a new interpretation
of it.
With this in mind I will try to reinterpret Locke's epistemological
philosophy in the Essay from several contemporary points of view.
Perhaps I will seem, to some readers, a little too tolerant. My purpose

6
 IDEA AND THING 7

is to offer arguments against some traditional criticisms of Locke and

reveal the deep structure of his epistemology. For this purpose, I will start
with the hypothesis that almost all of Locke's assertions are in fact true.
I think that this Davidsonian approach will be easily accepted by readers
who are well informed of contemporary hermeneutics, or who have
ever themselves engaged in the work of text interpretation.
It has been said that every historiographical study inevitably becomes
a contemporary history; and, in this sense, interpreting a text amounts
to nothing less than talking about the Gegenwart (present thought and
its context) of the interpreter in the form of interpretation of a past text.
Therefore, the success or failure of my venture here is just the success
or failure of my present philosophical position. I hope that many readers
will accept this new interpretation, but if it at least gives Locke's phi-
losophy a new occasion for its consideration, my efforts will not have
been in vain.
This is a revised English edition of my recent book, Locke-tetsugakuno
Kakusareta Ronri (Tokyo: Keiso-Shobo, 1991), and is part of work
carried out at the Harvard-Yenching Institute in 1991-1992. If my English
approximates that of native-speakers, it is due mainly to the help of
Ms. Mitzi Lee of Harvard University and the special assistance of my
colleague John Constable at Kyoto University.

Kyoto University YASUHIKO TOMIDA

 PART I

THE DEEP STRUCTURE OF

LOCKE'S THEORY OF IDEAS
 INTRODUCTION

1. The Imagist Interpretation

Among the various misinterpretations of Locke's theory of knowledge,

the one which is most common and which ascribes the most inconsis-
tencies to his theory takes his concept of an idea to be only one of
sense-data or mental images, namely, sensible ones. Following tradi-
tion, let us call such an interpretation "imagist." Promoted by Berkeley's
and Hume's understanding of Locke's theory of ideas, the imagist inter-
pretation has been accepted by many scholars, and various criticisms have
been made on the basis of it. As a result, his theory of knowledge seems
to be one quite crippled and flawed.
For example, according to the imagist interpretation, Locke's theory
of ideas can, just as can Berkeley's and Hume's, be taken for a pre-
cursor of the so-called sense-datum theory. Locke did not take pure
descriptive propositions concerning the immediate facts of ideas to be
"basic" ones, namely, those which could be an absolute foundation for
the sciences. But as long as we take ideas to be merely sensible, we
can see his theory of perception (which asserts that the immediate objects
of our minds are not things themselves but ideas) as being in the same
orbit as the basic sense-datum theory, according to which the genuine
objects of our perception are not physical things but sense-data. And if
this is correct, his theory of ideas must face the same criticism which
was raised against the sense-datum theory.
A powerful criticism of the sense-datum theory was put forward by
Neurath, and after the war other versions of the critique were published
in succession by Austin, Sellars, Hanson, and others. l Let us take
Hanson's as an example. It can be summarized as follows:
1) Seeing is, in most cases, seeing as. In other words, sensory images
are not merely given, but take an "organization" and are seen as
something. In this sense, perception or observation is "theory-laden."
But sense-datum theorists put emphasis on pure perception of sense-
data, and in this respect they are completely mistaken.
2) Sense-datum theorists undermine their own position by the claim that

9
10 Y ASUHIKO TOMIDA

the genuine objects of perception are sense-data. If they want to argue

for the claim that the objects of our perception are not physical things
but sense-data, they must appeal to the distinction between the two.
But they deprive the former of the status of perceptual objects, and
make the distinction impossible. 2
If Locke is correctly interpreted as a mere imagist, these problems
are also his. Let us take up the first problem first. If ideas were merely
something like sense-data or mental images, and if such ideas were
only objects of our understanding, then they would only appear as they
are, and in this respect Locke's theory of perception lacks an apparatus
that can treat the fact of our seeing something as such and such.
Therefore, when it is said that the theory-Iadenness of observation has
long been discussed, at least since Kant, and that the sense-datum theory
is merely a crude pre-Kantian theory, Locke is also treated as a philoso-
pher who had, at best, nothing but a pre-Kantian (Humean) theory of
perception.
The second problem is parallel to that which has frequently been
discussed as being a basic difficulty of Locke's "representative theory
of perception." It is a principle of his theory of knowledge that the imme-
diate objects of the mind, or the understanding, are ideas in the mind.
Yet at the same time he thought it self-evident that there are bodies
"without us." How then can we know the existence of external things?
To solve the problem, sense-datum theorists have investigated the
relation of translatability between "thing language" and "sense-datum
language," and have tried to explain the difference between things and
sense-data as a logical one, by treating physical objects as "logical con-
structions" of sense-data. This attempt has proved to be unsuccessful, but
the same line of thought has often played a leading role in interpretations
of Locke. And when commentators describe the history of classical
British empiricism, they generally adopt an account in which the efforts
of Berkeley and Hume eliminate Locke's purported "mixture" or "incon-
sistency" of two moments - namely, the realistic and the idealistic -
and establish a more consistent position. If, however, sense-datum theory
is vexed by the second problem cited above,3 then Locke's position would
prove to be untenable on two counts. First, his position would be unac-
ceptable for sense-datum theorists because it posits the existence of
"things themselves without us" in addition to the "ideas within us."
Second, it would be unacceptable for the critics of the sense-datum theory
just because it makes ideas our immediate objects. 4
 IDEA AND THING 11

Further, the imagist interpretation of Locke has made it easy to repu-

diate his theory of general (abstract) ideas and his theory of language
in general. Since Berkeley's refutation, many philosophers, including
Husserl, have interpreted his theory of general ideas in line with the
readings of Berkeley and Hume. 5 In these interpretations, an unnatural
reading of Locke's statements on the general (abstract) idea of the triangle
played a decisive role in rejecting his whole theory of general ideas.
Admittedly, we cannot have such a mental image as that which is "neither
Oblique, nor Rectangle, neither Equilateral, Equicrural, nor Scalenon; but
all and none of these at once.,,6 Therefore, the operation of "abstrac-
tion" which is supposed to produce such abstract ideas also cannot exist
at all.
Moreover, even if we could frame general ideas, since all ideas are
sensible, his linguistic view that words signify ideas proves to be nothing
but a theory of private language. Indeed, it is sometimes said that when
Wittgenstein criticized the theory of private language, he had in mind
Locke's theory of language in Book III of the Essay. If the imagist
interpretation were valid, Locke's theory of language would be subject
to Wittgenstein's criticism.
Thus, if we followed the imagist interpretation of Locke, we would
have to say that his theory of ideas had many difficulties, and since his
theory of knowledge is based on the theory of ideas, we would reject
the Essay's entire project. 7

2. A Viewpoint for Reinterpretation

However, there have been some recent attempts at an interpretation of

Locke that differ from the Berkeley-Humean account. For example, since
R. I. Aaron pointed out that Berkeley's reading of the paragraph on the
abstract idea of the triangle is unnatural, and that the paragraph is not
of supreme importance for an interpretation of Locke's theory of general
ideas,8 his viewpoint has been gradually accepted as a valid one. 9
Moreover, the imagist interpretation itself is now being reconsidered seri-
ously, and several widely-read books on Locke share the view that the
term "idea" expresses at least two sorts of things, namely, intelligible
things which we might call meanings or concepts, and sensible things
like sense-data or mental images.1O And in view of this, some scholars,
including Aaron, are trying to offer new interpretations of Locke's theory
of general ideas. 1I
12 Y ASUHIKO TOMIDA

In my opinion, however, there remains a problem in this otherwise

desirable approach. The attempt to distinguish ideas in terms of intelli-
gibility and sensibility, and to thereby reinterpret not only Locke's theory
of general ideas but also his whole theory of ideas was, indeed, a great
step in the task of surmounting the traditional interpretation, and there-
fore exceedingly significant. But does it not serve only to confirm the
ambiguity of Locke's concept of an idea?
Generally speaking, attributing ambiguity to an author poses a serious
potential danger. Certainly in the interpretation of an historical text we
must sometimes, after much consideration, acknowledge the author's own
ambiguity, but such conclusions are often premature. And if the latter
is the case, we may be dealing unfairly with the philosopher in question,
and may be oblivious to his or her real theory.
In the following three chapters, I will try to show that Locke's theory
of ideas has a unified structure which can be hidden when the theory
is treated as being merely ambiguous. In order to reveal this deep struc-
ture, I shall first take up a "common character of Locke's simple ideas,"
something which I have already discussed elsewhere. 12 In Chapter I, I
will retrace his argumentation and not only show that Locke's "ideas"
imply the distinct concepts of sensibility and intelligibility, but also make
clear the close relation between these two. I will treat them as two aspects
of perception. This investigation will show that Hanson's first criti-
cism, mentioned above, does not apply to Locke; that is to say, it will
show that though Locke did not use the expression "seeing as," he already
grasped the phenomenon of "theory-Iadenness" in his theory of ideas.
Then in Chapter II, I will reconsider his theory of general ideas in order
to confirm this unified structure.
According to Locke, the basis of sorting things is their conformity
to general, or abstract, ideas,13 that is to say, when things conform to a
general idea with a name 'X', they are regarded as 'X.' This is just
one form of Locke's expression or analysis of the phenomenon of "seeing
as." But it would not follow from this alone that it is wrong to see
Locke as an imagist. Even Berkeley and Hume - purportedly typical
imagists - did not entirely ignore the phenomenon of "seeing as."14 Thus,
if we want to show that Locke is, here, far nearer to Hanson than to
Berkeley or Hume, we must inquire in detail into his view on general
ideas. As was mentioned above, Locke's general ideas have usually
been understood as mental images. In Chapter II, however, I will consider
the problem chiefly in terms of a view which interprets his "general
 IDEA AND THING 13

ideas" as meanings or concepts, namely, intelligible ideas. We shall

find that Locke's theory of general ideas is far from being a "psycho-
logical hypostatization of the universals," as Husserl put it, and that
Locke did not take general (abstract) ideas to be mere mental images,
but in most cases understood them as concepts or meanings. And we
shall see in Locke's theory of ideas the very close relation between the
sensible and the intelligible - namely, the relation Hanson called "theory-
ladenness."
Traditional interpreters may be suspicious of this line of interpreta-
tion. But we ask them: how could the imagist interpretation which
attributes so many serious difficulties to Locke be a correct one? We shall
also attempt to surmount the charge of ambiguity, since it has attrib-
uted to Locke serious inconsistencies. Still, it is the imagist interpretation
that is extremely hostile to Locke's position. Certainly, if at the end of
our investigations we find that the greater part of the statements of a
philosopher are unacceptable to us, we have the freedom to place the
responsibility for this difficulty on the philosopher. But, following
Davidson and Rorty, might it not be more plausible to ask "Hasn't our
interpretation been wrong?"

NOTES

1 Incidentally, Sellars, who attempted to dismantle the so-called "Myth of the Given,"

mentioned Locke as a philosopher who contributed to the formation of the "Myth" (W.
Sellars, Science, Perception and Reality [London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1963], pp.
154-159).
2 See N. R. Hanson, Perception and Discovery (San Francisco: Freeman, Cooper &
Co., 1969), esp. Part II.
1 With this respect, see also W. V. o. Quine, Word and Object (Cambridge, Mass.:
The MIT Press, 1960), pp. 1-2, etc.
4 I shall investigate this problem thematically in Part II.

l For Husserl's interpretation, see E. Husserl, Logische Untersuchungen, 2. Bd., 1. Teil

(Husserliana, Bd. XIXIl, 1984), II, 2. Kapitel, §7. Cf. E. Husserl, Erste Philosophie
(192311924),1. Teil (Husserliana, Bd. VII, 1956),2. Abschnitt, 3. Kapitel, 18. Vorlesung.
6 J. Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, ed. P. H. Nidditch (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1975), Book IV, Chapter vii, Section 9. Henceforth, I shall
refer to this work as Essay and shall give numbers only in citations of it, e.g., IV,
vii,9.
7 An imagist interpretation such as this is also found in Rorty. See R. Rorty, Philosophy
and the Mirror of Nature (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979), Ch. III, Sec. 2.
Invoking the views of Sellars, Davidson, et ai., Rorty interprets Locke's theory of knowl-
edge as a "confusion" of the relation between cause and effect and the relation between
14 Y ASUHIKO TOMIDA

reason and consequence, and, therefore, takes it as a way of thinking on the side of
"privileged representation," a way of thinking obsessed with the conception of the human
being as a "mirror of nature." It is the status of sense-data (or mental images or appear-
ances) that he especially calls into question. According to his view, their presence is, in
most cases, just a cause of people holding a belief, and not a reason which justifies the
belief. In other words, appearance can be grasped in multiple ways, and so, it is not the
case that the truth of a belief follows absolutely from the presence of the appearance.
(See also R. Rorty, "Texts and Lumps," in R. Rorty, Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth
[Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991], pp. 80--81.) But did Locke actually think
that appearance is absolute, that we have to merely accept it, that it refuses to be multiply
"grasped" or "seen as," and that it escapes the necessity that anything must be "under a
description" in order to be a bit of material of knowledge? The following three chapters
will provide the basis for a negative answer to the question. And Locke's purported
confusion mentioned above will be examined in Supplement B.
8 R. I. Aaron, "Locke's Theory of Universals," in Aristotelian Society Proceedings,
Vol. XXXIII, 1932-1933, pp. 175-176. Cf. R. I. Aaron, John Locke, 3rd ed. (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1971), pp. 196-197.
9 E.g., J. L. Mackie, Problems from Locke (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976),
p.107.
10 Aaron, John Locke, op. cit., pp. 99-107; R. S. Woolhouse, Locke's Philosophy of
Science and Knowledge (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1971), pp. 34-37, etc. Cf. J. Locke,
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, ed. A. C. Fraser (New York: Dover, 1894),
"Prolegomena," pp. Iix-Ix, fn. I; pp. Ixxiv-Ixxv.
II Aaron, John Locke, op. cit., pp. 195-207; Mackie, op. cit., Ch. 4, etc.
12 See Y. Tomida, "Locke-no Tanjunkannenno Aru Touitsuteki Seikaku" ("A Common
Character of Locke's Simple Ideas") in Tetsugaku (Annual Review of the Philosophical
Association of Japan) (Tokyo), Vol. XXXI (1981).
13 See Chapter II and Supplement A, Section 2.
14 E.g., Berkeley says concerning numbers as follows:
That number is entirely the creature of the mind, even though the other qualities be allowed
to exist without, will be evident to whoever considers, that the same thing bears a dif-
ferent denomination of number, as the mind views it with different respects. Thus, the
same extension is one or three or thirty six, according as the mind considers it with
reference to a yard, a foot, or an inch. Number is so visibly relative, and dependent on
men's understanding, that it is strange to think how anyone should give it an absolute
existence without the mind.
(My italics. G. Berkeley, A Treatise concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge, in
A. A. Luce and T. E. Jessop (eds.), The Works of George Berkeley, Bishop of Cloyne
[London: Nelson, 1949], Vol. II, p. 46.)
 I. BEYOND THE AMBIGUITY INTERPRETATION

1. The Distinction between the Sensible and the Intelligible

Even if we now put the Berkeleyan-Humean understanding of an idea

in parentheses, we find in Locke's Essay many sentences which seem
to promote an imagist interpretation. For example, he says that "our Ideas
[... J are, as it were, the Pictures of Things. No one of these mental
Draughts, however the parts are put together, can be called confused,
[...J till it be ranked under some ordinary Name."! Moreover, several
examples raised in the passage on simple ideas also invite us to think
of Lockean ideas as sense-data or mental images. As is generally known,
Locke demarcates simple ideas into four sorts, namely, those which
"come into our minds by one Sense only," those which "convey them-
selves into the mind by more Senses than one," those which "are had
from Reflection only," and those which "make themselves way, and are
suggested to the mind by all the ways of Sensation and Reflection.,,2
Among these four, ideas of the first kind, those of light, color, sound,
teste and so on, are at least for the time being understandable as being
sensible. In particular, the following remark seems to substantiate the
imagist interpretation:
[T]here [are] a great many more of them [simple Ideas] belonging to most of the Senses,
than we have Names for. (II, iii, 2)

For though what is given to sensation has many subtle differences to

us, we often lack particular terms to describe them. So, keeping this in
mind, the simple ideas discussed here are sensible ones, that is, what
is given immediately through the senses. In other words, they are "sense-
data" in the strict sense. 3
Moreover, if at least some ideas can be taken as "sense-data," it would
naturally follow that some simple ideas are mental images. For, according
to Locke, our minds must retain simple ideas in order to make other ideas
out of them, and the mental faculty that reproduces ideas in our minds
is called memory or "Retention"; but if the original ideas are "sense-

15
16 Y ASUHIKO TOMIDA

data," then the reproduced ideas are, probably, mental images. Locke says
of memory:
The other way of Retention is the Power to revive again in our Minds those Ideas, which
after imprinting have disappeared, or have been as it were laid aside out of Sight: And
thus we do, when we conceive Heat or Light, Yellow or Sweet, the Object being removed.
This is Memory, which is as it were the Store-house of our Ideas. (II, x, 2)

Such sentences suggest that Locke is an imagist after all and that all
Lockean ideas are merely sensible. But as I have already said, several
recent scholars of Locke have claimed that the term "idea" has at least
one other use, namely, to refer to something intelligible. Therefore, when
we interpret Locke's ideas, we must take this point into account. 4
That Locke's idea are not necessarily "sensible" is clear if one thinks
of existence and unity, which Locke raised as examples of simple ideas
acquired both by sensation and reflection. We cannot see or hear them
in the same way as we see colors or we hear sounds. Locke says of
unity:
[TJhere is not any Object of Sensation or Reflection, which does not carry with it the
Idea of one [. . .J. (II, xiii, 25)
[EJvery Object our Senses are employed about; every Idea in our Understandings; every
Thought of our Minds brings this Idea [of Unity or One] along with it. (II, xvi, \)

Evidently, these ideas are concepts or meanings. That is, they are
intelligible.

2. Suggestion and Conceptual Grasp: The "As" -Structure

In spite of the recognition of such facts, however, the relation between
the sensible and the intelligible has scarcely been investigated. Are
there no characteristics common to them other than that of being in the
mind or being immediate objects of understanding? Is it impossible to
find any other unifying characteristic or close relationship between them?
In the following I will try to find such a relationship. And in order to
do that, I will pay close attention to the acts of the mind.
First, we must investigate Locke's conspicuous use of the word
"suggest." He uses the verb several times in a series of arguments con-
cerning those ideas which seem to be intelligible. For example, he says
that: "Existence and Unity, are two other Ideas, that are suggested to
the Understanding, by every Object without, and every Idea within."
 IDEA AND THING 17

(II, vii, 7) Locke uses a few other phrases to express how simple ideas
are acquired, for example, "come into," "convey itself (or themselves)
into," and "be received by." In contrast to these, the expression "be
suggested to" seems to express a special phenomenon,s namely, the
phenomenon of an intelligible idea being given.
If this wording shows that Locke was aware of a difference between
the way intelligible ideas are acquired and the way sensible ones are
acquired, then we may ask whether he said anything about a special
mental operation (or act) corresponding to it? Perhaps we can detect
this in his comments, embedded in the expressions "consider to be" or
"consider as." Following the passage cited above, Locke says that:
When Ideas are in our Minds, we consider them as being actually there, as well as we
consider things to be actually without us; which is, that they exist, or have Existence:
And whatever we can consider as one thing, whether a real Being, or Idea, suggests to
the Understanding, the Idea of Unity. (II, vii, 7)

This "considering to be" (or "considering as") - namely, conceptually

grasping - can be judged to be a phrase that refers to the mental act
correlative to the "suggestion" in question. The same thing is also found
in the case of the idea of power, which is an idea of the fourth kind, to
which those of existence and unity belong. Indeed, Locke does not
apply the expression "be suggested to" directly to the idea of power. But,
just as with the ideas of existence and unity, the idea of power cannot
be thought to be given in the same way as the ideas of colors and
sounds are. Moreover, Locke says here also that the mind gets the idea
through considering it. 6
Here we catch a glimpse of Locke's recognition of the characteristic
relationship between the sensible and the intelligible within the range
of simple ideas. When a sensible idea is given, if we can grasp it as some-
thing (as one thing, for example), then through this grasp we are given
an intelligible idea (one or unity, for example) in the form of its being
suggested. 7
Thus, on the Lockean empirical view concerning the acquisition
of ideas, some sorts of concepts or meanings are acquired in such a
correlation of phenomena. But concerning this, we must recognize a
problem, namely, whether we can say that intelligible ideas are really
acquired for the first time in this way; in other words, in what sense
are such ideas "from Experience"?
Unfortunately, Locke's answer to the question is not clear. In fact,
18 Y ASUHIKO TOMIDA

his concept of suggestion (or conceptual grasp) seems to threaten his

empiricism. The position varies only in a few particulars from that of
Plato, who regarded experience as a mere occasion for the actualiza-
tion of potential ideas. 8 But at least one thing is clear; Locke never accepts
such a Platonic position. For as his criticism of nativism and his view
on memory clearly show, he never supposes that unperceived ideas
exist in our minds, or that there are such things as potential ideas. 9 And
this seems to me to prevent him from sufficiently investigating the
matter. For probably he saw experience in the case of the acquisition
of intelligible ideas as a field where existence and unity, for example,
are vividly grasped; in Husserlian terms, as the field where "meaning-
intentions" are given "intuitional meaning-fulfillments." But we surmise
that he disposed of the problem in terms of empiricism, and did so
without sufficient explication. 10

3. Discerning

It is now clear that when a mind acquires intelligible ideas, it must

perform some operation (or act). But the necessity of mental acts in
the acquisition of ideas is not limited to the case of intelligible ideas.
Indeed, Locke explicitly says several times that at first simple ideas
are given to our minds and later our minds operate on them in various
ways and make diverse ideas out of them. For example, he says that:
These simple Ideas, the Materials of all our Knowledge, are suggested and furnished to
the Mind, only by those two ways above mentioned, viz. Sensation and Reflection. When
the Understanding is once stored with these simple Ideas, it has the Power to repeat,
compare, and unite them even to an almost infinite Variety, and so can make at Pleasure
new complex Ideas. (II, ii, 2)

Combined with the assertion that the mind is passive in the acquisition
of simple ideas, this passage suggests the interpretation that simple
ideas are from the beginning given separately and that the mind merely
receives them. In fact, he describes the passivity of the mind in the
following manner: "[A]s the Mind is wholly Passive in the reception
of all its simple Ideas, so it exerts several acts of its own, whereby out
of its simple Ideas, as the Materials and Foundations of the rest, the other
are framed." (II, xii, 1) But can we take these words literally and accept
the interpretation unconditionally?
Most interpreters today agree that Locke recognized the complexity
 IDEA AND THING 19

of the given. The following passages give evidence of such a recog-

nition:
As simple Ideas are observed to exist in several Combinations united together; so the Mind
has a power to consider several of them united together, as one Idea; and that not only
as they are united in external Objects, but as it self has join'd them. (II, xii, I)
THE Mind being furnished with a great number of the simple Ideas, conveyed in by
the Senses, as they are found in exteriour things, or by Reflection on its own Operations,
takes notice also, that a certain number of these simple Ideas go constantly together
[... J. (II, xxiii, 1)
Men, observing certain Qualities always join' d and existing together, therein copied
Nature; and of Ideas so united, made their complex ones of Substances. (III, vi, 28)

These passages are given to support the view that complex ideas of
substances have external archetypes, that, for example, the ideas of a man
and an animal are not arbitrarily formed but have their originals in
experience of external things. Thus, from Locke's view of ideas of sub-
stances, we must conclude that he himself recognized the complexity
of given ideas. ll
On the other hand, Locke also speaks of simple ideas as follows:
Though the Qualities that affect our Senses, are, in the things themselves, so united and
blended, that there is no separation, no distance between them; yet 'tis plain, the Ideas
they produce in the Mind, enter by the Senses simple and unmixed. For though the Sight
and Touch often take in from the same Object, at the same time, different Ideas; as a
Man sees at once Motion and Colour; the Hand feels Softness and Warmth in the same
piece of Wax: Yet the simple Ideas thus united in the same Subject, are as perfectly distinct,
as those that come in by different Senses. The coldness and hardness, which a Man feels
in a piece of Ice, being as distinct Ideas in the Mind, as the Smell and Whiteness of a
Lily; or as the taste of Sugar, and smell of a Rose. (II, ii, I)

Here Locke says that simple ideas are separately produced in the mind.
But this is not incompatible with the fact that the given is complex.
We can connect them and understand that the ideas which constitute
the given complex are distinct from each other. The problem, rather, is
that of how the simple ideas that are components of the complex are
received as distinct ideas.
Indeed, as we can easily receive a color as a different quality from
a sound, so we can receive one color as distinct from another color, or
one sound as distinct from another sound. But this does not mean that
when we receive them, our minds are quite passive and perform no
operations (acts). According to Locke, passivity does not mean absence
of operations, and this is shown, for example, in the following passage:
20 Y ASUHIKO TOMIDA

"PERCEPTION [...] is the first faculty of the Mind [... ]. [I]n bare naked
Perception, the Mind is, for the most part, only passive; and what it
perceives, it cannot avoid perceiving." (II, ix, 1) The problem of the
active and the passive is also treated in a chapter entitled "Of Power,"
and taking the argument developed there into account, we can see that
in Locke's view not only activity but also passivity is a kind of opera-
tion. 12 Therefore, it is certain that Locke recognized at least the mental
operation of "perception" as an act which our minds must exert in order
to acquire simple ideas. 13
But, for Locke, the act of perception is to be exercised for any idea,
and so it is still not enough to establish that "distinctness" of ideas which
was emphasized in the passage quoted above. When a simple idea is
received just as a distinct one, we must ask then what operation does
the mind exert besides perception?
In order for an idea to be separately received by the mind, it must
be distinguished from other ideas, for example, from this color, or from
that smell. When the mind receives a quality (or a quantity) from a
complex, it requires a mental operation to distinguish them. Locke calls
this operation "discerning":
ANOTHER Faculty, we may take notice of in our Minds, is that of Discerning and
distinguishing between the several Ideas it has. It is not enough to have a confused
Perception of something in general: Unless the Mind had a distinct Perception of
different Objects, and their Qualities, it would be capable of very little Knowledge; though
the Bodies that affect us, were as busie about us, as they are now, and the Mind were
continually employ'd in thinking. [By] this faculty of Distinguishing one thing
from another [... J, the Mind [... ] perceives two Ideas to be the same, or different.
(II, xi, 1)

He also says:
'Tis the first Act of the Mind, when it has any Sentiments or Ideas at all, to perceive
its Ideas, and so far as it perceives them, to know each what it is, and thereby also to
perceive their difference, and that one is not another. (IV, i, 4)

As these passages show, the operation of discerning is exerted in most

cases where an idea is perceived, whatever idea it may be. This almost
universal characteristic of the discerning faculty enables us to understand
why Locke sometimes talks as if the mind performed its acts only when
it acquires ideas other than simple ones. Moreover, it makes clear why
he uses the expression "passive" solely for the acquisition of simple ideas.
When we get simple ideas, we do not make new ones, but only receive
 IDEA AND THING 21

them through perception and discerning. This is the meaning of "passive"

in this case. 14
If we can find such a close relationship between the act of percep-
tion and the act of discerning in the acquiring of sensible simple ideas,
can we not then say that sensible simple ideas and intelligible simple
ideas not only have the relationship called "suggestion" in common but
also share the same root experience? For, if "considering as" (or "con-
sidering to be") means conceptually grasping the given, then even if
the discerning is in itself not yet an act of conceptual grasping, it is at
least an essential prior step for the latter, and perhaps is itself already
a sort of grasping in a wider sense. If such an interpretation is correct,
we must say that Locke's sensible ideas are not merely sensible but are
sensible ideas grasped in a wider sense. In the next section I will ascer-
tain Locke's view of the simplicity of simple ideas and consider this point
in more detail.

4. The Criteria of Simplicity

First, let us quote the passage which Locke calls the "definition" of simple
ideas. "[A simple Idea] being each in it self uncompounded, contains
in it nothing but one uniform Appearance, or Conception in the mind,
and is not distinguishable into different Ideas." (II, ii, 1) The expres-
sion "our uniform Appearance" in this definition suggests that the
simplicity of simple ideas consists of sameness in quality, as do the words
"not distinguishable into different Ideas." Thus, we might take (quali-
tatively) uniform sense-data or mental images as examples of simple
ideas. IS Since such ideas are, qualitatively, "uniform" and do not contain
different qualities, they are "not distinguishable into different Ideas," and
are "uncompounded."
But it is not sufficient to understand the simplicity of simple ideas
from the qualitative point of view. For Locke suggests that there is
another way to determine the simplicity of an idea. An argument about
the definition of a simple mode will make this clear. A simple mode is
defined as follows:
[ •.. J There are some which are only variations, or different combinations of the same
simple Idea, without the mixture of any other, as a dozen, or score; which are nothing
but the Ideas of so many distinct Unites added together, and these I call simple Modes,
as being contained within the bounds of one simple Idea. (II, xii, 5)
22 Y ASUHIKO TOMIDA

An idea that is made of several identical simple ideas added together

is a kind of complex idea called a "simple mode." "Simple" is not
synonymous here with "uniform." For, suppose that two square patches
of the very same color, white, for example, and of the same size are added
together without any overlap. From the viewpoint of the simplicity dis-
cussed above, the result of the addition is a patch which is, of course,
twice as big as each of the original two, but with regard to color still
the same and uniform, and therefore a simple idea. But on the defini-
tion of simple mode, it must also be a complex idea. This shows us
that Locke thinks of simplicity not only from the qualitative point of
view but also from another point of view, namely, a quantitative one.
That there are at least two points of view in defining simplicity is
also shown by the following passage wherein he discusses the reason
why no idea other than those of space and duration can become that of
infinity.
[... J All the Ideas, that are considered as having parts, and are capable of increase by
the addition of any equal or less parts, afford us by their repetition the Idea of Infinity;
because with this endless repetition, there is continued an enlargement, of which there
can be no end. But in other Ideas it is not so; for to the largest Idea of Extension or
Duration, that I at present have, the addition of any the least part makes an increase;
but to the perfectest Idea I have of the whitest Whiteness, if I add another of a less or
equal whiteness, (and of a whiter than I have, I cannot add the Idea.) it makes no
increase, and enlarges not my Idea at all; and therefore the different Ideas of Whiteness.
etc. are called Degrees. For those Ideas, that consist of Parts, are capable of being
augmented by every addition of the least part; but if you take the Idea of White, which
one parcel of Snow yielded yesterday to your Sight, and another Idea of White from
another parcel of Snow you see to day, and put them together in your Mind, they embody,
as it were, and run into one, and the Idea of Whiteness is not at all increased; and if
we add a less degree of Whiteness to a greater, we are so far from increasing, that we
diminish it. Those Ideas that consist not of Parts, cannot be augmented to what propor-
tion Men please. or be stretched beyond what they have received by their Senses [... J.
(II, xvii, 6)

What then are the simple ideas in the case of the ideas which can
be grasped from the quantitative point of view, those of space and time,
for example? Judging from the definition of the simple mode, it seems
that we can regard an inch or a second, for example, as simple ideas
in this case. But Locke's following words urge us to reconsider this
line of thought:
There is one thing more, wherein Space and Duration have a great Conformity, and that
is, though they are justly reckoned amongst our simple Ideas: Yet none of the distinct
 IDEA AND THING 23

Ideas we have of either is without all manner of Composition, it is the very nature of
both of them to consist of Parts: But their Parts being all of the same kind, and without
the mixture of any other Idea, hinder them not from having a Place amongst simple
Ideas. (II, xv, 9)

Here he says that the simple ideas in question have parts of the same
kind, but this can only be true when the simplicity of an idea is thought
of from the qualitative point of view. This is more clearly shown by a
footnote which was added to this section in the fifth edition: "[T]hat
Composition which he designed to exclude in that Definition [of simple
Idea], was a Composition of different Ideas in the Mind, and not a
Composition of the same kind in a Thing whose Essence consists in
having Parts of the same kind [...]". (II, xv, 9, footnote) Admittedly,
Locke is here seeing simplicity from the qualitative point of view. But,
again, if we think of simple ideas only from this viewpoint, all simple
modes defined above become simple ideas, and this is inconsistent with
the view that the simple mode is a kind of complex idea. If we follow
Locke's view in II, xv, 9, we can take all ideas of space and duration,
of whatever quantity they may be, to be simple ideas, insofar as they
are of the same quality.
But Locke does not give up the quantitative viewpoint suggested by
the definition of simple modes:
But the least Portions of either of [Space and Duration], whereof we have clear and distinct
Ideas, may perhaps be fittest to be considered by us, as the simple Ideas of that kind,
out of which our complex modes of Space, Extension, and Duration, are made up, and
into which they can again be distinctly resolved. (II, xv, 9)

And he raises, as such least portions, "sensible Point" and "Moment."

Thus, in order to avoid a complication, Locke takes the least sensible
units as simple ideas of Space and Duration, and regards various ideas
composed of them as their simple modes.

5. On "Partial Consideration"
These considerations on the subject of simplicity are not yet compre-
hensive, but point to something interesting. We can sum it up as follows:
1) One and the same sensible item can be received as a different idea,
if the viewpoint from which it is discerned is different.
2) A sensible simple idea is (in the ideal case) a correlate of the limit
of the discerning faculty.
24 Y ASUHIKO TOMIDA

I do not think that these points need detailed explanation. With regard
to the first point, a white sense-datum or mental image, for example,
can from the qualitative point of view be received as an idea of white,
but from the quantitative point of view it can be received as an idea of
extension. The sensible has various aspects, and how it is received is
dependent on the chosen viewpoint. Without such a choice, the given
is not yet anything, namely, it is, so to speak, anonymous. This step is
very close to the "considering as" mentioned above, and the former is
an essential condition for the latter. At least in principle, considering
something as something is realized by both the choice of an aspect and
attention to it.
Secondly, in order to acquire Lockean simple ideas, it is not suffi-
cient merely to pay attention to a certain aspect. The mind must not
only pay attention to an aspect of the given, but also exert its discerning
faculty either until it cannot qualitatively discern parts of the aspect
any more, or until it cannot quantitatively discern any further lesser
parts in it. Sensible simple ideas are (in ideal cases) limiting cases for
the discerning faculty.
Taking into account the point that without such various acts of the
mind the sensible cannot be acquired by the mind as even a simple
idea, we can see that not only intelligible ideas but also sensible ones
are grasped (at least in a wider sense).
In fact, there is a passage in the Essay which vividly suggests this
graspedness of sensible ideas and their close relationship with intelli-
gible ones:
'Tis true, Solidity cannot exist without Extension, neither can Scarlet-Colour exist without
Extension; but this hinders not, but that they are distinct Ideas. [... ] Space and Solidity
[are] as distinct Ideas, as Thinking and Extension, and as wholly separable in the Mind
one from another. (II, xiii, 11)

Let us take scarlet and extension as examples. Certainly we cannot have

any scarlet without extension as long as it is a sense-datum or a mental
image. Therefore, if the idea of scarlet is merely a sensible one, we cannot
have a simple idea of scarlet. It is always accompanied by extension, and
is, therefore, complex. In order for a sensible idea of scarlet to be simple,
we must at least distinguish the color aspect of the sensible from its other
aspects and grasp it as a qualitatively uniform one.
Perhaps, we can also explain this in terms of Locke's notion of
 IDEA AND THING 25

"partial Consideration," which he uses in a passage following the above

quotation:
[...1The Parts of pure Space are inseparable one from the other; so that the Continuity
cannot be separated, neither really, nor mentally. For I demand of anyone, to remove
any part of it from another, with which it is continued, even so much as in Thought. To
divide and separate actually, is, as I think, by removing the parts one from another, to
make two Superficies, where before there was a Continuity: And to divide mentally, is
to make in the Mind two Superficies, where before there was a Continuity, and consider
them as removed one from the other; which can only be done in things considered by
the Mind, as capable of being separated; and by separation, of acquiring new distinct
Superficies, which they then have not, but are capable of: But neither of these ways of
Separation, whether real or mental, is, as I think, compatible to pure Space.
'Tis true, a Man may consider so much of such a Space, as is answerable or com-
mensurate to a Foot, without considering the rest; which is indeed a partial Consideration,
but not so much as mental Separation, or Division; since a Man can no more mentally
divide, without considering two Superficies, separate one from the other, than he can
actually divide, without making two Superficies disjoin'd one from the other: But a partial
consideration is not separating. A Man may consider Light in the Sun, without its Heat;
or Mobility in Body without its Extension, without thinking of their separation. One is
only a partial Consideration, terminating in one alone; and the other is a Consideration
of both, as existing separately. (II, xiii, 13)

"Partial Consideration" is, first, "consider[ing] so much of such a

Space, as is answerable or commensurate to a Foot, without consid-
ering the rest." But the examples of the sun and its heat, and of mobility
in body and its extension suggest that, just as we can consider a space
of a foot though we cannot literally "separate" it from the rest, so too,
we can grasp scarlet as a different idea from that of extension, though
we cannot literally "separate" scarlet from extension. Therefore, the
notion of "partial Consideration" ought to apply to the latter case too;
namely, we make a "partial Consideration" only of the quality of scarlet
of a given complexity, and receive the quality as a distinct idea. This
we can generalize beyond the case of color, for the sensible generally has
many aspects and always has a background.
This "partial Consideration" has a very close relationship with con-
ceptual grasp, or can be seen just as the same act as the latter. Judging
from the examples given by Locke, the mind not only discerns and attends
to a part of space but also grasps it as a space of a foot. That is to say,
it is conceptually grasping the sensible idea. Thus, if Locke's "partial
Consideration" already contains the factor of "conceptual grasp," we
can safely say that the scarlet color, extension, and so on, discussed before
26 Y ASUHIKO TOMIDA

the introduction of the phrase "partial Consideration," were considered

instances involving the same phenomenon. However, it is probably not
correct to say that Locke treated all sensible simple ideas as having some
explicit conceptual determination. For as is shown by the case of simple
ideas without names (mentioned in the first section), Locke sometimes
considers, as it were, simple ideas without explicit conceptualization.!6
But we need to keep in mind the point that this phenomenon which Locke
tried to describe with the notion of "partial Consideration" is closer to
conceptual grasp than to grasping in the wider sense (that is, to grasping
as mere discerning); or, rather, Locke seems to have used the notion to
describe the former (that is, conceptual grasp itself).
Moreover, in light of this, we can infer from what we said in Section
2 that "the most universal"!? ideas, such as existence and unity, are not
the only intelligible ones, and that Locke thought, though he did not
say so explicitly, that every discernible thing can suggest some intelli-
gible simple idea or ideas according to its difference or differences.
For example, when we see a red flower, we can consider it not only to
be existing or one, but also to be red. Then not only ideas of existence
and unity but also an idea of redness might be suggested by it. Thus, gen-
erally speaking, attention to the given can not only give us sensible
ideas but also suggest intelligible ideas to us.
We have at least two sources of indirect evidence for this interpreta-
tion. One is Locke's use of the word "suggest," for example, in the two
following quotations (one of which has been quoted above).
These simple Ideas, the Materials of all our Knowledge, are suggested and furnished to
the Mind, only by those two ways above mentioned, viz, Sensation and Reflection. (II,
ii, 2)
[Sjimple Ideas are all from things themselves; and of these the Mind can have no more,
nor other than what are suggested to it. (II, xii, 2)

If "suggest" is interpreted in the manner mentioned above, it follows that

in these passages Locke takes not only ideas of existence, unity and so
on, but all simple ideas as containing some intelligible (or conceptual)
factor. If the idea of redness, for example, can be understood as also being
intelligible, this way of understanding would not necessarily be ground-
less. (However, since Locke often deals with "appearance," it goes
without saying that we cannot take all simple ideas to be merely intel-
ligible.)
The other indirect support is his view on general ideas or general
 IDEA AND THING 27

names. As will be discussed in the next chapter, according to Locke, when

we recognize some shared, or common, characteristic in several given
ideas, we take it to form a general idea and give a name, a general
name, to it. Such general ideas are criteria for sorting things, and once
stored we use them when we meet a given which conforms to them,
and thus we grasp the given as such and such. It would then follow
that in the case of a given which has some corresponding general idea
or ideas (and general name or names), conceptual grasp and suggestion
may occur. However, according to Locke's view on general ideas, such
a conceptual grasp can be exerted only after much mental work has
been done. We must consider especially the problem of whether we can
give this extended species of conceptual grasping the same status within
his empirical framework as the conceptual grasp in the cases of, for
example, existence and unity. IS But if we ignore the genetic point of view
and take only the result into account, it seems to me that Locke's text
suggests the above generalization.

6. The Distinction between the Sensible and the Intelligible Again

Let us sum up our discussion of simple ideas as follows. Our minds
receive the given in experience and discern and grasp its various aspects.
Colors and sounds, which are ordinarily prone to be understood as being
merely sensible, are in most cases not merely given, but are also dis-
cerned, and often conceptually grasped, as such and such a color or
such and such a sound. This phenomenon is not substantially different
from the one in which the given is grasped as being existent, or one. They
share with one another the same property of "graspedness." Therefore,
insofar as the distinction between the sensible and the intelligible is
that between, on the one hand, what is merely given and, on the other
hand, concepts (or meanings), it is insufficiently nuanced, and a facile
use of the distinction is in danger of concealing the fact that simple
ideas also have the character of being grasped.
Locke's "ideas" are not so unambiguous that it is now impossible to
make such a distinction. The difference between sensible simple ideas
and intelligible simple ones confirmed in the first section here is defi-
nitely not merely apparent. The examples mentioned there certainly
display a difference which enables us to distinguish between cases.
We can understand matters in the following way. In one case, the
sensible (that is, the given or its reproduction) appears in the manner
28 Y ASUHIKO TOMIDA

of its being grasped; in other words, though what appears as the given
is being grasped, it is its sensible aspect that is being thematized. And
in the other case, the grasped conceptual content itself is objectified,
and it is this objectified content (that is, a concept or meaning) that is
being thematized. Both cases have in common the basic factor of being
grasped, but they differ as to what is being thematized.
We must recognize the fact that insofar as the sensible is already being
discerned, it is relatively easy for us to shift our thematizing to the
intelligible in the manner of objectifying. If a discerned aspect is given
a name (and if the name is transformed into an abstract one), the shift
is easily made. In the Essay we find two sorts of passages, often mixed
with one another. There are passages wherein the given is the theme,
and there are also passages wherein a concept is the theme. The mixture
is, in my opinion, due to the close relation between the two, which is
based on their common root, that is, on their "graspedness."
Thus far we have examined the difference and relationship between
the sensibility and the intelligibility of simple ideas in terms of opera-
tions or acts of the mind. In the next chapter, I will focus on Locke's
view of general ideas, and attempt to clarify both Locke's theory of ideas
and the inappropriateness of the imagist interpretation of it.

NOTES

I II, xxix, 8.
2 II, iii, I.
3 Some, including W. C. Swabey, claim that Locke's idea is nothing but a meaning or
a universal, and that sensation (or sense-datum or mental image) does not fall into its
range. Cf. W. C. Swabey, "Locke's Theory of Ideas," in Philosophical Review, Vol.
XLII (1933). But this interpretation cannot deal with a passage such as II, iii, 2 just quoted,
and is also in discord with many other statements. For example, Locke says: "Whether
then they be Globules, or no; or whether they have a Verticity about their own Centres,
that produce the Idea of Whiteness in us, this is certain, that the more Particles of Light
are reflected from a Body, fitted to give them that Peculiar Motion, which produces the
Sensation of Whiteness in us; and possibly too, the quicker that peculiar Motion is, the
whiter does the Body appear, from which the greater number are reflected, as is evident
in the same piece of Paper put in the Sun-beams, in the Shade, and in a dark Hole; in
each of which, it will produce in us the Idea of Whiteness in far different degrees." (IV,
ii, 12) There is no other way to understand the term "idea" in this passage than to take
it as referring to the sensible.
4 Ayers, retaining the imagist interpretation, tries to interpret Locke's theory of abstrac-
tion (theory of general ideas) with a notion of "partial Consideration" which we shall
 IDEA AND THING 29

discuss later. Cf. M. R. Ayers, "Locke's Doctrine of Abstraction: Some Aspects of its
Historical and Philosophical Significance," in R. Brandt (ed.), John Locke (Berlin: de
Gruyter, 1981). This attempt should be noted because it identifies a Lockean notion
which had hitherto attracted almost no attention. But I do not think that this interpreta-
tion sufficiently takes into account the role of intelligible ideas or conceptual grasp in
Locke's theory of ideas. See the fifth section of this chapter.
5 The phrase in question has already been noticed by several people. Cf. J. Locke, An

Essay Concerning Human Understanding, ed. A. C. Fraser (New York: Dover, 1894),
Bk. II, Ch. ii, Sec. 2, n. 2 & Bk. II, Ch. vii, Sec. 7, n. 1; Swabey, op. cit., p. 578; J. W.
Yolton, "Locke's Concept of Experience," in C. B. Martin and D. M. Armstrong (eds.),
Locke and Berkeley (London: Macmillan, 1968), p. 44; S. L. Nathanson, "Locke's Theory
of Ideas," Journal of the History of Philosophy, Vol. XI (1973), p. 35. All of these
writers put the phrase in quotes, but they only suggest that "idea" is different from "sen-
sation" (Swabey), or suggest that the way of acquiring "simple ideas" is different from
the case of "complex ideas" (Yolton), or do not clearly show the point (Fraser), or
merely say that it shows that having a "percept" is not a sufficient condition for having
a concept (Nathanson).
6 See II, xxi, 1: "THE mind [... J considers in one thing the possibility of having any
of its simple Ideas changed, and in another the possibility of making that change; and
so comes by that Idea which we call Power."
7 Indeed, judging from Locke's wording, it is things or ideas that suggest such ideas,
and he does not explicitly say that it is sensible ideas. But since at least some ideas are
sensible ones, and since for things to be perceived is generally for the mind to "origi-
nally acquire ideas of substances," namely, for ideas of substances to be given by sensation,
this interpretation should be sufficiently clear. As to my wording of "originally acquiring
ideas of substances," see Chapter II, Section 5, below.
8 In the above article Swabey discusses this relation between Plato and Locke, though
from a slightly different point of view. See Swabey, op. cit., pp. 574-575.
9 Cf. R. I. Aaron, John Locke (3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971), pp.
136-138.
10 The main method Locke used to inquire into the origin of ideas was that of describing
his own mind, which had already acquired various ideas. But as T. H. Green once said
in criticism of Locke's genetic view of (sensible) ideas (D. Hume, The Philosophical
Works, ed. T. H. Green and T. H. Grose (Aalen: Scientia Verlag, 1964, reprint of the
new edition, 1886), Vol. I, "General Introduction," pp. 7-8), is it not in principle impos-
sible to adequately grasp the origin of intelligible ideas by this method? The arguments
of his Essay, Book II, are in most cases attempts to clarify the logical-constructive relation
between, on the one hand, ideas which are already acquired and, on the other, simple ideas
which are their components, as well as the relation between simple ideas and experi-
ence. Thus, they are not necessarily successful in describing the factual genetic process.
Therefore, in spite of Locke's intentions, the description of Book II is, whether it concerns
"suggestion" or "considering as," often nothing but the description of a mind which has
already to some extent acquired the intelligible. "Suggestion" and "considering as" are
expressions for the contact point between intelligible simple ideas and sensible simple
ideas rather than expressions for the origin of intelligible simple ideas. Locke's descrip-
tion here is nothing but a description of "intuitional meaning-fulfillment," in Husserl's
30 Y ASUHIKO TOMIDA

sense, rather than that of the phenomenon of an intelligible idea being acquired for the
first time.
There remains one further problem. Is Locke always thinking of perception of intel-
ligible ideas in general in the form of "intuitional meaning-fulfillment," just as in the
case of the acquisition of intelligible ideas? In other words, when he mentions, for example,
the ideas of unity and existence, does he think them always to be accompanied by some
sensible ideas which suggest them? If the correct answers to these questions are "Yes,"
then even when he seems to be talking about concept or meaning, something like a
mental image which suggests them is, so to speak, in view, and we must consider the
possibility that there may be some sensible factor behind his description even in such a
case. This point is important especially for the interpretation of his theory of general ideas,
for even if at least some of his general ideas are concepts or meanings, if he thought
universals to be always accompanied by something sensible which (to some extent) fulfills
(or instantiates) them, we must take general ideas to be always accompanied by something
sensible, even when it seems that we can deal with them just by saying that intelligible
ideas are to be regarded as general ones.
Unfortunately, there is no explicit answer to this problem in Locke. But judging from
several statements concerning the ideas of unity and existence, he thinks that suggested
intelligible ideas are distinct from suggestive sensible ideas, and even if he sees intelli-
gible ideas as being accompanied by suggesting mental images, it would be certain that
he is treating intelligible ideas as being different from the latter. Therefore, we may
conclude that when he treats intelligible ideas, he generally treats them as mere meanings,
in Husserl's sense, except in some special cases - specifically, those cases in which the
relation between sensible ideas and intelligible ideas is thematized. See the further dis-
cussion of general ideas in the next chapter.
\I The same point will also be confirmed with respect to ideas of modes. See Locke's
statements on ideas of modes which have external archetypes in II, xxii, 2 (this passage
will be quoted in Part II, Chapter I, Section 2) and II, xxii, 9. Cf. R. S. Woolhouse,
Locke (Brighton: The Harvester Press, 1983), p. 51.
12 II, xxi, 2. There he says as follows: "Power thus considered is twofold, viz. as able
to make, or able to receive any change: The one may be called Active, and the other Passive
Power."
13 Moreover, according to Locke, even if sufficient impulses are given to the senses,
if our minds do not take notice of or attend to them, there is no perception. See II, ix,
3.
14 Cf. Aaron, op. cit., pp. 111-112.
IS As will be argued in the next section, strictly speaking even such sense-data or
mental images cannot be simple. Here we ignore this because our topic is the criteria of
simplicity.
16 However, even simple ideas without name can appear with some conceptual deter-
mination (for example "the smell of this tree"), and his arguments concerning the formation
of sensible simple general ideas seem to depend on this fact. See Section 2 of the next
chapter.
17 This phrase refers to unity in II, xvi, 1. As will be discussed in Section 5 of the
next chapter, such wording suggests that the Lockean simple idea itself already quali-
fies as a general idea.
 IDEA AND THING 31

18 I cannot discuss this problem in detail in this treatise, but as I have already men-
tioned in note 10, in spite of Locke's "genetic" intention, his theory of ideas seems to
me to be a theory which presupposes our conceptual grasp. Therefore, my answer to
this difficulty will be, ultimately, that we should treat the conceptual grasp based on
acquired general ideas in the same way that we treat that of, for example, unity and
existence.
 II. LOCKE'S THEORY OF GENERAL IDEAS,
REVISITED

1. Berkeley's Misreading

Before re-examining Locke's theory of general ideas, let us briefly discuss

Berkeley's discussion of Locke. It is well known that when Berkeley
criticized Locke's theory, he chose, as the most crucial target, a passage
wherein Locke mentions the general or abstract idea of the triangle.' And
other writers have usually followed Berkeley in this respect. 2 But the
theme of that passage is that "[Axioms] are not the Truths first known
to the Mind," and so it is not the place where Locke thematically dis-
cussed general ideas or abstractions. 3 He argued these themes in several
sections,4 but Berkeley does not appear to deal adequately with all of
them,S which is sufficient reason for calling into question Berkeley's
entire criticism. Furthermore, it has not been noticed that when he quoted
Locke's remarks, he deliberately, but silently, italicized some words.
Today it is impossible for us to interpret Locke's theory of general ideas
without first taking up Berkeley's misreading, and by pointing out this
problem Aaron has opened up a fresh path to a reconsideration of Locke's
theory.
In A Treatise concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge,
Berkeley quotes Locke in the following way:

Abstract ideas are not so obvious or easy to children or the yet unexercised mind as
particular ones. If they seem so to grown men, it is only because by constant and familiar
use they are made so. For when we nicely reflect upon them, we shall find that general
ideas are fictions and contrivances of the mind, that carry difficulty with them, and do
not so easily offer themselves, as we are apt to imagine. For example, does it not require
some pains and skill to form the general idea of a triangle (which is yet none of the
most abstract comprehensive and difficult) for it must be neither oblique nor rectangle,
neither equilateral, equicrural, nor scalenon, but all and none of these at once. In effect,
it is something imperfect that cannot exist, an idea wherein some parts of several
different and inconsistent ideas are put together. It is true the mind in this imperfect
state has need of such ideas, and makes all the haste to them it can, for the conveniency
of communication and enlargement of knowledge, to both which it is naturally very
much inclined. But yet one has reason to suspect such ideas are marks of our imperfec-
tion. At least this is enough to shew that the most abstract and general ideas are not

32
 IDEA AND THING 33

those that the mind is first and most easily acquainted with, nor such as its earliest
knowledge is conversant about. 6

The words italicized here are not in italics in Locke's own text.
Emphasized in this way, the phrases "all and none," and especially
"inconsistent," give the impression that the idea of triangle is an "absurd
and impossible" one. However, if we examine Locke's text without
prejudice, it is clear that such a reading is wrong. Locke does not
say that the general idea of triangle is made of "inconsistent ideas."
What he says is that it is made of "some parts of several different and
inconsistent ideas." Therefore, general ideas are not self-contradictory
ones.
There is little to add to Aaron's criticism of Berkeley's "unfair"
reading,7 but it is worth remarking that Locke repeatedly emphasized that
complex ideas must not contain inconsistent components in them, and
he often treated the idea of a triangle as a representative of a type of
complex ideas, namely, ideas ()f modes. s What then was Locke's theory
of general ideas and abstraction?
It is not so easy to answer this question. The most serious difficulty
lies, as was mentioned in the last section of the previous chapter, in
the fact that passages concerning "appearance" and passages concerning
concepts are often mixed together. Therefore the interpretation we give
to one passage will not necessarily apply to the others. In the following,
we shall first examine individually several important passages, and then
attempt to draw a more coherent picture of the whole.

2. Sensible and Simple General Ideas

The first consideration concerning general ideas, or a mental act cor-

relative to them, namely, the operation of abstraction, is found in the
Essay, II, xi. Locke says:

The use of Words then being to stand as outward Marks of our internal Ideas, and those
Ideas being taken from particular things, if every particular Idea that we take in, should
have a distinct Name, Names must be endless. To prevent this, the Mind makes the par-
ticular Ideas, received from particular Objects, to become general; which is done by
considering them as they are in the Mind such Appearances, separate from all other
Existences, and the circumstances of real Existence, as Time, Place, or any other con-
comitant Ideas. This is called ABSTRACTION, whereby Ideas taken from particular Beings,
become general Representatives of all of the same kind; and their Names general Names,
applicable to whatever exists conformable to such abstract Ideas. Such precise, naked
34 Y ASUHIKO TOMIDA

Appearances in the Mind, without considering, how, whence, or with what others they
came there, the Understanding lays up (with Names commonly annexed to them) as the
Standards to rank real Existences into sorts, as they agree with these Patterns, and to
denominate them accordingly. Thus the same Colour being observed to day in Chalk or
Snow, which the Mind yesterday received from Milk, it considers that Appearance alone,
makes it a representative of all of that kind; and having given it the name Whiteness, it
by that sound signifies the same quality wheresoever to be imagin'd or met with; and
thus Universals, whether Ideas or Terms, are made. (II, xi, 9)

General ideas are formed by the operation of abstraction, which detaches

particularizing components from particular ideas.
According to Locke, it is time and place that play the most decisive
role in the particularization of ideas. Particularization means, in this case,
individualization, or making something just itself and different from
everything else. With regard to this, he says that:
When we see any thing to be in any place in any instant of time, we are sure (be it
what it will) that it is that very thing, and not another, which at that same time exists in
another place, how like and undistinguishable soever it may be in all other respects
[ ... j. (II, xxvii, 1)

By being separated from such particularizing things as time and place,

particular ideas become general ones.
Now, as the term "appearance" was used in the definition of simple
ideas,9 so also here, general ideas are said to be "precise, naked
Appearances in the Mind." Judging from the wording, it seems, at least
here, that general ideas are being treated as a variety of sensible ideas,
and furthermore as simple sensible ideas. (This is warranted by the
example of "whiteness" raised in the latter part of the quotation.)
Therefore, in this section, I will consider Locke's view on sensible and
simple general ideas on the basis of the text of II, xi, 9.
For example, the general idea of whiteness could only be, insofar as
it is sensible, acquired as a certain quality of a certain aspect of an appear-
ance which has many aspects, just as in the case of sensible and simple
ideas. Then, the separation mentioned there must also be done by the
discerning faculty discussed in Chapter I. If we take general ideas to
be a variety of sensible ones, then the operation of abstraction which
frames them must be the same as the mental act which acquires sensible
and simple ideas. IO And this seems to be confirmed by the wording: "[the
Mind] considers that Appearance alone."
But this is still insufficient for adequately understanding the Lockean
operation of abstraction. 11 Indeed, the separation of an idea from other
 IDEA AND THING 35

particularizing circumstances may seem to be giving attention exclusively

to a certain quality of a certain aspect in sensation, or putting aside the
other qualities of a certain aspect and paying attention only to a quality
in imagination. But even if a quality has been separated out in such a
manner, as long as it is still being considered as say the color of that
milk or the color of this snow, it seems that it has not yet been suffi-
ciently separated from the particularizing circumstances. The various
particularizing determinations, like time and place, are able to operate
independently of discerning and attending. Or rather, they are intelligible
or conceptual determinations, so they are different from mere attention
to appearance. If discerned and attended appearances can become general
ideas only when they are also separated from these determinations, it
is necessary for the mind not only to discern and attend to, but also to
"consider them as they are in the Mind such Appearances, separate
from all other Existences, and the circumstances of real Existence, as
Time, Place, or any other concomitant Ideas." Moreover, it must not
"consider how, whence, or with what others they came there."12 Here
again, as was pointed out in the previous chapter, the mental act of
considering plays an important role. In such a case again we must take
into account the operation of conceptual grasp, and it seems that the
transformation from particular ideas to general ones is ultimately nothing
but a kind of modification in the character of the conceptual grasp.
If, when we acquire a sensible idea of whiteness as a general idea,
we must not only discern and attend to it, but also "consider [it] as [it
is] in the Mind such Appearance, separate from all other Existences,
and the circumstances of real Existence, as Time, Place, or any other con-
comitant Ideas," and not "consider how, whence, or with what others
[it] came there," then it follows that Locke assumes that sensible ideas
generally receive some conceptual determinations as soon as they
appear.13 Indeed, when we look at a patch of white color, we have usually
already received it as, for example, this color or the color of this milk.
Here we are of course discerning the white color from other aspects,
and also from other colors within our sight, but we are also, whether
explicitly or not, grasping it in the narrow sense (that is, conceptually
grasping it) to some extent. If in such a situation the mind separates
and takes out from all the particularizing circumstances "the same color"
which appears in various things, then it must not only differentiate the
color from the others but also ignore the determinations particularizing
it (for example, spatio-temporal determinations) and grasp it as being
36 Y ASUHIKO TOMIDA

general. Hence, the modification in the character of the conceptual grasp

mentioned above amounts to ignoring the particularizing determinations.

3. The Meaning of "Representative"

Then, what does it mean to say that "Ideas taken from particular Beings,
become general Representatives of all of the same kind" (II, xi, 9)?
According to our interpretation, what Locke means in this passage
is that a sensible idea which has been discerned and separated from
particularizing determinations becomes a general representative of all
items of the same kind. What, then, is it to be a "representative"?
When we think of, for example, whiteness in general, we certainly
sometimes envision some white mental image. According to Locke, this
white color has originally been taken from some concrete, individual
object or objects. Namely, it is nothing but a quality that we have dis-
tinguished from many other sense qualities in an experienced aspect
and have then reproduced as a mental image which has no particularizing
determinations. And if, for example, we are thinking of its whiteness,
then we are thinking of whiteness in general. Whiteness was originally
acquired from experience of concrete things, and when we treat the white
color of a concrete thing in this way, it then becomes a representative
of the rest. And a name which was added to it is applied to those colors
which conform to it.
Thus, II, xi, 9 indicates that a sensible idea operates as a general
representative of particular ideas of the same kind. But this does not mean
that Locke's theory of general ideas is the same as Berkeley's theory
of representatives. It ought to be clear from the above consideration
that such an identification would be a misunderstanding, yet this sort
of misunderstanding is prompted by his claim that even general ideas
are particular. Therefore, I will eliminate the possibility of such a mis-
understanding here.
Locke's assertion that even general ideas are in a sense particular is
found in the following passage, amongst others:

[Ujniversality belongs not to things themselves, which are all of them particular in their
Existence, even those Words, and Ideas, which in their signification, are general. When
therefore we quit Particulars, the Generals that rest, are only Creatures of our own making,
their general Nature being nothing but the Capacity they are put into by the Understanding,
of signifying or representing many particulars. For the signification they have, is nothing
but a relation, that by the mind of Man is added to them. (III, iii, 11)
 IDEA AND THING 37

He also says:
[T]he immediate Object of all our Reasoning and Knowledge, is nothing but Particulars.
Every Man's Reasoning and Knowledge, is only about the Ideas existing in his own Mind,
which are truly, everyone of them, particular Existences [... ]. Universality is but
accidental to [our Knowledge], and consists only in this, That the particular Ideas, about
which it is, are such, as more than one particular Thing can correspond with, and be
represented by. (IV, xvii, 8)

Locke often emphasizes that all things are particular. 14 And from these
passages it is also clear that in this case he includes even general ideas
among things. In both passages, it is obvious that general ideas are in
themselves ("in their Existence") particular, and that their generality
consists in their relation to other particular ideas. From this, one might
think that Locke's general ideas are nothing but a variety of particular
ideas and that they operate as general ideas only by the relation added
to them, namely, the relation which enables them to represent more
than one particular idea. And one might think that his theory of general
ideas is a precursor of the theory of Berkeley, who remarks that:

[U]niversality, so far as I can comprehend not consisting in the absolute, positive nature
or conception of any thing, but in the relation it bears to the particulars signified or
represented by it: by virtue whereof it is that things, names, or notions, being in their
own nature particular, are rendered universal. IS

It is obvious that his view here is in wording very close to Locke's.

Now, at least two interpretations of the particularity of general ideas
seem possible. The first, which concerns sensible simple general ideas
only, is that even if sensible simple general ideas are sensible ideas which
have been separated from particularizing features, they are still partic-
ular because a sensible simple general idea is one among many of the
same kind. Locke says, "the same Colour being observed to day in Chalk
or Snow, which the Mind yesterday received from Milk, it considers
that Appearance alone, makes it a representative of all of that kind;
and having given it the name Whiteness, it by that sound signifies the
same quality wheresoever to be imagin'd or met with." But since the
appearances of whiteness have various subtle qualitative differences,
any appearance which is a representative is merely one among various
white colors, that is, is a member of a class of similar colors. Then
even if the appearance taken as the representative is said to be "the
same color" or "the same quality," it is still particular in the sense of
38 YASUHIKO TOMIDA

one amongst similar colors, or one amongst white colors of various

degrees of whiteness.
Such an interpretation presupposes ambiguity in the term "partic-
ular," and, what is more, concerns only sensible ideas. But some Lockean
ideas are straightforwardly intelligible ones, and for them, this inter-
pretation is untenable.
The second interpretation is that since general ideas are, whatever
they may be, perceived or had by someone at some point in time, they
are particular, at least in this spatio-temporal determination. As in III,
iii, 11 Locke speaks of the particularity of general ideas using the phrase
"in their Existence." According to him, every existing thing has a spatio-
temporal determination. Of course, such determinations are, as was
said in II, xi, 9, separable, and they can be, to some extent, added or
recovered when necessary. It is in this sense that every idea, including
general ideas, is particular.
At any rate, if Locke's assertion about the particularity of general ideas
can be understood in these ways, there are serious differences between
his theory of the "representative" and Berkeley's. Indeed, both his use
of the term "representative" and his statement that even general ideas
are particular, insofar as a certain kind of sensible ideas is taken as
general, might tempt one to take general ideas as mere particulars put
in representative relations in Berkeley's sense. But if the claim that
everything is particular means that even the general can have spatio-
temporal determinations, then Locke's view (according to which,
representatives have no particularizing determinations) is clearly different
from Berkeley's, in which a particular as such becomes a representa-
tive. (This is compatible with the first interpretation of particularity.
For the particular according to this view has already undergone dis-
cernment and elimination of particularizing determinations and, hence,
cannot be identical with Berkeleyan "particulars.")16

4. General Ideas of Substances

Thus far we have attempted an interpretation concerning Locke's theory

of general ideas and abstraction on the basis of the text in II, xi, 9. But
that is not yet an interpretation of his whole theory concerning these
matters. For if this interpretation is reliable when applied to simple and
sensible general ideas, it does not seem to be applicable to abstract
complex ideas (that is, complex general ideas) without qualification. This
 IDEA AND THING 39

will become clear as we review the discussion of general ideas in Book

III. That discussion begins with the following statements:
[.. . J/deas become general, by separating from them the circumstances of Time, and Place,
and any other Ideas, that may determine them to this or that particular Existence. By
this way of abstraction they are made capable of representing more Individuals than
one; each of which, having in it a conformity to that abstract Idea, is (as we call it) of
that sort. (Ill, iii, 6)

At first sight, this assertion seems to be a mere summary of II, xi, 9.

But the general ideas given as examples in the explanation immedi-
ately following cannot be understood to be sensible; therefore the
interpretation given here in Section 2 is not true of them. The explana-
tion is as follows:
There is nothing more evident, than that the Ideas of the Persons Children converse
with (to instance in them alone) are like the Persons themselves, only particular. The Ideas
of the Nurse, and the Mother, are well framed in their Minds; and, like Pictures of them
there, represent only those Individuals. The Names they first give to them, are confined
to these Individuals; and the Names of Nurse and Mamma, the Child uses, determine them-
selves to those Persons. Afterwards, when time and a larger Acquaintance has made
them observe, that there are a great many other Things in the World, that in some common
agreements of Shape, and several other Qualities, resemble their Father and Mother, and
those Persons they have been used to, they frame an Idea, which they find those many
Particulars do partake in; and to that they give, with others, the name Man, for Example.
And thus they come to have a general Name, and a general Idea. Wherein they make
nothing new, but only leave out of the complex Idea they had of Peter and James, Mary
and Jane, that which is peculiar to each, and retain only what is common to them all.
(III, iii, 7)

This shows that the general idea signified by the name "man" is a com-
bination of what is common to all individual men.
Now, if the idea of an individual man is sensible, it is particular (in
the first sense of "particularity" discussed in the previous section). Even
if we can say that having limbs is common to all individual men, their
sensible limbs are different from each other in form, size, color, and so
on. We find similarities among them, but no identity in a strict sense.
Thus, as Berkeley says,17 we could not take any idea of the limbs common
to Peter and James, Mary and Jane, if we take general ideas to be sensible.
This problem becomes clearer when we think of general ideas of the
animal and the vivens. Locke raises the ideas of the animal and the vivens
after his discussion of man. The general idea of the animal is made up
of several ideas common to ideas of individual animals, namely, that
40 Y ASUHIKO TOMIDA

of body, life, sense, spontaneous motion, and nourishment; and the

general idea of the vivens is an idea comprised of those of body, life,
and nourishment, which are derived from the general idea of animal as
shared by living things in general. 18 But we cannot have an idea of
body which is shared by men and cassowaries, for example, insofar as
that idea is sensible. Therefore, it is obvious that the general ideas
Locke is considering here are not sensible.
Some people have attempted to interpret general ideas as a kind of
mental image ("indeterminate images" or "generic images,,).19 But there
are at least three objections to this approach.
The first concerns definitions. The general idea of a substance is
a kind of complex idea, and, according to Locke, complex ideas are
clarified by the enumeration of the simple ideas which are their com-
ponents. 20 But if a general idea is originally nothing but an obscure mental
image, any attempt at its clarification is, however ideally the enumera-
tion may be done, hopeless.
The second objection concerns the classifying role which general ideas
are supposed to play. One of the most basic ideas of Locke's theory of
reference is that when general ideas are retained in our minds, things
are classified into kinds according to whether they conform to them or
not, and are called by the names of the kinds. 21 But if the criteria for
this classification were nothing but obscure mental images, they would
not work. Classification according to complex general ideas is successful
only when properties which conform to components of a general idea are
found in the things to be sorted. But if the general idea were nothing
but an indeterminate mental image, we should have to conceptually
determine which aspects, which characteristics of this indeterminate
generic image, are the criteria. Therefore, even if an indeterminate mental
image sometimes accompanies the classification, it is not the mental
image itself but its conceptual determinations that play the classifying
role. 22
The third objection to the attempt to interpret general ideas as inde-
terminate generic images draws attention to Locke's emphasis on the
"incorruptibility" of universals, or nominal essences, which are identi-
fied with general ideas. 23 If general ideas were nothing but unstable
mental images, they would not be said to be incorruptible.
In the last analysis, the ideas that Locke considers here are intelligible.
He seems to take a particular idea to be a combination of conceptual
determinations, and to think that ideas become more general by gradu-
 IDEA AND THING 41

ally taking up common components from these determinations. For

example, in the case of the vivens, he thinks that we exclude what is
peculiar to animal and plant, and take out only the common compo-
nents, namely, ideas of body, life and nourishment, and thus make the
general idea of the vivens out of them. Furthermore, that even partic-
ular ideas of individual men, which are the starting point, have, from
the beginning, the characteristic of intelligibility, seems also to be
suggested by the fact that in the passage quoted above he compares
them with the "pictures" of the individuals in the mind.
Thus, if complex general ideas of substances have to be understood
as being intelligible ones, their "representative" character needs recon-
sideration.
In this case, what the mind retains as general ideas are meanings or
conceptual determinations, namely, intelligible ideas. Their formation
seems to be accomplished as follows. As we have already pointed out,
Locke assumes that sensible ideas generally receive intelligible deter-
minations as soon as they appear. That is to say, the individuals that
we find, are, implicitly or explicitly, found under various conceptual
determinations which make them individuals. And if some determina-
tions are common to them, they are separated from the rest, retained as
one idea, and given a name. Thus when we meet individuals which
have determinations that conform to the common cluster of determina-
tions, we sort them into the same kind and call them by the same name.
This is Locke's view of the representativeness of general ideas of sub-
stances. In this case, general ideas taken as representatives are by no
means mental images. They are clusters of concepts, or meanings of
names.

5. Simplification and Abstraction

I have shown that when we acquire simple ideas, we need to exert some
mental acts to separate what is simple from the complex appearance
that is given. I have also shown that we need the same mental acts to
acquire sensible simple general ideas. Now, when we form complex
general ideas of substances, we must separate a cluster of ideas common
to particular ideas of substances from other particularizing ideas. And
because complex ideas are made of simple ideas, we may say that the
formation of complex general ideas of substances is essentially a gradual
movement to a simpler cluster of ideas. In all these cases, a simple
42 Y ASUHIKO TOMIDA

idea, or a cluster of common ideas, is separated out from something

complex. Therefore, apart from the problem of whether what is finally
acquired is used as a representative or not, we can conclude that the
act of simplification to acquire simple ideas, the abstraction required
for simple general ideas, and the abstraction required to generalize
complex ideas of substances, all involve one and the same mental
operation.
In fact, since simple ideas are ideas separated from all accompani-
ments, they already have the status of general ideas. This is clear from
the fact that Locke himself puts them at the head of a list of abstract ideas
in a passage wherein he discusses three kinds of abstract ideas. 24 But,
since we acquire general ideas of corporeal substances by abstracting
something shared by more than one particular, this acquisition is also
done by separation. Thus simplification and abstraction share a common
characteristic with one another.

6. General Ideas of Modes

Now, in II, xi, 9 Locke discussed sensible and simple general ideas,
and in III, iii, 7 he treated general ideas of substances. In contrast to these
passages, he considers the formation of general ideas of modes in a
very different way in the following several passages concerning the names
of mixed modes.

THE Names of mixed Modes being general, they stand, as has been shewn, for sorts or
Species of Things, each of which has its peculiar Essence. The Essences of these Species
also, as has been shewed, are nothing but the abstract Ideas in the Mind, to which the
Name is annexed. (III, v, I)
[Tlhese Essences of the Species of mixed Modes, are not only made by the Mind,
but made very arbitrarily, made without Patterns, or reference to any real Existence.
Wherein they differ from those of Substances [... j. [Ijn its complex Ideas of mixed Modes,
the Mind takes a liberty not to follow the Existence of Things exactly. It unites and
retains certain Collections, as so many distinct specifick Ideas, whilst others, that as
often occur in Nature, and are as plainly suggested by outward Things, pass neglected
without particular Names or Specifications. Nor does the Mind, in these of mixed Modes,
as in the complex Ideas of Substances, examine them by the real Existence of Things
[... j. (III, v, 3)
To understand this aright, we must consider wherein this making of these complex Ideas
consists, and that is not in the making any new Idea, but putting together those which
the Mind had before. Wherein the Mind does these three things: First, It chuses a certain
Number. Secondly, It gives them connexion, and makes them into one Idea. Thirdly, It
ties them together by a Name. (III, v, 4)
 IDEA AND THING 43

These passages show that the formation of general ideas of mixed

modes is different from that of simple and general ideas, and general
ideas of substances. It does not consist in separating something from
the complex. Rather, it consists in gathering several ideas already retained
in the mind and uniting them.
As we see in III, v, 4, when Locke discusses general ideas of mixed
modes, he generally does not mention the act of "abstraction."zs There
seems to be a reason for this. Mixed modes are formed, in principle,
not by acquiring an archetype from real particulars, but by choosing some
ideas from those already retained and tying them together. Therefore,
if we do not include among them ideas which are particularizing deter-
minations, we do not need any generalizations.
Here, too, we must understand general ideas of mixed modes to be
intelligible. For it is impossible to have general ideas of adultery and
ambition, for example, which are mental images.
To all these difficulties with the attempt to understand complex general
ideas as "indeterminate images" or "generic images," we can add another.
According to Locke's theory of knowledge, ideas of modes are gener-
ally real and adequate because they are without archetypes except
themselves. Therefore, the knowledge based on them is the prototype
of everything that deserves the name of "knowledge." Locke thinks of
mathematics as a model for this since it treats simple modes, and he
attempts to extend mathematics' demonstrability to morality, which treats
mixed modes. 26 But if general ideas of modes are nothing but indeter-
minate mental images, then how can we arrive at certain knowledge?27
Locke's defense of knowledge, based on ideas of modes as the proto-
type of knowledge in general, shows that general ideas of modes are
not indeterminate mental images.

7. The Priority of the Intelligible

Thus far we have considered Locke's theory of general ideas, considering

several separate cases. But from these several considerations it becomes
clear that his theory possesses a unified character.
Firstly, simple general ideas are nothing but simple ideas themselves.
And if they are sensible, Locke takes them to be something grasped by
the acts of discerning and conceptual grasp, and separated from other
conceptual determinations. Though he does not discuss the acquisition
of intelligible and simple general ideas like those of existence and unity,
44 Y ASUHIKO TOMIDA

since simple ideas are also general ideas, intelligible and simple ideas
are themselves general ideas, and therefore we must say of them that
"considering as," discussed in Chapter I, is the mental act by which
they are acquired. Thus, discerning, conceptual grasp, and its modifi-
cation, are mental acts required for the acquisition of simple general ideas.
And so Locke's simple general ideas are grasped and simple sensible
ideas or simple conceptual determinations. To use Husserlian language,
simple general ideas are simple "meanings," or the sensible which appears
in the "intuition fulfilling simple meanings." And the acquisition of
such simple general ideas presupposes a certain measure of explicit or
implicit conceptual grasp of the complex appearance which is given to
the mind.
General ideas of substances are also framed by taking determina-
tions common to more than one thing and tying them together under
general names. Therefore, these general ideas are also essentially the
same as Husserlian "meanings."
The same can also be said of general ideas without external archetypes
such as mixed modes. According to Locke, in this case, general ideas
and general names are made by gathering various ideas which have
already been acquired, and adding names to them. Therefore, these
general ideas, too, are conceptual, that is, intelligible. 28

8. A Remaining Problem
But even if Locke's theory of general ideas assumes the priority of the
intelligible, that does not mean that the theory then avoids all the diffi-
culties that have been pointed out thus far. Among the remaining
difficulties the most serious may be this, that even if the priority of the
intelligible is implied in a theory of sensible and simple general ideas,
Locke seems to have adopted the view that meaning is identical to a
type of mental image.
As is often pointed out, when we, for example, think of whiteness
or use the general names "whiteness" or "white," a white mental image
does not necessarily accompany them, nor is it true that we cannot think
or use language without such mental images. Therefore, as seen in Section
2, if Locke thinks of one variety of appearances as being general ideas,
it might be validly pointed out that he confuses mental images with
meanings. But it does not follow that he never sees the workings of
the intelligible or the conceptual, nor that he only sees the working of
 IDEA AND THING 45

attention in Mill's sense (so-called "exclusive attention").29 But the con-

siderations thus far indicate how sensitive he was to the workings of
the intelligible. If there is a problem in Locke's theory of general ideas,
it is not that in certain cases he confused meanings and mental images,
but rather that though he penetrated quite deeply into the phenomena
of meaning, he did not adequately distinguish between "meaning" and
"meaning-fulfillment" in Husserl's sense.
But we can see this "confusion" over simple general ideas more char-
itably, by regarding him as tripping over himself as he tries to confirm
intelligible meanings with "intuitive-fulfillments" (that is by appear-
ances), and thus avoid an empty use of language. 3o I cannot pursue this
problem further here, but we will have to reconsider Locke's confusion
of "meaning" and "fulfillment" in view of several other questions. For
example, why did he adopt the "compositionalist" position, namely,
that which holds that all ideas are either simple ideas or composed of
simple ideas? Why did he think of simple ideas as originating "from
Experience"? For Locke's line of argumentation suggests that it is in
simple (general) ideas that meanings and their fulfillments are most
closely related.

NOTES

I IV, vii, 9.
2 Husser! amongst them. Cf. E. Husserl, Logische Untersuchrgen, 2. Bd., 1. Teil
(Husserliana, Bd. XIX/I, 1984), II, 2. Kapitel, §11.
3 As is sometimes pointed out, in order to show that "[Axioms] are not the Truths first
known," Locke treated abstract ideas too negatively. See also R. I. Aaron, John Locke (3rd
ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971), p. 196; J. L. Mackie, Problems from Locke
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976), p. 107.
4 II, xi, 9; III, iii, etc. These important passages will be considered in the following
sections.
5 But it does not follow that Berkeley completely ignored them. See also M. C. Beardsley,
"Berkeley on 'Abstract Ideas' ," in C. B. Martin and D. M. Armstrong (eds.), Locke and
Berkeley (London: Macmillan, 1968); E. J. Craig, "Berkeley's Attack on Abstract Ideas,"
Philosophical Review, Vol. LXXVII (1968).
6 G. Berkeley, A Treatise concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge, in A. A.

Luce and T. E. Jessop (eds.), The Works of George Berkeley, Bishop of Cloyne (London:
Nelson, 1949), Vol. II, pp. 32-33.
7 See note 8 of the Introduction of Part One above.
R The condition that complex ideas must not contain inconsistent components will be

confirmed by the consideration of the formation of ideas of "mixed modes" in Part Two,
Chapter I below. See the second section of the chapter.
46 Y ASUHIKO TOMIDA

9 Cf. the fourth section of the previous chapter.

10 This point will be reconfirmed in the fifth section of this chapter.
11 Mackie uses the notion of "selective attention" to interpret Locke's abstract ideas. This
notion picks out rather precisely, I think, the phenomenon that we have thus far consid-
ered. But his interpretation does not make clear the close relationship between "sensible
ideas" and "intelligible ideas," and thus does not touch several problems which will be
considered below. For Mackie's interpretation, see Mackie, op. cit., Ch. 4.
12 The italics are mine.
13 This point has already been suggested in note 10 of the previous chapter.
14 E.g., III, iii, 1 and III, iii, 6.
IS Berkeley, op. cit., pp. 33-34. Husser! also claims the essential identity of their views
on representatives. Cf. Husserl, op. cit., II, 2. Kapitel, §28.
16 There still remains a problem to be discussed in the theory of general ideas set forth
in II, xi, 9, namely, the problem of how one grasps that two things are identical in
quality or kind. "[T]he same Colour being observed to day in Chalk or Snow, which
the Mind yesterday received from Milk, it considers that Appearance alone, makes it a
representative of all of that kind; and having given it the name Whiteness, it by that
sound signifies the same quality wheresoever to be imagin'd or met with." (My italics.)
In such a manner, Locke repeatedly uses wording such as "the same color" or "the same
quality." But colors called "white" may have subtly different tones and shades, and so
we do not necessarily apply the same general name only to those things which are liter-
ally of the same quality. Therefore, as was discussed above, even the ideas called "general
ideas" in II, xi, 9 are, all the same, particular in the sense of being one among many which
have subtle differences. How then can such things with differences be grasped as the same?
As to the problem let us start with the following passage:

In general it may be observed, that those simple Modes, which are considered but as
different degrees of the same simple Idea; though they are in themselves many of them
very distinct Ideas, yet have ordinarily no distinct Names, nor are much taken notice
of, as distinct Ideas, where the difference is but very small between them. (II, xviii, 6)

This passage states that even though there are subtle differences among ideas, they
can be treated as the same. And on the basis of such a statement, it might seem that
Locke assumes that one could perceive the colors of snow, milk, and chalk witllOut any
recognition of phenomenal difference. But this line of interpretation fails. For even if ideas
are sometimes not "much taken notice of, as distinct Ideas, where the difference is but
very small between them," it does not follow that they are always taken to be indistin-
guishable. (Actually, Locke explicitly talks in II, xvii, 6 about the perceptibility of different
degrees of the same simple idea.)
Unfortunately, Locke does not give any detailed explanation of the acts or processes
of grasping the sameness of appearances. He only says that experience gives us the same
ideas and that the sameness can be intuitively grasped. For example, he says: "[T]he sorting
of [Things] under Names, is the Workmanship of the Understanding, taking occasion from
the similitude it observes amongst them, to make abstract general Ideas, and set them
up in the mind, with Names annexed to them, as Patterns, or Forms [... J." (III, iii, 13)
See also Mackie, op. cit., pp. 124-125; J. W. Yolton, Locke and the Compass of Human
Understanding (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), p. 28.
 IDEA AND THING 47
17 Berkeley, op. cit., pp. 28f.
18 III, iii, 9.
19 See Mackie, op. cit., pp. 123-124. With regard to the general difficulty of the theory
of "generic image," see e.g. E. J. Furlong, "Abstract Ideas and Images," Aristotelian Society
Supplementary Volume XXVII (1953), p. 133.
20 See Supplement A, Section 2 below.
21 See Supplement A, Section 2 below.
22 With regard to the point that indeterminate images do not work in classifying
things, Locke's statement about "confused" ideas quoted at the beginning of the previous
chapter furnishes useful information. Such ideas are called "confused" only when they
are "ranked under some ordinary Name," and they themselves are not the criteria of the
classification.
23 See his view on the incorruptibility of essences in III, iii, 19. In IV, xi, 14 Locke
also says as follows: "[ ... ] Names being supposed to stand perpetually for the same Ideas;
and the same Ideas having immutably the same Habitudes one to another, Propositions,
concerning any abstract Ideas, that are once true, must needs be eternal Verities."
24 II, xxxi, 12.
25 Exceptions are found, e.g., in III, v, 5. There Locke says as follows: "[Clomplex Ideas
[of mixed Modes] may be made, abstracted, and have names given them, and so a
Species be constituted, before anyone individual of that Species ever existed."
26 As to this, Locke says: "This, I think, I may say, that if other Ideas, that are the
real, as well as nominal Essences of their Species, were pursued in the way familiar to
Mathematicians, they would carry our Thoughts farther, and with greater evidence and
clearness, than possibly we are apt to imagine."
"This gave me the confidence to advance that Conjecture, which I suggest, Chap. 3.
viz. That Morality is capable of Demonstration, as well as Mathematicks. For the Ideas
that Ethicks are conversant about, being all real Essences, and such as, I imagine, have
a discoverable connexion and agreement one with another; so far as we can find their
Habitudes and Relations, so far we shall be possessed of certain, real, and general Truths
[... ]." (IV, xii, 7-8)
27 As to this matter, Locke says, for example, that: "[A]ll Properties of a Triangle depend
on, and as far as they are discoverable, are deducible from the complex Idea of three Lines,
including a Space." (II, xxxi, 6)
28 On the basis of what we have thus far discussed, we must point out that in spite of
the excellence of his insight, Aaron's interpretation of Locke's theory of general ideas
is insufficient. As already mentioned, Aaron criticizes the Berkeleyan interpretation, and
then distinguishes three strands in Locke's theory of general ideas (Aaron, op. cit., pp.
197-202). The first strand is the view that "a universal is a particular idea which
'represents' many other particulars." But according to Aaron, this is a view "which
Locke seems to have held before he devoted serious attention to the problem." and "[i]n
the Essay Locke is never wholly satisfied with this view and so it is not easy to find an
explicit statement of it." And he points to, as "the nearest approach to an explicit state-
ment," the following passage in II, xi, 9: "[ .. .]Ideas taken from particular Beings, become
general Representatives of all of the same kind [... ]." According to Aaron, on this first
view, certain particular ideas are, as they are, taken to be general ones. The second
strand is the view that general ideas are a part of particular ideas, namely, a part which
is recognized to be common to many particulars, and that they are acquired by "a certain
48 Y ASUHIKO TOMIDA

process of elimination." The third is the view that takes general ideas to be "meanings,"
and identifies the latter with a character or group of characters which forms an "essence."
Aaron grasps the essence of the theory much more successfully than does Berkeley.
But his interpretation is in several respects still insufficient.
Firstly, aside from the manuscripts, we can find barely any evidence of the first view
in Locke's Essay. Not only does Aaron himself say that "it is not easy to find an explicit
statement of it," but even the passage quoted above which he takes as being most sup-
portive of the view does not take particular ideas to be general without any eliminative
process. Moreover, in this passage Locke suggests the separation of intelligible determi-
nations, and never thinks of general ideas as being merely sensible, as Aaron suggests.
The same applies to the second strand. Aaron does not see any workings of the con-
ceptual grasp even in the statements of III, iii. But it seems that here the act of conceptual
grasp and its correlates - conceptual determinations - are already present. It is in the
third strand that Aaron sees their workings, and his line of interpretation shows that he
does not sufficiently understand the close relationship between sensible ideas and intel-
ligible ones.
29 See Husserl, op. cit., II, 3. Kapitel, § 13.
30 I think that what Husserl calls the "necessary recourse to corresponding intuitions
in order to clarify meanings" lies behind Locke's thought here. Cf. Husserl, ibid., I, 2.
Kapitel, §21.
 III. HANSON AND LOCKE:
A PROVISIONAL CONCLUSION

1. What Precisely Did Hanson Claim?

Thus far I have engaged in a series of investigations in order to examine

the validity of the imagist interpretation of Locke's theory of ideas and
consider whether Locke overlooked the phenomenon of "theory-Iaden-
ness" or not. To reconfirm our conclusions, I will tum again to N. R.
Hanson's view on perception.
Hanson rejected the view that we perceive sense-data in a pure form
and then add interpretations to them. He directs our attention to the "orga-
nization" which some figures, such as the duck-rabbit figure, typically
show, and then suggests that perception in general is conditioned by
past experience of knowledge, and that, in visual perception, seeing is
in most cases realized in the form of "seeing as." In other words, in
most cases the purity of perception is spoiled by theory. Therefore, not
only is the double-deck scheme according to which cognition is com-
prised of two independent factors - namely, of pure perception of
sense-data, and of interpretation or theory-construction - invalid, but it
follows from this that it is not pure perceptual data that undermines
any given theory, but another theory.
But as the qualification "in most cases" suggests, Hanson does not
entirely deny the possibility of the pure perception of sense-data. He
certainly leaves open the possibility that we may perceive given sensory
images without pollution, for example, when we lack the knowledge
or experience to recognize an image given by a microscope or an x-
ray picture, or when we have just woken up and our heads are not yet
clear. But he asserts that though theory-laden perception is sometimes
not realized, in most cases we cannot receive pure sense-data.
There is a further noteworthy point concerning Hanson's view: to
distinguish sensory and theoretical contributions in perception is not
necessarily to deny the theory-Iadenness of the perception. According
to Hanson, the basic view of sense-datum theorists is that these two
contributions can be clearly separated, and that the perception of sense-
data and the conceptualization or interpretation of them together form

49
50 YASUHIKO TOMIDA

a double-deck or two-stage process. But the claim that perception is in

most cases theory-laden is independent of the claim that it is comprised
of two factors, and therefore to distinguish the two in order to clarify
the mechanism of theory-laden perception does not amount to a disavowal
of the fact or necessity of theory-Iadenness. Even Hanson often mentions
two moments, that is, past experience or knowledge, on the one hand,
and sensory images, on the other, when he discusses theory-Iadenness.
Therefore, the problem is rather how the two moments or factors are
related. Therefore, we cannot assume that all sense-datum theorists
overlook theory-Iadenness, and hence the existence of statements in the
Essay which seem to mention the perception of pure sense-data would
not necessarily show that Locke himself passed over the question of
theory-Iadenness.
Taking these points into account, I will in this chapter reconsider
the following two problems.
1) Did Locke acknowledge the possibility of the perception of com-
pletely pure sense-data?
2) How did he think the sensory and conceptual moments to be
related?
The answer to the second question has already been suggested to some
extent by the considerations in the previous two chapters. But in this
chapter I shall take up some passages which I have not yet discussed
and try to arrive at answers to both problems. I will direct our atten-
tion especially to several passages on perception that seem to throw
light on these matters. I will give particular attention to the "Molyneux
problem" and its answer, added to the Essay in the second edition,
which many scholars have taken to be crucial to the understanding of our
problem.

2. The Molyneux Problem

Let us begin by stating the Molyneux problem. When a man who has
been blind since birth gains sight after growing up, can he distinguish
between a globe and a cube only by sight, without touch? Locke said
no. And he wanted each reader to understand, by means of this problem,
"how much he may be beholding to experience, improvement, and
acquired notions, where he thinks, he has not the least use of, or help
from them." (II, ix, 8)
This problem has been considered by many people since then, but what
 IDEA AND THING 51

is important to us is whether or not Locke acknowledged in his negative

answer the possibility of the perceptibility of pure sense-data. If we think
that the person who has suddenly acquired his visual sense cannot tell
a cube from a globe, we probably do have to say that he is confronted
with a perception which is not laden with any geometrical theory acquired
through touch. But does this mean that Locke acknowledged the fact
of a perception which is not theory-laden?
It seems to be normal to give an affirmative answer to this question.
For example, Kambartel, who was a leading figure of the Erlangen
school, draws from Locke's argument concerning the Molyneux problem
the conclusion that he reveals the existence of "something which is given
first, utterly immediate" and plays the role of an "absolute beginning
point of experience." In other words, here is an "experiential basis" which
"has differences but does not have any determinations," and which is "not
defiled with acquired knowledge or interpretation." Hence, he sees in
Locke a two-stage theory of perception, namely, a theory of perception
comprised of the perception of the purely given and its superadded
interpretation. 1
Locke's answer to the Molyneux problem does indeed show that he
acknowledged the possibility of perceiving pure sense-data, and so we
probably have to give an affirmative answer to our first question in
Section 1 above. 2 But even if this means acknowledgment of the per-
ceptibility of a pure "experiential basis," there remains some doubt as
to whether we can draw from this the conclusion that Locke's theory
of perception is generally a two-stage one. Our present problem concerns
the general relation between sensory and conceptual contributions in
Locke's theory of perception, and not the relation in the special case
of this example. So, let us tum our attention to the wider context of
the Molyneux problem. The problem was introduced in order to propose
that "Ideas of Sensation [are] often changed by the Judgment." I will next
clarify what Locke was trying to do in this discussion.

3. "Ideas of Sensation [Are] Often Changed by the Judgment"

In the first part of II, ix, 8 Locke says that:
We are farther to consider concerning Perception, that the Ideas we receive by sensa-
tion, are often in grown People alter'd by the Judgment, without our taking notice of it.
When we set before our Eyes a round Globe, of any uniform colour, v.g. Gold, Alabaster,
or Jet, 'tis certain, that the Idea thereby imprinted in our Mind, is of a flat Circle vari-
52 Y ASUHIKO TOMIDA

ously shadow'd, with several degrees of light and Brightness coming to our Eyes. But
we having by use been accustomed to perceive, what kind of appearance convex Bodies
are wont to make in us; what alterations are made in the reflections of Light, by the
difference of the sensible Figures of Bodies, the Judgment presently, by an habitual custom,
alters the Appearances into their Causes: So that from that, which truly is variety of shadow
or colour, collecting the Figure, it makes it pass for a mark of Figure, and frames to it
self the perception of a convex Figure, and an uniform Colour; when the Idea we receive
from thence, is only a Plain variously colour'd as is evident in Painting. (II, ix, 8)

And in the next section he says:

[ •.. J Sight, the most comprehensive of all our Senses, conveying to our Minds the Ideas
of Light and Colours, which are peculiar only to that Sense; and also the far different Ideas
of Space, Figure, and Motion, the several varieties whereof change the appearances of
its proper Object, viz. Light and Colours, we bring our selves by use, to judge of the
one by the other. This in many cases, by a settled habit, in things whereof we have frequent
experience, is performed so constantly, and so quick, that we take that for the Perception
of our Sensation, which is an Idea formed by our Judgment; so that one, viz, that of
Sensation, serves only to excite the other, and is scarce taken notice of it self [... J. (II,
ix, 9)

Here we can clearly see that he is discussing the two moments which
make up normal perception. One is "the Ideas we receive by sensa-
tion," or "the Perception of our Sensation," and the other is "the
Judgment," or "an Idea formed by our Judgment." The term "judgment,"
and the verb "collect" used to express the relation of the two, certainly
suggest the two-stage theory which Hanson rejects. But what is being
analyzed here is the Judgment's alteration of "the Ideas we receive by
sensation [... ] without our taking notice of it," that is, "the Perception
of our Sensation" which, exciting "an Idea formed by our Judgment,"
"is scarce taken notice of it self." What we should pay attention to is
the close relation between the two moments which the phrases "without
our taking notice of it," and "scarce taken notice of it self" point to,
and this plainly shows the extent to which Locke recognized the phe-
nomenon of theory-Iadenness.
But one might object in the following way: In the phrase "the Idea
[...] of a flat Circle variously shadow'd, with several degrees of light
and Brightness coming to our Eyes," Locke is obviously invoking the
first part of the two-stage process, and this expression is clearly the
language of sense-datum theorists; therefore, in spite of the phrase "not
be taken notice of," does his wording not show that the perception of
pure sense-data is generally possible?
I believe it does not. First of all, it is not the general possibility of
 IDEA AND THING 53

so-called "phenomenal description" that is the subject of his considera-

tion here. What Locke wants to emphasize is "how much [we] may be
beholding to experience, improvement, and acquired notions, where
[we think], [we have] not the least use of, or help from them," and not
a special attempt at a "phenomenal description" of the given.
When he analyzes the phenomena in question, he certainly has
recourse to something like phenomenal description. But as my argu-
mentation in Chapter I has already shown, the performance of the
description itself needs various mental acts and is, therefore, closely
related to the intelligible. Even if when Locke analyzes the typical phe-
nomena of theory-Iadenness he has recourse to phenomenal description,
we need not, as Kambartel does, jump to the conclusion that this is
evidence of a two-stage theory. Rather, it seems to be more natural to
think that he used phenomenal description as if he were putting its
mechanism in parentheses, that is, in order to make clear the phenomena
in question. 3

4. The Synchronic and Diachronic Diversity of the

Grasped Contents

Finally, in order to answer the second question posed in Section 1 above,

I would like to point out that Locke touched on the synchronic and
diachronic diversity of grasped contents by showing the possibility of
multiple kinds of grasp in the case of sensible simple ideas.
Let us only consider simple ideas derived from sensation. One of
Locke's basic proposals is the distinction between things themselves
and ideas, and he grasps the relation between qualities or powers of things
and the simple ideas caused by them as one of strict correspondence. That
is to say, the qualities and powers of things themselves not only work
as causes of simple ideas, but also have a constant correspondence to
the latter. Of course, this correspondence is different according to whether
the qualities in question are primary or secondary. In the case of primary
qualities there is a resemblance relation between the qualities as causes
and the ideas as results, whereas in the case of secondary qualities there
is no such relation. Nevertheless, even in the latter case, there is so
constant a correspondence between qualities and ideas that, according
to the differences between ideas as results, we can surmise that there
are differences between the qualities or powers as causes. Thus, there
is no room for arbitrariness about what simple ideas are given, and that
54 Y ASUHIKO TOMIDA

is determined both by things themselves and the manner in which ideas

are produced (which is unknowable).4 Locke says concerning this:
[Tjhese several Appearances, being designed to be the Marks, whereby we are to know,
and distinguish Things, which we have to do with; our Ideas do as well serve us to that
purpose, and are as real distinguishing Characters, whether they be only constant Effects,
or else exact Resemblances of something in the things themselves: the reality lying in
that steady correspondence, they have with the distinct Constitutions of real Beings.
[... j [Ojur simple Ideas are all real and true, because they answer and agree to those
Powers of Things, which produce them in our Minds, that being all that is requisite to
make them real, and not fictions at Pleasure. (II, xxx, 2)
[Sjimple Ideas [... j must necessarily be the product of Things operating on the
Mind in a natural way, and producing therein those Perceptions which by the Wisdom
and Will of our Maker they are ordained and adapted to. From whence it follows, that
simple Ideas are not fictions of our Fancies, but the natural and regular productions of
Things without us, really operating upon us [... j. (IV, iv, 4)

If in this way simple ideas derived from sensation are necessarily

produced by the stimulation of things themselves and exist in the mind
only as the merely given, then as far as the formation of ideas is con-
cerned, it is only in the cases of complex ideas that we have some
freedom.
But, as already seen in Chapter I, even if something is given as a
candidate for a simple idea, this does not necessarily determine its char-
acter as a grasped idea. It is not until the mind grasps it from some
viewpoint as something, that its content is determined. There are many
possibilities as to the viewpoint and how that something is grasped. In
this sense, the mind has freedom, but to what extent?
For example, we certainly cannot grasp an extension of uniform scarlet
as an idea of white, but, nevertheless, Locke shows in several passages
that the same appearance can be grasped in an unexpectedly large number
of ways. For example, he says that the ideas of unity and existence are
suggested by any thing and by any idea. If so, it follows that the same
sensible idea may be grasped not only as scarlet, as extended, or as a
sensible point, but also as one thing, or an existent thing. Thus, in its
grasp of sensible simple ideas, the mind has considerable freedom of
choice of ample possibilities for alteration.
Moreover, in Locke's theory of simple ideas there is even a passage
which seems to touch on the possibility of grasping ideas on the basis
of theory-Iadenness in a stronger sense.
I confess Power includes in it some kind of relation, (a relation to Action or Change) as
indeed which of our Ideas, of what kind soever, when attentively considered, does not?
 IDEA AND THING 55

For our Ideas of Extension, Duration, and Number, do they not all contain in them a secret
relation of the Parts? Figure and Motion have something relative in them much more
visibly: And sensible Qualities, as Colours and Smells, etc. what are they but the Powers
of different Bodies, in relation to our Perception, etc. And if considered in the things them-
selves, do they not depend on the Bulk, Figure, Texture, and Motion of the Parts? All
which include some kind of relation in them. Our Idea therefore of Power, I think, may
well have a place amongst other simple Ideas, and be considered as one of them, being
one of those, that make a principal Ingredient in our complex Ideas of Substances, as
we shall hereafter have occasion to observe. (II, xxi, 3)

Here he says that all our ideas "include a relation," and that even ideas
of colors are not exceptions. This view of colors can be understood as
based on the corpuscular physics of his day, and, if so, this can be taken
as an example of a considerably advanced theory influencing the grasp
of ideas. Therefore, we might say that Locke glimpsed the possibility that
a new theory may produce a new way of grasping ideas.
There is a possibility that the given can be variously grasped even
at the stage of simple ideas, and that fresh acquisitions of knowledge
or beliefs can influence even the grasp of simple ideas. When we inter-
pret Locke's theory of ideas, we must bear in mind these facts as they
appeared to him. And if in the same way we can confirm the possi-
bility evident in Locke that the given complexity which has been grasped
in one way can be grasped in another, then this will play an important
role in the interpretation of his whole theory of knowledge. So, the recog-
nition that Locke was not an imagist leads us to an understanding of
the flexible and stratified structure of his theory of knowledge.

NOTES

1 F. Kambartel, Erfahrung und Struktur (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1976),

pp. 15f.
2 But this interpretation is not quite free from difficulties. It is not, for example,
necessarily clear what the person's conditions are. And it is not necessarily clearly shown
whether he is still in a situation where such mental operations as discerning do not work,
whether sufficient room for reasoning is given to him, and the like. But, as John Davis
once pointed out, there is a difference between Molyneux's and Locke's presentations
of the problem: "in Molyneux's original statement of the problem, the blind man is
debarred only from touching the globe and the cube, whereas Locke imposes the addi-
tional condition that the blind man make the identification at first sight" (J. W. Davis,
"The Molyneux Problem," Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. XXI (1960), p. 394).
This might throw some light on the matter. In this connection, Molyneux's wording that
"he has not yet attained the experience, that what affects my touch so or so, must affect
sight so or so" seems to suggest, at least, the newly sighted individual's exercise of the
56 Y ASUHIKO TOMIDA

discerning faculty in sight. (The presentation of the problem by Molyneux himself, in

the letter of 1692, is quoted in Davis, ibid., p. 393.)
3 We must acknowledge that there is a subtle but significant difference between that
"Perception of our Sensation" which is described as "the Idea of a flat Circle variously
shadow'd," on the one hand, and, on the other, the perception assumed in the Molyneux
problem which cannot be geometrically defined. But judging from the fact that Locke
inserted the problem in between the two passages quoted above, both the Molyneux
problem and the arguments which are its context are intended to show the same thing.
Therefore, if we want to understand the whole coherently, it must be the case that Locke
"used phenomenal description as if he were putting its mechanism in parentheses" in order
to analyze the phenomenon of theory-ladenness.
4 As to Locke's agnostic view concerning the problem of how ideas are produced by

the operations of bodies, see IV, iii, 13; IV, iii, 28; etc.
 PART II

THE HIDDEN LOGIC OF LOCKE'S

REPRESENTATIVE THEORY OF PERCEPTION
 INTRODUCTION

1. The Veil-oj-Perception Doctrine

In the Introduction to Part One, I have already mentioned that Locke's

representative theory of perception is often treated as a stumbling block
in his epistemology. According to Locke, the immediate objects of our
minds are ideas "within" them; and they work as signs for external things
which are not directly present to the mind. But if our immediate objects
are nothing but ideas, how can we know the existence of external things?
This question, and its negative answer, has lead many people to refute
Locke's theory of knowledge. Ever since the publication of the Essay
his theory of perception has been dismissed as a view which makes
knowledge of external things impossible. l
Jonathan Bennett's term, "the veil-of-perception doctrine," expresses
this negative assessment most typically. Bennett says that "Locke puts
the objective world, the world of 'real things', beyond our reach on the
other side of the veil of perception; so I call this aspect of his thought
his 'veil-of-perception doctrine'. The more usual label, 'representative
theory of perception', is unsatisfactory because it does not express what
is wrong with the theory.,,2 The same assessment is also found in
Aaron:
Today [the] defects [of the representative theory of perception] are perfectly plain. In
the first place, given ideas only, how can we know whether they do adequately repre-
sent originals which we have never seen? To know whether the representation is correct
or not one must first see the original. Locke himself seems to have been aware of this
criticism, though it is not clear that he fully realized how devastating it could be. [... ]
To know that the representations are faithful one would first have to see the originals
and yet, if one saw the originals, seeing the representations would surely be superfluous.
In the second place, the theory is defective because we have no right on the evidence
before us to assert that these originals do exist. We only see the copies. How then can
we possibly know that they are copies, copying certain originals which are never directly
experienced by us? Without contradicting oneself it becomes possible to deny the ultimate
object supposed to be copied by the idea, and the door is opened for idealism. 3

These are only two examples of many of what is sometimes called

the "standard interpretation," and both of them claim that there is a

58
 IDEA AND THING 59

fatal defect in Locke's theory of perception: if ideas alone are given to

us, we cannot know the existence and properties of external things.
Certainly, Locke also asserts that not only ideas but also "things them-
selves" exist; and following a contemporary theory in physics (the
corpuscular theory), he takes the latter to be minute particles, single or
combined. But, according to the standard interpretation, not only has
he no stable ground for the assertion, but it is also contradictory to
make such an assertion while holding a view that our immediate objects
are only ideas; and as Gilbert Ryle once claimed, "the assumption of
[mental proxies for independent realities] throws no light on the problem
(if it is one) of how we can think about or know things," and "it embodies
a theory, unplausible in itself, which, if true, would make knowledge
or even probable opinion about independent realities quite impossible.,,4
But is there really such a contradiction or defect in Locke's theory of
perception?

2. Towards a Reinterpretation

We can question the standard interpretation on a number of points. Firstly,

we can ask whether Locke really adopted the representative theory of
perception. This question has already been posed by several Locke
scholars, such as Woozley and Yolton,5 and some of them take Locke's
critical remark on Malebranche as a decisive ground for believing that
he did not. But, we have to acknowledge that he did adopt the repre-
sentative theory of perception, and that, as Mackie once argued, Locke's
remark on Malebranche's theory of ideas does not imply that he rejected
the theory in question. 6 However, this does not mean that we can pass
over the possibility suggested by Woozley and Yolton: namely, that Locke
was a direct realist of some sort. A number of commentators have
observed that the Essay contains several passages which seem to
explicitly claim, or at least implicitly assume, that things are directly
perceivable.
Secondly, we can even question the thesis that Locke believed the
immediate objects of the understanding to be ideas. In Part One I have
already shown that Locke was to a considerable extent aware of the
phenomenon of "theory-ladenness." In other words, his theory of ideas
took in the phenomena woven by "meanings" or "concepts." Now,
Hanson suggests that seeing something as X is generally not seeing sense-
data but just seeing X; and Husserl asserts that a meaning establishes a
60 Y ASUHIKO TOMIDA

relation with an object. 7 These points are exceedingly important for our
reinterpretation of Lockean "ideas." If Hanson and Husserl are in this
respect correct, the mental act which I call "grasping as" is simply having
a relation with an object (as opposed to having a relationship with an
idea), and perceiving an idea which is a meaning could be recast from
a different point of view as thinking of things or objects. Thus, even if
ideas are our minds' immediate objects, it does not necessarily mean that
minds cannot "touch" external objects.
Thirdly, when Locke distinguishes ideas from external things, what he
thinks of as external objects are, as mentioned above, minute particles
that the corpuscular physics of his day took to be realities. But without
doubt we can find in his Essay another type of notion of body: the
complex idea of substance. Thus, when we consider the representative
theory of perception as it concerns the distinction between ideas and
things, we ought to examine closely the relation between the two dif-
ferent notions of body. In my opinion, the interpreters who treat Locke's
representative theory of perception solely in terms of an epistemologi-
cally unbridgeable gap between ideas and things fail to grasp the logic
behind the two notions of body.
Thus, in Locke's theory of perception there still remain some serious
problems to solve. Needless to say, here too, we could dismiss his theory
as, for example, a mixed coexistence of two different elements, a rep-
resentative theory of perception on the one hand, and direct realism,
on the other. But it is possible to solve these problems comprehensively
with a new interpretation.
In my view, those who adopt the "standard interpretation" generally
share a conspicuous tendency: they see Locke's theory of perception, and
therefore his theory of knowledge, as a static one. Were we to take the
representative theory of perception to be on the same plane with the
position of direct realism, the coexistence of the two in his Essay would
be nothing but a contradiction. And, indeed, if we fail to grasp the rep-
resentative theory of perception itself as a whole series of dynamic
activities and only take up its result, it does appear to be an inconsis-
tent theory. But these two assessments of his thinking share, in my
opinion, the same root error; both overlook the dynamic character of
the theory and fail to grasp the dynamic, stratified relation between the
two moments of representationalism and direct realism.
The major purpose of the following inquiry is to clarify this relation
and propound an interpretation which will, as it were, sublate the apparent
 IDEA AND THING 61

contradiction mentioned above. But, in order to do this, we must first

confirm one of the basic spiritual attitudes to be found in the Essay.
Generally speaking, we have a tendency to see a theory of knowl-
edge or epistemology as a static meta-investigation which inquires into
some existing knowledge with a view to clarifying the general conditions
for knowledge. But Locke, as distinct from other thinkers, such as Kant,
was clearly aware of that transitional status which seems characteristic
of the "first-order" activities of human beings. Or rather, he lived in a
transitional epoch and could not but become conscious of this character
of our activities. This awareness is, I think, much reflected by his own
activity in expounding the theory of knowledge. For example, he repeat-
edly emphasizes the importance of "experience," "observation," or
"natural history," and advocates piecemeal acquisition of more adequate
ideas and knowledge.
This emphasis on the piecemeal acquisition of more adequate ideas
accounts for one type of modification of the notion of body in the Essay.
But we should also notice the fact that under the varied series of dis-
courses in his Essay there lies another type of modification in the notion
of body. As mentioned above, we can find two sorts of notion of body
in the Essay. One is the notion used in the investigations of natural
history. It is formed by extending our common-sense notion of body,
and its archetype is what we ordinarily think of as a body. The other is
the concept of "things themselves," as posited by the corpuscular hypoth-
esis, and it is in several respects different from the ordinary notion. What
we should especially take note of is the relation of these two notions
of body. In the following I shall speak of the former as referring to "expe-
riential objects," and the latter as referring to "things themselves." If
we grasp not only a static but also a sort of dynamic relation between
these notions, we shall have recognized another dynamic characteristic
of Locke's epistemological thought. And this, I propose, is the very
key which enables us to solve the various problems with Locke's rep-
resentative theory of perception.
In Chapter I, I shall argue, in connection with Locke's view on idea-
formation, that he was extremely sensitive to the creative and generative
character of human activities. To demonstrate this, I shall first take up,
as my model case, the idea-formation of mixed modes. It is in the
formation of ideas of mixed modes that Locke recognized the possi-
bility of human freedom and creativity - or the possibility of change -
most clearly. So by seeing its actual conditions, we will confirm his
62 YASUHIKO TOMIDA

philosophy's basic attitude towards change. Then we shall consider the

plasticity of ideas of substance, or the possibility of their historical change
- in other words, the possibility that ideas of substance can change with
the progress of natural history. And finally, I shall turn to the relation
between the complex idea of substance and the "idea" of body based
on the corpuscular hypothesis. This consideration will suggest that the
shift from the former to the latter can be understood as a creative step
in physics, and that the structure of Locke's Essay itself reflects this
step.
In Chapter II, I shall attempt to reread his representative theory of
perception, keeping in mind his theory of knowledge as a philosophy
of change. We shall find that when one answers a certain kind of question
in physics by positing things themselves which are different from expe-
riential objects, the representative theory of perception is established
as a theory which shows the relationship between the two sorts of objects.
The theory itself not only presupposes the ordinary notion of body but
also always retains it as an essential factor. Therefore it is a matter of
course that in Locke's discourse direct realism and the representative
theory of perception appear intertwined. Thus, his representative theory
of perception depends on positing things themselves, and the "standard"
criticism to the effect that the things themselves are put beyond a veil
proves to be invalid. The criticism overlooks the dynamic, stratified,
character of Locke's representative theory of perception and should
therefore be set aside as a superficial one.
In Chapter III, I will discuss one more alleged difficulty with Locke's
theory of knowledge. Locke's discussion in the Essay constructed a
general theory of knowledge and probable belief, but therein he relied
on much of the physics of his day. And this has given important ground
to one line of criticism of Locke. We cannot deny that when he con-
structed his theory of knowledge he depended on the thinking of the
new physics. Does this necessarily make his thought confused, circular,
or inconsistent?
Several philosophers have given an affirmative answer to that
question. This response is already found in Kant who called Locke's
theory of knowledge a "physiology of human understanding,,,g and
relatively recently we find it also in Husser\.9 As is well known, Husserl
considers Locke's activities in the Essay to be pioneering work in
phenomenology, but at the same time he criticizes Locke for bringing
a discussion of natural science into a treatise on the theory of knowledge.
 IDEA AND THING 63

According to Husserl, it is a glaring "confusion" to bring physics

into cognitive phenomenology, a discipline which should, he thinks, be
restricted to the field of evidence. Husserl thinks this a confusion of what
should be grounded with what gives it its grounds or foundation. But
if we keep in mind the dynamic, stratified, character of Locke's theory
of knowledge (as explained below in Chapter II), we will be able to
see the relationship between physics and the theory of knowledge in
the Essay as a more reasonable one. And if my investigation shows
that the essential character of human understanding should be seen not
in terms of the imagery of building blocks, but in terms of that of a spiral,
and that Locke's Essay was simply a result of the activities of this human
understanding, this treatise will have achieved its aim.

NOTES

1 See J. W. Yolton, John Locke and the Way of Ideas (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1956), pp. 99f.
2 J. Bennett, Locke, Berkeley, Hume (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971), p. 69.

3 R. I. Aaron, John Locke (3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971), pp. 102-
103.
4 G. Ryle, "John Locke on the Human Understanding," in C. B. Martin and D. M.
Armstrong (eds.), Locke and Berkeley (London: Macmillan, 1968), p. 22.
5 For Woozley's interpretation, see J. Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Under-
standing, ed. A. D. Woozley (Bergenfield, New Jersey: Meridian, 1974), pp. 27-28, and
concerning Yoiton's view, see Chapter II, Section 3.
6 J. L. Mackie, Problems from Locke (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976), pp. 37-41.
7 For Husserl's view, see his remarks on "meaning-fulfillment" in E. Husser), Logische
Untersuchungen, 2. Bd., I. Teil (Husserliana, Bd. XIX/I, 1984), I, etc.
8 I. Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft, A IX.

9 E. Husser!, Erste Philosophie (1923/24), I. Teil (Husserliana, Bd. VII, 1956), esp. 2.
Abschnitt.
 I. PHILOSOPHY OF CHANGE

1. Idea-Formation and the Freedom of Mind

According to Locke, the mind passively acquires simple ideas, whereas

it frames various complex ideas in some active way. This is one of his
well-known views, and from this it seems to follow that in idea-forma-
tion the mind is creative or free. Actually, Locke argues that ideas of
modes, especially of "mixed" ones, are formed by the mind without
any archetypes except themselves. But this does not mean that the mind
has the same freedom in all cases involving complex ideas. As to the
ideas of substances, he says that they generally have "external patterns,"
and suggests that their formation is considerably constrained. Moreover,
this contrast between ideas of modes and those of substances is reflected
in his view concerning knowledge; and, as a consequence, we find
in Locke the same kind of dichotomy in knowledge that we see in
Hume.
But we must be careful when we attribute to Locke the view that there
is neither creativity nor freedom in the acquisition of simple ideas, or
the view that the formation of ideas of substances is confined within
certain parameters. As we have already seen in Part One, Chapter III,
even sensible simple ideas can be grasped and modified in various ways,
and, since complex ideas are comprised of simple ones, sensible complex
ideas must be grasped in different ways too. We have already shown
that Locke's general ideas of substances and mixed modes are gener-
ally intelligible, conceptual, ones. In this chapter, we shall further
examine Locke's view on the possibility of modification, or new for-
mation, of intelligible complex ideas; and we will show to what extent
Locke acknowledged creativity and freedom in the activity of idea-
formation.

2. General Conditions for the Idea-Formation of Mixed Modes

Writing of the idea-formation of ideas of mixed modes, Locke
says:

64
 IDEA AND THING 65

That the Mind, in respect of its simple Ideas, is wholly passive, and receives them all from
the Existence and Operations of Things, such as Sensation or Reflection offers them,
without being able to make anyone Idea, Experience shews us. But if we attentively
consider these Ideas I call mixed Modes, we are now speaking of, we shall find their
Original quite different. The Mind often exercises an active Power in the making these
several Combinations. For it being once furnished with simple Ideas, it can put them
together in several Compositions, and so make variety of complex Ideas, without exam-
ining whether they exist so together in Nature. And hence, I think, it is, that these Ideas
are called Notions: as if they had their Original, and constant Existence, more in the
Thoughts of Men, than in the reality of things; and to form such Ideas, it sufficed, that
the Mind put the parts of them together, and that they were consistent in the Understanding,
without considering whether they had any real Being: though I do not deny, but several
of them might be taken from Observation, and the Existence of several simple Ideas so
combined, as they are put together in the Understanding. For the Man who first framed
the Idea of Hypocrisy, might have either taken it at first from the observation of one,
who made shew of good Qualities which he had not [... J. (II, xxii, 2)

In other words, some ideas of mixed modes have their external arche-
types or prototypes. l But in most cases the mind arbitrarily collects
several simple ideas and puts them together. And in these cases the
condition the mind must satisfy is only that "they [should be] consis-
tent in the Understanding," that is, that they should not include
inconsistent ideas. This point is also stated as follows:
[•.• J Mixed Modes and Relations, having no other reality, but what they have in the
Minds of Men, there is nothing more required to those kind of Ideas, to make them
real, but that they be so framed, that there be a possibility of existing conformable to them.
These Ideas, being themselves Archetypes, cannot differ from their Archetypes, and so
cannot be chimerical, unless anyone will jumble together in them inconsistent Ideas.
(II, xxx, 4)

But the situation is essentially the same even in those cases where
ideas of mixed modes have external archetypes. Since Locke defines
"modes" as "such complex Ideas, which however compound, contain not
in them the supposition of subsisting by themselves, but are considered
as Dependences on, or Affections of Substances,,,2 we can assume that
they do not "subsist" by themselves, but exist only as modes of some-
thing. In other words, in the scene of perception wherein they acquire
their external archetypes, ideas of modes appear together with other ideas
- for example, ideas of substances and various other things which form
the situation. Therefore, even when the mind acquires, say, the idea of
hypocrisy on the basis of an external archetype, it must select some ideas
out of many concomitant ones. Thus the mind is responsible for choosing
its ideas.
66 Y ASUHIKO TOMIDA

3. Mixed Modes and "the End of Language"

In principle, the mind can form any idea of a mixed mode, provided
that the idea contains no inconsistency. But in practice, it does not
necessarily form just any idea. As we have already seen in Part One,
Chapter II, Locke says that "in its complex Ideas of mixed Modes, the
Mind takes a liberty not to follow the existence of Things exactly," but
he also says in the next passage that:
[The Mind] unites and retains certain Collections, as so many distinct specifick Ideas,
whilst others, that as often occurr in Nature, and are as plainly suggested by outward
Things, pass neglected without particular Names or Specifications. (III, v, 3)

What then produces this difference?

Locke takes up this question exclusively in connection with "the end
of language":
If we should enquire a little farther, to see what it is, that occasions Men to make several
Combinations of simple Ideas into distinct, and, as it were, settled Modes, and neglect
others, which in the Nature of Things themselves, have as much an aptness to be combined,
and make distinct Ideas, we shall find the reason of it to be the end of Language; which
being to mark, or communicate Men's Thoughts to one another, with all the dispatch
that may be, they usually make such Collections of Ideas into complex Modes, and affix
names to them, as they have frequent use of in their way of Living and Conversation,
leaving others, which they have but seldom an occasion to mention, loose and without
names, that tie them together [... ]. (II, xxii, 5)

Locke also remarks that:

[T]hough [complex Ideas of mixed modes] be Combinations made of Ideas, that are
loose enough, and have as little union in themselves, as several other, to which the Mind
never gives a connexion that combines them into one Idea; yet they are always made
for the convenience of Communication, which is the chief end of Language. The Use of
Language is, by short Sounds to signifie with ease and dispatch general Conceptions;
wherein not only abundance of particulars may be contained, but also a great variety of
independent Ideas, collected into one complex one. In the making therefore of the Species
of mixed Modes, Men have had regard only to such Combinations, as they had occasion
to mention one to another. (III, v, 7)

According to Locke, the recording and communication of thoughts are

the general ends of language. 3 And in the passage just quoted the end
is described in a way such that it further implies a point of some interest.
For the present it will be enough to say that what is emphasized is a
convenience of language, namely, the fact that a speaker can commu-
 IDEA AND THING 67

nicate his or her thoughts "by short Sounds [... ] with ease and dispatch."
This appears again, when he says that "[Men] made Ideas of Actions very
nicely modified, and gave those complex Ideas names, that they might
the more easily record, and discourse of those things, they were daily
conversant in, without long Ambages and Circumlocutions; and that
the things they were continually to give and receive information about,
might be the easier and quicker understood."4 But what is truly inter-
esting is the mechanism which lies behind and supports "the end of
language. "

4. "Manner of Life"

To explain why some mixed modes are framed and given a name but
others are not, it would not be sufficient only to mention the avoidance
of "long Ambages." Rather, we would have to notice what lies behind
people's wishes, or intentions, to communicate their thoughts without
circumlocution. It is their interests and needs, "custom," "fashion,"
"opinion," or "manner of life," which make people interested in partic-
ular things.
Locke realizes that manners vary across nations, cultures, subcultures,
and the like, and that therefore the people's concerns also vary. And
ultimately he sees differences in manner mainly in terms of a relation
to mixed modes. Thus he says:

[TJhat Men in framing different complex Ideas, and giving them Names, have been
much governed by the end of Speech in general [... ] is evident in the Names, which in
several Arts have been found out, and applied to several complex Ideas of modified
Actions, belonging to their several Trades, for dispatch sake, in their Direction or
Discourses about them. Which Ideas are not generally framed in the minds of Men not
conversant about these Operations. And thence the words that stand for them, by the
greatest part of Men of the same Language, are not understood. (II, xviii, 7)
[T]he several Fashions, Customs, and Manners of one Nation, making several
Combinations of Ideas familiar and necessary in one, which another people have had never
any occasion to make, or, perhaps, so much as take notice of, Names come of course to
be annexed to them, to avoid long Periphrases in things of daily Conversation; and so
they become so many distinct complex Ideas in their Minds. [... ] Where there was no
such Custom, there was no notion of any such Actions; no use of such Combinations of
Ideas, as were united, and, as it were, tied together by those terms: and therefore in
other Countries there were no names for them. (II, xxii, 6)
[T]he Mind in mixed Modes arbitrarily unites into complex Ideas, such as it finds
convenient; whilst others that have altogether as much union in Nature, are left loose,
and never combined into one Idea, because they have no need of one name. (III, v, 6)
68 Y ASUHIKO TOMIDA

[T]hose of one Country, by their customs and manner of Life, have found occasion
to make several complex Ideas, and give names to them, which others never collected
into specifick Ideas. (Ill, v, 8)

And the following passage gives some concrete examples:

If they join to the Idea of Killing, the Idea of Father, or Mother, and so make a distinct
Species from killing a Man's Son, or Neighbour, it is because of the different heinous-
ness of the Crime, and the distinct punishment is due to the murthering a Man's Father
or Mother different from what ought to be inflicted on the Murther of a Son or Neighbour;
and therefore they find it necessary to mention it by a distinct Name, which is the end
of making that distinct Combination. But though the Ideas of Mother and Daughter, are
so differently treated, in reference to the Idea of Killing, that the one is joined with it,
to make a distinct abstract Idea with a name, and so a distinct Species, and the other
not; yet in respect of carnal Knowledge, they are both taken in under Incest; and that
still for the same convenience of expressing under one name, and reckoning of one Species,
such unclean mixtures, as have a peculiar turpitude beyond others; and this to avoid
Circumlocutions, and tedious Descriptions. (Ill, v, 7)

This passage shows concretely that Locke held that people's particular
interests and needs produce ideas of particular mixed modes. And besides
these examples Locke also raises a number of others like "ostrakismos"
and "proscriptio," and discusses the variety of manners and the corre-
sponding differences of mixed modes. 5

5. New Manners and the Creativity of Vocabulary

But the state of affairs seen above might rather seem to be a restriction
on idea-formation. If people's interests or needs frame various mixed
modes, and if those interests and needs variously overlap each other
and form manners, customs, or cultures, then people's idea-formation
of mixed modes can certainly be seen as strongly restricted by culture.
But the fact is that the restriction applies only to the acceptance of
existing ideas of mixed modes. Indeed, Locke recognizes the existence
of such situations, as is obvious from the fact that he repeatedly argues
that people sometimes form ideas of mixed modes by being taught the
names of the simple ideas which are their ingredients. But, in the several
passages quoted above, he also takes up the cases where new ideas of
mixed modes are framed. In these cases too, the acquisition of a new
manner might seem to be prior to the idea-formation itself. But shouldn't
we see the former rather as being united with the latter?
To see this more clearly we must take notice of the fact that Locke
mentions not only the diversity of ideas of mixed modes, but also
 IDEA AND THING 69

their diachronic change. He says this as straightforwardly as one could

wish:

Hence also we may see the Reason, Why Languages constantly change, take up new,
and lay by old terms. Because change of Customs and Opinions bringing with it new
Combinations of Ideas, which it is necessary frequently to think on, and talk about, new
names, to avoid long descriptions, are annexed to them; and so they become new Species
of complex Modes. (II, xxii, 7)

This passage certainly suggests that the idea-formation of mixed modes

is under a kind of social constraint, but, at the same time, it suggests
the positive role of ideas and the names of mixed modes in the creation
of new manners. Thus, Locke is not claiming that a society's status quo
necessarily restricts idea-formation involving mixed modes, but rather he
is suggesting that human beings have always the possibility of devel-
oping new "manners of life," and that the idea-formation of ideas of
mixed modes plays an important role in the realization of that possibility.
Moreover, according to Locke, language is a social art; so, when people
in one part of a society create a new way of living and a new vocabu-
lary for it, the vocabulary will contribute to change in the ways of living
in other parts of the society.
It is therefore clear that Locke's view concerning "mixed modes"
comes close to the stream of contemporary philosophy that emphasizes
the relationship between language and creativity.6

6. Complex Ideas of Substances and the Investigation

of Natural History

According to Locke, whenever the mind frames complex ideas it exer-

cises some active operations, but in the case of substances the extent
of the mind's freedom is most limited. As to ideas of modes and rela-
tions, their conformity or nonconformity to external archetypes is in
principle out of the question, since they themselves are their own arche-
types. Indeed, even in the case of ideas of substances, we can produce
"fantastical or chimerical" ideas which do not have any archetype, but
ordinarily they must, at least to some extent, conform to external arche-
types or patterns; they must be "real." Therefore, as far as ideas of
substances with external archetypes - especially, those of natural sub-
stances - are concerned, we clearly see a restriction in idea-formation
which cannot be found in the production of ideas of mixed modes.
70 Y ASUHIKO TOMIDA

This does not mean, however, that ideas of substances are of a char-
acter such that once they are formed they remain unchangeable.
Originally, ideas of substances are "certain Collections of simple Ideas,
that have been observed or supposed constantly to exist together."?
Therefore, when the mind frames them, it "endeavour[s] to copy the
Substances, that exist in the World, by putting together the Ideas of those
sensible Qualities, which are found coexisting in them."s But "those
Qualities, and Powers of substances, whereof we make their complex
Ideas, are so many and various, that no Man's complex Idea contains
them all.,,9 So, here again, there is room for freedom of choice, and the
possibility of diversity or diachronic change. Concerning this, Locke
observes that:
Though the Mind be wholly passive, in respect of its simple Ideas: Yet, I think, we
may say, it is not so, in respect of its complex Ideas: For those being Combinations of
simple Ideas, put together, and united under one general Name; 'tis plain, that the
Mind of Man uses some kind of Liberty, in forming those complex Ideas: How else comes
it to pass, that one Man's Idea of Gold, or Justice, is different from anothers? But
because he has put in, or left out of his, some simple Idea, which the other has not.
(II, xxx, 3)

The "gold" and "justice" mentioned here are Locke's favorite examples
of substance and mixed mode respectively. Thus, judging from this
passage, ideas of substances can be diverse, even if they have external
archetypes. 10
The diversity of ideas of substances follows from the fact that "those
Qualities, and Powers of Substances, whereof we make their complex
Ideas, are so many and various, that no Man's complex Idea contains
them all," but at the same time there follows, from the latter part of
the sentence, the possibility of diachronic change in ideas of substances;
that is to say, there is always a possibility of choice, but there is another
possibility that the progress of observations and experiments about a sub-
stance may change the contents of the idea of the substance. Concerning
this possibility, Locke says, for example, as follows:
[N]o one, who hath considered the Properties of Bodies in general, or this sort in Particular,
can doubt, that this, call' d Gold, has infinite other Properties, not contained in that complex
Idea. Some, who have examined this Species more accurately, could, I believe, enu-
merate ten times as many Properties in Gold [... ]: And 'tis probable, if anyone knew
all the Properties, that are by divers Men known of this Metal, there would an hundred
times as many Ideas, go to the complex Idea of Gold, as anyone Man yet has in his;
and yet, perhaps, that not be the thousandth part of what is to be discovered in it. The
 IDEA AND THING 71

changes that that one Body is apt to receive, and make in other Bodies, upon a
due application, exceeding far, not only what we know, but what we are apt to imagine.
(II, xxxi, 10)11

As is well known, according to Locke, the "real qualities" or "real

constitutions" of things themselves are, in practice, unknowable, so we
cannot deduce what properties substances have. The only means we have
to know them are our own experiments and close observations, that is,
in order to form ideas of substances, we must have recourse to the
ceaseless investigations of "natural history."

7. Two Sorts of Ideas of Body

Thus far we have shown that an idea of substance can always change
over time, and that this change interlocks with the acquisition of knowl-
edge by the study of natural history. But there is another kind of change
in ideas of substances.
According to Locke's basic conception, we must make a sharp dis-
tinction between "ideas" and "things themselves.,,12 And, since the latter
cannot be our immediate objects, we must, when forming complex ideas
of substances, selectively combine several ideas which are acquired
through the "affection" on our senses by "things themselves." But in spite
of this basic view, he repeatedly mentions "things themselves," and in
fact they play an important role in his theory of knowledge. Therefore,
(though we must postpone detailed discussion until the next chapter) it
is clear that "things themselves" were also for him objects of the under-
standing. If in this sense we can also call "things themselves" ideas,
insofar as they are objects of our understanding, then it follows that there
are at least two kinds of ideas of body in the Essay. One, needless to
say, is that of "(complex) ideas of substances," and we can call them
ideas of experiential objects, as opposed to "things themselves." The
other idea of body involves the "idea" of "things themselves." What
relation then do these kinds of ideas have to one another?

8. The Formability of the "Idea" of Things Themselves

To answer that question, we will consider here whether the idea of

things themselves can be formed within Locke's basic view of idea-
formation.
72 Y ASUHIKO TOMIDA

According to Locke, things themselves are single or compound minute

bodies (corpuscles or particles) having no qualities like color and taste,
but only primary qualities like extension, solidity, motion, and so on.
Besides, the corpuscles themselves, or the texture they constitute, are too
small to be perceived by our senses.
But judging from his views concerning idea-formation, it is quite
natural to imagine that we can form the idea of things themselves. For
Locke, it is self-evident that we can have ideas of primary qualities
and of corporeal substances and that to form the idea of "things them-
selves" we need only to add several mental operations which can be
exerted towards these "things"; for example, those operations which give
the characteristic of minuteness or of insensibility to the idea of bodies
which have primary qualities alone.
In various passages Locke explicitly or implicitly shows that the
mind can exert such operations. Firstly, as the mind can, by repeatedly
adding quantitative ideas, form the idea of infinity, so it can, by repeat-
edly dividing a quantitative idea or by use of analogy, frame the idea
of extreme minuteness. 13 Secondly, if we have recourse to Locke's
idea that we can form a "negative" idea from a "positive" one,14 it is
also possible to claim that we can get the idea of "insensibility" or
"imperceptibility" from their positives. Thus, it is possible,· within
Locke's theory of idea-formation, to acquire the idea of "things them-
selves."15
Indeed, Locke explicitly says that the qualities of "things themselves"
are, except primary qualities of gross bodies, imperceptible. But in spite
of this unknowability of particular "things themselves" (that is, the
unknowability of the "real essence" or "internal constitution" of things),
he himself acknowledges that we can have a general "idea" of "things
themselves":

This [real] Essence [of Gold], from which all these Properties [like peculiar Colour,
Weight, Hardness, Fusibility, etc.] flow, when I enquire into it, and search after it, I plainly
perceive I cannot discover: the farthest I can go, is only to presume, that it being nothing
but Body, its real Essence, or internal Constitution, on which these Qualities depend,
can be nothing but the Figure, Size, and Connexion of its solid Parts; [... ] I have an
Idea of Figure, Size, and Situation of solid Parts in general, though I have none of
the particular Figure, Size, or putting together of Parts, whereby the Qualities above-
mentioned are produced; [... J (II, xxxi, 6)
 IDEA AND THING 73

9. The Creative Flight to a New View of Body

Our problem is thus that of what relation the idea of body as an idea
of "things themselves" has to the idea of substances. As mentioned above,
Lockean ideas of substances are ideas of what we ordinarily think of
as bodies, namely, those of experiential objects. Then, why did another
sort of idea of body - namely, the idea of "things themselves" - have
to be framed? The major reason is that people noticed several problems
which seemed to be insoluble or inexplicable within the framework of
experiential objects. It goes without saying that these problems have been
taxing philosophers ever since ancient Greek physica, and especially
so since ancient atomism. In Locke's time "Epicureanism" had already
been revived, and under its influence several British natural scientists
began to use unusual ideas of body as hypotheses to explain various
physical phenomena, and this new movement did influence Locke's Essay
to a considerable extent.
With such circumstances in mind, we might conclude that the new idea
of things themselves was a result of a diachronic change (different from
that discussed in the Section 6 above) in ideas of substances. As I shall
argue in the next chapter, this formation of a new idea of body was an
important factor in investigations carried out according to hypotheses
as distinct from those of natural history.
Just as we have seen that the new idea-formation of ideas of mixed
modes is closely related to the formation of new "manners of life," so
we can see that the new idea-formation of substances occurs in the
same situation. And if the above sketch is correct, we can say that the
Essay itself, which was written with the corpuscular hypothesis in mind,
is a living example which implicitly demonstrates the process of the
creative modification of "ideas of substances" in the wider sense.

NOTES

1 See also II, xxii, 9.

2 II, xii, 4.
1 III, ii, 1-2.

4 II, xviii, 7.
5 II, xxii, 6, etc.
6 For this subject, see my "Chokkan, Goi, likokeisei" ("Intuition, Vocabulary, and Self-
Formation"), Riso (Tokyo) No. 634 (1987), esp. §4. Locke has sometimes been treated
negatively by people who are interested in the creativity of metaphor because he did
74 Y ASUHIKO TOMIDA

not allow metaphorical uses of words. But, in my opinion, we must attach importance
to the fact that he took notice of the relationship between vocabulary and creativity.
7 II, xxxi, 6.
8 II, xxxi, 8.
9 Ibid.
10 As to the matter of choice, we must also take into account the fact that Locke some-
times discusses it in connection with "the end of language." See III, vi, 32-33.
\I See also II, xxxi, 8; III, ii, 3; III, ix, 13, etc.
12 See also the first section of next chapter.
II Addressing this division Locke writes: "[I]n the former Considerations of the Infinity
of Space and Duration, we only use Addition of Numbers; whereas [Division of Matter]
is like the division of an Unite into its Fractions, wherein the Mind also can proceed in
infinitum, as well as in the former Additions, it being indeed but the Addition still of
new Numbers: [... J" (II, xvii, 12) See also IV, v, 6.
14 This distinction appears in, e.g., II, xvii, 15.
15 See also D. E. Soles, "Locke's Empiricism and the Postulation of Unobservables,"
Journal of the History of Philosophy, Vol. XXIII (1985).
 II. EXPERIENTIAL OBJECTS,
AND THINGS THEMSELVES

1. Ideas and Things Themselves

In this chapter I shall propose a new interpretation of Locke's repre-

sentative theory of perception. But before doing that, it will be useful
to confirm some points concerning the theory.
What is an "idea"? In a well-known passage Locke writes:
[The Word Idea] being that Term, which, I think, serves best to stand for whatsoever is
the Object of the Understanding when a Man thinks, I have used it to express whatever
is meant by Phantasm, Notion, Species, or whatever it is, which the Mind can be employ'd
about in thinking; [... ] (I, i, 8)

According to his view on power, "Understanding" is the power of

perception,l and Locke also says, "what Perception is, everyone will
know better by reflecting on what he does himself, when he sees, hears,
feels, etc. or thinks, than by any discourse of mine.,,2 Therefore, roughly
speaking, ideas are objects of sense perception or thinking.
On the other hand, he also holds that an idea is, "whatsoever the
Mind perceives in it self, or is the immediate object of Perception,
Thought, or Understanding.,,3 Thus, according to Locke, all ideas share
a characteristic, they are "immediate objects" of the understanding or
perception. He repeatedly emphasizes this in the Essay; for example,
he says that "the Mind, in all its Thoughts and Reasonings, hath no
other immediate Object but its own Ideas.,,4
Furthermore, this common characteristic is limned by another expres-
sion: the phrase "in our minds." This expression is used in many passages,
such as this typical example: "I presume it will be easily granted me, that
there are such Ideas in Men's Minds; [... J" (I, i, 8)
But, on this view, something external must also exist, and indeed
Locke does acknowledge the existence of a world of things outside
our minds, namely, outside the worlds of our ideas. For example, when
he explains "qualities" which produce ideas in our minds, he calls the
"subjects" of those qualities (namely, the so-called "objects," "bodies,"
or "things") "something existing without US."5 The term "thing" refers

75
76 Y ASUHIKO TOMIDA

not merely to a body, but sometimes also to the mind. 6 But when he uses
it in contrast with "idea," he usually means by it an external body. And
it is the relation between such things and ideas that we have to clarify
here.
The difference between ideas and things finds a clearer expression
in the following passage:
[Sjince the things, the Mind contemplates, are none of them, besides it self, present to
the Understanding, 'tis necessary that something else, as a Sign or Representation of
the thing it considers, should be present to it: And these are Ideas. (IV, xxi, 4)

This passage shows that being "within" or "without" the mind corre-
sponds to being "present" or "not present" to the understanding. Why are
things not present then to the understanding? Why can't they be imme-
diate objects of the mind?
According to Locke, the origin of all ideas is in sensation or reflec-
tion. And in sensation, when things themselves affect the senses, certain
movements are conveyed to the brain through nerves and thus cause ideas
in the mind. 7 That is to say, things themselves are not immediately present
to the mind, but (as explicitly said in IV, xxi, 4 quoted above) only
ideas which represent them are present. s

2. Problems with the Representative Theory of Perception

This view leads us to ask the following questions:
1) If things are not present to the understanding, how does it know of
their existence?
2) If things are not present to the understanding, how does it know
that ideas are signs or representations of them?
3) If things are not present to the understanding, how does it know
the qualities of things?
Concerning the first question, Locke says that:
The Knowledge of the Existence of any other thing [except ourselves and GODj we can
have only by Sensation [... j; no particular Man can know the Existence of any other
Being, but only when by actual operating upon him, it makes it self perceived by him.
(IV, xi, 1)

In this passage he says that we can know the existence of things by

sensation, but since the immediate objects of sense perception are not
things themselves but ideas, this answer is inadequate. Moreover, if the
 IDEA AND THING 77

words "it makes it self perceived by him" are taken literally, they would
contradict the claim that things are not present to the understanding.
As for the second question, Locke raises it himself:
'Tis evident, the Mind knows not Things immediately, but only by the intervention of
the Ideas it has of them. Our Knowledge therefore is real, only so far as there is a con-
formity between our Ideas and the reality of Things. But what shall be here the Criterion?
How shall the Mind, when it perceives nothing but its own Ideas, know that they agree
with Things themselves? (IV, iv, 3)

And he answers this question in the following way:

[I] think there be two sorts of Ideas, that, we may be assured, agree with Things.
First, The fIrst are simple Ideas, which since the Mind, as has been shewed, can by
no means make to it self, must necessarily be the product of Things operating on the
Mind [... ]. (IV, iv, 3-4)

All complex ideas are placed in the second group, except those of sub-
stances, and since Locke holds that complex ideas of modes and relations
themselves are generally their own archetypes, they are necessarily real.
In contrast with them, he treats complex ideas of substances in the fol-
lowing way: "[O]ur Ideas of Substances being supposed Copies, and
referred to Archetypes without us, must still be taken from something that
does or has existed; [... J" (IV, iv, 12) But "Herein [... ] is founded
the reality of our Knowledge concerning Substances, that all our complex
Ideas of them must be such, and such only, as are made up of such simple
ones, as have been discovered to co-exist in Nature." (IV, iv, 12) If the
archetypes are "without us," it would follow that they are not ideas.
But, the second quotation suggests that archetypes should be ideas. Thus,
seemingly, Locke does not adequately explain the relation between ideas
of substances and their external archetypes.
With regard to the third question, a well-known argument concerning
the qualities of things is found in II, viii. It is argued there that "quali-
ties" in things themselves produce ideas in the mind. And Locke divides
them into three kinds:
1) "The Bulk, Figure, Number, Situation, and Motion, or Rest of their
solid Parts; those are in them, whether we perceive them or no; and
when they are of that size, that we can discover them, we have by
these an Idea of the thing, as it is in it self."
2) "The Power that is in any Body, by Reason of its insensible primary
Qualities, to operate after a peculiar manner on any of our Senses,
78 Y ASUHIKO TOMIDA

and thereby produce in us the different Ideas of several Colours,

Sounds, Smells, Tasts, etc."
3) "The Power that is in any Body, by Reason of the particular
Constitution of its primary Qualities, to make such a change in the
Bulk, Figure, Texture, and Motion of another Body, as to make it
operate on our Senses, differently from what it did before."9
These three sorts of qualities are called "primary qualities," "secondary
qualities," and, usually, "Powers," respectively, but as can be easily seen,
they are, in short, either primary qualities or powers based on them, a
point supported by the following description:·
To conclude, beside those before mentioned primary Qualities in Bodies, viz. Bulk, Figure,
Extension, Number, and Motion of their solid Parts; all the rest, whereby we take notice
of Bodies, and distinguish them one from another, are nothing else, but several Powers
in them, depending on those primary Qualities [... J. (II, viii, 26)

Now, since primary qualities are qualities of things themselves,

according to Locke's "official" view, we cannot know them directly.
Then, what grounds does he have for claiming that things have such
primary qualities as solidity, figure, extension, and so on? Locke does
not give a clear answer to this question, but the following is, at least,
suggestive:
[Primary qualities are J such as Sense constantly finds in every particle of Matter, which
has bulk enough to be perceived, and the Mind finds inseparable from every particle of
Matter, though less than to make it self singly be perceived by our Senses. (II, viii, 9)

It is ideas that the senses and the mind "find." So, to admit properties
which have the above-mentioned characteristics as primary qualities
might be nothing more than to admit a kind of "idea" found in sensa-
tion to be a primary "quality." Therefore, he seems here to overstep
the line between ideas and things themselves, or to suggest that at least
primary qualities of gross bodies are immediately perceptible. But, on
the other hand, he claims that the idea of primary qualities are "resem-
blances" of the latter, \0 and tries to preserve the distinction between
ideas and qualities. Thus, eventually, he distinguishes ideas from things,
refuses to accept the latter as immediate objects of the understanding,
and thereby, seemingly, undermines his own view that primary quali-
ties belong to things themselves.
Thus, Locke's representative theory of perception certainly seems
to be defective. But for a fair interpretation of his whole theory of
 IDEA AND THING 79

knowledge we must reexamine his theory of perception from another

point of view.

3. A Clue Towards Reinterpretation: The Moment of Direct Realism

One of the clues leading on to our reinterpretation of Locke's repre-
sentative theory of perception is the anti-representative, direct-realistic,
moment, which is seen to be "mixed" in his Essay. This has already been
pointed out by several Locke scholars, such as Yolton, who claims,
after discussing several examples, that Locke acknowledged that the mind
directly perceives bodies:

[T]here are a number of passages in the Essay showing Locke saying that objects are
sensibleY
[T]hat Locke believed objects and their qualities to be perceptible cannot be doubted
on the basis of his texts. Only if we burden ourselves first with a theory of representa-
tive perception (and interpret that theory in a specific way) can we be led to ignore
what Locke says. The text is not unequivocal on the question of immediate ideas and
mediate knowledge of things. It is explicit, however, that Locke talks of ordinary per-
ceptual objects and of our seeing and perceiving those objects. 12
The so-called 'representative theory of perception' is supposed to be threatened with
idealism and privacy; realism is, at best, a postulate or belief. All Locke's use of ordinary
physical object and event talk to the contrary, the doctrine of knowledge via ideas seems
to clash with his easy talk of observing objects. J3

He also quotes Woozley, who remarks that Locke "talked of seeing tables,
and of having ideas of tables, but never seeing ideas of tables,,,14 and
comments that "Woozley is clearly right in stressing that Locke's way
of ideas did not commit the category mistake of saying we see ideas,
not tables."ls The same assertion is also made by Greenlee. He observes
that Locke is in many passages "treating ideas as qualities," and that such
passages "reveal a deep-lying vein of direct realism in the Essay.,,16
Admittedly, these interpreters' assertions have a limited validity. But
we must also pay attention to one more point, their concepts of "objects"
or "bodies." Yolton points out that there are two concepts of object in
Locke:

The one concept is embedded in the corpuscular theory, it tells us what properties objects
have non-relationally, both on the micro and the macro level. That concept also gives
us a causal explanation of macro-objects. The second concept of object is Locke's attempt
to articulate a philosophy of nature and of knowledge sufficient for the scientific activ-
ities of Boyle, Hooke, and Sydenham. J7
80 Y ASUHIKO TOMIDA

The two concepts of object correspond to the idea of the thing itself based
on the corpuscular hypothesis, and the complex idea of substance respec-
tively. And, obviously, the passages both Yolton and Greenlee raised
as being non-representative are concerned with the latter.
In spite of the merit of his thesis, I cannot accept Yolton's interpre-
tation as an adequate one. It does not sufficiently take into account the
moment of representative theory, and, moreover, he does not seem to
explain clearly the relation between the two concepts of object.

4. Examples of the "Mixture" of the Two Moments

We might quote several passages in IV, xi - those on the existence of
things - as examples of the "mixture" of the two moments: the moments
of representative theory of perception, on the one hand, and that of direct
realism, on the other. In those passages two different views seem to be
interwoven. One of them - that of the representative theory - can be
recognized, for example, in the following passages:
'Tis therefore the actual receiving of Ideas from without, that gives us notice of the
Existence of other Things, and makes us know, that something doth exist at that time
without us, which causes that Idea in us [... J. (IV, xi, 2)
[... J 'Tis plain, those Perceptions are produced in us by exteriour Causes affecting
our Senses [... J. (IV, xi, 4)

According to these passages it is ideas that are present to us, and the exis-
tence of things are, as it were, indirectly known.
The other view is no less definite:
[... J I think no body can, in earnest, be so sceptical, as to be uncertain of the Existence
of those Things which he sees and feels. (IV, xi, 3)
[WJe cannot so far distrust their Testimony, as to doubt, that such Collections of simple
Ideas, as we have observed by our Senses to be united together, do really exist together.
(IV, xi, 9)

We must pay attention to the fact that in IV, xi, 3 above, he uses the
expression "the Existence of those Things which he sees and feels."
According to the representative theory of perception, since seeing and
feeling are perceptions, their objects ought to be ideas. But the subject-
matter of the passage is not knowledge of existence of ideas but that
of things. On the other hand, according to IV, xi, 9, "such Collections
of simple Ideas, as we have observed by our Senses to be united
together," seem ofthemselves capable of existing in the external world. IS
 IDEA AND THING 81

In the following sections I will attempt to find an interpretation which

enables us to see the relation of these two moments synthetically (and
the relation of two ideas of body interlocked with them).

5. The Commonsensical Stance and the Epistemological View

In order to treat the problem adequately, it is best to first think about

the strata or the difference of orders in language or thinking. In other
words, we have to pay attention to the fact that in Locke's theory of
knowledge the word "idea" is used, as it were, at the meta-level. As
already mentioned in the first section, his theory of knowledge in the
Essay is based on a three-term relation comprised of the thing itself, idea,
and mind (or understanding). According to Locke, when ideas derived
from sensation are perceived originally (in other words, when they are
actually given by sensation), they are produced in the mind by things
themselves that affect the senses. If we tentatively call such a view an
epistemological view, then in this view, the immediate objects of our
understanding are ideas, not things themselves.
But in ordinary, artless, sense perception, we usually do not grasp
the perception itself in terms of the three-term relation mentioned above.
Rather, in most cases, we believe that we directly perceive things as
they are. Namely, in ordinary circumstances we see sense perception from
the viewpoint of a two-term relation between thing and mind. Let us
tentatively call this direct-realist stance the commonsensical stance.
Admittedly, there is a gap between our commonsensical stance and
the Lockean epistemological view. In my opinion this gap is just
a difference of orders in language (or thinking). In other words, the
recognition or thinking of things in the "commonsensical stance" be-
longs to the first order of activities, whereas the Lockean theory of
knowledge is a consideration concerning such recognition or thinking
- namely, a sort of consideration at the meta-level. Therefore, the term
"idea" belongs not to the first order level but to the meta-level called
epistemology.
In a sense, making this distinction is a matter of course, but, in my
opinion, to emphasize it leads us to a fairer interpretation of Locke's
representative theory. The reason for this will gradually become clear
in the following considerations. Let us first look into what linguistic
relation holds between the commonsensical two-term view and the
Lockean three-term view.
82 Y ASUHIKO TOMIDA

6. The First-Order Meaning of the Phrase "Perceiving Ideas"

According to Locke, some ideas are simple and others are complex,
and the latter are divided into three kinds: substance, mode, and relation.
Insofar as they are ideas, they are "in the mind" and different from things
themselves. But Locke's statements about complex ideas suggest that,
roughly speaking, they are nothing but things, qualities of things, and
relations between things (or qualities of things based on some rela-
tions), all of which are recognizable in our ordinary experience. 19 For
example, he says that complex ideas of substances are "such combina-
tions of simple Ideas, as are taken to represent distinct particular things
subsisting by themselves,,,2o but he also says that the idea of the sun is
"an aggregate of those several simple Ideas, Bright, Hot, Roundish,
having a constant regular motion, at a certain distance from us, and,
perhaps, some other.,,21 These latter words clearly indicate that he is
treating substances as things which we know experientially. We can say
the same thing also in the cases of other sorts of complex ideas like
murder and incest. And this means that if we ignore the various problems
frequently associated with his way of demarcating complex ideas, and
see his treatment of them as a whole, we can say that he is, in those cases,
just analyzing "objects," their "qualities," and their "relations" in the
ordinary sense, from the viewpoint of epistemology. In other words, he
is analyzing them in the basic framework of the three-term relation, as
something which is composed of simple ideas.
Thus, he turns out to be making a kind of translation, the translation
of the two-term relation in the commonsensical stance, into the three-
term relation in the epistemological view. And on the basis of this implicit
translation, he proceeds to analyze complex ideas. For example, direct
recognition of things in the commonsensical stance (that is, direct recog-
nition of experiential objects) is translated into the original perception
of ideas of substances through affection by things themselves. To be more
precise, the recognition of an experiential object as a thing which falls
under a sort is translated as originally perceiving a particular idea of
substance on the basis of affection by a thing itself(or things themselves),
and at the same time perceiving that the idea conforms to an abstract idea
of substance which has already been retained in the mind and given a
name. 22 And thinking of things in general is translated as various mental
operations that have a perception of a particular or general idea of a
substance as an element.
 IDEA AND THING 83

If we acknowledge such a translational relation in Locke's wording,

then we can say that his introduction of "ideas" into his epistemolog-
ical view is another way of speaking about the first-order perception
of experiential objects. Thus, his use of "idea" does not permit us to inter-
pret his theory of perception as one introducing a veil. To say that the
mind originally perceives an idea of substance is, in most cases, to say
that it directly perceives an experiential object, and to say that the mind
thinks of an idea of a substance is, generally speaking, to say that it thinks
of an experiential object.

7. Reasons for the Transition to a

Representative Theory of Perception

My second move toward a new interpretation of Locke is to reflect on

reasons for the transition from the commonsensical stance to the epis-
temological view.
There are several reasons for the transition. Why didn't Locke think
that things were immediate objects? And why did he think that, with
the exception of the primary qualities of gross bodies, things do not show
how they really are? The answer to this has much to do with the history
of science. As is well known, Locke accepted the corpuscular theory
as the best hypothesis for explaining various natural phenomena. The
hypothesis was based on the restoration of "Epicureanism," and in fol-
lowing it he refused to take experiential objects to be things themselves
and accepted a different concept of body.23 Admittedly Locke did not
explicitly state concrete reasons for accepting the corpuscular hypoth-
esis in his Essay, but we can find at least two general reasons for
re-positing things themselves and depriving experiential objects of their
status as things themselves. 24
The first reason is based on the so-called illusion, or relativity, of
sensation. For example, when Locke shows why heat and cold are to
be regarded as ideas in the mind and not as qualities in things them-
selves,25 he has recourse to the relativity of the sensations of heat and
cold. Generally, the recognition of such relativity, or illusion, plays an
important role in his argument; and from this recognition he draws the
conclusion that our perception does not necessarily faithfully show things
themselves as they are. More particularly he concludes that the so-
called "ideas of secondary qualities" are not similar to their causes,
namely, the secondary qualities themselves. It may be said in this con-
84 Y ASUHIKO TOMIDA

nection that to make this dissimilarity clear was the very purpose
of his distinction between ideas and things themselves. Locke writes
that:
To discover the nature of our Ideas the better, and to discourse of them intelligibly, it
will be convenient to distinguish them, as they are Ideas or Perceptions in our Minds;
and as they are modifications of matter in the Bodies that cause such Perceptions in us:
that so we may not think (as perhaps usually is done) that they are exactly the Images
and Resemblances of something inherent in the subject [... J. (IT, viii, 7)26

The second general reason concerns the causal process of our sense
perception. Within our commonsensical stance we already believe that
we perceive things through the operation of our senses, and this belief
potentially leads us to raise a question: the question of whether we truly
perceive things themselves as they are. For according to this belief, we
perceive things through various media. Locke seems to have been aware
of this problem. As already mentioned, according to Locke, when we .
perceive external things, they affect our senses and cause various move-
ments there. These movements are conveyed to the brain, and as a result
the phenomenon of "perceiving things," in the commonsensical sense,
is realized. With regard to this, he says that:
If then external Objects be not united to our Minds, when they produce Ideas in it; and
yet we perceive these original Qualities [primary Qualities] in such of them as singly
fall under our Senses, 'tis evident, that some motion must be thence continued by our
Nerves, or animal Spirits, by some parts of our Bodies, to the Brains or the seat of
Sensation, there to produce in our Minds the particular Ideas we have of them. [... J
After the same manner, that the Ideas of these original Qualities are produced in us,
we may conceive, that the Ideas of secondary Quaiities are also produced, viz. by the
operation of insensible particles on our Senses. (II, viii, 12-13)

Since perception needs various media between things and minds, it is not
unnatural to raise the question of whether we really perceive external
things as they are. And this doubt can also lead us to re-posit things them-
selves as being different in some points from experiential objects.
If at least for these reasons one posits something new as a thing
itself, then he must have a means to translate (or transform) his thinking
or language about the experiential objects into a new thinking or language
that fits the new situation. For this, Locke adopted the term "idea," and
thereby he changed the status of experiential objects into that of "ideas"
in the mind.
If my conjecture is correct, we must acknowledge that his epis-
temological view was a means of solving problems arising from the
 IDEA AND THING 85

commonsensical stance, or that it was an attempt to give grounds for their

solutions. In other words, the basic framework of the Lockean theory
of knowledge is a result of the adoption of a better scientific way of
thinking.
If Locke's representative theory of perception was in fact established
in this way, some problems raised by the interpreters mentioned in the
Introduction to Part Two will disappear. If the relation between ideas and
the mind is given first, and subsequently things themselves are posited
behind the ideas, or if the relation between things themselves and the
mind is given first, and subsequently ideas are inserted in between them
from somewhere, certainly the ideas will play the role of a veil between
the mind and things themselves. And in such a case we will not be able
to escape the conclusion that we cannot know of the existence of things
themselves and of how they really are. But the ideas do not enter the
stage of epistemology in the manner of a deus ex machina. Rather, we
must see the situation in the following way: First, the relation between
experiential objects and the mind is given in the commonsensical stance;
then, things different in some respects from the experiential objects are
posited as "things themselves"; and finally, the experiential objects
assume the status of "ideas." Therefore, in this situation, our assump-
tion concerning the existence of things themselves, and the way they
are, plays an essential leading role.

8. From Experiential Objects to Things Themselves

Interestingly enough, in Locke's discussion of ideas, we can find a recon-

struction of the process of re-positing things themselves. In my opinion,
the best clue to this is a seemingly unintelligible passage concerning
"original ideas."
In the last section of the largest chapter in the Essay, II, xxi entitled
"Of Power," Locke concludes:

And thus I have, in a short draught, given a view of our original Ideas, from whence
all the rest are derived, and of which they are made up; which if I would consider, as a
Philosopher, and examine on what Causes they depend, and of what they are made, I
believe they all might be reduced to these very few primary, and original ones, viz.
Extension,
Solidity,
Mobility, or the Power of being moved;
which by our Senses we receive from Body:
86 Y ASUHIKO TOMIDA

Perceptivity, or the Power of perception, or thinking;

Motivity, or the Power of moving;
which by reflection we receive from our Minds. I crave leave to make use of these two
new Words, to avoid the danger of being mistaken in the use of those which are aequiv-
ocal. To which if we add
Existence,
Duration,
Number;
which belong both to the one, and the other, we have, perhaps, all the Original Ideas on
which the rest depend. For by these, I imagine, might be explained the nature of Colours,
Sounds, Tastes, Smells, and all other Ideas we have, if we had but Faculties acute enough
to perceive the severally modified Extensions, and Motions, of these minute Bodies, which
produce those several Sensations in us. (II, xxi, 73)

We can take the original ideas enumerated here to be, for the time
being, simple ideas which are used to form complex ideas. But we cannot
understand the epithet "original" in the sense of "ultimate components
of all complex ideas." For, in the Lockean theory of idea-formation as
based on the distinction between simple and complex ideas, the ideas
of secondary qualities, those of colors and sounds, for example, are
also qualified to be such components. As is seen in the latter part of
the quoted passage, the word "original" is used here to distinguish qual-
ities of things themselves and our ideas. In short, Locke says here that
the ideas of colors, sounds, and so on should be explained in terms of
those qualities which things themselves originally have.
Yolton remarks of that:
The list of primary qualities given in 2.8 varies, but the composite from that chapter is
the following: solidity, extension, figure, motion, rest, bulk, number, texture, size, situ-
ation. [. . . J Locke thought this list too long, or thought it capable of reduction.
Encompassing minds as well as bodies, he offered a list of eight original ideas from
which all the rest are derived (2.21.73). This curious passage is reflected in only a few
other places in the Essay. Its position in the Essay, coming at the end of the very long
chapter on 'power', is odd, though it seems meant as a summary of the programme of
derivation so far presented. It does not, however, summarise the analysis of the genesis
of ideas in the previous chapters. Rather, it appears to suggest a quite different kind of
derivation. [... J What this curious passage explicitly offers is a list of ideas causally
basic for all other ideas. 27

This remark is quite suggestive. If we can identify the original ideas

with the basic concepts of physics that Locke accepts, then the process
by which he narrows ideas down to a very few basic ones can be inter-
preted as a process of selecting the qualities appropriate to things
themselves from among the qualities of our experiential objects. In II,
 IDEA AND THING 87

viii he devotes many pages to reasons for the selection, and much of Book
II is devoted to the consideration of ideas of qualities which things them-
selves should have.

9. The Inquiry by Hypothesis

Moreover, we must appreciate the fact that Locke's epistemological view

provided means supporting the possibility of inquiring into the posited
things themselves. This fact clearly shows that it is wrong to draw the
conclusion that his epistemology makes knowledge of external things
impossible.
According to Locke, we cannot generally have "knowledge" about
things themselves. But this does not mean that we must remain com-
pletely ignorant of them. Indeed, following some contemporary physi-
cists, he thought that physics could not be a system of certain knowl-
edge,28 but he acknowledged the possibility of acquiring probable beliefs
by hypothesis or analogy. He held that general knowledge of substances
is very limited, but that nevertheless investigation by hypothesis or
analogy can play an important role in physics. Particles were one of
the things which could be investigated by such means. Locke observes
that:

There remains that other sort concerning which, Men entertain Opinions with variety of
Assent, though the Things be such, that falling not under the reach of our Senses, they
are not capable of Testimony. [One of them concerns) the manner of Operation in most
parts of the Works of Nature: wherein though we see the sensible effects, yet their
causes are unknown, and we perceive not the ways and manner how they are produced.
[... ) This sort of Probability [... ) and the rise of Hypothesis, [which are adopted in
such cases) has also its Use and Influence; and a wary Reasoning from analogy leads
us often into the discovery of Truths, and useful Productions, which would otherwise
lie concealed. (IV, xvi, 12)

In a well-known controversy concerning the problem of hypothesis

in Locke,29 Laudan claimed that Locke had attached importance to the
corpuscular hypothesis as a method of physics, whereas Yost and Yolton
denied this. YoIton remarks:

I can find no evidence that the account of the science of nature Locke gives recom-
mended using the corpuscular hypothesis as a way of discovering new observable qualities
of bodies. Nor did Locke's account urge us to use, or say that scientists were using,
that hypothesis to explain all phenomena in the natural histories. 30
88 Y ASUHIKO TOMIDA

Locke was not interested in, and certainly found no room in his account of knowl-
edge for [... J the attempt to confirm the corpuscular hypothesis or to make inferences
from observed to unobserved phenomenaY

As Yolton says, Locke certainly did not recommend the corpuscular

hypothesis, nor did he attempt to analyze the hypothetical method, but
as Locke's words quoted above show, he did not, in fact, reject it.
Warning of the danger of using hypotheses, he writes:
Not that we may not, to explain any Phoenomena of Nature, make use of any probable
Hypothesis whatsoever: Hypotheses, if they are well made, are at least great helps to
the Memory, and often direct us to new discoveries. But my Meaning is, that we should
not take up anyone too hastily, [... J till we have very well examined Particulars, and
made several Experiments, in that thing which we would explain by our Hypothesis,
and see whether it will agree to them all; whether our Principles will carry us quite through,
and not be as inconsistent with one Phoenomenon of Nature, as they seem to accommo-
date, and explain another. (IV, xii, 13)

A number of contemporary scientists adopted the corpuscular hypoth-

esis, but, as Yolton suggested, their principal concern was, or should have
been, to collect data through the investigation of natural history. Locke
did not reject hypotheses, but issued a stern warning against carelessly
setting up a hypothesis before making sufficient investigation of natural
history, and in this spirit he put emphasis on the investigation of natural
history rather than on hypothesis-formation.
We must not, therefore, draw the conclusion that the positing of ideas
makes external things unapproachable. Rather, the acquisition of a better
scientific theory requires the positing of new "things themselves" and
of ideas, and in the Essay Locke tried to show, in the framework of the
three-term relation established by the positing itself, how the investiga-
tions of the new physics could proceed.

10. The Stratified Structure of the

Representative Theory of Perception

Thus far we have made it clear that the establishment of the represen-
tative theory of perception is a result of a new step, one taken away
from the commonsensical stance. But this move does not consist merely
in throwing an old conception away and adopting a new one. In order
to make this point clear, let us again consider the premises of Locke's
representative theory of perception.
As was discussed above, one of the general reasons for Locke's move
 IDEA AND THING 89

to the representative theory of perception is the problem raised by rela-

tivity of sensation, or illusion. But, when we say something is relative,
we must have already recognized that something else is not relative,
whether temporarily so or not. For example, even if heat is relative to
our physical conditions, if we acknowledged in our commonsensical
stance that everything perceived through senses were relative, namely,
if we believed that all things, including, say, shapes and the existence
of things, were relative, the relativity itself would not come into question.
Similarly, if we believed that all sense perception were illusory, the
phenomenon of illusion itself would hardly be questionable. It is our
ordinary belief that there is something not relative, and that there is a
perception which is veridical, that enables us to take the problem of
relativity and illusion seriously.
As to the second general reason for shifting to the representative theory
of perception, we can say the same thing. In our sense perception there
are indeed many media working between the object and our under-
standing. And when we take this fact as a reason for the move to the
representative theory, we, at least implicitly, exploit our ordinary, direct
realistic belief that those things really exist as they appear.
Thus, in each case, it is clear that the commonsensical belief in our
direct realistic perception of things motivates the transition to the rep-
resentative theory of perception. Therefore, the representative theory
of perception has belief in direct realistic perception as its essential
premise, one without which it cannot be established.
Indeed, the combination of direct realism as a premise and the rep-
resentative theory of perception as the conclusion can be seen to be
impossible only if we ignore the dynamic relationship between them. But
there is, in fact, a dynamic and stratified relation between them. And
the representative theory of perception always, at least implicitly, derives
its power - the power to keep its realistic character - from belief in
the direct perception of the commonsensical stance. In other words, expe-
riential objects in the original two-term relation of the commonsensical
view are accepted into the three-term relation of the epistemological view
in the form of "ideas" of substances, and at the same time, the char-
acter of real existence, which the experiential objects originally had, is
inherited by the things themselves re-posited in the three-term relation
of the representative theory of perception. And because of this inher-
ited character, the representative theory of perception is saved from falling
into idealism. (If the representative theory of perception becomes a closed
90 Y ASUHIKO TOMIDA

theory and loses its connection with the ordinary direct realistic stance,
then, as Aaron has said, it can easily translate into idealism.)

11. The "Mixture," and Lockean "Essentialism" Revisited

But can we draw from Locke's discourse in the Essay any support for
our interpretation that there is a stratified structure in his representa-
tive theory of perception? Locke himself does not discuss it explicitly,
but I think we can give some indirect evidence. First, I will take up
the direct realism I have already described in Sections 3 and 4 above,
and interpret the mixture of the two views in the Essay from our point
of view.
As already pointed out, when we consider the direct realistic element
in the Essay, we must pay special attention to the fact that it is not
things themselves but experiential objects that hold the status of things.
If we keep this in mind, Locke's answer to the question concerning the
existence of things, covered in the Section 2, can be understood as
follows.
Locke says that the existence of things is known by sensation. But,
according to the representative theory of perception, it is ideas alone
and not things themselves that sensation gives. Therefore, even if ideas
are originally given by sensation, it does not follow from this that external
things exist. But Locke, nevertheless, asserts that we cannot distrust
the testimony of our senses to the existence of external things. This asser-
tion, however, does not sound unnatural, when we take up the event called
"originally perceiving ideas" and see it in the terms of the common-
sensical stance. In the commonsensical stance we usually believe that
we can directly confirm the existence of external things (things as
experiential objects, though) by sense perception. And because of this
belief, we not only trust the testimony of our senses, even in the epistemo-
logical position, but also transfer the character of reality from the
experiential objects to the re-posited things themselves.
In other words, though Locke tried to retain the wording of the
representative theory of perception, he sometimes could not prevent
himself from exhibiting a direct realistic stance which is dynamically and
stratificationally related to the representative theory itself.
Another problem pointed out in Section 2 - the problem of quali-
fying a kind of "idea" found in sensation to be a primary "quality" -
would be also cleared up by the same consideration. Such "ideas" are
 IDEA AND THING 91

originally nothing but qualities of the things perceived in the common-

sensical stance (namely, some qualities of experiential objects), and Locke
not only grants that those qualities are the qualities of things them-
selves, but also at the same time changes the status of experiential objects
and their qualities at large into that of "ideas." Expressed in terms of
his representative theory, this move can be seen as illegitimately over-
stepping the line between ideas and things themselves. But in other,
less misleading words, nothing more is involved here than the positing
of things themselves anew by retaining some qualities of experiential
objects.
Our second indirect evidence for the stratified structure of Locke's
representative theory is the passage which Mackie once raised as showing
his anticipation of Kripke's essentialism. 32 For example, Locke writes
that:
[Ijn mixed Modes any of the Ideas that make the composition of the complex one, being
left out, or changed, it is allowed to be another thing, i.e. to be of another Species
[... j. But in Substances it is not so. For though in that called Gold, one puts into his
complex Idea, what another leaves out; and Vice Versa: yet Men do not usually think,
that therefore the Species is changed: Because they secretly in their Minds referr that name,
and suppose it annexed to a real immutable Essence of a thing existing, on which those
Properties depend. He that adds to his complex Idea of Gold, that of Fixedness or Solubility
in Aqua Regia, which he put not in it before, is not thought to have changed the Species;
but only to have a more perfect Idea [... j. (III, x, 19)

The phrase "a real immutable Essence" in this passage means the qual-
ities which a thing itself has. Thus, according to Locke, our name for
a substance is connected with both a complex idea of substance in the
mind and an external thing itself corresponding to it. By this, we could
corroborate our interpretation again: in positing things themselves as
different in some respects from experiential objects, the representative
theory of perception does not abandon its premises concerning experi-
ential objects and their direct perception, but, in fact, retains both
conceptions of body.
The argument above demonstrates, I think, that the negative, and
somewhat hostile, veil-of-perception interpretation fails to do justice to
Locke's theory. His positing of ideas was not, as Ryle put it, ground-
less and useless; rather it played a positive role in his theory of knowledge
and reflected the progress of the new science of his day.
92 Y ASUHIKO TOMIDA

NOTES

1 See II, xxi, 5.

2 II, ix, 2.
3 II, viii, 8.
4 IV, i, 1.
5 II, viii, 7-8. Locke uses "without us" and "without our minds" synonymously.
6 See IV, xxi, 4, to be quoted next.
7 See II, viii, 12-13, to be quoted in Section 7, and also IV, ii, 11.

8 Woozley objected to such a representationalist interpretation of Locke on the basis

of Locke's criticism of Malebranche. Concerning Woozley's interpretation and Mackie's
criticism of it, see notes 5 and 6 in the Introduction to Part Two. As for the so-called
"mixed interpretation," which takes Locke to have adopted a view of direct realism, at
least for the primary qualities of gross things, the following passage provides a clear
counter-example.
[TJhese several Appearances, being designed to be the Marks, whereby we are to know,
and distinguish things, which we have to do with; our Ideas do as well serve us to that
purpose, and are as real distinguishing Characters, whether they be only constant Effects,
or else exact Resemblances of something in the things themselves: the reality lying in
that steady correspondence, they have with the distinct Constitutions of real Beings.
[... J [OJur simple Ideas are all real and true, because they answer and agree to those
Powers of Things, which produce them in our Minds [... J. (II, xxx, 2)

9 II, viii, 23.

10 See II, xxx, 2, quoted in the note 8 above, and II, viii, 24.
11 J. W. Yolton, Locke and the Compass of Human Understanding (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1970), p. 40.
12 Ibid., p. 41.
13 Ibid., p. 127.
14 Ibid., p. 134.
15 Ibid.
16 D. Greenlee, "Locke's Idea of 'Idea'," in I. C. Tipton (ed.), Locke on Human
Understanding (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), p. 53.
17 Yolton, op. cit., p. 136.
18 Indeed, Locke says in a passage that "[thoseJ/deas, if I speak of sometimes, as in
the things themselves, I would be understood to mean those Qualities in the Objects which
produce them in us" (II, viii, 8). But it is unnatural to apply this proviso to the passage
in question. For in that case the sentence would become "we cannot so far distrust their
Testimony, as to doubt, that such Collections of Qualities in the Objects which produce
simple Ideas, as we have observed by our Senses to be united together, do really exist
together," and this would make our senses testify to the co-existence of particles which
are thought to be insensible.
19 We cannot treat some simple modes, namely, space and duration, so easily. See
R. I. Aaron, John Locke (3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971), pp. 155-156.
20 II, xii, 6.
21 II, xxiii, 6.
 IDEA AND THING 93

22 This translatability is supported by Locke's assertion concerning the role of abstract

ideas of substances in classification. See Part One, Chapter II and Supplement A.
23 Locke writes of the corpuscular hypothesis: "I have here instanced in the corpuscu-
larian Hypothesis, as that which is thought to go farthest in an intelligible Explication
of the Qualities of Bodies [... J." (IV, iii, 16)
24 The corpuscular hypothesis was, of course, not created by Locke. Therefore, when
we consider this matter historically, we must at least look for its grounds in the whole
history of atomism dating back to Leucippus and Democritus, as well as in the grounds
advanced by Locke's contemporaries, Boyle, Stanley, and Gassendi, for example, whose
influence he registered. But here we shall consider only the reasons that are found in
the Essay.
25 II, viii, 21.
26 In this passage Locke divides ideas into ideas and qualities. In my opinion, this
indicates the turn from the way of thinking in the "commonsensical stance" to that which
is based on the explicit distinction between ideas and things themselves in the "episte-
mological view." See also P. Alexander, "The Names of Secondary Qualities," Proceedings
of the Aristotelian Society, New Series, Vol. LXXVII (1977).
27 Yolton, op. cit., pp. 25-26.
28 Cf. M. J. Osler, "John Locke and the Changing Ideal of Scientific Knowledge," Journal
of the History of Ideas, Vol. XXXI (1970); G. A. J. Rogers, "Boyle, Locke, and Reason,"
Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. XXVII (1966), pp. 214--215.
29 Cf. R. M. Yost, "Locke's Rejection of Hypotheses about Sub-Microscopic Events,"
Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. XII (1951); L. Laudan, "The Nature and Sources
of Locke's Views on Hypotheses," in I. C. Tipton (ed.), Locke on Human Understanding
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977); Yolton, op. cit., Ch. 2.
30 Yolton, op. cit., p. 64.
31 Ibid., p. 65.
32 J. L. Mackie, "Locke's Anticipation of Kripke," Analysis, Vol. XXXIV (1974).
 III. LOCKEAN NATURALISM

1. Husserl's Criticism

It is well known that Husserl thought of Locke's theory of knowledge

as a precursor of his phenomenology because of its "historical, plain
method." But according to Husserl, Locke's phenomenological activi-
ties were, after all, halfhearted. For instead of holding on to the immanent
field of consciousness opened by Descartes and carrying through phe-
nomenological description, he often had recourse to various physical and
metaphysical ideas.'
Admittedly, from the viewpoint of Husserl'S "phenomenology of
knowledge," envisaged as a ground for the sciences, Locke's theory of
knowledge cannot do the work: it is unable to provide the sciences with
a foundation based on ultimate evidence. And in exploiting scientific
ideas to ground scientific activities, he could be accused of petitio prin-
cipii (or circular argument). Indeed, Locke said that in order to "enquire
into the Original, Certainty, and Extent of humane Knowledge; together,
with the Grounds and Degrees of Belief, Opinion, and Assent," he would
not "meddle with the Physical Consideration of the Mind" but would
exclusively use the "Historical, plain Method.,,2 But, as a matter of fact,
he often invoked physical considerations, and it is especially noteworthy
that he used some ideas drawn from contemporary corpuscular physics
in order to clarify the legitimacy and conditions of the new scientific
activities.
But, in my opinion, if we follow the line of thought developed in
the previous chapters, we must reject the Husserlian criticism and, at least
in principle, defend Locke's attempt at a theory of knowledge. I do not
mean, of course, to sift out his genuine phenomenological activities from
impurities and so qualify his philosophy as a true precursor of Husserl's
phenomenology. Rather, pushing our argument one step further, I want
to assert that the incompleteness or circularity which seems to· plague
his epistemology does not entail inconsistency, and that his theory is
rather an archetype of a desirable form of epistemology.
My assertion here is based on an acknowledgment of an anti-foun-

94
 IDEA AND THING 95

dationalistic position. And, to make my point clear, I shall exfoliate the

close, complementary relation between the field of Evidenz (self-evident
knowledge) on the one hand, and that of natural (or physical) doxai
(opinions), on the other. In Part One, I have already briefly considered
the contents of Lockean phenomenology, and I shall presuppose that
discussion in the following sections.

2. The Role of Physical Considerations in

Locke's Theory of Knowledge

It is widely granted that Locke acknowledges the possibility of non-

empirical knowledge concerning modes and raises mathematics and ethics
as examples. In contrast, physical inquiry is in some respects different,
and the range of its knowledge is, in principle, quite limited. According
to Locke, we can indeed acquire physical knowledge about the exis-
tence of gross bodies and the co-existence of some qualities. But, as to
the internal constitution of things themselves, we cannot, generally,
acquire knowledge, only probable beliefs. But how did Locke explain
this difference? A consideration of the point will clarify that character-
istic of Locke's epistemology which Husser! saw as being circular or
confused.
First, I want to emphasize again that complex ideas of substances
and modes are quite different from each other in respect of whether
they have external archetypes or not. When the mind forms ideas of
modes, it is, in principle, free to combine several ideas, and the ideas
thus formed are themselves their archetypes. Therefore, ideas of modes
cannot be incomplete in relation to their archetypes. Thus, in the case
of modes, (as is recognized in mathematics) it is possible to acquire
certain knowledge only on the basis of their contents, without any appeal
to experience. But in the case of complex ideas of substances, the cir-
cumstances are different. When the mind frames them, it usually does
not collect and unite arbitrary ideas, but it must follow the archetypes
given by sense perception. Therefore, in this case it is in principle impos-
sible to acquire general certain knowledge on the basis of the contents
of our ideas alone. Thus, whether ideas have external archetypes or not
accounts for differences in jUdgments, and this is, for Locke, one reason
why physical knowledge is very limited.
A second reason is that our ideas of substances do not represent things
themselves as they really are. As already seen in the previous chapter,
96 Y ASUHIKO TOMIDA

Locke distinguishes things themselves from ideas, and demarcates the

qualities of things themselves into several sorts. One of them is the group
of so-called "primary qualities," like solidity, shape, movement, and so
on, and it is only these primary qualities that things themselves originally
have as their qualities. The other qualities, namely, "secondary quali-
ties" and "powers," are nothing but powers based on primary qualities.
Therefore, it is solely primary qualities and the powers based on them
that belong to the things themselves, and such things themselves affect
our senses and cause ideas in our minds. But when our minds frame
complex ideas of substances, the ideas which are their ingredients do
not necessarily represent each quality of things themselves as they really
are. Ideas of secondary qualities especially are quite different from the
secondary qualities themselves. Therefore, even if we can acquire knowl-
edge of the co-existence of qualities of substances, this knowledge
concerns, at best, only the co-existence of qualities as far as they are
given to us as ideas, and generally we cannot acquire knowledge about
the qualities things themselves have.
On the other hand, the same limitation of physical knowledge is also
explained in terms of the distinction between "nominal essence" and "real
essence." "Nominal essence" is the content of our general complex
ideas of substances, and the "internal constitution" of a thing itself is
called its "real essence." For the same reason mentioned above, we cannot
have knowledge of real essences of things themselves. Locke says,
indeed, that if we could know real essences, we might deductively know
what qualities each sort of body has, but in the end he denies the pos-
sibility.3 Therefore, according to Locke, we can, in principle, only acquire
probable beliefs about things themselves.
Admittedly, the reasons Locke raises for the restriction on physical
knowledge, especially the second reason, are based on the physical
thought of his day. Therefore, as HusserI claims, his attempt at a theory
of knowledge seems to be sheer "confusion" or "circular."

3. The Practical Interest of Locke's Essay

But before drawing such a rash conclusion, we have to see what Locke
was aiming at in the Essay. As already mentioned, his purpose was "to
enquire into the Original, Certainty, and Extent of humane Knowledge;
together, with the Grounds and Degrees of Belief, Opinion, and Assent."
But he did not undertake the inquiry only to fulfill some merely theo-
 IDEA AND THING 97

retical interest; he did it with a conspicuous practical interest in mind.

This practical interest is clearly seen in the fact that the question he
asks through the whole Essay is that of how we should use our under-
standing to acquire "Whatsoever is necessary for the Conveniences of
Life, and Information of Virtue.,,4
For example, the main point of Book I is not, as is sometimes said,
to eliminate "innate ideas"; the arguments against innate ideas merely
constitute a part of Book I. It is not innate ideas but "innate principles"
that Locke attempts to refute in the whole book. As is well known, Locke
pointed out, for example, the lack of universal assent as one of the
grounds for denying innate principles, but what is important here is rather
the reason why he wanted to deny the existence of innate principles. That
reason, to put it briefly, is that if we acknowledge the existence of
such pri'nciples, we will fall into the danger of accepting would-be
"principles" without good grounds. 5
Book Ill's consideration of the abuse of words and its remedies has
a noticeably practical significance, too. Some "linguistic philosophers"
have even praised Locke as a pathfinder, which serves as a useful
reminder that his discussion is intended to eliminate hindrances to inquiry
arising from meaningless uses of words.
Such critical statements based on his practical interests are, further,
explicitly found in the criticism of the syllogism and in the warning
against easy uses of axioms and hypotheses in Book IV, and moreover,
in the admonition against enthusiasm added to Book IV in the fourth
edition.
We must also note the fact that such criticisms were not intended
to be merely general. For example, we can guess that the arguments
against innate principles were mainly directed against some contempo-
raries, such as Herbert of Cherbury and some Cambridge Platonists,
and that the critical strictures against abuse of language, adherence to
syllogism, overestimation of the axiom, and so on, were mainly directed
against traditional scholastic thought. The same can be said concerning
the admonition against enthusiasm and the easy use of hypotheses. In
brief, his practical interest in the Essay has the conspicuous character-
istics of historicity. And, in the Essay, such a historical, practical, interest
has priority over the theoretical interest in "grounding" the sciences.
So the Essay is perhaps best thought of as an instruction manual
for the correct use of the understanding, and this bearing is concretely
seen in Locke's considerations on the possibility of and the means for
98 Y ASUHIKO TOMIDA

realization of physical and moral knowledge. As can be seen in the last

chapter of the Essay, Locke divides science into "physike," "praktike,"
and "semeiotike." Among these three, semeiotike (the doctrine of signs)
can be thought to have its paradigm in Books II and III. And it is the
possibility and means of the remaining two - namely, physike and
praktike - that Locke attempted to make clear in various parts of the
Essay, especially in Book IV. Therefore, the Essay is a kind of apolo-
getics which tries not only to propound the possibilities of these three
sciences - especially of the new physics - but also to show the means
of rightly performing them.
If we may here limit our subject-matter to physics, then it is clear from
the following passage in "The Epistle to the Reader" that Locke intended
to contribute, in some manner, to the activities of the new physics of
his day.
The Commonwealth of learning, is not at this time without Master-Builders, whose mighty
Designs, in advancing the Sciences, will leave lasting Monuments to the Admiration for
Posterity; But every one must not hope to be a Boyle, or a Sydenham; and in an Age
that produces such Masters, as the Great - Huygenius, and the incomparable Mr. Newton,
with some other of that Strain; 'tis Ambition enough to be employed as an Under-Labourer
in clearing Ground a little, and removing some of the Rubbish, that lies in the way to
Knowledge [... ].6

In this passage Locke modestly calls himself an "Under-Labourer" for

the leading figures of contemporary physics. This not only clearly shows
that Locke supported their activities, but also suggests that he attempted
to contribute to these activities at a level different from theirs. The
work he did as an "Under-Labourer" takes the form of apologetics for
the sciences mentioned above, especially in the form of a theory for
defending and promoting the new physics.?
Now our question is how his theory for defending physics is
related to his phenomenological research. To answer it, I will first
show that the immanent field of consciousness, which is the field of
phenomenological description, is thrown open with the close involve-
ment of physical doxai (opinions) in the procedure. And building on
that I will suggest that, for Locke, it is not at all contradictory to use
physical opinions as grounds for his phenomenological research, and that
all his activities constitute a type of non-foundationalistic, naturalistic
theory of knowledge.
 IDEA AND THING 99

4. The Immanent Field of Consciousness and

the Ordinary and Physical Doxai

As was seen in Part One, Locke attempted to observe and describe various
acts of the mind and their correlates (ideas in the mind), and in this
sense he was a notable worker in the immanent field of consciousness.
But is the immanent field of consciousness, namely, the field consti-
tuted of what is immediately given to the mind, always already open
to everybody without any need of assistance from argumentation for
opening itself?
The Lockean "idea" is, as mentioned before, an expression for all "the
Object[s] of the Understanding when a Man thinks." and an idea is, as
something "in the mind" or "present to the mind," an immediate object
of the mind, and there are no immediate objects of the mind other than
the ideas. s Therefore, not only elements of thought, emotion, and pain
but also objects of sense perception are grouped together under the
name of "ideas." This use of the term "idea" may be self-evident for those
who are accustomed to such a manner of thinking - those who are usually
called philosophers. But the fact is that such a way of lumping the objects
of our mind together has neither logical necessity nor practical compelling
power.
Among our ordinary beliefs, there is a belief that our conscious
thought, emotion, pain, and the like are private and in a sense internal.
By contrast, when we perceive a certain sensible object, we usually
take the perceived qualities to be public; they are qualities of a certain
external thing. Actually, it is not necessarily absurd to suppose that, as
far as we immediately perceive those qualities, they have the same imme-
diacy and privacy that emotion and pain have. But usually we do not take
them to be inner sensory images, nor do we lump them together with
thought, emotion, pain, and the like; we do not give them the character
of mentality. If such a way of grouping "mental" phenomena were prac-
tically compelling at all, not only certain philosophers but also all laymen
would have already adopted it without any argument. But the facts are
otherwise. So we cannot say that it is practically compelling.
Nor is this way of grouping the objects of the mind logically neces-
sary. For the objects of sense perception have various determinations, for
example, not only so-called "immediate givenness" but also spatiality (or
locality), temporality, and so on. So lumping them together with such
mental phenomena as conscious thought and emotion simply on the basis
100 Y ASUHIKO TOMIDA

of their "immediacy" is just one of many ways of grouping various

phenomena.
Nevertheless, this way of grouping mental objects has been seen as
self-evident, especially in the modern period. This is typically expressed
by the fact that Descartes took res cogitans as "a thing that doubts, under-
stands, affirms, denies, wills, does not will, and imagines, senses,,,9 and
gathered the objects of thinking under the name of "ideas." But how
did this way of grouping mental phenomena come to be adopted?
It is often pointed out that Locke inherited the conception of the
immanent field of consciousness from Descartes. (As I shall show later,
this is not the only way Locke acquired that concept.) And for Descartes,
immediate certainty and evidence was the most significant marker of
the immanent field of consciousness. But we cannot help noticing that
when Descartes tried to open up this field (in a form that contains all
of sensation, thought, volition, emotion, and the like), even he himself
had to use a kind of doxai as a stepladder.
When Descartes put in question the certainty of experiential and
mathematical knowledge through so-called "methodical doubt," he used
the following doxai as the reasons for his doubt:
1) Senses have sometimes deceived us.
2) We cannot clearly distinguish dream from reality.
3) Even in mathematics we sometimes make mistakes.
4) There is the possibility that there might be a "deceiving god" who
always leads us to make mistakes.
In comparison with the certainty of the existence of the "ego" or res
cogitans, the degree of certainty of these reasons is indeed low, so we
cannot say that they could be "first principles" in Descartes' sense. But
they do play the role of premises for the argumentation that gives a
privileged status to "ego sum." That is to say, without these premises,
Descartes would have remained in the ordinary situation prior to the
doubt, in which state he had believed various things with different degrees
of certainty. And, with the exception of the hypothesis of a deceiving
god, these premises are ordinary doxai, as it were. Thus, it is obvious
that even for Descartes a species of doxai played an important role in
opening up the immanent field of consciousness.
Some may claim that the reasons raised in the process of "method-
ical doubt" play the role of a ladder in Wittgenstein's sense, and that once
we have climbed up to the immanent field of consciousness, we can
kick them away. But, in my opinion, this claim is illegitimate; it leads
 IDEA AND THING 101

us to an improper treatment of the instruments that are used as the

premises to both open and maintain the field in question. These doxai
are, indeed, low in their certainty, but they were confirmed one by one
in the process of "methodical doubt." Therefore, until they are refuted
by some reason, they retain their status as believable circumstances. Even
Descartes did not dispose of the premises without reservations. It is
well known that he gave them a distinct explanation or interpretation
on the basis of his newly established first principle.
Thus, we can see that, even in the case of Descartes, the field in
question has already been secured in close relation with various doxai,
and that it is groundless and arbitrary to completely eliminate or ignore
such doxai.
Now, it is certain that when Locke arrived at the immanent field of
consciousness, he had been influenced by Cartesian thought, but, he
was also, and simultaneously, influenced by the tradition of corpuscular
physics.
Originally the corpuscular physics of the seventeenth century was
framed through the restoration of ancient atomism under the name of
"Epicureanism," and ancient atomism itself had made a distinction
between things themselves and sensory images. According to atomism,
atoms have only quantitative determinations, such as shape and size;
and color, taste, and the like exist only by nomos (that is, they do not
exist in the external world at all, but human beings have such sensory
systems that when they receive some stimulus from atoms, they expe-
rience color, taste, and so on); they are nothing but our phantasiai.
Needless to say, even for ancient Greeks it ought to have been an ordinary
doxa that our thought, emotion, and so on are internal. And according
to ancient atomism, what we directly feel as qualities of external objects
are the results of stimulation by things themselves, and are different from
qualities of things themselves. 10
The conception that not only conscious thought and emotion, but
also objects that are directly sensed, are something internal is already
rudimentarily contained in ordinary belief, even if not promoted by atom-
istic physics. The awareness of "illusion," or the awareness of the gap
between reality and its appearance, already suggests this line of thought.
Further, when in physical inquiry people adopt the view that reality is
not the same as what we experience as such, or the view that percep-
tion is a result of the reception of stimuli from reality, it generally
comes to admit the possibility of the thorough internalization of the
102 Y ASUHIKO TOMIDA

immediate objects of sense perception. For when something that is dif-

ferent from an experiential object is posited as a thing itself, this positing
makes it necessary to change the status of experiential objects, and
when the immediate objects of sense perception prove to be the results
of stimulation by reality, it becomes impossible to identify the immediate
objects with reality.
The restored "Epicureanism" contained these two factors. So in the
restored theory it was quite natural to see not only thought, emotion,
and so on as being internal or mental, but the object of sensation also.
Since Locke thought of corpuscular physics as the preeminent physics
of his day, it was a matter of course for him to take all the immediate
objects of the mind to be mental, and to think of the field of the mind
as comprising all immediate objects and all mental acts.
In our ordinary stance we usually understand sense perception in terms
of a two-term relation between thing and mind; and even here there are
already opportunities to see the gap between external objects and per-
ceptual images; but the objects of sense perception are still not quite
internalized. But when, with the development of physics, something
different in character from experiential objects comes to be taken as
the thing itself, and our sense perception comes to be thought of as a
result of stimulation by things themselves, the objects of perception
that are otherwise taken to be external are, together with other mental
items, seen as being internalized in the mind. Thus, the basic frame-
work of perception shifts from the two-term relation to the three-term
relation comprised of things themselves, ideas, and the mind. For Locke,
the immanent field for phenomenological inquiry is that which is com-
prised of the latter two terms of the three-term framework.
Therefore, the new field formed in such a manner is closely related
to several ordinary or physical doxai, and the range of this field is
determined through arguments which use those doxai as premises.

5. A Non-foundationalistic Theory of Knowledge

Now, we can judge that the framework of his theory of knowledge

(including its field of "phenomenology of knowledge") was, directly
or indirectly, derived from the physical conceptions of his day. For him,
corpuscular physics was based on the best hypothesis, and his Essay's
framework was intended to show the possibilities of the new physics.
 IDEA AND THING 103

If such an interpretation is correct, is it not the case that concerning

this matter there is no inconsistency in Locke?
If people apprehend some fundamental inconsistency in his work, it
is because they think it self-evident that there is a field of inquiry which
is quite independent of any physics and which enables them to "ground"
the latter. But the immanent field of consciousness which seems to play
such a role is, actually, opened up on the basis of various doxai. It is
the so-called "Cartesian anxiety" (that if we do not have an "Archimedean
point," all will collapse) that forces people to give this field complete
independence and priority.l1 A new type of natural philosopher was in
Locke's day recasting the cognitive status of physics from a system of
absolute knowledge to one of probable beliefs, and accordingly Locke
himself set a strong limit to the range of knowledge in physics. But the
physics which he wanted to defend was not so fragile that he had to estab-
lish its foundation by putting its activities in parentheses. As the passage
quoted above shows, Locke accepted the new physics, and using it as
a basis he tried to play the role of "Under-labourer." The more strongly
he supports the new physics, the stronger its influence on the other
fields of his inquiry becomes. Therefore, even if his conclusions based
on physike spilled over into the field of semeiotike, and even if the theory
of knowledge itself was formed in accordance with the new physics,
that does not at all imply incoherency.
But some may object that if Locke's theory of knowledge is a kind
of apologetics for physics which presupposes its probable beliefs, it
can advance no resolute answer to skepticism, and that therefore his work
is really unable to defend physical science itself. But, the skepticism in
question here does not present positive alternatives to the knowledge
(or beliefs) of the time. It always draws the conclusion that what is called
"knowledge" may be false, or that we cannot acquire any knowledge
at all. If it is no longer necessary to point out that even a skeptic must
give some reason or reasons for his conclusion, and if it is no longer nec-
essary to emphasize that his conclusion may be a candidate for a piece
of knowledge, then it is only the skeptic's use of "may" or "maybe"
that still remains to be considered.
This way of hedging can play an important positive role. For, it can
lead us to take a flexible attitude toward the existing would-be "knowl-
edge." In other words, this sort of thinking can open a way to a sort of
"fallibilism," namely, the attitude in which we mend our ways with
pleasure whenever we notice we are wrong.
104 Y ASUHIKO TOMIDA

On the other hand, this hedging can lead in a less helpful direction.
It can make us merely repeat the words "we may be wrong" without
admitting any positive alternatives, and so allow us to give spurious
legitimation to the avoidance of positive activity. This type of skep-
tical attitude has nothing to do with Locke. As is typically stated in the
"Introduction" to the Essay, the core of Locke's general stance is the
thought that whatever limitations our faculties may have, we must try
to use them correctly to serve life's needs. Therefore, as far as skepti-
cism which operates in this latter manner is concerned, Locke's answer
to it could only be ethical, and nobody would be able to offer a decisive
objection to a skepticism so framed.
In brief, we can only try to make progress in inquiry on the basis of
various doxai. Even Cartesian first philosophy had some probable beliefs
as premises. Indeed, the Cartesian first principle was the result of an
attempt to secure a firm foundation and was intended to be a support
for the progress of the sciences. But in spite of its strong tendency
towards foundationalism, we can see the real intellectual steps found
in Cartesian first philosophy to be a movement from doxai to a reflec-
tion of them, and again to the doxai. More properly, we can grasp the
steps using the image of a "spiral" which is formed by adding an upward
movement to the circle. And it is just this image that Locke's project
suggests.
Let us summarize in Quinean-Davidsonian terms. In Locke's network
of beliefs there are three major nodes. One was the new physics (physike),
and another, praktike. In order to show how to form and defend the
scientiae, a theory of knowledge was required, but its activities had to
be consistent with the physics Locke wanted to defend. Thus he wrote
the Essay. Therefore, it is for him a matter of course, not an inconsis-
tency, that physical views in various forms intervene in the description
of the mental field whose framework is given by the physical views them-
selves. He took to be real what the physics of his day took to be real,
and on the basis of it tried to form apologetics for physics; in short, he
formulated a type of naturalistic meta-physics.
If people see at the heart of this a confusion or a circle, and assess
it negatively, it is because they take "foundationalistic" thinking for
granted. Locke's endeavors are certainly circular. But if we cast off foun-
dationalistic thinking and take seriously the fact that even those
candidates for knowledge whose degrees of certainty seem exceedingly
 IDEA AND THING 105

high are in fact supported in various ways by doxai, we can more readily
accept Locke's theory of knowledge.

NOTES

1 Cf. E. Husserl, Erste Philosophie (1923/1924), 1. Teil (Husserliana, Bd. VII, 1956),
esp. 2. Abschnitt.
2 I, i, 2.
3 IV, iii, 9-14.
4 I, i, 5.
5 We must also take into account Locke's assertion that our knowledge does not depend
on maxims. See IV, vii & xii.
6 pp. 9-10 in the Nidditch version.
7 See R. S. Woolhouse, Locke (Brighton: the Harvester Press, 1983), pp. 37-38.
8 As to these points, see Part Two, Chapter II, Section 1.
9 R. Descartes, Meditationes de Prima Philosophia (Paris: J. Vrin, 1970), p. 29.
10 Cf. Theophrastus, De Sensu, 63 (H. Diels, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, ed. W.
Kranz (Berlin: Weidmann, 1951-1952), 68A135.
11 Husserl notes that: " 'I think' in Descartes' sense is the' Archimedean point' on the
basis of which the systematic and absolutely certain rise of a genuine philosophy should
be made." (Husserl, op. cit., p. 62. The translation is my own.) And for "Cartesian anxiety,"
see R. J. Bernstein, Beyond Objectivism and Relativism (Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press, 1983), pp. 16-25.
SUPPLEMENTS
 A. LOCKE'S THEORY OF REFERENCE REVISITED:
AGAINST SCHWARTZ AND PUTNAM

1. Two Aspects of Locke's Theory of Reference

When the "causal theory of reference" was presented in the late sixties
and early seventies, Locke's theory of language was often regarded as
a representative of the "traditional" theory of reference (or meaning)
which was then receiving severe criticism. For example, Hilary Putnam
suggested in the last section of his "Meaning of 'Meaning' " that Locke
was a typical proponent of a flawed theory, l and in his introduction to
an anthology on the "new theory of reference," Stephen P. Schwartz wrote
that Locke's view was "the best example of the traditional theory of
meaning.,,2 Schwartz summed up Locke's view as follows:
His view is that with each meaningful term there is associated some abstract idea or
definition that determines what things have a right to be called by the name. This abstract
idea is what he called the nominal essence of the kind for which the term stands. These
nominal essences are of our own making, whereas real essences exist in the things them-
selves and are made by nature. It is by the nominal essences that we distinguish things
into sorts since, according to Locke, we can never come to know the real essences of
natural things.l

Certainly, Locke's view can be presented in this way, and in this

form it does seem to be subject to the criticism leveled against it by
proponents of the new theory of reference. But, in my view, what these
critics have done is merely to rediscover one aspect of Locke's own view,
that of the "natural kind terms". For, Putnam's theory of natural kind
terms is, in some respects, very similar to Locke's. In fact, in 1974 J.
L. Mackie presented a paper on "Locke's Anticipation of Kripke,,,4 and
suggested that Locke had already half discovered "essentialism.,,5 With
these two aspects of Locke's thought in mind, I shall try to make clear
his theory of the names of natural substances.

2. Locke as a Traditional Theorist of Meaning

Certainly Schwartz treated Locke as a traditional theorist of meaning

with good reason. If we sum up the characteristics of the traditional

107
108 Y ASUHIKO TOMIDA

theory of meaning (and reference) following Putnam's view, they are

as follows:
1) Knowing the meaning of a term is simply to be in a certain psy-
chological state. 6
2) The meaning of a term is given by specifying a conjunction of
properties (or predicates).
3) The meaning of a term provides the necessary and sufficient condi-
tion for something falling into the extension of the term.
4) Therefore, for each property P which belongs to the conjunction of
properties that gives the meaning of a term "X," the statement "Xs
have a property P" is an analytic truth.
5) And if PI' P2, ••• , Po are all of the properties in the conjunction,
then "anything with all of the properties PI' P2, ••• , Po is an X" is
likewise an analytic truth. 7
When we read the Essay in the light of this characterization, it is not
difficult to find ample grounds to support the conclusion that Locke
was a traditional theorist of meaning.
Let us begin with the first characteristic. There is no doubt that he
looked upon an idea "signified" by a word as its meaning. An idea is
something in our mind or in our understanding; and being in our mind
or in our understanding means being perceived or understood by the mind
or understanding. 8 Therefore it seems certain that he identified "knowing
the meaning of a term" with "being in a certain psychological state."
As to the second of Putnam's characteristics of the traditional theory,
as far as natural kind terms are concerned, it is certain that Locke owned
it. He not only writes that: "[ ... ] Definition being nothing but making
another understand by Words, what Idea, the term defined stands for, a
definition is best made by enumerating those simple Ideas that are
combined in the signification of the term Defined [... ]" (III, iii, 10),
but also cites a concrete example, saying that "Man was a solid extended
Substance, having Life, Sense, spontaneous Motion, and the Faculty of
Reasoning.,,9 This example clearly shows that the enumeration of those
simple ideas which are ingredients of a complex idea of substance
is, in practice, made by presenting some conjunction of properties or
predicates.
Thus, it seems plausible that he would adhere to the third charac-
teristic of traditional theory listed above. Actually he repeatedly claims
that the idea signified by a word (in the case of a general name it is an
abstract idea) determines its extension:
 IDEA AND THING 109

[E]ach of [the Individuals], having in it a conformity to that abstract Idea [which is

signified by a general name), is (as we call it) of that sort. (III, iii, 6)
That then which general Words signify, is a sort of Things; and each of them does that,
by being a sign of an abstract Idea in the mind, to which Idea, as Things existing are found
to agree, so they come to be ranked under that name; or, which is all one, be of that
sort. (Ill, iii, 12)
[I]t [is] evident, that Things are ranked under Names into sorts or Species, only
as they agree to certain abstract Ideas, to which we have annexed those Names [... ].
(Ill, iii, 15)
THE common Names of Substances, as well as other general Terms, stand for
Sorts: which is nothing else but the being made signs of such complex Ideas, wherein
several particular Substances do, or might agree, by virtue of which, they are capable
to be comprehended in one common Conception, and be signified by one Name.
(III, vi, I)

Thus it is obvious that Locke's thought on natural substance adheres

to the first three propositions characteristic of the traditional theory of
meaning given above. Given this it seems reasonable to suppose that
he also owned the fourth and fifth. And in fact there is a passage in
the Essay, the discussion in IV, viii entitled "Of Trifling Propositions,"
which seems to support this supposition. Schwartz has quoted its fifth
section in support of his claim that Locke is a typical traditional theorist
of meaning.
Alike trifling it is, to predicate any other part of the Definition of the Term defined, or
to affirm anyone of the simple Ideas of a complex one, of the Name of the whole complex
Idea; as All Gold is fusible. For Fusibility being one of the simple Ideas that goes to
the making up the complex one the sound Gold stands for, what can it be but playing
with Sounds, to affirm that of the name Gold, which is comprehended in its received
Signification? 'Twould be thought little better than ridiculous, to affirm gravely as a Truth
of moment, That Gold is yellow; and I see not how it is any jot more material to say, It
is fusible, unless that Quality be left out of the complex Idea, of which the Sound Gold
is the mark in ordinary Speech. What Instruction can it carry with it, to tell one that
which he hath been told already, or he is supposed to know before? For I am supposed
to know the Signification of the word another uses to me, or else he is to tell me. And
if I know that the name Gold stands for this complex Idea of Body, Yellow, Heavy, Fusible,
Malleable, 'twill not much instruct me to put it solemnly afterwards in a Proposition,
and gravely say, All Gold is fusible. Such Propositions can only serve to shew the
Disingenuity of one, who will go from the Definition of his own Terms, by re-minding
him sometimes of it; but carry no Knowledge with them, but of the Signification of Words,
however certain they be. (IV, viii,S)

Schwartz takes this passage to be suggesting that "analytic propositions

are derived from definitions."l0 If Schwartz is correct, that is, if Locke's
"trifling propositions" are nothing but "analytic propositions," then we
110 Y ASUHIKO TOMIDA

would have to say that Locke would certainly accept the fourth and
fifth propositions as well.
Schwartz also cites the following views of Locke as evidence that
he is a traditional theorist of meaning: that there is a sharp distinction
between nominal and real essences, that what the conjunction of quali-
ties in question expresses is a nominal essence, and that we cannot
know real essences. Here too, Schwartz's claim seems to be right. For
example, Locke distinguishes nominal and real essences in the fol-
lowing way:
[TJhough, perhaps, voluntary Motion, with Sense and Reason, join'd to a Body of a certain
shape, be the complex Idea, to which I, and others, annex the name Man, and so be the
nominal Essence of the Species so called: yet no body will say, that that complex Idea
is the real Essence and Source of all those Operations, which are to be found in any
Individual of that Sort. The foundation of all those Qualities, which are the Ingredients
of our complex Idea, is something quite different: And had we such a Knowledge of
that Constitution of Man, from which his Faculties of Moving, Sensation, and Reasoning,
and other Powers flow; and on which his so regular shape depends, [... J we should
have a quite other Idea of his Essence, than what now is contained in our Definition of
that Species, be it what it will [... J. (III, vi, 3)

His remarks on the unknown character of real essences are equally sup-
portive of Schwartz's interpretation:
Nor indeed can we rank, and sort Things, and consequently [... J denominate them by
their real Essences, because we know them not. Our Faculties carry us no farther towards
the knowledge and distinction of Substances, than a Collection of those sensible Ideas,
which we observe in them; which however made with the greatest diligence and exact-
ness, we are capable of, yet is [... J remote from the true internal Constitution [(real
Essence)] from which those Qualities flow [... ]. (III, vi, 9)

Thus Locke is taken in contemporary philosophy of language as "the

best example" of a traditional view which is to be rejected.

3. Putnam's Criticism of the Traditional View

If this is correct, and Locke is a typical proponent of the traditional
view, what does the "new theory of reference" find to criticize? Let us
consider Putnam's remarks: "[wlith any natural understanding of the term
'property,' it is just false that to say that something belongs to a natural
kind is just to ascribe to it a conjunction of properties."u
And, according to Putnam, the reason for this consists, first of all,
in the fact that "a natural kind may have abnormal members."
 IDEA AND THING 111

A green lemon is still a lemon - even if, owing to some abnormality, it never turns yellow.
A three-legged tiger is still a tiger. Gold in the gaseous state is still gold. It is only
normal lemons that are yellow, tart, etc.; only normal tigers that are four-legged; only gold
under normal conditions that is hard, white or yellow, etc. 12

Namely, in his view, even if a conjunction of qualities is given as a

meaning (or an intension, and so on) of a natural kind name, things which
must be called by the name do not have all the qualities. Then, at least
the third, fourth, and fifth propositions listed above would have to be
taken as being wrong.
In his discussion Putnam assumes that the "conjunction of proper-
ties" (or "defining characteristics," or "distinguishing characteristics," or
"superficial features") gives the "stereotype" of the natural kind in
question, and describes its "normal member" or "paradigm." Roughly
speaking, it is equivalent to the Lockean "nominal essence." Thus,
according to Putnam, Locke's view that the extension of a natural kind
is determined by its nominal essence is mistaken.
There is a further characteristic of the traditional view that Putnam
emphatically rejects, the thought that knowing the meaning of a term
is identical with being in a certain psychological state (as described in
the first proposition above). This thought, together with the view that
meaning determines extension, constitutes the view that some psycho-
logical state determines the extension of a term. Putnam offered several
arguments against this, the most representative being the "twin earth"
argument. It runs as follows.
For the purpose of the following science-fiction examples, we shall suppose that some-
where there is a planet we shall call Twin Earth. Twin Earth is very much like Earth: in
fact, people on Twin Earth even speak English. In fact, apart from the differences we
shall specify in our science-fiction examples, the reader may suppose that Twin Earth is
exactly like Earth. [... J
Although some of the people on Twin Earth [... J speak English, there are, not sur-
prisingly, a few tiny differences between the dialects of English spoken on Twin Earth
and standard English.
One of the peculiarities of Twin Earth is that the liquid called "water" is not H20
but a different liquid whose chemical formula is very long and complicated. I shall
abbreviate this chemical formula simply as XYZ. I shall suppose that XYZ is indistin-
guishable from water at normal temperatures and pressures. Also, I shall suppose that
the oceans and lakes and seas of Twin Earth contain XYZ and not water, that it rains
XYZ on Twin Earth and not water, etc.
[ ••. J
Now let us roll the time back to about 1750. The typical Earthian speaker of English
did not know that water consisted of hydrogen and oxygen, and the typical Twin Earthian
112 Y ASUHIKO TOMIDA

speaker of English did not know that "water" consisted of XYZ. Let Oscar! be such a
typical Earthian English speaker, and let Oscar 2 be his counterpart on Twin Earth. You
may suppose that there is no belief that Oscar! had about water that Oscar 2 did not have
about "water." If you like, you may even suppose that Oscar! and Oscar2 were exact dupli-
cates in appearance, feelings, thoughts, interior monologue, etc. Yet the extension of
the term 'water' was just as much HP on Earth in 1750 as in 1950; and the extension
of the term 'water' was just as much XYZ on Twin Earth in 1750 as in 1950. Oscar!
and Oscar2 understood the term 'water' differently in 1750 although they were in the same
psychological state, and although, given the state of science at the time, it would have
taken their scientific communities about fifty years to discover that they understood the
term 'water' differently. Thus the extension of the term 'water' (and, in fact, its "meaning"
in the intuitive preanalytical usage of that term) is not a function of the psychological state
of the speaker by itself.13

The other arguments which Putnam offers are essentially the same as this.
In each case the conclusion drawn is that the "meaning" or extension
of a word can be different even if the psychological state is the same.
Thus Putnam tries to refute the traditional view comprised of two closely
connected elements - the "methodological solipsism" which identifies
knowing the meaning of a term with being in a certain psychological
state, on the one hand, and the view that if the meaning is the same,
the extension is also the same, on the other. Therefore, if such a criti-
cism is legitimate, then the Lockean view would be fundamentally
incorrect.
Putnam himself adopted a positive view of reference in which a natural
kind term is certainly connected with a conjunction of properties or a
stereotype. This stereotype is "a standardized description of features of
the kind that are typical, or 'normal' ," and in many cases constitute "ways
of recognizing if a thing belongs to the kind."14 Moreover, if a speaker
cannot indicate the conjunction of properties connected with a term,
his or her linguistic competence will be doubted. 15 But, as already seen,
this "stereotype" does not constitute such analytic truths as are set forth
in the fourth and fifth propositions above, nor does it give a necessary
and sufficient condition for belonging to the natural kind in question.
Therefore, though it displays the typical characteristics of the kind, in
most cases it does not determine its extension. 16
Then, how is the extension of a natural kind term determined?
According to Putnam, it is both the paradigm, or standard example, of
the kind, and scientific investigations into its "hidden composition," its
"essential features," that play an important role in the determination.
He says that:
 IDEA AND THING 113

A natural kind term [... J is a term that plays a special kind of role. If I describe some-
thing as a lemon, or as an acid, I indicate that it is likely to have certain characteristics
(yellow peel, or sour taste in dilute water solution, as the case may be); but I also
indicate that the presence of those characteristics, if they are present, is likely to be
accounted for by some "essential nature" which the thing shares with other members of
the natural kind. What the essential nature is is not a matter of language analysis but of
scientific theory construction; today we would say it was chromosome structure, in the
case of lemons, and being a proton-donor, in the case of acids. Thus it is tempting to
say that a natural kind term is simply a term that plays a certain kind of role in scien-
tific or prescientific theory: the role, roughly, of pointing to common "essential features"
or "mechanisms" beyond and below the obvious "distinguishing characteristics."17

He also says that:

To belong to a natural kind, something must have the same composition, or obey the
same laws [... J as model members of the class, and this composition or these laws are
not usually known when the natural kind term is introduced, but require an indetermi-
nate amount of investigation to discover. 18

According to him, a natural kind term is connected not only with super-
ficial features of its model member, but also with its essential features
(or its composition, or law), and, in many cases, whether something
belongs to a natural kind or not is determined by whether it shares
the essential features of the paradigm of the kind. And these essential
features are not a priori given but must be discovered by scientific
investigation.
What he means by the term "essential feature" corresponds to what
Locke calls "real essence." So, in contrast with Locke, who thought
that nominal essence determined extension, Putnam recognizes a leading
role for real essence.
Besides this, Putnam's view has one more characteristic aspect, his
position on the "division of linguistic labor":
Every linguistic community exemplifies the sort of division of linguistic labor just
described: that is, it possesses at least some terms whose associated "criteria" are known
only to a subset of the speakers who acquire the terms, and whose use by the other speakers
depends upon a structured cooperation between them and the speakers in the relevant
subsets. 19

He calls this "the hypothesis of the universality of the division of lin-

guistic labor." Certainly, this is a very important point, and it was hardly
taken into account in the methodologically solipsistic traditional view.
According to this hypothesis, not all speakers need to be able to deter-
mine the extension of a natural kind term in question. It is sufficient
114 Y ASUHIKO TOMIDA

that there be experts on the kind in a given linguistic community, and

that other people have access to their judgment when necessary.

4. Complex Ideas of Natural Substances and the

Knowledge of Co-existence

In spite of all said above, I do not think that Schwartz's interpretation

of Locke is altogether right, or that Putnam's criticism of the traditional
view applies unconditionally to Locke. Before accepting these inter-
pretations and criticisms we should consider two questions:
1) How does Locke think we arrive at the definition of a general
name of a natural substance (or the complex idea which the name
signifies )?
2) In what sense is the "trifling proposition" of IV, viii trifling?
Readers might think that we have already been given a clear answer to
the second question by Locke himself in the passage from IV, viii, 5
quoted above in Section 2, but an adequate answer requires considera-
tion of the first question, as will become clear in the following. So, let
us begin with the first question.
In the case where the meaning of a general idea of substance has
already been determined, we could give a correct definition by enumerat-
ing the qualities (namely, the "simple" ideas) which are its ingredients.
Thus, when we assert the proposition "all gold is fusible" on the basis
of a definition, it would, as Locke says, "carry no Knowledge with [it],
but of the Signification of [a] Word." But we should consider how
complex ideas signified by general names of substances are acquired
before such definitions are arrived at.
We find the answer to this question in the passage concerning complex
ideas of substances in Book II, and in those concerning knowledge of
"co-existence" in Book IV. In Book II Locke says:
[W]e come to have the Ideas of particular sorts of Substances, by collecting such
Combinations of simple Ideas, as are by Experience and Observation of Men's Senses
taken notice of to exist together, and are therefore supposed to flow from the particular
internal Constitution, or unknown Essence of that Substance. (II, xxiii, 3)20

The complex ideas of substances are not given to us ready-made from

the beginning, but are acquired by the observation of the co-existence
of simple ideas. This point becomes clearer in Book IV's discussion:
 IDEA AND THING 115

As to the second sort, which is the Agreement, or Disagreement of our Ideas in Co-
existence, in this our Knowledge is very short, though in this consists the greatest and
most material part of our Knowledge concerning Substances. For our Ideas of the Species
of Substances, being, as I have shewed, nothing but certain Collections of simple Ideas
united in one Subject, and so co-existing together: v.g. Our Idea of Flame is a Body
hot, luminous, and moving upward; of Gold, a Body heavy to a certain degree, yellow,
malleable, and fusible. These or some such complex Ideas as these in Men's Minds, do
these two names of the different Substances, Flame and Gold, stand for. When we would
know any thing farther concerning these, or any other sort of Substances, what do we
enquire but what other Qualities, or Powers, these Substances have, or have not? which
is nothing else but to know, what other simple Ideas do, or do not co-exist with those
that make up that complex Idea. (IV, iii, 9)21

From these passages it is obvious that the definitions of natural kind

terms, or names of natural substances, are not based on analytic knowl-
edge but on synthetic judgments which are the results of an investigation
into those substances. And Locke himself clearly acknowledges that these
synthetic judgments may exhibit both synchronic diversity and diachronic
change. We have already shown this in Part Two, Chapter I, Section 6,
but the following passage provides another example of this:
, [TJis by trying alone, that I can certainly know, what other Qualities co-exist with those
of my complex Idea, v.g. whether that yellow, heavy, fusible Body, I call Gold, be
malleable, or no [... J. Because the other Properties of such Bodies, depending not on
these, but on that unknown real Essence, on which these also depend, we cannot by
them discover the rest [. . .J. For upon Trial, having found that particular piece (and all
others of that Colour, Weight, and Fusibility, that I ever tried) malleable, that also makes
now perhaps, a part of my complex Idea, part of my nominal Essence of Gold: Whereby
though I make my complex Idea, to which I affix the Name Gold, to consist of more simple
Ideas than before: yet still, it not containing the real Essence of any Species of Bodies,
it helps me not certainly to know [... J the other remaining Properties of that Body,
farther than they have a visible connexion, with some or all of the simple Ideas, that
make up my nominal Essence. [... J Here again for assurance, I must apply my self
to Experience; as far as that reaches, I may have certain Knowledge, but no farther.
(IV, xii, 9)

Thus it would seem to be clear that the Lockean "definitions" of the

names of natural substances are the result of synthetic judgments by expe-
rience. It would then prove to be very problematic to ascribe the fourth
and fifth propositions characteristic of the traditional theory of meaning,
as given in the Section 2 above, to Locke. To do so would ignore the
facts that the "definitions" of the names of substances are based on
synthetic judgments and that these "definitions" may change according
to the progress of investigations.
116 Y ASUHIKO TOMIDA

In this connection, we must also add a note concerning whether the

third proposition can be ascribed to Locke. As was shown in Section
2, it is evident that Locke does own the third proposition. But from
what we have thus far considered, it is clear that Locke is not proposing
that proposition alone, that is, it is only a certain temporary logical
relation, or a certain transient phenomenon, which would be shown at
each point by the process of diachronic change in synthetic judgments
on substances. At each moment we know, at best, only some proper-
ties of each substance, so what we can do to determine the extension
of a term of substance is restricted to a consideration of the properties
which are known at that moment and a nomination of these as the
necessary and sufficient conditions for something falling into that term's
extension, that is, taking the enumeration of them as its "definition." This
is nothing more than "ethnocentrism" in Rorty's sense, the idea that
we must work by our own lights because we have no other.22 As to
the relation between inquiry and definitions, Locke himself remarks
that:
[TJhough Definitions will serve to explain the Names of Substances, as they stand for
our Ideas; yet they leave them not without great imperfection, as they stand for Things.
For our Names of Substances being not put barely for our Ideas, but being made use of
ultimately to represent Things, and so are put in their place, their signification must
agree with the Truth of Things, as well as with Men's Ideas. And therefore in Substances,
we are not always to rest in the ordinary complex Idea, commonly received as the
signification of that Word, but must go a little farther, and enquire into the Nature and
Properties of the Things themselves, and thereby perfect, as much as we can, our Ideas
of their distinct Species; or else learn them from such as are used to that sort of Things,
and are experienced in them. For since 'tis intended their Names should stand for such
Collections of simple Ideas, as do really exist in Things themselves, as well as for the
complex Idea in other Men's Minds, which in their ordinary acceptation they stand for:
therefore to define their Names right, natural History is to be enquired into; and their
Properties are, with care and examination, to be found out. For it is not enough, for the
avoiding Inconveniencies in Discourses and Arguings about natural Bodies and substan-
tial Things, to have learned, from the Propriety of the Language, the common but confused,
or very imperfect Idea, to which each Word is applied, and to keep them to that Idea in
our use of them: but we must, by acquainting our selves with the History of that sort of
Things, rectify and settle our complex Idea, to belonging to each specifick Name; and
in discourse with others, (if we find them mistake us) we ought to tell, what the complex
Idea is, that we make such a Name stand for. (III, xi, 24)

We acquire synthetic knowledge of the co-existence of properties of

substances by the inquiry of natural history, and form definitions on
the basis of each result. Once a definition is formed, or the simple ideas
 IDEA AND THING 117

that are ingredients of the idea of a substance are known, we will not
succeed in "instructing" other people if we predicate any part of the
definition - or any words which signify some of the simple ideas - of
the name of the substance. But this does not mean that the "trifling propo-
sition" expresses an analytic truth which is eternally true.

5. The Difference between Locke and Putnam in

Their Historical Contexts

Thus far we have shown how misleading it is to unconditionally ascribe

to Locke the third, fourth, and fifth propositions of Putnam's canon of
characteristics of the traditional theory of meaning. Next, we shall see
if the first and second propositions can actually be ascribed to Locke.
Would Putnam's criticisms then hold? This will show just how close
Putnam's view actually is to Locke's.
Putnam emphasizes "the division of linguistic labor" and the leading
role of "real essences" in the determination of the extension of a term,
and in these respects his view are seemingly wholly different from those
of Locke. But, as the last quotation above shows, Locke does not com-
pletely ignore the difference and relation between experts and laymen,
and, as the passages quoted in the Section 2 suggest,23 he appreciates how
much progress could be made in sorting if "real essences" could be
known. So, it seems that the differences between Locke and Putnam
on these matters are not decisive. Rather, they are historical, that is,
they reflect differences between stages of development in natural science
and between the theories which they criticize.
As is well known, when Locke presented his view on the names of
natural substances, the target of his criticism was the scholastic view,
specifically the Aristotelian view. And when we consider that he does
not attach much importance to "the division of linguistic labor," we
must take into account the fact that this is not necessary to his criti-
cism of his opponents.
What should be emphasized is, rather, the difference in physica in
Locke's and Putnam's times. In Locke's day, there was a prominent trend
promoting the reintroduction of inquiries into natural history (in contrast
to the stiffened scholastic physica), to describe particular natural phe-
nomena and gain general knowledge from them.24 And these inquiries
were, in brief, inquiries into "nominal essences." On the other hand,
the importance of hypotheses was also pointed out, but the investiga-
118 Y ASUHIKO TOMIDA

tion through advancing hypotheses was, as far as natural kinds were con-
cerned, still in the incipient stage. And though Locke himself was in favor
of this method, it had not yet achieved such results and reliability that
people could determine the extension of a term on the basis of knowl-
edge of "real essence." Putnam, however, lives in a period when people
can rely to a considerable degree on knowledge concerning "real
essences," and therefore he can talk about the way in which it determines
extensions.
This is also one of the reasons why Locke says only that in order to
"perfect, as much as we can, our Ideas of their distinct Species" we
must "learn them from such as are used to that sort of Things, and are
experienced in them," when he mentions the division of linguistic labor.
Probably, for Putnam, such a statement might not seem to sufficiently
indicate the division of labor which he wishes to indicate. For him,
"experts" do not necessarily present knowledge of a species to laymen
in their determination of the extension of a term. But if the grasp of
species in Locke's days was still on the level of "nominal essences," it
was clearly possible that laymen could share ideas of species by learning
them from experts, and thereby themselves determine the extensions.
By contrast, with our highly developed contemporary sciences, laymen
often have no way of defining species other than that of relying on
experts.
Given such differences, the decisive difference between Locke and
Putnam is probably neither that of whether what determines extension
is a nominal or a real essence, nor that of whether they acknowledge
the social division of linguistic labor or not. The major difference seems
to be the difference in the temporal setting of their inquiries. In order
to make this clearer, let us briefly examine two problems. One is the
"twin earth" argument, and the other is the view that meaning determines
the extension.
First, following the "twin earth' argument, let us suppose that we
are now living in 1750. Then our only criterion for determining whether
something is water or not might be the "nominal essence" of water.
Therefore, if we happen to go to the twin earth by some miraculous
accident, then we would take the liquid in the seas and lakes there to
be water. But then say we discover the "real essence" of water, so that
we judge whether something is water or not by that "real essence." And
we find that the liquid in the twin earth which once was taken to be water
is really different from water. This just means that what is water can only
 IDEA AND THING 119

be judged at each moment "ethnocentrically," in Rorty's sense. Thus,

there is nothing in this story of the twin earth that is incompatible with
Locke's view. What this story shows is that the content and reliability
of the knowledge of "real essences" has changed with the times. 25
Putnam also would have to acknowledge that meaning determines
extension, at least for the "experts." Contemporary experts might often
think of "real essences" as the "properties which determine the exten-
sions," but as far as the extensions are determined by the scientific
"synthetic judgments" of experts themselves, we would have to say
that, ultimately, meanings determine the extensions here just as in
instances where people rely on "nominal essences."26

NOTES

1 H. Putnam, "The Meaning of 'Meaning' ," in H. Putnam, Mind, Language and Reality

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), p. 271.

2 S. P. Schwartz (ed.), Naming, Necessity, and Natural Kinds (Ithaca: Cornell University
Press, 1977), p. 16.
3 Ibid., p. 16.

4 1. L. Mackie, "Locke's Anticipation of Kripke," Analysis, Vol. XXXIV (1974).

5 Mackie also discusses this in his Problems from Locke (Oxford: Oxford University
Press), 1976, pp. 93-100.
6 Concerning the matter of "being in a certain psychological state" Putnam says that:
"Feeling that meanings are public property [... Fregel identified concepts (and hence
'intensions' or meanings) with abstract entities rather than mental entities. However,
'grasping' these abstract entities was still an individual psychological act. None of
these philosophers doubted that understanding a word (knowing its intension) was just
a matter of being in a certain psychological state (somewhat in the way in which
knowing how to factor numbers in one's head is just a matter of being in a certain very
complex psychological state)." (H. Putnam, "Meaning and Reference," in Schwartz,
op. cit., p. 119)
7 For this characterization, see H. Putnam, "Is Semantics Possible?," in Schwartz,
op. cit.; "Meaning and Reference"; "The Meaning of 'Meaning' ," etc.
8 See the first section of Part II, Chapter II. Locke also says that: "[Ilf these Words (to
be in the Understanding) have any Propriety, they signify to be understood."
(I, ii, 5)
9 III, iii, 10.
10 Schwartz, op. cit., p. 17.
11 Putnam, "Is Semantics Possible?," op. cit., p. 103.
12 Ibid.
13 Putnam, "Meaning and Reference," op. cit., pp. 120-122. Cf. Putnam, "The Meaning
of 'Meaning' ," op. cit., pp. 223-224.
14 Putnam, "The Meaning of 'Meaning' ," op. cit., p. 230.
15 Ibid., pp. 246f.
120 Y ASUHIKO TOMIDA

16 Putnam does not quite deny the possibility of determining the extension of a term
by stereotype. Cf. Ibid., p. 241.
11 Putnam, "Is Semantics Possible?," op. cit., p. 104.
18 H. Putnam, Realism and Reason (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 1983,
p.74.
19 Putnam, "Meaning and Reference," op. cit., p. 126. Cf. Putnam, "The Meaning of
'Meaning' ," op. cit., p. 228.
20 See also II, xii, 6 and II, xxiii, 1.
21 See also IV, i, 6.
22 On the notion of "ethnocentrism," see, e.g., R. Rorty, Objectivity, Relativism, and
Truth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 38.
23 III, vi, 3 and III, vi, 9.
24 With regard to the tendency of the Royal Society, to which Locke belonged, to
attach importance to "natural history," see J. W. Yolton, Locke and the Compass of Human
Understanding (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), pp. 53f.
25 The following passage is also relevant: "This at least is certain, that which ever
Hypothesis be clearest and truest, (for of that it is not my business to determine), our
Knowledge concerning corporeal Substances, will be very little advanced by any of
them, till we are made see, what Qualities and Powers of Bodies have a necessary
Connexion or Repugnancy one with another; which in the present State of Philosophy. I
think, we know but to a very small degree [... J." (IV, iii, 16)
26 This point has been made at greater length by J. R. Searle, in his Intentionality
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), Ch. 9.
 B. THE LOGICAL SPACE OF
LOCKEAN "LEGITIMATION":
AGAINST RORTY'S INTERPRETATION

1. Locke and Rorty

In his Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, Rorty cites Descartes, Locke,
and Kant as contributors to the frame-formation of modem Western epis-
temology, and says:
We owe the notion of a "theory of knowledge" based on an understanding of "mental
processes" to the seventeenth century, and especially to Locke. We owe the notion of
"the mind" as a separate entity in which "processes" occur to the same period, and espe-
cially to Descartes. We owe the notion of philosophy as a tribunal of pure reason, upholding
or denying the claims of the rest of culture, to the eighteenth century and especially to
Kant, but this Kantian notion presupposed general assent to Lockean notions of mental
processes and Cartesian notions of mental substance. 1

In other words, Descartes "invented" the mental field of "certainty,"

Locke inherited this and offered an epistemology based on a "descrip-
tion" of various mental processes, and Kant eliminated the physio-
psychological character of Lockean epistemology and propounded a non-
empirical transcendental form of epistemology based on the so-called
"Copernican revolution." Needless to say, Rorty rejects such epistemo-
logical conceptions, and intends to undermine them, but (except for the
question as to whether Descartes "invented" the mental field) his assess-
ment of the relation between Descartes, Locke, and Kant is itself not
particularly new, and would not be controversial.
In principle I approve of Rorty's antifoundationalistic critique,2 but his
interpretation of Locke, as presented in Chapter III of Philosophy and
the Mirror of Nature, seems to me wide of the mark. In my view, though
Locke's epistemology served to open the way for the conception of
foundationalistic philosophy, his theory of knowledge itself has, rather,
a non-foundationalistic tinge, and in this respect it can be taken to be
an example of "pragmatist" philosophizing of the type Rorty himself
recommends.
According to Rorty, Locke's theory of knowledge is based on a
serious confusion. That is, he discusses the possibility or validity of
knowledge on the basis of a causal explanation of the occurrence of

121
122 Y ASUHIKO TOMIDA

impressions or ideas caused by the "affection" of things themselves.

But in Rorty's view this is a confusion of the justification of knowl-
edge with its causal explanation. In order to make this point clear, Rorty
invokes Reid, Green, and Sellars, and asserts that Locke's mistake was
that, generally, he thought of knowledge on the model of "knowledge of"
rather than "knowledge that," and that he identified having impressions
with having knowledge. Further, Rorty claims that when we justify a
proposition, we should do it by putting the proposition into a logical
space, but that Locke tried to do it by indicating kinds of physiolog-
ical, causal conditions.
Indeed Locke's epistemology depends much on causal explanation.
But he did not identify having impressions with having knowledge, nor
did he think that all knowledge should be justified in relation to some
impressions. Therefore, Rorty's interpretation does not apply to Locke,
and to suggest otherwise is to distort what Locke actually intended.
In the following we shall consider what kind of justification Locke
entertained. To discuss this, we have to see Locke's basic view of knowl-
edge and consider what relation his causal, genetic explanation has to
that view. And in doing so, I think, we also have to keep in mind Rorty's
distinction between legitimation and justification. 3
Legitimation is a kind of justification, and it justifies the claim that
a certain sort of inquiry in a particular field is, as a whole, worthwhile.
By contrast, the term "justification" used in the narrow sense means
the justification of particular propositions which are candidates for knowl-
edge in a certain field. Of course, even when legitimating the activities
of a certain area of culture as a whole, we are still justifying certain
propositions or assertions. Therefore, strictly speaking, the distinction
between legitimation and justification might not hold. But if we take into
account whether the question concerns an area of culture (or of science)
as a whole, or whether it concerns particular candidates for knowledge
within such an area, the distinction would not be insignificant. In my
view, it is legitimation which Locke was concerned to achieve by means
of his causal explanations, and his view on justification is not then
decisively different from Rorty's. After showing this explicitly, I would
like to suggest that his activities can be seen as an example of the prag-
matic philosophical practices which Rorty recommends.
 IDEA AND THING 123

2. The Green-Rortyan Interpretation of Locke

According to Rorty, the Cartesian "invention" secured the special field

of inquiry called "human mind," but this was not "a sufficient condi-
tion for the development of epistemology." In his view, the development
of epistemology from the establishment of the realm of the mental had
to proceed by way of a confusion in Locke, that is, the confusion between
"a mechanistic account of the operations of our mind" and "the
'grounding' of our claims to knowledge.,,4 In stating this, Rorty quotes
the following words of T. H. Green:
[A]II empirical psychology rests [on the fundamental confusion] between two essen-
tially distinct questions - one metaphysical, What is the simplest element of knowledge?
the other physiological, What are the conditions in the individual human organism in virtue
of which it becomes a vehicle of knowledge?5

Through these words Rorty turns our attention to the interconnected facts
that "a claim to knowledge is a claim to have justified belief" and that
"it is rarely the case that we appeal to the proper functioning of our
organism as ajustification." According to him, justification should gen-
erally be given by putting propositions into a logical space - in other
words, by confirming logical relations between propositions. Therefore,
to do this by describing "the conditions in the individual human
organism" is to commit a serious error. He says:
Granted that we sometimes justify a belief by saying, for example, "I have good eyes,"
why should we think that chronological or compositional "relations between ideas," con-
ceived of as events in inner space, could tell us about the logical relations between
propositions?6

Rorty calls such a confusion a "naturalistic fallacy,,,7 as Sellars did,

and further asks:
How was it that Locke should have committed what Sellars calls "a mistake of a piece
with the so-called 'naturalistic fallacy' in ethics," the attempt to "analyze epistemic facts
without remainder into non-epistemic facts"? Why should he have thought that a causal
account of how one comes to have a belief should be an indication of the justification
one has for that belief?8

To these questions, Rorty answers:

The answer, I think, is that Locke, and seventeenth-century writers generally, simply
did not think of knowledge as justified true belief. This was because they did not think
124 Y ASUHIKO TOMIDA

of knowledge as a relation between a person and a proposition. We find it natural to

think of "what S knows" as the collection of propositions completing true statements by
S which begin "I know that ... " When we realize that the blank may be filled by such
=
various material as "this is red," "e mc 2," "my Redeemer liveth," and "I shall marry
Jane," we are rightly skeptical of the notion of "the nature, origin, and limits of human
knowledge," and of a "department of thought" devoted to this topic. But Locke did not
think of "knowledge that" as the primary form of knowledge. He thought, as had Aristotle,
of "knowledge of" as prior to "knowledge that," and thus of knowledge as a relation
between persons and objects rather than persons and propositions. Given that picture,
the notion of an examination of our "faculty of understanding" makes sense, as does
the notion that it is fitted to deal with some sorts of objects and not with others. It
makes even more sense if one is convinced that this faculty is something like a wax
tablet upon which objects make impressions, and if one thinks of "having an impres-
sion" as in itself a knowing rather than a causal antecedent of knowing. 9

Here the basic form of Rorty's interpretation of Locke is clear. In Rorty's

view, Locke thought of knowledge on the model of "knowing of," took
"having an impression" to be "knowing," and thus thought that justifi-
cation was given by the causal examination of the process of acquiring
impressions. In order to confirm such an interpretation on the Reid-Green-
Sellars line, he quotes the following words of Locke: "[I]mprinting, if
it signify any thing, being nothing else, but the making certain Truths
to be perceived. For to imprint any thing on the Mind without the
Mind's perceiving it, seems to me hardly intelligible." (I, ii, 5)
And from here he further points out that Locke thought of knowl-
edge in terms of ocular imagery.
It is precisely the choice of sense-perception as a model, and in particular of ocular
imagery, which makes both Aristotle and Locke attempt to reduce "knowledge that" -
justified true belief in propositions - to "knowledge of" construed as "having in
mind."10

He also says that:

[Tjhe most important shuffle in Locke's treatment of knowledge is [... j, as 1 have said,
between knowledge as something which, being the simple having of an idea, can take place
without jUdgment, and knowledge as that which results from forming justified judg-
ments. [... j Just as Aristotle has no clear way to relate grasping universals to making
judgments, no way to relate the receptivity of forms into the mind to the construction
of propositions, neither has Locke. This is the principal defect of any attempt to reduce
"knowledge that" to "knowledge of," to model knowing on seeing. 11

These quotations adequately represent, I hope, Rorty's interpretation of

Locke, and allow us to summarize his position. In brief, referring to Reid,
Green, and Sellars, Rorty tried to show that
 IDEA AND THING 125

1) Locke thought of knowledge using the model of ocular imagery.

2) Therefore, he thought of knowledge primarily as "knowing of."
3) Thus he thought that the justification of our claims to knowledge
should be given by the clarification of the causal process of the acqui-
sition of impressions.
As I said before, Rorty thinks that Locke's confusion between justifi-
cation and causal explanation promoted the establishment of the modern
epistemology which developed from Descartes' "invention" of the
"mind." Let us note here that epistemological philosophy after Locke
directed its attention to the process of acquiring knowledge rather than
to the logical relation of propositions.

3. Locke's Causal, Genetic Explanation

Locke's theory of knowledge takes two distinct "naturalistic" approaches.

One treats the process of acquiring human knowledge as a synchronic,
causal process that begins with things themselves affecting senses, and
leads to knowledge via the production of ideas. The other considers the
process as diachronic and genetic, a process which begins in the mother's
womb and leads to the stage where a person has knowledge of a com-
paratively high level. These two approaches are complicated in the Essay,
but let us review them separately.
The diachronic, genetic approach emerges from the following picture
in the Essay. Originally we are born, as it were, as a piece of white
paper without any principles or ideas written on it. At the beginning,
we acquire various ideas by sensation, but later we also turn our atten-
tion to our mental operations. Thus our minds acquire various simple
ideas by sensation and reflection, namely by experience. These ideas
are retained in our minds, but our minds also frame complex ideas by
connecting or comparing them. Moreover, our minds take up common
ingredients from various particular ideas, and by abstraction make general
ideas. Now, while retaining ideas in this way, the mind acquires knowl-
edge by perceiving the "agreement or disagreement of ideas." At the
beginning knowledge concerns only particular things, but the mind grad-
ually acquires advanced general knowledge by means of its faculties
of abstraction and reasoning.
The causal approach is found in the following picture. There are
various things around us, and things themselves are thought to have
only primary qualities, and powers based on them. Such things them-
126 Y ASUHIKO TOMIDA

selves affect our sense, namely, give "impulses" to them. Then, these
impulses are conveyed to the brain, which is the seat of the mind, and
cause ideas there. If the ideas are known to conform to a certain general
idea already retained in the mind, they are given the name which has
been added to it, and are sorted into species. In the case of complex ideas
of substances, an idea which has already been sorted in this manner is
known to be accompanied by other ideas, and the mind thereby acquires
"knowledge of co-existence." By perceiving such a complex idea in the
form of a sense impression, it knows the existence of a thing which is
its cause.
This basic picture of the process of acquiring knowledge which Locke
propounded included various physical elements, that is, it included the
view of the new physics of his day, and other physical considerations.
And on the basis of this picture, he considered both the limits and
possibilities of knowledge. What many people, including Rorty, question
about these approaches is that they only consider physiological,
psychological, causal events (or their conditions) in acquiring beliefs, and
that these events (or conditions) have essentially nothing to do with the
contents of the beliefs. I want here to raise the question as to whether
we really can dispose of these approaches as examplifying a mere
"naturalistic, genetic fallacy."

4. Problems of the Rortyan Interpretation

As already suggested, Locke defines knowledge as "the perception of the
connexion and agreement, or disagreement and repugnancy of any of our
Ideas.,,12 And he demarcates it into four sorts, namely, "identity or
diversity," "relation," "co-existence or necessary connexion," and "real
existence.,,13 Among these four, there is room for discussion of "real exis-
tence," but if we understand this as the agreement or disagreement of
a certain idea and the idea of "existence," then it would be clear that
he does not identify having ideas with having knowledge. 14 The following
passage provides corroboration of this:
THOUGH Truth and Falshood belong, in Propriety of Speech, only to Propositions; yet
Ideas are oftentimes termed true or false [... J. Though, I think, that when Ideas them-
selves are termed true or false, there is still some secret or tacit Proposition, which is
the Foundation of that Denomination [. . . J. [OJur Ideas, being nothing but bare
Appearances or Perceptions in our Minds, cannot properly and simply in themselves be
said to be true or false, no more than a single Name of any thing, can be said to be
true or false. (II, xxxii, 1)15
 IDEA AND THING 127

That is to say, if something does not have the form of a proposition,

it cannot be true or false, and so mere ideas cannot be candidates for
knowledge. 16
This statement of Locke's arouses suspicions, at least about the second
of Rorty's theses on the interpretation of Locke given in Section 2 above.
Nevertheless, the passage from I, ii, 5 might still be seen as showing
that that thesis is right. But we can easily demonstrate the interpreta-
tion of that passage to be wrong. For, what is discussed in most of
Book I of the Essay, including the passage in question, is not ideas,
but principles that take the form of a proposition.1 7 That is to say, Locke
asks in the passage whether certain principles are imprinted in our minds
or not, and he wants to assert that it would be strange if truths (which
take the form of a proposition) were imprinted in the mind, and the
mind did not perceive them.
As for Rorty's first thesis, it is true that Locke used ocular imagery
in various parts of the Essay. For example, in "The Epistle to the Reader"
and "Introduction" he likens the understanding to the eye, and when
he discusses the process of acquiring ideas of sensation, he often seems
to be thinking of the eye. Moreover, when he treats the "clearness" and
"distinctness" of ideas, he exclusively considers visual perception, and,
further on, when he talks about "intuitive knowledge," he likens intuition
to sight. But such ocular imagery is mainly used in considerations con-
cerning ideas, and when it is applied to "knowledge," it is only used in
order to emphasize the immediateness of the perception of relationships
between ideas, and it is not the case that he offers an argument which
identifies the perception of an isolated idea or impression with the acqui-
sition of knowledge.
Therefore we might well doubt the validity of the Rorty's third thesis.
According to another method of demarcation in IV, ii, knowledge is
divided into "intuitive knowledge," "demonstrative knowledge," and
"sensitive knowledge." Intuitive knowledge, like "white is not black,"
is acquired by immediately perceiving the agreement or disagreement
between ideas. Demonstrative knowledge, like "the three angles of a
triangle equal to two right ones," is the perception of agreement or dis-
agreement between ideas via another idea or other ideas. IS And "sensitive
knowledge" concerns the existence of external objects, and is acquired
by sensation. Admittedly, the validity of the first two as kinds of knowl-
edge does not depend on any causal or genetic explanation of the process
of acquiring ideas. And even in the case of "sensitive knowledge," which
128 Y ASUHIKO TOMIDA

seems to have more or less to do with such explanations, its validity

as knowledge is, actually, independent of them. Concerning this "sen-
sitive knowledge," Locke says as follows:
There is, indeed, another Perception of the Mind, employ'd about the particular exis-
tence offinite Beings without us; which going beyond bare probability, and yet not reaching
perfectly to either of the foregoing degrees of certainty, passes under the name of
Knowledge. There can be nothing more certain, than that the Idea we receive from an
external Object is in our Minds; this is intuitive Knowledge. But whether there be any
thing more than barely that Idea in our Minds, whether we can thence certainly inferr
the existence of any thing without us, which corresponds to that Idea, is that, whereof
some Men think there may be a question made, because Men may have such Ideas in
their Minds, when no such Thing exists, no such Object affects their Senses. But yet
here, I think, we are provided with an Evidence, that puts us past doubting: For I ask
anyone, Whether he be not invincibly conscious to himself of a different Perception,
when he looks on the Sun by day, and thinks on it by night; when he actually tastes
Wormwood, or smells a Rose, or only thinks on that Savour, or Odour? We as plainly
find the difference there is between any Idea revived in our Minds by our own Memory,
and actually coming into our Minds by our Senses, as we do between any two distinct
Ideas. (IV, ii, 14)19

Admittedly, it is not causal, genetic, explanation but only the percep-

tion of the difference of ideas that he takes to be the ground for taking
"sensitive knowledge" as knowledge. Thus, Locke did not seek justifi-
cation in causal explanations for either intuitive and demonstrative
knowledge, or even for "sensitive knowledge." Rorty's third thesis, there-
fore, is incorrect.

5. The Logical Space for "Legitimation"

But we must take into account the fact that our discussion in the previous
section concerned justification in a narrow sense. When the term
"justification" is used in this sense in Locke's theory of knowledge
causal explanation is not, in principle, used for justification of partic-
ular knowledge. Therefore, as far as justification is concerned, Rorty's
criticism of Locke is misdirected. But we are still left with the question
of Locke's legitimation of several disciplines, and as was pointed out
in Section 3, on this level, Locke certainly has recourse to naturalistic
considerations.
In Rorty's account, which tries to deconstruct foundationalistic epis-
temology, the Lockean presupposition that we need not only to justify
particular claims to knowledge, but also to legitimate them by causal
 IDEA AND THING 129

explanation, is unacceptable. And Rorty has in fact used Locke's "con-

fusion" to question this kind of assumption in many other theories of
knowledge. Therefore, Rorty's point does not depend on whether Locke
was guilty of confusion on the level of particular "justification."
But even after we change the subject from "justification" to "legiti-
mation'" it is still impossible to find in Locke the characteristics
which correspond to the first and second of Rorty's theses. Therefore,
as far as Rorty's criticism of Locke is based on them, it is, here again,
irrelevant.
This leaves us in a quandary. If the claim that Locke confused expla-
nation with justification is not well grounded, and if nevertheless Rorty's
assertion that Locke's activities are doubtful still makes some sense,
we must find another target for his criticism.
If we turn back to the context of Rorty's remarks, it is clear that we
still have to consider the question of whether Locke attempted to provide
"legitimation" by positing any "privileged" knowledge or not. What Rorty
regards as an essential character of "epistemology" is that it "sees the
hope of agreement as a token of the existence of common ground which,
perhaps unbeknown to the speakers, unites them in a common ratio-
nality,,20 and that by the attempt to find common ground it tries to
bind the rest of culture. And for this, epistemologists have recourse to
"privileged representations" or "privileged knowledge." What we must
further ask then is whether Locke's "legitimation" can be characterized
as an attempt to "bind" something by such "privileged knowledge."
As already seen in Part Two, Chapter III, Locke's theory of knowl-
edge certainly intends to "legitimize" physike and practike. That is, his
theory of knowledge tries to make clear the possibility and limitations
of knowledge and probable beliefs in several areas of culture. But there
is no evidence that in such a project of "legitimation" he appealed to a
kind of privileged knowledge. Rorty himself acknowledges this, and
for the same reason Husserl could not give Locke's activities his all
out support. Rorty says:
whereas Locke had retained the new inner space of research - the workings of the newly
invented Cartesian mind - he had not been able to hold onto Cartesian certainty. Locke's
"sensualism" was not yet a suitable candidate for the vacant position of "queen of the
sciences.'>21

To call Locke's standpoint "sensualism" is controversial, but it is certain

that the "legitimation" in Locke's theory of knowledge could not "hold
130 Y ASUHIKO TOMIDA

onto Cartesian certainty." For, as said above, Locke had recourse to

various "causal, genetic explanations" for the "legitimation," and he owed
many of them to the new physics of his day.
Let us consider the way Sellars and Rorty think of justification.
Justification is to be provided by putting a proposition into a logical
space. If this is correct, then we need to think about the "logical space"
into which Locke's explanations fitted. Locke was not, in principle,
attempting to justify particular claims to knowledge. As we argued in
Part Two, Chapter III, what he had to do was to determine the appro-
priate range of the application of understanding and to defend the
activities which people could accomplish within that range. In this kind
of apologetic legitimation he often utilized explanations, and later this
came to be criticized as being "circular," "inconsistent," or "confused."
But if what Locke intended to do was to defend the possibilities of a
new physics and a new moral system and to promote their inquiries,
on what grounds can Rorty reject this attempt?
I would like to quote Rorty and Hegel in order to suggest how we
should answer this question.
In his "Science as Solidarity," Rorty remarks that:
Dewey was accused of blowing up the optimism and flexibility of a parochial and jejune
way of life (the American) into a philosophical system. So he did, but his reply was
that any philosophical system is going to be an attempt to express the ideals of some
community's way of life. He was quite ready to admit that the virtue of his philosophy
was, indeed, nothing more than the virtue of the way of life which it commended. On
his view, philosophy does not justify affiliation with a community in the light of some-
thing ahistorical called "reason" or "transcultural principles." It simply expatiates on
the special advantages of that community over other communities. 22

Judging from Rorty's view here, he seems to have no reason for objecting
to Locke's frequent use of explanations, which he believed correct, to
defend certain activities of a certain cultural space (or some field of
science). And, in this sense, I think that Locke's project in developing
his theory of knowledge can be taken to be an example of the pragma-
tist project for philosophizing recommended by Rorty.
On the other hand, Hegel once criticized epistemology thus:

Therefore, this claim is that we should know our ability to know before we know. This
is as if we tried to swim before entering into water. The inquiry into the ability to know
itself is knowing, and it can never reach the goal which it wants to reach. For the inquiry
itself is just the goal [... ].23
 IDEA AND THING 131

These words express the core of Rorty's metaphilosophical thought.

But Locke attempted to "legitimate" knowledge by means of "knowl-
edge" which he had already had, and in this respect he is not an
epistemologist in Hegel's sense. It is only those who think that philoso-
phers have, or should have, a certain field of privileged knowledge who
reject this particular epistemological approach as being confused or
circular. Rorty mistook Locke for a philosopher of the type described
by Hegel, and so concluded that the Essay was "confused."

NOTES

1 R. Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1979), pp. 3-4. Cf. pp. 136-139.
2 For my own view on Rorty, see my "Kisozukeka Rentaika" ("Foundation or

Solidarity?"), Shiso (Tokyo), No. 743 (1986); "Chokkan, Goi, likokeisei" ("Intuition,
Vocabulary, and Self-Formation"), Riso (Tokyo), No. 634 (1987); R. Rorty, Rentaito
Jiyuno Tetsugaku (Philosophy ofIfor Solidarity and Freedom), ed. and trans. Y. Tomida
(Tokyo: Iwanami-Shoten, 1988), Translator's Afterword.
3 See Rorty's uses of "legitimation" and "justification" in R. Rorty, "Transcendental
Arguments, Self-Reference, and Pragmatism," in P. Bieri, R.-P. Horstmann, and L. Krueger
(eds.), Transcendental Arguments and Science (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1979).
4 Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, op. cit., p. 140.
5 Ibid., pp. 140-141. Cf. D. Hume, The Philosophical Works, ed. T. H. Green and

T. H. Grose (Aalen: Scientia Verlag, 1964), Vol. I, "General Introduction," p. 19.

6 Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, op. cit., p. 141.
7 For Sellars' notion ofthe "naturalistic fallacy," see W. Sellars, Science, Perception and
Reality (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1963), p. 131.
8 Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, op. cit., p. 141.
9 Ibid., pp. 141-142.

10 Ibid., p. 146.
\I Ibid.
12 IV, i, 2. Incidentally, the wording of "agreement and disagreement of ideas" does
not confirm the following argumentation: "In one place we are told: 'Since the mind,
in all its thoughts and reasonings, hath no other immediate object but its own ideas,
which it alone does or can contemplate, it is evident that our knowledge is only conver-
sant about them.' And again: 'Knowledge is the perception of the agreement or
disagreement of two ideas.' From this it would seem to follow immediately that we cannot
know of the existence of other people, or of the physical world, for these, if they exist,
are not merely ideas in any mind. Each one of us, accordingly, must, so far as knowl-
edge is concerned, be shut up in himself, and cut off from all contact with the outer world."
(B. Russell, A History of Western Philosophy [New York: Simon and Schuster, 1945],
p. 611.) As we have already shown in Part Two, Chapter II, Locke's theory of knowl-
edge, which uses the term "idea," is a meta-level consideration, and if we translate the
use of the term into the first order wording, then, for example, perceiving the idea of "gold"
132 Y ASUHlKO TOMIDA

is thinking of gold, and perceiving the agreement of the idea of "gold" and that of
"fusibility" is nothing but knowing that gold is fusible.
13 IV, i, 3.
14 Many people have wondered whether Locke's argument on the knowledge of real
existence is consistent with the above definition of knowledge. Cf. R. I. Aaron, John Locke
(3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University press, 1971), pp. 237f.; R. S. Woolhouse, Locke
(Brighton: The Harvester Press, 1983), p. 59. But there is no doubt that "Locke does
not say that seeing a colour or hearing a sound is knowing." (Aaron, pp. 245-246.)
15 It is also relevant that Locke says that: "[O]ur Knowledge [... ] all consists in
Propositions [... ]." (II, xxxiii, 19)
16 Aaron notes that: "Locke's account of knowledge implies that the object of knowl-
edge is always a proposition or an inference. This means that we never know an idea in
isolation. Locke teaches this quite explicitly in Book IV, and it is only those who confine
their reading to Book II who misinterpret him on this point." (Aaron, op. cit., p. 227.
Cf. p. 231.)
17 Book I sufficiently demonstrates this, but many people suppose that it is against the
innateness of ideas that he argues there (e.g. F. Copleston, A History of Philosophy [Garden
City: Image Books, 1964], Vol. V, Part I, p. 82). See especially Woolhouse, op. cit.,
pp. 17-19. Note that it is only near the end of Book I that Locke deals with innate ideas.
18 The above-mentioned distinction in knowledge is basically the same as that of
Descartes. On their relation, see, e.g., Aaron, op. cit., pp. 10-11, 220-223.
19 See also IV, ii, 5.
20 Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, op. cit., p. 318.
21 Ibid., p. 137.
22 R. Rorty, Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1991), p. 43.
23 G. W. F. Hegel, Vorlesungen ueber die Geschichte der Philosophie, III (G. W. F.
Hegel, Werke [Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1971], Vol. XX), p. 334. The
translation is my own.
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 PART TWO

THE LOGIC OF THE LIVING PRESENT

TRAN Due THAO, PARIS 1991
 DANIEL J. HERMAN

TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION

Tran Duc Thao was born September 16,1917 in Thai Binh, in what would
later become North Vietnam. He left for France in 1963 where he pursued
his philosophical studies. It was then and there that he met Sartre,
Merleau-Ponty and Jean Cavailles who introduced him to the philos-
ophy of Husserl. In 1941-42, under the direction of Cavailles, Thao
did his doctoral dissertation on the Husserlian method, and under the
strong influence of Merleau-Ponty deviated from common interpretations
which made of Husserlian phenomenology a doctrine of eternal essences
to a philosophy of temporality, of historical subjectivity and universal
history. For, as Husserl used to say, "inner temporality is an omni-
temporality, which is itself but a mode of temporality."
It was then that lengthy dialogues took place between Sartre and Thao.
These conversations were taken down in short hand with the aim of
publishing them. Thao gave his own version of them when he stated
that Sartre's invitation was for the purpose of proving that existen-
tialism could peacefully co-exist with Marxism on the doctrinal plane.
Sartre minimized the role of Marxism in so far as he recognized its
value solely in terms of politics and social history. The sphere of influ-
ence would be shared by both Marxism and existentialism, the former
being competent with respect to social problems, the latter being valid
solely as philosophy. Thao tried to point out to Sartre that quite to the
contrary Marxist philosophy was to be taken seriously since it grappled
with the fundamental problem of the relation of consciousness to matter.
These dialogues with Sartre, along with the destruction of German
fascism, necessitated a radical choice between existentialism or Marxism,
Sartre and Merleau-Ponty having already opted for the former. Thao,
owing to his phenomenological orientation, broke with existentialism
with the publication of Phenomenology and Dialectical Marxism.' Owing
to this same orientation, the choice of Marxism created for Thao a need
to rid the dual Hegelian and Husserlian phenomenologies 2 of their ide-
alistic form and metaphysical elements in order to salvage whatever
else was left valid and place it at the service of dialectical materialism
for a scientific solution of the problem of subjectivity.
Tran Duc Thao's analysis of Husserlian phenomenology, especially

147

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© 1995 Kluwer Academic Publishers.
148 DANIEL 1. HERMAN

the later writings, the Crisis and the "Origin of Geometry," led him to
a cavalier rejection of phenomenology altogether. The practical results
of Husserl's analyses are incompatible with the theoretical framework
in which they originated. Meaning, which originates at the ante-
predicative level, cannot be the work of a transcendental ego that con-
stitutes the meaning of the world outside of space and time, but is, rather,
the work of a consciousness immersed in a historical becoming. Husserl's
transcendental ego turns out to be the actual consciousness of each man
within his own actual experience. At this point, Thao points out, Husserl
falls into a total relativism: "the merchant at the market has his own
market truth." Husserl's constitutions of the world with the contempla-
tion of eternal essences turns out to be a nihilism, wherein consists the
crisis of Western man, which in tum gave birth to irrational man, the
existential man whose claim is that the only sense of life is the lack of
any sense, or Heidegger's "being unto death."
The solution to the crisis of Western man and others lie for Thao in
dialectical materialism, thus the second part of the book: "The Dialectic
of Real Movement." What Thao stresses here is Husserl's investigation
turned right side up, by ridding it of idealistic formalism and thereby con-
struction a new rationality, a stress on the concrete contents of experience.
The relationship between consciousness and its intentional object is expli-
cated by reference to the antepredicative level of conscious experience
mediated by human labor. "The notion of production takes into full
account the enigma of consciousness inasmuch as the object that is
worked on takes its meaning for man as a human product." The real-
izing of meaning is precisely nothing but the symbolic transposition of
the material operations of production into a system of intentional oper-
ations in which the subject appropriates the object ideally, in reproducing
it in his own consciousness. "This is true reason for man, who being
in the world constitutes the world in the intensity of his lived experi-
ence." And the truth of any constitution such as this is measured only
by the actual power of the mode of production from which it takes its
model. The humanization of nature through labor is how Thao accounts
for how matter becomes life and consequently assumes human value.
Tran Duc Thao frankly admits that an interpretation of Marxism
subject to the conditions of a personality cult engulfed Phenomenology
and Dialectical Materialism in a hopeless metaphysical juxtaposition
of phenomenological content to material content which paved the way
for the return of an idealistic dualism.
 TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION 149

Afterwards, Thao found, in his studies between 1960-1970, that in

order to avoid the above-mentioned danger he had to minimize phe-
nomenology, without, thereby overcoming the juxtaposition. 3 These
essays form his second major work, Recherches sur l'origine du langage
et de la conscience. 4
Tran Duc Thao's analyses are divided into three parts: (1) the origins
of consciousness by means of the indicative gesture, (2) the birth of
language and making of tools, and (3) Marxism and psychoanalysis.
We will briefly outline the first two investigations for they truly present
Thao's original contributions to the fields of anthropology, linguistics
and, of course philosophy.
Thao's investigations into the genesis of consciousness finds it to be
due to the development of language which, in tum, is generated by human
activity in the development of material conditions which precisely con-
stitutes human labor as social labor.
The transition from animal psychism to human consciousness is
effected by the prehominid. What distinguishes the prehominid from
the animal is the indicative sign which constitutes the original form of
consciousness. The indicative sign consists in pointing to a "relatively"
distant object and thus establishing a relationship between the subject
(pre-hominid) and an object that is external and independent. The reader
will recognize here Thao's version of the phenomenology's thesis of
the intentionality of consciousness, which states that consciousness is
always consciousness of an object. Animals are incapable of pointing
or indicating anything whatsoever as distant or external objects. At the
prehominid stage, however, indicative gestures - pointing to the game
to be chased - serve to coordinate group movements in hunting expe-
ditions. As yet the indicative gesture remains a natural and unconscious
gesture as it occurs only in an immediate biological situation. This uncon-
scious gesture will become conscious when the members of the hunting
expedition will not only indicate game to other members but to them-
selves individually, which means that the material gesture advances from
a linear form (indicating the object to others) to a circular arc (signi-
fying back to oneself as a member of the group). The reciprocity of
the indicative gesture is thus essential not only for consciousness but
more importantly for self-consciousness. Man's objective material rela-
tionship with the environment entails a meaning experienced immediately,
before it emerges on the conscious level as language. Thus, there is a
language of real life which develops from the material conditions of social
150 DANIEL J. HERMAN

life. Language is not arbitrary, it is a constitutive moment of con-

sciousness. Consciousness is language, pre-thematic or subconscious at
first in so far as it is immersed in action, and thematic or fully con-
scious when the lived experience of material conditions is interrupted,
providing thereby a pause, the pause that is precisely what occasions
consciousness to take a look at or reflect upon that experience.
For Tran Duc Thao the origin of humanity, i.e., the moment when
prehominid became hominid, coincides with the elaboration of the
instrument into a tool. The most intelligent of the highest apes, such as
chimpanzees, can only use their hands, and when they manipulate objects
they do so only to satisfy their immediate biological needs. Here Thao
makes an enormous vital distinction between the instrument and the tool. 5
The instrument as a separate or external object to be manipulated by
the organism is never viewed as separate or external. The animal works
only under the compulsion of a situation of biological need, and thus
can never abstract the moment of labor for the satisfaction of a need to
introduce a mediating element between itself and the object of need.
The object of biological need always occupies a central position in the
animal's perceptual field. Hence it cannot go beyond the stage of imme-
diate and direct manipulation, since the total dynamic field does not allow
for the introduction of a second object, in other words, does not allow
for mediation, which is precisely what constitutes thinking. With man,
however, the needed object is transformed through the mediation of the
tool into an object of labor. Thus productive labor which marks the begin-
ning of human activity, and the transition from nature to culture, became
possible only when the prehominid had gone beyond simple pointing.
At this stage he is already capable of an idealizing representation of
the absent object to himself, but he can also create the ideal and typical
form to be actualized in the tool.
The transition from the presentative indicative sign of the this here
to the representative sign of the this absent is the first form of reflec-
tion and the manifestation of that "liberation of the brain" whereby man
transcends the limitations of the present situation which always imprison
the animal. After a certain dialectical development, however, it also
permits man to escape reality and confine himself to symbolic con-
struction by denying the reality of human life. Thus idealism is born from
the transformation of these symbolic constructions into principles and
therefore the negation of objective reality. Thus idealism, according to
Thao, must once again be turned right side up.
 TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION 151

When years later Tran Duc came to reflect upon this investigation,
he confessed to having became stagnated on the pure formalism of
the threefold combination of the "this" (here or absent) (T) in the motion
(M) of the form (F). At the same time the development of these figures
should have been able to account for the development of the various
semiotic structures of languages as they originate in both humanity and
a child. But a purely mechanistic combination done almost entirely
within the horizon of dialectical materialism was expected to bridge
the gap between the animal and man. Thus, Thao concluded that he
had confused two entirely different semiotic formations - the gestures
of the prehominid and language properly so-called, or verbal language
which is specific to man - in a single confused representation of
language.
In short, from the years 1960-70 to the early 80s, Thao was con-
fusing the gestures of the prehominid with the language of early man,
so that, on the semiotic plane, he was suppressing the essential differ-
ence between the most evolved animal and the most primitive man by
reducing the specificity of human language to the development of a
simple combination of emotional and gestural signs. This reduction, Thao
admits, was due to a mechanistic metaphysics, a metaphysics which
denies the dialectical unity of human history, depriving humanity, thereby,
of its real meaning. 6
Thao frankly admits that the third investigation, "Marxism and
Psychoanalysis," was written primarily as a concession to the times.
The events of 1968 had profoundly influenced intellectual Communists,
who naively thought that psychoanalysis was promising the world by
shedding light upon the mystery of language. It didn't take long for Thao
to realize that psychoanalysis would be of no help with regard to the
problem of sentence formation.
Mention has already been made that in his Investigation into the Origin
of Language and Consciousness Tran Duc Thao had tried to correct
Phenomenology and Dialectical Materialism by minimizing or even
neglecting phenomenology in order to undertake an entirely mate-
rialistic approach to the genesis of consciousness, one rid of phe-
nomenological subjectivism. This neglect, confesses Thao, was not so
much a matter of choice as a response to the dictates of the political
dogmatic deformation of Marxism engendered by the "proletarian cultural
revolution."
Today, Tran Duc Thao could rid himself of all philosophical taboos
152 DANIEL J. HERMAN

by developing a knowledge of man thereby restoring the dialectical unity

of both theory and practice in a globalistic comprehension of world
history.
Tran Duc Thao returned to France in September, 1991, taking up
residence in Paris in order to renew his by now enthusiastic research with
the aim of elaborating the project of the unification of science and phi-
losophy starting with the origins of consciousness and its development
with the historicity of the world. Enriched now by the contributions of
Husserlian studies of the third period, Thao began to write feverishly,
intuiting correctly that he had little time left in which to author what
would be his third and last book. It was not to be completed, for Tran
Duc Thao died tragically as a result of an accidental fall on April 24,
1993. He was 76.
Tran Duc Thao and I became very active correspondents for about a
year, before his sudden death. I was translating his articles as soon as
he would submit them to me, with the hope that his forthcoming book
would somehow alleviate his dire financial situation as well as leave
to posterity his final philosophical testament. This testament now consists
of three essays with two appendices. One of those essays and the two
appendices follow.
The first essay7 sets up a dialectical logic in stark opposition to formal
logic, which, at first impression, would lead one to think that the former
logic is very much in opposition to the customary way of thinking. Formal
logic with the "three laws of thought" constituting its backbone considers
the present instant to be immobile, so that movement would constitute
a passage from one immobile instant to the next, with the net result
that formal logic could not possibly be faithful to reality as movement
would turn out to be a succession of instants. Such a metaphysical con-
ception of things which thinks in terms of strong dysfunctions; either/or
- yes, yes/no, no, is a thought which thinks outside of time, outside of
the temporal flow. Against this false metaphysics according to which
something either exists or not, Heraclitus avers, to the contrary, "every-
thing is and at the same time is not, for it flows."
This formal logic with its succession of instants was also refuted by
Hegel when he rejected the excluded middle term. Formal logic says
that something is either A or -A; there is no middle term. To which Hegel
replies, there is a third term in that very same thesis. A is itself that
third term, for A can be either A+ and -A. Thus A is that third term
that one wants to exclude.
 TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION 153

The formula of Heraclitus, taken up by Hegel, "Everything is and

equally is not," was abbreviated in such a way as to give rise to regret-
table confusions, for one was led to think that for dialectical logic being
itself is not, which is contrary to common sense. Thus both logics,
opposed to each other as they were, had to be synthesized. since both
did justice to reality and common sense.
This task, according to Thao, was left to Husserl, and was accom-
plished by means of the temporalization in the Living Present. s This
task Husserl has left for posterity to implement. It yields a dialectical
globalistic interpretation of human history.
Real time, according to Husserl, is not clock time as Aristotle con-
ceived of it in his famous definition, "time is the measure of motion,
according to a before and an after," a definition which until Husserl
had never been challenged. 9 Aristotle's conception of time makes of
the instant, an immobile instant, and motion is once again made incom-
prehensible, for how can it be reconstructed given its immobility?! For
Husserl, on the other hand, "The Present which flows (i.e., the Living
Present) is the Present of the movement of flowing, of having flowed,
and of having yet to flow. The now, the continuity of the past, and the
living horizon of the future outlined in protention, occur consciously
'at the same time,' an 'at the same time' which flows." With phenom-
enological time, time is no longer considered as a fourth dimension of
space, says Thao, and we are now able to effectively reconstruct history
as the measuring of humanity with its wealth of real relations instead
of as the abstraction of reciprocal causal relations.
Thus, Tran Duc Thao applies the theory of the Living Present as a
theory which alone can account for individuality in the sciences, espe-
cially the science of biology.lO
Thao, once again, finds Aristotle to be at fault when he maintained
that, "science concerns only the general, existence concerns only the
singular." For three thousand years this Aristotelian motto went unchal-
lenged, as a science of singular existence was never really considered,
even though in its practical application science had to deal with that exis-
tence. Those very dealings only amounted to meeting points. Science
would never grasp existence in itself or the singular individual as such,
the individuality of that existence being reduced as it was to an abstract
point. The Living Present, continues Thao, is first of all and essentially
the concrete individuality of singular existence constituting itself, at each
instant, in the temporalization, or intrinsic movement of that very instant,
154 DANIEL 1. HERMAN

its interval of becoming the completion of which is accomplished by itself

in its passage to the following instant.
The evidence of the internal dialectic of the Living Present can be
found in the analysis of biological temporalization. We won't extend our-
selves on this analysis. Suffice it to say, in Thao's own words, that
"At each instant biological individuality surges as a system of func-
tions inherited from the past, that which has been sedimented in its past
and yet remains actually present in Retention which blends with the actual
Now, which provoked tension in the metabolism of the functioning of
these functions, or in Protention into the imminent future."
His conception is an innovation of Husserlian temporality. *

The University of West Florida

NOTES

1 Tran Duc Thao, Phenomenologie et Materialisme Dialectique (Paris: Minh Tan, 1951);
Phenomenology and Dialectical Materialism (New York: Gordon and Breach, 1971) trans.
and introd. Daniel J. Herman and Donald V. Morano (Dordrecht, Boston, Lancaster, Tokyo:
Reidel Pub. Co., 1986)
2 See Appendix A.
3 "Un Itin6raire" published in the French journal Revolution (June 7, 1991, no 588).
4 Tran Duc Thao, Recherches sur l'origine du language et de la conscience (Paris:
Editions Sociale, 1973); Investigations into the Origin of Language and Consciousness,
trans. Daniel J. Herman and R. L. Armstrong (Dordrecht, Boston, Lancaster, Tokyo: Reidel
Publishing Co., 1984).
5 A distinction which is totally ignored by Jane Goodall, who use these terms synony-
mously. No wonder! Had she been properly educated in her field she would have benefitted
not only from Thao's anthropological research but from Koehler's as well. Koehler years
ago had already pointed out in his classical experiments with apes that they cannot
represent to themselves an absent object, hence they are incapable of thinking, if thinking
at its minimum consists in taking a distance from what one thinks.
6 Tran Duc Thao, "Un Itineraire," op. cit.
7 Tran Duc Thao, "Pour une Logique Formelle at Dialectique."
8 Tran Duc Thao, "La dialectique logique comme dynarnique de la temporalization."
9 Thao forgets Bergson whose distinction between clock time and real duration undoubt-
edly influenced Husser!.
10 Tran Duc Thao, "La tMorie du Present Vivent comme theorie de l'individualite."
* I wish to express my heartfelt gratitude to Arlene Jewell who sacrificed most of her
holiday time to type these manuscripts.
 TRAN Due THAO

DIALECTICAL LOGIC AS THE GENERAL LOGIC

OF TEMPORALIZATION

Aristotle defined time as the measure of motion according to a before

and an after, from which it follows that the instant wherein that measure
is determined by the hand of a clock, presents itself as a limit which
separates the past from the future, and at the same time possibly connects
them by simple contiguity, in such a way that that instant remains
immobile in its punctual instantaneity. This immobility of the instant
as such, renders the motion of things incomprehensible, seeing that this
motion should necessarily coincide with an infinity of purely static
positions. It is clear that the point in time is but an abstraction, albeit a
necessary one for measurement. But to define the instant as a point is
to reify an abstraction which amounts to a suppression of the future itself.
It was only in the first part of the twentieth century, that, with the
development of the phenomenological method, Husserl was able, in the
third phase of his creative activity, to grapple with the problem of tem-
poralization in the living present and, thereby, transcend the Aristotelian
difficulties by bringing to light the dialectic of the instant in the instant
itself.
It is true that Husserl's thought on the Living Present was limited to
the domain of the pure subjectivity of lived experience. We can, however,
take up its essential content again, giving it necessary development and
transformation in order to elaborate a dialectical logic as a general
dynamic of temporalization, in other words, a general logic of being in
its motion and objective and subjective becoming.
Such a logic would open the way to the task Husserl left to posterity
in the Krisis, the elaboration of a really universal conception of the exact,
historical, social and human sciences, which in turn would lead to an
effectively rational comprehension of the problem of man and his values
in its dialectical complexity, a globalistic conception of the history of
mankind.
We can now give a more precise description of the living present by
considering the situation of the actual Now, and by bringing to light
the internal retention of the present instant in the flow of the Now to
protention. This gives us a diagram of temporalization:

155

A-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana Vol. XLVI, 3-143.

© 1995 Kluwer Academic Publishers.
 Vl
0'\

-l
:;tI
>
Z
~z situation of the Now N in the Instant I o
,,L--/-7~/-7->"-/-A~ ';:6
.. ~
n
-l
J:l situation of the Now NI in the Instant II :I:
./ 7/ /' /' :713 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - >
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situation of the Now N2 in the Instant 12
 DIALECTICAL LOGIC 157

The flow of time constantly contains in depth, a sedimentation from high

to low which functions as retention from low to high.
Retention R, resulting from the sediments S in the instant I, finds itself
connected with the situation of the Now N in that instant I.
The being still present in retention R contracts, by virtue of its con-
nections with that situation of N, a tension upon the imminence of future,
or protention.
We place in a common parenthesis retention R and the now N: (RN)
in order to indicate that the content of R inherited from the past, as
that which is still present, immediately flows in the now N with which
it blends, because it is precisely still present now. And it is this Now
N, bearing within itself the retention R of its past still present now, which
flows and comes to the flowing upon the imminence of the future in
the protention P.
"The Present which flows, is the Present of the movement of flowing,
of having flowed, and of having yet to flow. The now, the continuity
of the past and the living horizon of the future, which is outlined in
protention, are conscious 'at the same time' and this is an 'at the same
time; which flows." (Husserl, Unpublished ms. C 2 I 1932-1933 - quoted
by Tran Duc Thao, Phenomenologie et Materialisme Dialectique, p. 143.
English translation, p. 230.)
One should notice that the situation of the Now N, here symboli-
cally indicated by a vertical line above N, contains in reality the whole
state of the world.
And it is in the concomitant connection with the state of the
world that the retentional heritage of the past blending with the actual
present Now assumes a tension upon the imminence of the future as
protention.
The classical theory of time only took into account the linearity of
the simple phenomenon of the flowing which led thereby from the
measure of a clock to the mathematical definition of time as the number
of motion according to the anterior and the posterior.
As a result the present instant as simple limit between the past and
the future was abstractly reduced to a static point. Movement and
becoming were thus made incomprehensible, and there was even less a
question of historical reality and of effective historical sense. Time was
reduced to a fourth dimension of space, a dimension which, suppressing
the richness of real relations, came to the abstraction of causality, with
its various modes of reciprocal action as causal complexes.
158 TRAN Due THAO

It is only with the consideration of the Living Present understood in

its effective reality as substance which posits itself as subject that time
appears to constitute itself in that primordial Present in three directions
in constant dialectical connection: direction in length, of the flowing
as such; direction in depth, of the retentional sedimentation; and the
concomitant direction of all the connections with the state of the world.
And it is to be noticed that this state of the world comprises within
itself a plurality of stages historically in formation and in systemic super-
position.
The Husserlian discovery of the living Present with its threefold
temporalizing direction thus paves the way for the task of a radical
remodeling of the way of thinking with the constitution of a new logic
as the Logic of Temporalization in the Living Present - or the Logic of
the Living Present. This new logic opens the perspectives for a concrete
solution, both theoretical and practical, of the fundamental problems of
the philosophical tradition: the general, the particular and the singular,
necessity and contingency, mediation, negation, self-negation and the
negation of the negation, contradiction, essence and existence, quality
and quantity, being in itself, being for others, being for itself, great-
ness, and smallness, servitude and freedom.
Between the already acquired givens of retention as the heritage of the
past and protentional tension over the imminence of the future, there
is, of course, a fundamental opposition which defines the internal con-
tradiction of reality present in the instant, a contradiction which constantly
implies its unity, and the strife of its contraries.
The unity of the contradiction between retention and protention posits
the reality of the present instant in the identity of its being according
to its immediate logical form: (1) that which is, is.
At the same time, the strife of contraries, the strife of the proten-
tional imminence of the future with the retentional past, brings it about
that this same present reality sinks in the movement of its disappear-
ance as it is expressed in the mediated dialectical logical form: (1) That
which is, is; and at the same time, it is and is not, in the sense that it
is no longer.
This disappearance of the Now in the past is expressed in the imme-
diate negative form of the logic of temporalization: (2) that which is
not, is not.
However, the past in the movement of its disappearance still main-
tains itself in its retentional sedimentation, which expresses itself in its
 DIALECTICAL LOGIC 159

mediated dialectical logical form: (2) that which is not, is not; and at
the same time, in the form of that which is no longer, it still is.
Such a sedimented retention completes the intrinsic movement of
the present instant, which posits the reality of that instant in the com-
pleted being, as it is expressed in its total immediate logical form: (3)
that which is, is either A or -A; there is no middle term.
At the same time, this completion of the intrinsic movement of the
present instant I brings about, by that very same sedimented retention,
the passage to the following instant I, which is expressed in its total
mediated dialectical form: (3) that which is, is either A or -A; and at
the same time, in the form of being already in the appearance of the
future, it is itself and another.
Itself and another, that is, in the intrinsic movement of the instant I
itself, the passage to the instant 11.
In other words, in the intrinsic movement of the present instant a
double passage is brought about; the instant is the instant of the passage
of the past still present to the imminence of the future, of retention to pro-
tention. And that passage terminates as the passage of the actual instant
to the following instant.
Actually, the sedimentation of Instant I in its own movement of
"flowing, of having flowed, and of having yet to flow" produces an
internal retention R of itself in the flowing of its Now N and under its
protention P, in such a way that this internal retention appears as the
imminent future in and under protention P. And this imminence of the
future as the appearance of the imminent future precisely constitutes
the completion of the actual Instant I, a completion which effects its
passage to the following Instant II.
At Instant 11 the internal retention R of the preceding instant frees
itself by finding itself connected with the new situation, the situation
of Now NI in that Instant 11.
The passage of each present instant I to the following present 11 is
thus effected in the intrinsic movement of the instant I itself, as the
completion of its movement of "flowing, of having flowed, and of having
yet flow" so that this effected passage is itself a flowing from one
instant to the other.
The intrinsic movement of each instant thus presents itself as a lapse
of time. And the continuation of the flowing of instants lapsing into
one another is the definition of the flow of time.
160 TRAN Due THAO

APPENDIX A
THE DUAL HEGELIAN AND HUSSERLIAN PHENOMENOLOGIES

"Time," says Hegel, "is the notion itself in the form of existence."!
At the very heart of Hegel's rational dialectic we find the dialectic of time as notion
in the form of existence. It is only with Husserl, however, with his theory of the living
present (Lebendige Gegenwart) mentioned in Group e of his unpublished works,2 that,
we get for the first time a precise description of the consciousness of time, particularly
in the Preface to the Phenomenology of Spirit.
The Living Present is the movement of primordial consciousness, it is the temporal-
izing temporality always present to itself in a preservation and perpetual conquest of
self: the past is retained therein as that which still is (retention) and the future is announced
therein as that which already is (protention). This is a continual movement in which
each present moment immediately passes into retention and sinks more into the past,
but into a past which still is; meanwhile the future here and now possessed in proten-
tion is actualized in a lived present; in this continual movement the self remains identical
to itself, while renewing itself constantly; it remains precisely the same only by always
becoming another, in that absolute flux of an "eternal Present."
"The Present which flows is the Present of the movement of flowing, of having
flowed and having yet to flow [die Gegenwart des Verstromens, des Abstromens und
des Zustromensl. The now, the continuity of the past, and the living horizon of the future
which is outlined in protention are conscious 'at the same time' and this 'at the same time'
is in 'at the same time' which flows."3
In the Preface to the Phenomenology of Spirit Hegel writes: " ... everything depends
on grasping and expressing the ultimate truth not as Substance but as Subject as well.
... The living substance, further, is that being which is truly subject, or what is the
same thing, is truly realized and actual solely in the process of positing itself or in medi-
ating with its own self its transitions from one state to its opposite.,,4
In Husserlian language we can translate "substance that is truly subject" as the Living
Present which constitutes itself in the movement of its retentional past, its actual present
and its protential future.
"Being which is truly subject ... or, what comes to the same thing, the process of
positing itself, or mediating with its own self in and from its other," this is the Living
Present which always remains identical to itself as such in its flowing, at the same time
that it always becomes another by positing itself in the movement of its retentions. It is
thus truly "the mediation with its own self in and from its other."
We present below in two face to face columns passages which are characteristic of
Hegel's Preface to the Phenomenology of Spirit and their equivalent in the Husserlian
phenomenology of the Living Present:

Hegel Husserl
Being as subject (substance).5 The Living Present constantly renews
itself in the movement of its retentional
past, its actual now and its protential
future.
 DIALECTICAL LOGIC
The subject is pure and simple
negativity and on that account
a process of splitting up.
A process of duplicating
factors of opposition.
A process that in turn is the
negation of this indifferent
diversity and of the opposition
it entails.
A process of reinstating
self-identity.
Reflection into its own
self in and from its other
in true reality.
***
The seriousness, the suffering,
the patience, and the labor
of the negative. 6
***
Precisely because the form is as
necessary to the essence as the
essence is to itself, the essence
must not be conceived of and
expressed as essence alone. 7
That is to say, the essence must not
be expressed as an immediate
substance or as a pure self-
intuition of the Divine,
161
The Living Present negates itself
indefinitely by sinking more and more
into the past which is still present and the
retentional past which is no longer even
though it still is.
A double movement which opposes these
two movements.
An opposition that is, in turn negated (in a
negation of negation) by the continuity of
the retentional past which still is and is
prolonged in the actual now which is
constituted in its protential future.
It is solely in the movement of
temporalization that the self-identity of
the living Present is reinstated.
The reflection of pure lived experience of
that temporality which is always other than
itself and comes back into itself and which
constitutes the living Present as truth.
The seriousness, the suffering, the patience
and the labor of the intentional movement.
It is precisely because the form qua the
intentionality of retention, of actual moments
and of protentions is as essential to the
essence as the living Present as it is to itself,
that the essence as the living Present must
not be solely expressed as the living Present.
That is to say, the living Present is not to
be expressed as an immediate Present only
or as a pure experience of transcendental
subjectivity,
162 TRAN Due THAO

but as form also, and with the but also, as the moving intentionality of
entire wealth of the developed form, retention, actualization and protention and
in the whole wealth of that developed
intentional movement.

Only then is it grasped and In this way only can the essence of the living
expressed as really actual. Present be grasped and expressed as really
actual.

Mediation is nothing but the Mediation is nothing but the process of

process of self-identity. self-identity of the living Present with the
succession of its retentions, actualization and
protentions.

***
In other words, it is reflection In other words, it is reflection returning upon
directed into itself. 8 itself the lived experience of that succession
of the Present as flowing, of having flowed,
and of yet having to flow.

The aspect in which the ego is The movement of temporalization which

for itself finds itself in the temporalized succession

is pure negativity. continues from the negation of the self as

its disappearance into the past and from the
negation of that negation in the passage from
the retentional past to the actual present
which posits itself on its protentional past,
a passage wherein the living Present returns
upon itself, constantly reflecting upon itself.

Reduced to its utmost Reduced to its utmost abstraction, the Present

abstraction, then, the process in its very movement of flowing, having
is one of bare and simple becoming. flowed and yet having to flow takes up again
the succession of past and present moments
and the lived horizon of future moments.

We misconceive, therefore, the nature It is thus a misconception of reason to

of reason if we exclude reflection or exclude from truth the concrete movement of
mediation from ultimate truth and constituting intentionality and to fail to grasp
do not take it to be a positive moment it as a positive moment of the absolute.
of the absolute.

It is reflection which constitutes truth, It is this movement which constitute truth

the final result, and yet at the same as a result, but it is also that same movement
time does away with the contrast which annuls the opposition between truth
 DIALECTICAL LOGIC 163

between result and the process of
arriving at it. For this process is
likewise simple and therefore not
distinct from the form of truth,
which consists in the appearance
of simplicity in the result.
and its becoming as the becoming of
intentionality which constitutes it, for that
becoming is likewise simple, and thus does
not differ from the form of truth which
consists in the appearance of simplicity in the
result.

NOTES

I G. W. F. Hegel, Preface a La Phinomenologie de l'Esprit, edition bilingue de Jean

Hyppolite (Paris: Aubier, 1966), pp. 4~9 (The Phenomenology of Mind, trans. J. B.
Baillie (New York: Harper Torch Books, 1967), p. 104
2 Tran Duc Thao, Phinomenologie et Materialisme dialectique (Paris: Minh Tan, 1951;

re-issued New York: Gordon and Breach Science Pubs., Inc., 1971), pp. 139-144.
Phenomenology and Dialectical Materialism trans. Daniel J. Herman and Donald
V. Morano (Dordrecht, Boston, Lancaster, Tokyo: Reidel Pub. Co., 1986), pp. 227-
230.
1 Ibid., p. 143, footnote (p. 80).
4 Hegel, op. cit., pp. 4~9 (p. 80).
j Ibid., pp. 48-49 (p. 80).
6 Ibid., pp. 48-51 (p. 81).
7 Ibid., pp. 50-51 (p. 81).
8 Ibid., pp. 52-53 (pp. 82-83).

APPENDIX B
THE DIALECTIC OF ANCIENT SOCIETY

INTRODUCTION

The birth of a historic formation is mediated by the dialectical negation of the pre-
ceding formation, a negation which implies the triple meaning of a suppression,
preservation, and sublation.'
Thus, the birth of the first social formation with Homo habilis contains the negation
of the animal grouping that had arrived at its highest evolutionary level with the
Australopitheci, which implies the suppression of the animal mode of life founded on
the direct exploitation of environmental resources. The instruments or elementary tools
prepared or elaborated by the most intelligent apes still belong to the animal level; they
are only prefigurations of the production of the means of existence, such as we first see
them in Homo habilis; i.e., a complex and well-defined system of tools enabling the
construction of rudimentary huts with the whole forming an encampment. In short, the
negation of animality with its passage to humanity appears first of all as a suppression
of the essence of the animal grouping (to wit, immediate life as a whole's depending
upon the surroundings) by the first system of production with the social relations expressed
by the first language of social cooperation in the first local community of Homo habilis.
164 TRAN Due THAO

At the same time, this same negation has the meaning of a preservation of the use
of brutal force in the relations between the local communes, different and opposed as
they are in their quarrels about hunting and gathering grounds.
Finally, this preservation of violent relations is accompanied by a sublation of that
violence by the language of hostility, which sanctions the relation of force by a symbol
of strife, a symbol, which to a certain degree tends to replace the real struggle.
The "No!" energetically proffered by the infant of eighteen months expresses an
interdiction which sublates the use of real violence by the tone of symbolic violence,
socially comprehensible, which progressively diminishes the spasmic violence of the
original behavior of opposition.
In short, the passage from the last animal grouping to the first human society
is mediated by a negation which is at the same time suppression, preservation and
sublation.
The case is the same for the passage from the last primitive society to the first
civilized society.

***
Thus, according to the investigations of historical archeologists, notably Jean Louis Huot
and his colleagues, the ancient social formation appeared in the Orient during the age
of copper, at the beginning of the third millennium before our era, in the essential form
of the City System comprising the town with its rural suburbs. Beyond these suburbs,
tributary agricultural communes were to be found.
Still further away were independent Neolithic agricultural communes which were
subject to being pillaged by the city.
The birth of the ancient social formation thus presents itself as a first negation of
the tribal social formation, as the suppression of that formation in the territory of the
city system. This suppression implies, at the same time, the preservation of that same tribal
structure beyond the city system within the agricultural communes, And that preserva-
tion contains the sublation of that same tribal formation by the imposition of tribute and
service upon the nearest agricultural communes, and occasionally by looting expedi-
tions against more remote agricultural communes.
In this way, this first negation gives birth to the city system comprising the town
and its rural suburbs, which dominate tributary agricultural communes. These as a whole
appear to be dominated.
The city, therefore, constitutes a system of domination in ancient society or social
formation. The fundamental quality or essence of that social formation is evidently defined
first of all by its system of domination, and not by its dominated elements.
If we consider the city-system of town and rural suburbs, it is important to notice
that these suburbs imply a division between individual lands and communal lands of
the city.
The individual plots of land are appropriated by peasant families and by the diverse
personalities of the religious, military, and merchant aristocracy. The form of that appro-
priation moves from possession or individual property, more or less recognized by custom
or law, to private property, properly so-called, which appears with the first use of iron
in the Greco-Roman, Achaemenian and Chinese cities (in Latin: arva).
 DIALECTICAL LOGIC 165

On the other hand, there always remains in the rural suburbs of towns a reserve of
communal lands (in Latin: ager publicus). These communal lands belong to the city and
have nothing to do with the tributary agricultural communes.
In the city, the work of production is secured by the free men and their dependents
(slaves, serfs, and other servants). As a result of this, there ensues a division of social
relations comprising, on the one hand, the small family initiatives in production, with a
small number of dependents and trade in local markets using the simple form of value,
and, on the other, the larger initiatives in production directed by aristocratic merchants,
with a great number of dependents and trade in more or less distant markets, which,
with the use of copper or primitive bronze, saw the use of the developed or complete
form of value.
The social system of the city, thus, appears, from its Sumerian origins, to be
essentially a system of exchange and dependency, developing within a complex unity
of contraries, comprising the free opposition between traders, the imposed opposition
between aristocrats and common people, and the enforced opposition between master
and servants. A unity of contraries such as this is secured and symbolized by the ancient
state.
Given the particular conditions in Asia, a continental mass that has a very restricted
number of streams and coastal areas, areas suitable for market places were less numerous,
as a whole, than in Europe. Consequently, in spite of the development of the cities, the
proportion of agricultural communes remained high there, which secured the power of
the aristocracy, whose armed intervention was necessary for the exacting of tribute. Under
these conditions the form of government could only be monarchical.
It was only in the particular condition of the carved up geography of Greece and
Italy, at a moment when a powerful commercial current imposed itself between the old
civilizations of the Orient and the still Neolithic countries beyond the Alps, that it was
possible for cities to develop during the age of iron and to then extend over the greatest
part of the territory previously occupied by agricultural communes. Only there could
ancient monetary relations bring about a considerable development of slavery, which
then gave simple citizens sufficient leisure to enable tbem to participate in the power of
the state in the form of a democratic regime alternating between two parties: the aristo-
cratic and the popular.
The form of the ancient state, however, whether democratic or monarchical, does
not change its essence, which is to guarantee within the city, or federation of cities,
regularity in trade and the domination of free men over the servants; this is the essen-
tial function of the state. The exacting of tribute from surrounding agricultural communes
is a regular but nonessential function, since the system of production within the city,
can, strictly speaking, given the economic unity of the town with its rural suburbs, be
self-sufficient without tribute.
The higher number of tributary agricultural communes of cities in the Orient promoted
the predominance of an aristocracy which was in charge of exacting tribute, thus leading
to the monarchical form of government, The Greco-Roman states also had tributary agri-
cultural communes, but they were few in number, so that the exaction of tribute could
not swing the balance decisively to the side of the aristocracy to the point that, as in
the Orient, this would mandate a monarchical form of government. However, the very
superiority of ancient democracy brought about such a development of slavery and a
166 TRAN Due THAO

colonialism, which for alI practical purposes was enslaving, that the Roman Empire
ended with a return to an increasingly monarchical regime.
In short, the opposition between monarchy and ancient democracy was only formal.
The differing number of tributary agricultural communes entailed important, but nonessen-
tial, difference. The ancient society owed its essential unity to the domination of the
city system over the agricultural commune.

NOTE

* The author uses surpasser which literalIy means "to overtake"or "to go beyond," to
denote "synthesis" in the Hegelian dialectic. Hegel used "aufheben" which means to "raise"
or "elevate" but since in his phenomenology "aufheben" means not only to raise but to
raise on a higher level, insofar as the synthesis has preserved within itself both of the
previous movements of the dialectic, this unique movement in the dialectical process there-
fore must be denotated by a unique term, and to that purpose we have chosen the term
sublation adopted by J. Baillie in his English translation of Hegel's Phenomenology.
(Translator'S Note)
 PART THREE

THE BASIC GRAMMAR OF

INTERCULTURAL TEXTS
 HWA YOL JUNG

PHENOMENOLOGY, THE QUESTION OF

RATIONALITY AND THE BASIC GRAMMAR
OF INTERCULTURAL TEXTS

Only connect! ... Live in fragments no longer. Only

connect, and the beast and the monk, robbed of the
isolation that is life to either, will die.
E. M. Forster

1. PROLOGUE: THE QUESTION OF RATIONALITY AND

THE SPECTRE OF EUROCENTRISM

There is no possible point of view from which the world

can appear an absolutely single fact.
William James

This essay is an adventure in, and a critical exploration of, the postmodern
condition. As a "postparadigm", postmodernism is a critical response
to the disenchanted spectre of modernity - philosophical, scientific,
cultural, and above all life-worldly. It is concerned particularly with
the translation of Western rationality into the reading of the non-Western
world, i.e., the modernist prejudices in the production of intercultural
texts on the "politics of modernization".
Postmodernity or postmodernism is a "penturbian" phenomenon -
the term penturbia was reportedly coined by the academician Jack
Lessinger in order to describe the unique configurations of the sprawling
region in the United States of development, consisting of small cities and
towns, new subdivisions, homesteads, etc., i.e., - shall we say - all the
enclaves of modernity.! Jean-Franyois Lyotard sets the philosophic tone
for postmodernism when he writes in The Postmodern Condition: "[p]ost-
modem knowledge is not simply a tool of the authorities; it refines our
sensitivity to differences and reinforces our ability to tolerate the incom-
mensurable. Its principle is not the expert's homology, but the inventor's
paralogy.,,2
For the purpose of this essay, postmodernity should be construed
neither strictly as "the tradition of the new" (Harold Rosenberg) nor
exclusively as "the novelty of the past" (Matei Calinescu).3 Both
Rosenberg's and Calinescu's entitlements belittle, I submit, the real

169

A-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana Vol. XLVI, 3-143.

© 1995 Kluwer Academic Publishers.
170 HWA VOL JUNO

meaning of postmodernity as a "postparadigm". In them the ideas of

"tradition" and the "past" tend to becloud the programmatic thrust of
the "new" and "novel". The "paradigmatic" use of postmodernity must
be expressed, rather, as "the novelty of the new (future)". To accent it,
we can use the term post-postmodernity, however oxymoronic, pro-
hibiting and even opprobrious it may sound. By the novelty of the new,
I have in mind what Roland Barthes has said about the nature of inter-
disciplinary study which is not the putting together of several academic
disciplines on one single subject or theme but rather "consists in creating
a new object, which belongs to no one [discipline]".4 The "Text" is,
according to him, one such object. The postmodernist or post-post-
modernist is thus a neophilist, but the neophilist is not a neophiliac
who is constantly driven to and obsessed with creating "new objects".
For today emerges from yesterday, and tomorrow from today. The
Russian literary theorist Mikhail Bakhtin wrote so ably about the end-
lessly discontinuous circle of repetition and renewal as the postmodernist
principium of a true dialogue:
There is neither a first nor a last word and there are no limits to the dialogic context (it
extends into the boundless past and the boundless future). Even past meanings, that is,
those born in the dialogue of past centuries, can never be stable (finalized, ended once
and for all) - they will always change (be reviewed) in the process of subsequent, future
development of the dialogue. At any moment in the development of dialogue there are
immense, boundless masses of forgotten contextual meanings, but at certain moments
of the dialogue's subsequent development along the way they are recalled and invigo-
rated in renewed form (in a new context). Nothing is absolutely dead: every meaning
will have its homecoming festival. 5

Ethnocentrism, great or small, has permeated some of the finest minds

in the modern intellectual history of the West from Montesquieu to
Rousseau, Hegel and Marx to Karl Wittfogel (who is the author of a
work with the foreboding title Oriental Despotism: A Comparative Study
of Total Power6). There are always, of course, exceptions: Leibniz,
Humboldt and Herder who, as a judicious comparativist, refused to
identify felicity with just being European or Western. From the very
outset, it should be said that the hotly debated question of rationality
in the production of intercultural texts is not so much the question of
epistemological absolutism and relativism as of how transversal truth may
indeed be formulated without the fallacy of ethnocentrism.
The European habit of mind called Eurocentrism is that hegemonic
disposition or propensity of the modern West (Europe) which willy-
 PHENOMENOLOGY AND INTERCULTURAL TEXTS 171

nilly legislates or legitimizes itself as the privileged or anointed guardian

of the historical telos of the entire globe. 7 By positioning itself as the
teleological temple of the world, Eurocentrism becomes a tribal idolatry.
The astute observer of modernity Zygmunt Bauman writes:
From at least the seventeenth century and well into the twentieth, the writing elite of
Western Europe [with] its footholds on other continents considered its own way of life
as a radical break in universal history. Virtually unchallenged faith in the superiority of
its own mode over all alternative forms of life - contemporaneous or past - allowed it
to take itself as the reference point for the interpretation of the telos of history ....
Now, ... Europe set the reference point of objective time in motion, attaching it firmly
to its own thrust towards colonizing the future in the same way as it has colonized the
surrounding space. 8

Eurocentrism is tantamount to the inability of modern European intel-

lectuals to recognize or accept the otherness of the non-European Other.
As knowledge and power conspire with each other, the conquest of
knowledge leads inevitably to the conquest of power. The deconstruction
of Eurocentrism is a "modulation" of the postmodern task. The begin-
ning of postmodernity is a celebration of the end of modernity by
loosening up Europe's grip on universal truth. Europe's grip on uni-
versal truth may be likened to an Asian anecdotal frog who lived at
the bottom of a deep well and saw a piece of the heaven one day and
shouted with delight that it is the universe.
What really is shocking is the Eurocentric racism professed by two
of the guiding, "enlightened" philosophers of the modern West: David
Hume and Immanuel Kant. Hume's racism is blatant and uncontained.
The offensive and violent subtlety of every word in his essay "Of National
Characters" (174211758) should be sounded out loud and clear and should
not be missed or taken lightly:
I am apt to suspect the negroes, and in general all the other species of men (for there
are four or five different kinds) to be naturally inferior to the whites. There never was a
civilized nation of any other complexion than white, nor even any individual eminent either
in action or speculation. No ingenious manufactures amongst them, no arts, no sciences.
On the other hand, the most rude and barbarous of the whites, such as the ancient
GERMANS, the present TARTARS, have still something eminent about them, in their
valour, form of government, or some other particular. Such a uniform and constant dif-
ference could not happen, in so many countries and ages, if nature had not made original
distinction betwixt these breeds of men. Not to mention our colonies, there are NEGROE
slaves dispersed all over EUROPE, of which none ever discovered any symptoms of
ingenuity; tho' low people, without education, will start up amongst us, and distinguish
themselves in every profession. In JAMAICA indeed they talk of one negroe as a man
172 HWA YOL JUNG

of parts and learning; but 'tis likely he is admired for very slender accomplishments,
like a parrot, who speaks a few words plainly.9

Now Kant, who is reputedly the philosophical paragon of the "enlight-

ened" age (Aufkliirung) of invincible modernity by envisioning it as
liberation from humanity's "self-incurred tutelage" and championed
human dignity, obligatory moral integrity, and universal knowledge,
parrotted mindlessly Hume's racism in Observations on the Feeling of
the Beautiful and Sublime (1763). In addition to ridiculing the "grotes-
queries" of the Indians and Chinese, Kant observed in a singularly
unenlightened and prejudiced way:
The Negroes of Africa have by nature no feeling that rises above the trifling. Mr. Hume
challenges anyone to cite a single example in which a Negro has shown talents, and asserts
that among the hundreds of thousands of blacks who are transported elsewhere from
their countries, although many of them have even been set free, still not a single one
was ever found who presented anything great in art or science or any other praiseworthy
quality, even though among the whites some continually rise aloft from the lowest rabble,
and through superior gifts earn respect in the world. So fundamental is the difference
between these two races of man, and it appears to be as great in regard to mental capac-
ities as in color. The religion of fetishes so widespread among them is perhaps a sort of
idolatry that sinks as deeply into the trifling as appears to be possible to human nature.
A bird feather, a cow's hom, a conch shell, or any other common object, as soon as it
becomes consecrated by a few words, is an object of veneration and of invocation in
swearing oaths. The blacks are very vain but in the Negro's way, and so talkative that they
must be driven apart from each other with thrashings. lO

Western logocentrism is a Weltanschauung in which the Greek logos

became transformed into Reason, disembodied Reason and reached its
peak in the Enlightenment's thought. For our purpose we would single
out Hegel who identified the rational with the real. He not only had
enormous influence on the tradition of modernity but also asserted the
rational or philosophical deficiency of the Oriental mind by privileging
the Christian Occident for the "progressive" (dialectical) attainment of
the historical Weltgeist, i.e., "Orientalism". Hegel's Orientalism is that
unwarranted and "provincialized" assumption that the Western system
of truth or knowledge has the privileged guardianship for all rationality.
For him, the East - China and India - represented the childhood of
history. Chinese history, like the rhythm of nature, repeats itself endlessly
and becomes an unhistorical history: unlike Western history, it is the static
and seamless flow of the eternal yesterday. We might add here that
although he rejected his mentor's "idealism" for the sake of "materialism"
 PHENOMENOLOGY AND INTERCULTURAL TEXTS 173

and proudly called himself "a citizen of the world", Marx too spoke of
the "Asiatic mode of production" and never entertained the possibility
of a Communist revolution in the "Asiatic", underdeveloped countries
including Russia. To be sure, Marx was a consummate child of the
Enlightenment believing in everything that went with its idea of progress
including technology.
Jiirgen Habermas, whose critical theory is embedded in the tradition
of Hegel's and Marx's dialectical thought, comes to a defense of moder-
nity, that is, the Enlightenment, as an unfinished project and offers one
of the most systematic and trenchant critiques of postmodernism from
Nietzsche to Heidegger, Foucault and Derrida as "disempowering"
Reason. The title of his critique of Heidegger's ontology is quite telling:
"The Undermining of Western Rationalism." The postmodernist critique
of Reason, contends Habermas, "exacts a high price for taking leave
of modernity".l1
Despite his ambitious project of constructing a theory of social systems
by cutting through the high edges of contemporary sociology on the
trajectory of "evolution" or "development", Habermas - unlike his pre-
cursors such as Hegel, Marx and Weber - says very little about the
"politics of modernization" in the "other" (non-Western) world. His will-
ingness to discuss the impact of "modernization" (technologization) on
the (Western) life-world as "colonization" does not, unfortunately, extend
to an exploration of (the Marxian idea of) the issues concerning the
Western colonization of the non-Western world associated with the
"politics of modernization".12 No wonder, John B. Thompson, who is
an astute and sympathetic observer of Habermas's social theory, dis-
paragingly expressed skepticism on this matter. He contends:
[i]n fact Habermas's "reconstruction" of the developmental logic of world-views looks
very much like a mere projection of Piaget's ontogenetic stages on to the phylogenetic
scale; many readers will no doubt balk at what appears to be a continuation of Hegelian
ambitions with cognitive-developmental means. One is bound to wonder, moreover, just
how Habermas's theory of social evolution can be applied to the developmental course
of societies outside of Europe, just how it can void the ethnocentrism and oversimplifi-
cation which characterize so many evolutionary schemes. 13

The real question appears to be how the "modernist" model of Hegelian

and Marxian rationality can avoid Western ethnocentrism in dealing with
the non-Western world. Plea bargaining for the innocence of, and freedom
from, ethnocentrism would at best result, I fear, in a guilty verdict for
what the French postmodernist Barthes calls "Western narcissism".14
174 HWA VOL JUNO

II. THE QUESTION OF EUROCENTRISM WITHIN THE

PHENOMENOLOGICAL MOVEMENT

[T]he critique of ethocentrism - the very condition of

ethology - should be systematically and historically
contemporaneous with the destruction of the history
of [Western] metaphysics. Both belong to a single and
same era.
Jacques Derrida

[T]he conquest of knowledge [for Hernando Cortes]

leads to the conquest of power.
Tzvetan Todorov

Husserl seems to set out on Hegel's path in his judgment of Oriental

thought by affirming the "privileged" position of Western philosophy -
the entelechy of philosophy and humanity based on Greek theoria which
is absent in Oriental thought. Husserl traces the origin of Western phi-
losophy in the "theoretical" attitude called theoria in the thought of Plato
and Aristotle. Devoid of any practical interest, theoria is the fully dis-
interested way of seeing the world. As he put it in his Vienna lecture
of 1935, "[ wlithin European civilization, philosophy has constantly to
exercise its function as one which is archontic for the civilization as a
whole" .15 "Man," he continued,
becomes gripped by the passion of a world-view and world-knowledge that turns away
from all practical interests and, within the closed sphere of its cognitive activity, in the
times devoted to it, strives for and achieves nothing but more theoria. In other words, man
becomes a non-participating spectator, surveyor of the world; he becomes a philoso-
pher; or rather, from this point on his life becomes receptive to motivations which are
possible only in this attitude, motivations for new sorts of goals for thought and methods
through which, finally, philosophy comes to be and he becomes a philosopher. 16

Later Husser! spoke of the best of European humanity bearing within

itself an absolute idea by means of "a universal philosophy which grows
through consistent apodictic insight and supplies its own norms through
an apodictic method" rather than by merely being the "anthropological
types" of China and India. Although the common features between
Oriental thought and Greek philosophy are evident, for Husserl the essen-
tial distinction lies in the fact that the purely theoretical attitude has its
historical origin in Greece, and the perfecting of that attitude has become
the unending task of the successive generations of Western inquirers.
 PHENOMENOLOGY AND INTERCULTURAL TEXTS 175

He was concerned with the crisis only of European sciences and

European humanity. By his celebrated reference to the role of a philoso-
pher as "the civil servant of humanity", Husserl wanted to speak of
Western humanity rather than a Western philosopher becoming the civil
servant of all global humanity.
Since Leibniz, who considered Chinese to be paradigmatic to philo-
sophical language, there has never been, I think, a mood of Oriental
etrangisme in philosophy more favorable than the one engendered by
Heidegger. There is a citing of Heidegger's enthusiastic reaction to the
reading of Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki, whose name has for several decades
been synonymous with Zen (Ch'an) Buddhism in the West: Heidegger
reportedly said that he, too, was trying to say exactly what Suzuki
wrote. Some critics of Heidegger's thought even make a kind of left-
handed (i.e., "sinister") compliment that his Being is really the Tao (Way)
in Chinese Taoism. i?
From the very inception of his deconstructive grammatology, Derrida
has been very much self-conscious of metaphysics as the Western history
of Being. As early as 1966 before the publication in 1967 of his magnum
opus, De La Grammatologie, Derrida considered the critique of ethno-
centrism as contemporaneous with the destruction of the history of
Western metaphysics. i8 At the conclusion of the lecture on "The Ends
of Man" he delivered in 1968 at an international colloquium in New York
on the proposed theme of "Philosophy and Anthropology", he spoke of
"the violent relationship of the whole of the West to its other, whether
a 'linguistic' relationship (where very quickly the question of the limits
of everything leading back to the question of the meaning of Being
arises), or ethnological, economic, political, military, relationships, etc."i9
While Heidegger queried if the Western languages are languages of meta-
physical thinking,20 Derrida in his interview with Richard Kearney spoke
with complete self-assurance that
[ljogocentrism, in its developed philosophical sense, is inextricably linked to the Greek
and European tradition. As I have attempted to demonstrate elsewhere in some detail, logo-
centric philosophy is a specifically Western response to a much larger necessity which
also occurs in the Far East and other cultures, that is, the phonocentric necessity: the
privilege of the voice over writing. The priority of spoken language over written or
silent language stems from the fact that when words are spoken the speaker and the listener
are supposed to be simultaneously present to one another; they are supposed to be the
same, pure unmediated presence. This ideal of perfect self-presence, of the immediate
possession of meaning, is what is expressed by the phonocentric necessity. Writing, on
the other hand, is considered subversive in so far as it creates a spatial and temporal
176 HWA VOL JUNO

distance between the author and audience; writing presupposes the absence of the author
and so we can never be sure exactly what is meant by a written text; it can have many
different meanings as opposed to a single unifying one. But this phonocentric necessity
did not develop into a systematic logocentric metaphysics in any non-European culture.
Logocentrism is a uniquely European phenomenon. 21

Here Derrida assuredly carves out years of research for ethnographers,

linguists, and comparativists to prove or disprove his point. He knows
the working of Ernest Fenollosa - the American philosopher who went
to Japan in the last quarter of the nineteenth century to teach philos-
ophy and is credited with the invention of "etymosinology" - the way
of reading the quiddity of Chinese culture by the etymological and com-
positional tracing of ideograms. Derrida is also able to dabble into a
few ideograms in his 1969 essay called "Dissemination". The evidence
of Derrida's knowledge of Chinese as (ideographic) writing is, however,
still scanty: Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak - the able Indian translator of
Derrida's De la Grammatologie - can hardly be contradicted when she
said: "the east is never seriously studied or deconstructed in the Derridean
text."22
In the phenomenological heritage, however, it is indeed Merleau-Ponty
who squarely and fairly confronts Hegel's "Orientalism" and addresses
directly the question of the Orient and the Occident, of "non-phi-losophy"
and "philosophy" without, I believe, a trace of Western ethnocentrism.
The occasion was the publication in Les Philosophes celebres which
included Buddha and Chuang Tzu in the section called "The Orient and
Philosophy" and for which Merleau-Ponty wrote a brief "Avant-Propos"
that puts forcefully his conception of philosophy as the discovery of
truth in the lateral relationship of one (the West) to the "other" (the
East).23
Merleau-Ponty spoke well of ethnological findings from Marcel Mauss
to Claude Levi-Strauss who in his Inaugural Lecture in 1960 at the
College de France entitled "Chaire d'Anthropologie sociale", paid
moving homage to the "savage mind" of the "primitives", whose "pupil"
and "witness" he is, to the end of preserving the lateral continuity of
all humanity.24 Their ethnological findings, according to Merleau-Ponty
open up the "lateral universal" which is "no longer the overarching
universal of a strictly objective [and, we might add, rationalistic] method"
but which is acquired through ethnological experience and its incessant
testing of the self through the other person and the other person through
the self. It is a question of constructing a general system of reference
 PHENOMENOLOGY AND INTERCULTURAL TEXTS 177

in which the point of view of the native, the point of view of the civi-
lized man, and the mistaken views of each has of the other can all
find a place - that is, of constituting a more comprehensive experience
which becomes in principle accessible to men of a different time and
country.25
For Merleau-Ponty, Oriental thought is both suggestive and instruc-
tive. As he recounts, Hegel viewed Oriental thought in a cavalier fashion.
Oriental thought for Hegel is in a perpetual state of "immature" child-
hood. It is neither philosophy nor religion, since, on the one hand, it is
not open to absolute and universal knowledge, its culture being bound
by its own assumptions, and on the other hand, it does not presuppose
the principle of freedom and individuality. For Hegel, philosophical truth
as absolute and universal knowledge is certified by the Occidental seal
of approval alone. Oriental thought is a philosophical infantilism or pale-
ography in the progression of world history. However, there is, according
to Merleau-Ponty, a fundamental difference between Hegel and Husserl
in their respective views of Oriental thought. Even if Husserl, like Hegel,
retains the privileged position of Western philosophy, "he does so not
by virtue of its right to it - as if its possession of the principles of all
possible cultures were absolutely evident - but in the name of a fact,
and in order to assign a task to it".26 That is to say, for Husserl the
privileged position of Western philosophy is not simply proclaimed but
must be proven and witnessed.
For Merleau-Ponty, moreover, all thought is part of the life-world as
sociocultural reality; all philosophies are anthropological types and none
has any special right to the monopoly of truth. Husserl admitted the value
of "primitive cultures" for an understanding of our own type of the life-
world and the meaning of the life-world as the invariant form of
generality. "If Western thought is what it claims to be," Merleau-Ponty
challenges, "it must prove it by understanding all 'life-worlds' .,,27
Merleau-Ponty further contends that the arrogant path of Hegel that
excludes Oriental thought from absolute and universal knowledge and
draws "a geographical frontier between philosophy and non-philosophy"
also excludes a good part of the Western past. Philosophy as a per-
petual beginning is destined to examine its own idea of truth again and
again because truth is "a treasure scattered about in human life prior to
all philosophy and not divided among doctrines". Thus the life-world -
and its different versions both Occidental and Oriental - is the source
from which truth emerges. If so, Western philosophy is destined to
178 HWA VOL JUNG

reexamine not only its own idea of truth but also related matters and
institutions such as science, economy, politics and - we would add - tech-
nology, Merleau-Ponty writes very poignantly:
[flrom this angle, civilizations lacking our philosophical or economic equipment take
on an instructive value. It is not a matter of going in search of truth or salvation in what
falls short of science or philosophical awareness, or of dragging chunks of mythology
as such into our philosophy, but acquiring - in the presence of these variants of humanity
that we are so far from - a sense of the theoretical and practical problems our institu-
tions are faced with, and of rediscovering the existential field that they were born in
and that their long success has led us to forget. The Orient's "childishness" has some-
thing to teach us, if it were nothing more than the narrowness of our adult ideas. The
relationship between Orient and Occident, like that between child and adult, is not that
of ignorance to knowledge or non-philosophy to philosophy; it is much more subtle,
making room on the part of the Orient for all anticipations and "prematurations". Simply
rallying and subordinating "non-philosophy" to true philosophy will not create the unity
of the human spirit. It already exists in each culture's lateral relationships to the others,
in the echoes one awakes in the other. 28

In this lateral search for truth, nothing should be taken for granted or pre-
judged. It is just here that Merleau-Ponty makes a decisive break with
Hegel. As childhood and adulthood are one inseparable ontological order
of man, so Oriental and Occidental cultures are one integral part of the
life-and-death cycle of humanity everywhere which points to philo-
sophical truth. The idea of ontogenesis and phylogenesis must in brief
be correlated from one culture to another, that is, it must be correlated
both vertically and horizontally so that we may discover the onto-
logical continuity of all humanity. We expect to learn as much from
primitive cultures as from modern ones regarding the condition of
humanity. Merleau-Ponty thus contends that "[t]here is not a philos-
ophy which contains all philosophies; philosophy as a whole is at certain
moments in each philosophy. To take up the celebrated phrase again
"philosophy's center is everywhere and its circumference nowhere.,,29
In the final analysis, for Merleau-Ponty the Orient must also have a place
in the museum of philosophies to celebrate its hitherto "secret, muted
contribution to philosophy". He writes: "Indian and Chinese philosophies
have tried not so much to dominate existence as to be the echo or the
sounding board of our relationship to being. Western philosophy can learn
from them to rediscover the relationship to being and initial option which
gave it birth, and to estimate the possibilities we have shut ourselves
off from in becoming 'Westerners' and perhaps reopen them.,,30
 PHENOMENOLOGY AND INTERCULTURAL TEXTS 179

III. DIATACTICS AS THE POSTMODERN LOGIC

OF ONTOLOGICAL DIFFERENCE

The solution to the problem of identity: Get lost.

Norman O. Brown
For twenty-five centuries, Western knowledge has tried
to look upon the world. It has failed to understand that
the world is not for the beholding. It is for hearing. It
is not legible, but audible.
Jacques Attali

Diatactics is the way of thinking which has existed from Homer to the
Beat1es and from the art of philosophical rhetoric in ancient Greece
to the yin-yang logic of correlation in ancient China. 31 Its synonyms
are dialectic and dialogue. In this essay, diatactics is put forth as the
way of exploring the postmodern condition which is marked by the
eccentricitl2 of difference and multiplicity as webs of interdependent
relationships.
Diatactics is the neologism of Hayden White who intended to replace
it with the dialectic which was chartered in modern Western thought
by Hegel and Marx. By diatactics, White intended to avoid the certain
transcendental overtone of Hegel's thought (idealism, rationalism) on the
one hand and the ideological overtone of Marx (materialism, praxiology)
on the other: diatactics is neither "hypotactical" (conceptually over-
determined) nor "paratactical" (conceptually underdetermined).33 The
term diatactics is further appropriated in this essay as the logic of
correlating two (or more) disparate phenomena as interdependent
and complementary. As it is spelled di altactics, moreover, it arouses
literally the intimate sense of touch (tactility) and broadly the inter-
play of the senses including the incorporation of mind and body. The
Greek logos, as the Hebrew dabhar, was first the way of telling a story
(mythos) before it became Reason (nous). Without tracing further its
Begriffsgeschichte, it is safe to say that the dialectic is perhaps the most
natural and transversal way of human thinking that facilitates the "art
of memory" (of Mnemosyne - Lady Memory - who gave birth to the nine
Muses or daughters) with the aid of music (singing accompanied by a
string instrument) for the sake of transmitting orally cultural messages,
i.e., by way of oral poetry which is the "first language" of humankind. 34
In the following pages, diatactics will be formulated as quintessentially
correlative, incarnate and festive. In so doing, it will be divided into
180 HWA YOL JUNO

five subsections: (1) the incarnate logic of correlation with a focus on

heterology (III. I ), (2) the primacy of the body and embodied thinking,
(3) banality defined as socially disembodied and anesthetic (III.3), (4)
carnival or the life of the festive body as the nonviolent way of decon-
structing the world (111.4), and (5) technology as disembodied and at
best as visual which has serious social implications and consequences
(III.S).

III.I. The ancient Chinese invented the most comprehensive system of

diatactics called the logic of correlation that seeks the archetypical dif-
ference(s) between the two opposites - yin and yang - as complementary.
On the one hand, there is yang. On the other hand, there is yin. Diatactics
is the meeting of the two opposites - yin and yang - as complemen-
tary. This ancient logic of correlation is a horizontal nexus of the multiple
correlations of meanings on a cosmological scale. It is most visible in
constructing an elaborate cosmology in I Ching (the Book of Changes)
as a vectorial, complementary interplay of the yin element (negative:
earth, moon, nature, night, female, left) and the yang element (positive:
heaven, sun, history, day, male, right) as a "double helix".35 To exem-
plify simply: Sinism is the diatactics of Confucianism (Orthodoxy) and
Taoism (Unorthodoxy, Heterodoxy) as complementary. I Ching is the
semiotic nexus of yin symbolized by a broken line (--) and yang sym-
bolized by an unbroken line (-) whose permutation produces 64
hexagrams (26 = 64) - one hexagram as a grouping of six unbroken
lines called ch'ien (creativity) and another hexagram as a grouping of six
broken lines called k'un (receptivity). Most importantly, the Chinese yin-
yang logic of correlation as complementarity, unlike the dialectics of both
Hegel and Marx, has no trap of the ultimate telos. It is a theory of per-
manent "revolution". Maoism or Mao's "politics of modernization"
(Westernization) is a reinterpretation of the Marxian dialectic by way
of his indigenous yin-yang logic: as he himself sloganized it, China
must "historicize" or "nationalize" Marxism. 36 Here Merleau-Ponty's
insight on "ambiguity" (spelled "ambi/guity" or "two" and "aroundness")
as the essence of the "good dialectic" or "hyperdialectic" is helpful. To
be ambiguous (Le., complementary), the dialectic is without synthesis.
The only good dialectic is for Merleau-Ponty a "hyperdialectic" which
"is capable of reaching truth because it envisages without restriction
the plurality of the relationships and what has been called ambiguity".37
The hyperdialectic, that is, the dialectic without synthesis "is not ...
 PHENOMENOLOGY AND INTERCULTURAL TEXTS 181

skepticism, vulgar relativism or the reign of the ineffable. What we reject

or deny is not the idea of surpassing that reassembles, it is the idea
that it results in a new positive, a new position.,,38 The dialectic without
ambiguity effaces or eradicates the difference as identity. Like Merleau-
Ponty's hyperdialectic and Bakhtin's dialogue, the Chinese yin-yang logic
of correlation, which is never simply dyadic, is a logic of ontological
difference which facilitates and promotes the postmodern eccentricity
of difference and multiplicity as webs of complementary, interdepen-
dent relationships. It is the logic of difference as difference as opposed
to the logic of difference as identity.39 Multiplicity is predicated upon
difference, for only difference begets multiplicity: where there is no
difference, there is no multiplicity. In the first place, the basic tenet of
the yin-yang correlation is synchronicity, that is the idea of everything
being connected to everything else in the cosmos. In the second place,
there can be neither beginning nor ending in it. 40 To employ Bakhtin's
language, dialogue is "unfinalizable".41 To presuppose beginning in a
dyadic relationship is to privilege one element over the other. On the
other hand, to posit an ending is to violate the very idea of multiplicity
as webs of interdependent relationships. Unlike the unending yin-yang
correlation, the Hegelian and Marxian dialectic has an ending. In it
synthesis is the identity of identity and nonidentity or the union of union
and nonunion. 42 Thus Gianni Vattimo comes to the percipient con-
clusion that "it is precisely in the Hegelian dialectic that the history
of the notion of identity in the metaphysical tradition [of the West]
is in fact accomplished.,,43 The Hegelian dialectic consummates the
philosophical te/os of, and scales the theoretical height, of modernity.
Marx, too, follows the footsteps of his "great teacher": while the
State is for Hegel the dialectical end of history, communism - the
opposite of Hegel's statism - is for Marx the dialectical end of history
where the proletariat is crowned as universal class. To sum up: to
deconstruct the Hegelian and Marxian dialectic is to reclaim the eccen-
tricity of difference which begets multiplicity as webs of interdependent
relationships.44
The notion of ontological difference is not monopolized by Sinitic
thought alone. On the contrary, it is also a keyword in the philosoph-
ical discourses of Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Levinas, and Derrida. For
Derrida in particular whose grammatology challenges the spectre of
ethnocentrism when writing is identified with the alphabetic writing of
the West (i.e., phonocentrism). He has transformed difference into the
182 HWA VOL JUNO

portmanteau neologism differance that supplements his grammatology

with the "temporalizing" dimensions of deferral. The difference between
"difference" and "differance" cannot be heard in saying but can only
be seen in writing. As the catch phrase of Derrida's grammatology
is "there is nothing outside of the text" (if n 'y a pas de hors-texte),45 post-
Heideggerian "Derridasein" - to use the clever phrase of Maurice
Natanson 46 - sustains its life (Dasein) on a grammatological "pro-
gram(me)" rather than an existential "project." There is an unexpected
gratuity from Derrida's pantextualism: it stretches rather than shrinks
the hermeneutical horizon of what constitutes the text, language, or com-
munication. Samuel Beckett dissolves the facile dichotomy between
speaking and writing when he observes perceptively that in language
as gesture the spoken and the written are one and the same. 47 The semiotic
graphism of gesture may be likened to "reading" the theatrical perfor-
mance of the voice. Gesture is eloquent language, both spoken and written
simultaneously, precisely because it is performative. It grammatologizes
the body's performance. 48 Joyce Carol Oates reads a boxing match as a
dialogue of two skilled bodies, as an ineliminably social text. To quote
her un surpassable, phenomenological description of a boxing match:
Because a boxing match is a story without words, this doesn't mean that it has no text
or no language, that it is somehow "brute", "primitive", "inarticulate", only that the text
is improvised in action; the language of a dialogue between the boxers of the most
refined sort (one might say, as much neurological as psychological: a dialogue of split-
second reflexes) in a joint response to the mysterious will of the audience which is
always that the fight be a worthy one so that the crude paraphernalia of the setting -
ring, lights, ropes, stained canvas, the staring onlookers themselves - be erased by way,
ideally, of transcendent action. Ringside announcers give to the wordless spectacle a
narrative unity, yet boxing as performance is more clearly akin to dance or music than
narrative. 49

What is the logic of difference as the principium of diatactics? It is

both heterologic and heterocentric. It is difference as Unterschied (Unter-
Schied) since diatactics and difference may be spelled as dialtactics
and diJIference. The logic of difference is heterologic (dialogic) because
it promotes the otherness of the Other as difference, whereas the logic
of identity is homo logic (monologic) because the otherness of the Other
(alterity) is reduced to the Same. Without heterology, dialogue degen-
erates into nothing but a set of two monologues, which is to say, it is
not dialogic. Diatactics is also heterocentric rather than egocentric
because the primacy of the Other as alterity is built into its structure.
 PHENOMENOLOGY AND INTERCULTURAL TEXTS 183

To sum up: heterology begets dialogue (polylogy), while homology breeds

monologue (monology). The former marks civility, while the latter
incivility.
Bakhtin is a master of the dialogic. For him, to be or to exist is to
communicate, and to communicate is to dialogize "heteroglossia" which
broadly refers to a heterogeneous, polyphonic diversity of languages, dis-
courses, voices and meanings. 50 His dialogism embodies and expands
Ludwig Feuerbach's discovery of "Thou" as the Copernican revolution
of social thought. Bakhtin's dialogical principle, which Feuerbach himself
hailed as the future principle of philosophy, is mindful of Marx's social
ontology where the self is intrinsically a social text and is filtered through
and reinterpreted by Buber's dialogical philosophy. For Bakhtin, dialo-
gism is to monologism what Copernican heliocentrism is to Ptolemaic
geocentrism - and, we might add from the standpoint of diatactics, what
modernity is to postmodernity.51 In the genealogy of the social for
Bakhtin, neither the "I" nor the "you" alone owns meaning: the "We"
owns or co-owns meaning. The self and the other are active copartici-
pants in, and coproducers of, the "We" or dialogue (i.e., Gemeinschaft-
lichkeit). For him, however, the matter of "addressivity" is the soul of
dialogue and the essence of the logosphere: as he writes, "every word
is directed toward an answer and cannot escape the profound influence
of the answering word that it anticipates .... Primacy belongs to the
response, as the activating principle: it creates the ground for under-
standing, it prepares the ground for an active and engaged understanding.
Understanding comes to fruition only in the response. Understanding and
response are dialectically merged and mutually condition each other; one
is impossible without the other."52
The idea of answerability or responsibility is endemic to the dialog-
ical principle in Buber's ontology of the interhuman and Levinas's
heteronomic meontology as well as Bakhtin's heterology. The German
etymology clearly shows a familial circle of "word" (Wort), "answer"
(Antwort), "to answer" (antworten), and "to be responsible for" (ver-
antworten).53
Buber propounded the ethics of responsibility. According to him, there
are two primary words: the "I-Thou" and the "I-It". The subject I must
be the I of either "I-Thou" or "I-It", or else it is nothing at all: "[t]here
is no I taken in itself, but only the I of the primary word I-Thou and
the I of the primary word 1_lt.,,54 In either case the I is always already
relational or dialogical. In responsibility lies the we as the midterm
184 HWA VOL JUNO

between the isolated I and the no-body (das Man or the "anonymous
Other", to use Heidegger's word). Only in reference to the we does
responsibility constitute the ethical condition of language itself. In
Levinas's thought, which accentuates the primacy of the ethical, sub-
jectivity is affirmed never for itself (Le., never monologic or egocentric)
but for another (pour l' autre) (Le., dialogic or heterological). Subjectivity
comes into being as "heteronomic": "[i]t is my inescapable and incon-
trovertible answerability to the other that makes me an individual
'I' ."55 Thus the notion of responsibility or answerability that coincides
with the ethical is, first and foremost, the confirmation of the I
which is what Levinas calls the "meontological version of subjectivity",
based on the face as its most basic modus. He writes, therefore, that
responsibility is "the essential, primary and fundamental structure of
subjectivity. For I describe subjectivity in ethical terms. Ethics, here,
does not supplement a preceding existential base; the very node of
the subjective is knotted in ethics understood as responsibility.,,56
Responsibility, in short, is the very ethical enrootedness of my being-
in-the-world. The face is the centerpiece of Levinas's heteronomic
meontology.57 It not only establishes the direct contact with the other
but also is solicited by and drawn to the other. The face to face is, Levinas
tells us, "the primordial production of being on which all the possible
collocations of the terms are found.',58 The face is indeed an ethic, a
human ethic: "the epiphany of the face is ethical.',59 As the face speaks
(in silence), speaks uniquely from and for each individual, it is an
ethical discourse. In the final analysis, the face is an ethical hermeneutic
of the body or the human as embodied.
To disidentify60 the other with the self is to acknowledge the radical
alterity of the Other, and vice versa. Since, however, the self and the other
are correlated with, that is, not separated from, each other, diatactics
affirms the ontological sphere of the "between" or "inter" whether it
be the interhuman or intersubjective (e.g., Buber's das Zwischen-
menschliche), the human and the natural (ecology), or the human and
the artificial (e.g., cybernetics). All dialogical thought, therefore, depends
on the "fuzzy" ontological zone of the "between" (inter). As Heidegger
has it, Differenz is Unter-Schied with radial alterity.61 Where there is
no difference, there is no complementarity.
The "conquest of America" is predicated on the inability of European
culture to tolerate or accept non-European otherness, which typifies the
achievement of European modernity.62 Tzvetan Todorov's The Conquest
 PHENOMENOLOGY AND INTERCULTURAL TEXTS 185

of America: The Question of the Other is a unusually telling intercul-

tural case study about the consequences of the Western logic of identity
on the rest of the world or, more specifically, of the Spanish coloniza-
tion, conquest, and destruction of the Other as Mesoamericans. This
Spanish conquest shows the result of the logic of identity without a
heterology: as Hernando Cortes had it, "the conquest of knowledge
leads to the conquest of power.,,63 To put it differently in the language
of the phenomenologist Levinas, it is due to the absence or lack of "the
epiphany of the Other,,64 as difference (both Differenz and Unterschied)
that transcends the territorial imperatives of the self. In the words of
Todorov himself: "[a]t the same time that it was tending to obliterate
the strangeness of the external other, Western civilization found an
interior other. From the classical age to the end of romanticism (i.e., down
to our own day), writers and moralists have continued to discover that
the person is not one - or is even nothing - that Je est un autre, or
simple echo chamber, a hall of mirrors.,,65 Moreover, Todorov contends
that the Spanish conquest of the Mesoamericans is only one, though
exemplary, case of the inhumane consequences of European civiliza-
tion where "logos has conquered mythos; or rather, instead of poly-
morphous discourse, two homogeneous genres have prevailed: science
and everything related to it derive from systematic discourse, while
literature and its avatars practice narrative discourse.,,66 Portugal, France,
England, Holland, Belgium, Italy and Germany all tried later to catch
up with Spain's "Orientalism".
In addition to the ontological sphere of the "between" or "inter", the
other half of the term dialtactics contains the synesthesia of the senses
and the interplay (intertext) of mind and body as well as tactility or the
sense of touch. In diatactics, there can be no Cartesian, metaphysical
dualism between res cogitans and res extensa: there is no Logos (Reason)
that is disembodied. To use the language of Merleau-Ponty, logos is a
"wild" (sauvage) being that is intertwined with the world of the senses.
Not only is language an embodied phenomenon (Sprachleiblichkeit) but
also intersubjectivity (dialogue) is first and foremost intercorporeality.
For Giambattista Vico who is also anti-Cartesian, speech itself stands
in "midway between mind and body" .67 Words, for him, are carried
over from human bodies to signify nature, where the "body language"
animates inanimate things, and from the properties of human bodies to
signify the institutions of mind. 68 For Bakhtin, too, the body plays a
central role in human communication and interaction: his dialogism is,
186 HWA VOL JUNO

according to Katerina Clark and Michael Holquist, "a Slavic version of

Tantrism".69 The body not only "speaks", but man speaks only by means
of the body. As speech "dialogizes" mind and body, every utterance is
a "biotext" as well as a "sociotext".7o For Bakhtin, "the body answers
the world by authorizing it."71
Chinese ideography - calligraphy in particular - is, also, a kinetic
art: it is the human body in graceful motion.72 It goes against the heavy
legacy in Western thought that only the death of the body liberates the
soul, that is, the body (soma) - as the ancient Greek saying has it - is
the tomb (serna) of the soul.73 Ideograms are metaphors of the body itself.
The Chinese revere the art of calligraphy as much as painting: callig-
raphy is the painting of ideograms. Calligraphy is a pantomimic art,
somatography. With Michel Foucault we should note that the calligram
alphabetizes the ideogram and that conversely, we might add, it also
ideogrammatizes the alphabet. 74 In the genealogy of form, calligraphy
is indeed prior to painting. In very significant measure, Chinese ideog-
raphy is a choreography of human gestures and, as a family of signifiers,
"a conversation of gestures" - to use the expression of George Herbert
Mead - which, because of the presence of meaning, cannot be reduced
to a phenomenon of physiology. It may be said that Picasso's "Swimmer"
(1929) and "Acrobat" (1930) are two choreographs of the human body
in fluent and rhythmic motion which are approaching calligraphy. They
are, in short, balletic and frolicking anthropograms. In Chinese writing,
for example, "man" is a sign (Le., the exemplary anthropogram) that
pictures hislher upright posture. R. G. Collingwood observes that every
language is a specialized form of bodily gesture and, as such, that dance
is the mother of all languages. 75 Since the dance is the fluent motion
of the body in time and space, it may rightly be claimed as the "birth-
place" of all visual and auditory arts. We may ask: what is the act of
speaking, as is shown particularly in an African "click tongue" in the
singing of Miriam Makeba, if not a gigue of the mouth and tongue?
Moreover, what is playing piano if it is not the dancing of the fingers?
When Stephane Mallarme characterizes the dance as the "visual embod-
iment of idea" (incorporation visuelle de ['idee), he could be mistaken
for speaking about the essence of Chinese written characters. 76 With
Samuel Beckett we can reiterate that in gesture as language the spoken
and the written are identical. The Far Easterners who use Chinese ideog-
raphy often write their ideograms "in the air" with their fingers· during
the course of a conversation in order to be specific because there are
 PHENOMENOLOGY AND INTERCULTURAL TEXTS 187

so many homonyms. From the standpoint of embodiment, the opposite

of speech is not writing but silence. Not only is silence the karma of
the body, but also - as Bernard P. Dauenhauer puts it - "the embodi-
ment of silence is action.'077 Although he by no means has in mind
Chinese written characters as "silent words", Norman O. Brown speaks
of silence as the body's language. For silence is nothing but the word
activated as flesh. "To recover the world of silence, of symbolism," he
asserts, "is to recover the human body .... The true meanings of words
are bodily meanings, carnal knowledge; and the bodily means are the
unspoken meanings. What is always speaking silent is the body.,,78 To
modify his formula slightly by adding two brackets around the letter m
of the word mother: "silence is the (m)other tongue.,,79 After the fashion
of Susan Sontag, it may be said that silence, that is, the body's language,
is not the "incineration", but a remedy for the "pollution", of language. 80
Lik Kuen Tong formulates the dialectical Tao of language, the Chinese
language, when he writes:
... in the context of Chinese philosophy, ... speech and silence are correlative concepts.
There is no speech without silence, and there is no silence without at least the possi-
bility of speech .... We may say, in the metaphysical terminology of the / Ching, that
speech is the yang of silence, and silence the yin of speech. But "one-yin-one-yang is called
Tao". The alternation of speech and silence is thus an instantiation of the cosmic law of
/, the primordial process of creativity which is the ultimate reality of the universe. 81

It should not escape our attention here that the East Asians whose
language is characterized as the choreography of human gestures have
had throughout their history the extraordinary sense of appreciating
silence as a form of language and communication.

111.2. The body has been and will always be the capital of pleasure
and suffering as well as the nocturnal and forbidden site of sins. The
question of the body, of the body politic (incorporated), unfortunately
has until recently remained in the hinterland of philosophical discourse.
Indeed it has been a philosophy's orphan child. It may be said, there-
fore, that the incorporation of the "low" culture of the body into the
"high" culture of philosophical discourse is downright subversive and
transgressive.
As the body is the site of performance(s) which is linguistic, psy-
choanalytic, aesthetic and ethical, minding the body is a postmodern
occurrence and preoccupation. By attending to the performative life of
the body, carnal hermaneutics82 is meant to be that philosophical disci-
188 HWA YOL JUNO

pline of interpretation which transgresses the limited boundaries of

modernity. It is carnal not only because it attends to the body as flesh
but also because the reading of the body politic itself is a carnal act in
which the word becomes flesh. 83 But for carnal hermeneutics, the post-
modern critique of logocentrism which defines the philosophical legacy
of modernity since Descartes, would be insufficient and incomplete.
Carnal hermeneutics attempts to think with, through, about and of the
body as a cultural institution.
Nietzsche is without doubt the postmodern harbinger and herald of
carnal hermeneutics when by ensnaring the "despisers of the body" he
declares that "body am I entirely, and nothing else; and soul is only a
word for something about the body.,,84 With Dagen Kigen who is the thir-
teenth-century founder of the Saw Zen school, Nietzsche shares the
seminal insight that we are in direct contact with the world both social
and natural only because the body precedes the mind and we humans
are embodied and intercorporeal. 85 It should be emphasized again and
again that only by way of the body are we humans enrooted simulta-
neously in both (spatial) nature and (temporal) culture. "The human body
[corps], as a living body endowed with ipseity, with 'propriety' ," Michel
Haar asserts, "is incontestably immersed into the nonhistorical, yet opens
onto the historical. It is immersed in the nonhistorical because our sensory
or motor possibilities are as ancient as life; it opens onto the historical
because both our acquired habits in respect of particular actions and
our 'spontaneous' gestures are fashioned by cultural models.,,86 On the
other hand, it is also true that the nature of nature or earth as living nature
is never purely natural but is also a historical and social construct. For
one thing, nature neither has nor knows a history, that is to say, the history
of nature is a human construct. By the same token, it is misleading to
say that the social nature of the human is only a "second nature" or
"second birth". It should be said that the body is an "ambiguous" being,
it is a two-dimensional being: one is natural (spatial) and the other his-
torical (temporal). And these two sides of the body are reversible.
"No/body" is purely natural or purely historical.
In the West, Nietzsche's formulation of the primacy of the body points
to the radical reversal and subversion of the modern legacy of the
Cartesian Cog ito which is plagued with dualism, egocentrism, and ocu-
larcentrism. According to the Cartesian idea of ego cogito, the mind is
independent of and alienated from the body and needs nothing more than
itself to exist. The mind as Cog ito erects the privatized, insulated and
 PHENOMENOLOGY AND INTERCULTURAL TEXTS 189

echoless pantheon of "clear and distinct ideas". Cartesian metaphysics

whose epicenter is the Cogito is identifiable with the panoptic hegemony
of vision or ocularcentric metaphysics. As a matter of fact, there is an
identity between the "I" and the "eye". The Cogito is video ergo sum
or the mind's I is the mind's eye. Heidegger contends that the "I" (the
"eye") of the Cog ito as thinking sub/stance (res) becomes the center of
thought from which the "I-viewpoint" and the subjectivism of modern
thought originate: "the subjectivity of the subject is determined by the
'I-ness' [Ichheit] of the 'I think' .,,87 Therefore, according to Heidegger,
the "I-viewpoint" of the Cartesian Cogito highlights the modern age as
"the age of the world picture" (Weltbild).
Elias Canetti continues the ancient Greek tradition of Democritus by
celebrating the beginning of worldly things as the enactment of the
hand(s), that is, the world as "handicraft". He writes:
The hand which scoops up water is the first vessel. The fingers of both hands inter-
twined are the first basket. The rich development of all kinds of intertwining, from the
game of eat's cradle to weaving, seems to me to have its origin here .... It is not
enough that this or that shape should exist in the surrounding world. Before early man
could create it himself, his hands and fingers had to enact it .... It was the fingers forming
a hollow to scoop up water which made the cup real. One could say that objects in our
sense, objects which have value because we ourselves have made them, first existed as
signs made by hands. 88

While Canetti celebrates the "pristine force" of the hand in gesticu-

lation, Heidegger extols thinking itself, which is quintessentially human,
as "handicraft". For Heidegger, the way of thinking as well as of the hand
is not simply "rationalistic" in the traditional sense of Western meta-
physics. Above all, it is mood (Befindlichkeit, Stimmung), not Reason,
by means of which Dasein "finds" or "discloses" itself as "being-in-
the-world" (in-der- Welt-Sein).89 Mood, therefore, is the way of attuning
ourselves to the world. As Heidegger explains, it "is never merely a
way of being determined in our inner being for ourselves. It is above
all a way of being attuned, and letting ourselves be attuned, in this or
that way in mood. Mood is precisely the basic way in which we are
outside ourselves. But that is the way we are essentially and constantly.,,90
Mood or disposition is exemplified in the auditory space of music
which is, for Walter Pater, the "consummate art" because "all art con-
stantly aspires towards the condition of music".91 It was in the opus no.
1, The Birth oj Tragedy,92 that the youthful Nietzsche attempted to make
the world intelligible by way of music and to justify the world itself as
190 HWA VOL JUNG

an aesthetic phenomenon. For him, it is (musical) aesthesis rather than

(visual) theoria that leads to the radical transformation of the world
and the new discovery of reality. Music also creates the tempo of pianis-
simo, as it were, of social relationships. In essence, music is the cultiva-
tion of a "family" or "consociation" (oikos) of sounds: it is intimately
and inherently socializing. As hOren (to hear) is related to ZugehOren
(belonging) and das AngehOrige (belonging to the household), hearing
intimates and signifies the familial or filial nexus of people and things.93
Music creates the magic of a (harmonious) circle. Although we speak
interchangeably of the tonality of color and the coloration of tone, tones
in auditory space interpenetrate each other, whereas colors in visual space
juxtapose each other: the simultaneous sound of two tones is not one
mixed tone, but a chord, whereas blue and yellow in the same space
produce another color, green. Visible words come alive when they are
read and heard aloud, when seeing and hearing create a touch of synes-
thesia. Sound travels in no one direction; it travels in all directions.
Musical tones have no locatable places: they are neither here nor there
but everywhere (i.e., placeless or ubiquitous).94 As such they are all
encompassing, all embracing, all surrounding. For Parmenides, Being
itself is the perfect sphere. There is also a famous medieval definition
of God: Deus est sphaera cujus centrum ubique (God is a sphere of
which the center is everywhere). Like sound, He is encyclical. In the
Renaissance, the Vitruvian figure inscribed in a square and a circle was
a symbol of symphonia between microcosm and macrocosm. Leonardo
da Vinci attained a harmonious smile in La Gioconda by means of the
geometry of a circle, i.e., "by moulding the line of the mouth on the arc
of a circle whose circumference touches the outer corners of both eyes.'095
The way of the hand that makes music is, for Heidegger, also the
way of thinking.96 As he states, "[b]y 'way', or 'how', we mean some-
thing other than manner or mode. 'Way' here means melody, the ring and
tone, which is not just a matter of how the saying sounds. The way or
how of the saying is the tone from which and to which what is said is
attuned.,,97 In What Is Called Thinking? which is, according to the author
himself, the least read among his works, Heidegger's thinking on thinking
a
as handicraft (handy craft) is unsurpassable while observing propos that
the most thought-provoking event of our time is that we are still not
thinking. There occurs in it a passage which is elegant in form and rich
in content on the matter which defies paraphrasing and thus is worth
quoting in full:
 PHENOMENOLOGY AND INTERCULTURAL TEXTS 191

[wje are trying to learn thinking. Perhaps thinking, too, is just something like building
a cabinet. At any rate, it is a craft, a "handicraft". "Craft" literally means the strength
and skill in our hands. The hand is a peculiar thing. In the common view, the hand is
part of our bodily organism. But the hand's essence can never be determined, or explained,
by its being an organ which can grasp. Apes, too, have organs that can grasp, but they
do not have hands. The hand is infinitely different from all grasping organs - paws,
claws, or fangs - different by an abyss of essence. Only a being who can speak, that is,
think, can have hands and can be handy in achieving works of handicraft. But the craft
of the hand is richer than we commonly imagine. The hand does not only grasp and
catch, or push and pull. The hand reaches and extends, receives and welcomes - and
not just things: the hand reaches itself, and receives its own welcome in the hands of others.
The hand holds. The hand carries. The hand designs and signs, presumably because man
is a sign. Two hands fold into one, a gesture meant to carry man into the great oneness.
The hand is all this, and this is handicraft. Everything is rooted here that is commonly
known as handicraft, and commonly we go no further. But the hand's gestures run every-
where through language, in their most perfect purity precisely when man speaks by
being silent. And only when man speaks, does he think - not the other way around, as
metaphysics still believes. Every motion of the hand in every one of its works carries itself
through the element of thinking, every bearing of the hand bears itself in that element.
All the work of the hand is rooted in thinking. Therefore, thinking itself is man's simplest,
and for that reason hardest, handiwork, if it would be accomplished at its proper
time. 98

In Heidegger, therefore, thinking, speaking and the hand which is always

moving while being still, form a filial, pious union. The hand is "the piety
of thinking". As the hand is tactile, so are thinking and speaking and,
above all, all doing. Language, body, and thought are not dissociated from
one another. There is no subordination of speaking to thinking. Only
disembodied thought would subordinate the body to thinking where
thinking of speaking comes before actually speaking, i.e., the wrong-
headedness of "metaphysical" thought. As we walk on two legs, we
also speak and think with two hands. If thought is a handy craft, its
opposite - thoughtlessness - is an infliction of cutaneous alagia, the
condition of feeling no pain in the skin which is out of touch or tune with
the outside world of others both human and nonhuman. The "thinking
hand" or thinking as a handiwork, of which Heidegger speaks, confers
upon us the work of the hand as embodied conduct. As such the hand
is not just an "extension" of the body but is the body incorporated. The
hand is the lived body; it is an organized "corporation". As embodied
conduct, the hand is pan sensory and synesthetic. It activates the workings
of the other senses such as hearing, seeing, saying, and singing. Indeed,
it embodies the sociability of the senses. The hand(s) and thus thinking
are, in sum, the "cathedral" of everything that humans do: it is charac-
192 HWA YOL JUNO

teristic of the human Geschlecht. 99 Commenting on Rodin's "The

Thinker", Rainer Maria Rilke thus writes that "[h]e sits absorbed and
silent, heavy with thought: with all the strength of an acting man he
thinks. His whole body has become head and all the blood in his veins
has become brain."loo There is also the interesting expression in Japanese
(Zen) Buddhism called kufu which is the way of thinking with the whole
body rather than with the head. It is, as the Japanese would say, "thinking
with the abdomen" or with hara as "the vital center" of the human
body, of man. Kufu seeks to "unstuck" the deadlock of the intellect in
the fields of mental and spiritual discipline. The Japanese speak gump-
tiously of hara no aru hito or hara no nai hito, of "man with or without
belly". There are also hara no hiroi hito, and hara no semai hito: "a
man with the broad belly" and "a man with the narrow belly". Hara or
the belly signifies the integrated character or personality of man in the
sense of having the vital unity of mental, psychological, and spiritual
qualities. 101
When he declares in the above-quoted passage that "[t]he hand reaches
and extends, receives, and welcomes - and not just things: the hand
extends itself, and receives its own welcome in the hands of others",
Heidegger is enunciating and propagating the principle of sociability
as elegantly as any professional sociologist. So does Rodin's The Kiss
(1886) embrace the principle of sociability and sublimate, as it were,
the diatactics of yin and yang in humanity. Herein lies, too, our reason
against the definition of philosophy as conceptual abstraction (ab/strac-
tion), against rationalism, against (Western) metaphysics, that is, against
modernism that betrays the Sinitic, ideogrammic Sprachleiblichkeit and
above all Heidegger's solemn meditation on thinking as handicraft.
Moreover, concept as categorial abstraction in isolation from the body
profoundly misunderstands its own etymology because the verb "to
conceive" is, interestingly, associated with "fertility" (or fecundity) of
the body in thinking with language. Etymologically, therefore, reason
as conlception is not only associative but also markedly feminine.
Ironically, it is "conception" rather than "perception" that has a close
affinity with the body, with the language of the body. The logic of
diatactics is programmed as a pharmakon to remedy the underestima-
tion of the body on the one hand and to poison the overestimation of
the intellect (Reason) on the other hand.
Minding the body is also a shifting concern of ecriture feminine. In
the feminine Geschlecht it is manifested as a protest or contestation
 PHENOMENOLOGY AND INTERCULTURAL TEXTS 193

against phallocentrism or the one-sided hegemony of the yang over the

yin element. The feminine protest dec enters masculine identity and
accents on the eccentricity of (sexual) difference, on the ontoLogicaL
difference of the feminine GeschLecht as tactophilic rather than scop-
tophilic. As a subversion of identity, it is both anti-ocularcentric and
anti-androcentric. The feminine way embodies the communal sense of
intimacy by way of touch, contact, proximity, consociation, and "soft"
knowledge.
Gynesis - to appropriate the neologism of Alice A. Jardine - signi-
fies the feminine genesis of things and the valorization of the feminine. 102
In so doing, it erases the false dichotomy between the mind (con/ception)
and the body (per/ception) which may be called a "patriarchal bifurca-
tion". Gynesis has surfaced, I think, as a keyword in postmodern thinking
that is capable of redefining the human as a carnal being-in-the-world.
It is a paradigmatic shifter in the handling of postmodern philosophical
discourse. Elizabeth Sewell observes with discernment:
the fertility of the body cooperates in the processes of thinking with language. There
remains a great unresolved problem behind this, as behind the use of such words as "fertile"
or "pregnant" of ideas, of the verb "to conceive" in intellectual terms. To relegate these
simply to metaphor is to miss the whole point, for they are clues to something that is going
on in this field of myth we are exploring. Grammar maintains that the body is operative
there as much as the mind. The human organism thinks as a whole, and our division of
it into mind and body is the result of overemphasis on logic and intellect in near isola-
tion which has led [or, better, misled] us into so one-sided a view of the activity of thought,
so gross an underestimation of the body's forms of thought and knowledge. 103

The "soft" wisdom of the feminine body celebrates the filial relation-
ship between mind's "conception" and the body's "perception". One
without being fertilized by the other impregnates no meaning.
Gynesis as jouissance (enjoyment) - the "feminine Imaginary" in a
Lacanian sense - signifies not only the aesthetic appreciation of the body
politic or things carnal but also - as jouissance is also spelled play-
fully and homonymously ''j'oui's sens" ("I hear meaning") - a resistance
to and the subversion of ocularcentrism which is implicated in the
Cartesian Cog ito as an epistemological pursuit of "clear and distinct
ideas". To repeat: ocularcentrism is androcentric. Jouissance auscul-
tates the voice of the feminine with a difference, it is the bliss or even
eroticism of hearing and voicing but not of seeing. Gynesis as jouissance
promises to show vision's ultimate cuL-de-sac. If, as Mikhail Bakhtin
intimates, ears are naturally anti-official, feminine jouissance is rightly
194 HWA YOL JUNG

a revolt against and an attempt to defenestrate the scoptophilic regime

of phallocentrism.
The (feminine) body as social discourse confronts and subverts
directly the established tradition of the "mind's eye". There is no body,
I submit, who is more insinuating and persuasive than Luce Irigaray
on the question of the body politic as jouissance. For her, the advocacy
of the feminine is an inter/ruption of the enduring scopic regimes of
Western philosophy including the Cartesian Cogito in modernity. She
writes forcefully:

Investment in the look is not privileged in women as in men. More than the other senses,
the eye objectifies and masters. It sets as a distance, maintains the distance. In our
culture, the predominance of the look over smell, taste, touch, hearing, has brought about
an impoverishment of bodily relations .... The moment the look dominates, the body
loses its materiality.l04

Many feminists today, moreover, hold not only that women speak with
a "different voice" but also that femininity is allied with the sense of
touch more closely than that of sight. There is indeed a stark contrast
or opposition between the voyeurism of the "mind's seeing" (eye or I)
and the communal intimacy and contact of the "body's touch". They
contend that the aristocracy of vision is a peculiarly phallocentric, patri-
archal, and matrophobic institution and the logic of voyeurism is uniquely
a male logic. The "participatory" sense of touch valorizes the feminine,
whereas "spectatorial" vision glorifies the masculine. To feminize the
body politic, therefore, is to accent the sense of touch and to decenter
or de-panopticize the spectre of vision in our thinking. By so doing,
we loosen up the global scopic grip on, and bring the communal sense
of intimacy to, the oversighted or overtelevised world. Gynesis, when
translated into tactility, intervenes and fleshes out masculine ocularcen-
trism. And that makes all the difference.

111.3. Adolf Eichmann, who can both see and hear, epitomizes thought-
lessness, social and moral anesthesia, or a kind of the social cutaneous
alagia, while Helen Keller exemplifies thoughtfulness by way of the sense
of touch that compensates visual and auditory deficiencies. lOs Hannah
Arendt's Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evi/ 106 is
a most telling ethical tractatus of our time. It was originally meant to
be a reportage of Eichmann's trial in Jerusalem in 1961 which points
to the grave immoral consequences of the conduct of men and women
 PHENOMENOLOGY AND INTERCULTURAL TEXTS 195

defined in terms of identity without difference, without the radical alterity

of the other as a single individual or a collectivity, i.e., banality. For
Arendt, "thoughtlessness" underlies banality which shuns critical judg-
ments and shirks individual responsibility. Eichmann, for example,
mistakenly identifies his blind obedience to authority, following "orders"
from his superiors, with Kant's ethics of "duty" grounded in the indi-
vidual conscience and critical faculties. Her recollection of Eichmann's
"banality of evil" a decade later is worth recasting in some length:
[s]ome years ago, reporting the trial of Eichmann in Jerusalem. I spoke of "the banality
of evil" and meant with this no theory or doctrine but something quite factual, the phe-
nomenon of evil deeds, committed on a gigantic scale, which could not be traced to any
particularity of wickedness, pathology, or ideological conviction in the doer, whose only
personal distinction was a perhaps extraordinary shallowness. However monstrous the
deeds were, the doer was neither monstrous nor demonic, and the only specific charac-
teristic one could detect in his past as well as in his behavior during the trial and the
preceding police examination was something entirely negative: it was not stupidity but
a curious, quite authentic inability to think. He functioned in the role of prominent war
criminal as well as he had under the Nazi regime; he had not the slightest difficulty in
accepting an entirely different set of rules. He knew that what he had once considered
his duty was now called a crime, and he accepted this new code of judgment as though
it were nothing but another language rule. To his rather limited supply of stock phrases
he had added a few new ones, and he was utterly helpless only when he was confronted
with a situation to which none of them would apply, as in the most grotesque instance
when he had to make a speech under the gallows and was forced to rely on cliches used
in funeral oratory which were inapplicable in his case because he was not the survivor.
Considering what his last words should be in case of a death sentence, which he had
expected all along, this simple fact had not occurred to him, just as inconsistencies and
flagrant contradictions in examination and cross-examinations during the trial had not
bothered him. Cliches, stock phases, adherence to conventional, standardized codes of
expression and conduct have the socially recognized function of protecting us against
reality, that is, against the claim on our thinking attention which all events and facts arouse
by virtue of their existence. If we were responsive to this claim all the time, we would
soon be exhausted; the difference in Eichmann was only that he clearly knew of no such
claim at all. 107

What Arendt demands here is not our ability to theorize abstractly or

think in abstraction but our ability to reason morally on the basis of
Socratic sensus communis, Aristotelian phronesis or Kantian practical
judgment as the innate abode of man's humanity. It is thinking as a natural
necessity of human life which is a critical faculty of every man or woman
who belongs to the species called humans. For Arendt, Eichmann was
"neither perverted nor sadistic" but rather "terribly and terrifyingly
normal",108 i.e., unmistakably banal. As she describes laconically,
196 HWA YOL JUNG

Eichmann's inability to think is tantamount to his inability to think "from

the standpoint of somebody else", that is, his inability to recognize the
radical alterity of the other as human. It is the supreme mark of inci-
vility and inhumanity. Indeed, Eichmann lost the sense of touch with
the social world. "No communication," writes Arendt, "was possible with
him, not because he lied but because he was surrounded by the most
reliable of all safeguards against the words and the presence of others,
and hence against reality as sUCh."I09

I1I.4. The body is not only the material condition of the soul's exis-
tence but also the window, as it were, through which one peeps into
the inner depth of one's soul - be it suffering, sorrow, or joy. There is
indeed an inexorable diatactics between man's interiority and exteri-
ority. For this very reason, the body's exteriority as play text is manifested
in the carnival that is characteristic of man as homo ludens.
Carnival is, for its Latin name sake (carne/vale), an incarnation of
the festive body. It is the body politic par excellence which is a cele-
bration of festive bodies whose space is filled always with the extravagant
display of vestemes and gustemes. Carnival is a parley of people as
players, it is specular pageantry. We shall give the special name poli-
textuality to carnival life - the kind of a new genre that hybridizes a
literary and a political genre. The most distinguishing characteristic of
carnival as politextuality is that it is "heresiarchical" in that it means
to be subversive or metamorphic from the ground up and intends to
preserve and perpetuate intersubjective dialogue at the same time.
Carnivalization breaks up the colorless and prosaic monopoly of the
established order. It dismantles the hierarchical by freely blending "the
profane and the sacred, the lower and the higher, the spiritual and the
material" .110 According to the philosophic playwright Luigi Pirandello,
the Latin humor designates "a physical substance in the form of fluid,
liquid, humidity or moisture" and humans are said to have four "humors"
- blood, bile, phlegm, and melancholy" .111 And the humorist sees the
world not exactly in the nude but in "shirt sleeves". For Pirandello, the
main thrust of humor lies in edifying "the feeling of the opposite"
(negativa) in what we do and think. By splitting every affirmation into
a negation, humor triggers and engenders the "spontaneous birth"
(ingegno) of things. To put it more politically, humor as negativa
uncloaks, unmasks, or exposes the "dirty bottom" of the officialdom
and established regime.
 PHENOMENOLOGY AND INTERCULTURAL TEXTS 197

Carnival is the ludic form of subversion. It is playfully, that is, non-

violently subversive as it intends both to destroy a "real" world and to
construct a "possible" world at the same time: it indeed nonviolently
deconstructs the world. Clowning decrowns the hierarchical. Carnival
as clowning is, as Eugene Goodheart - for whom deconstruction is no
term of endearment - puts it succinctly, "an assault on stable hierarchical
notions or reality".112 To return once again to the body politic of Bakhtin
as our guide which exhibits certain Brueghelian and Rabelaisian themes,
to carnivalize the world is to dialogize it: in Bakhtin's body politic car-
nivalization and dialogization go hand in hand. What freeplay is to
Derrida's deconstructionism,l13 the carnivalesque is to Bakhtin's dialo-
gismo As a protest against the mono logic "misrule" of the officialdom,
carnival life transgresses and transforms the canonical order of truth
and the official order of reality. As Bakhtin writes, carnival life
is past millennia's way of sensing the world as one great communal performance. This
sense of the world, liberating one from fear, bringing the world maximally close to a person
and bringing one person maximally close to another (everything is drawn into the zone
of free familiar contact), with its joy at change and its joyful relativity, is opposed to
that one-sided and gloomy official seriousness which is dogmatic and hostile to evalua-
tion and change, which seeks to absolutize a given condition of existence or a given
social order. From precisely that sort of seriousness did the carnival sense of the world
liberate man. But there is not a grain of nihilism in it, nor a grain of empty frivolity or
vulgar bohemian individualism. 114

Carnival is in brief a celebration of dialogue and community, it liber-

ates people and brings them together and compels them to participate
in communal living.
Unlike revolution which is a violent form of subversion, however,
carnival as dialogic is the playful body in rebellion. As Bakhtin insists,
the most distinguishing characteristic of violence is that it knows no
laughter. 1I5 In both intention and result, subversion by violence brings
death to dialogue whose epiphany is the Other. For it there is no other
alternative because it intends to exterminate the opposition. In his
argument against Arthur Koestler, in Humanism and Terror, Maurice
Merleau-Ponty once defended violence uncompromisingly by saying that
inasmuch as we are carnal beings, we are destined to violence. As
violence is the common origin of all political regimes, insisted Merleau-
Ponty, not only do "life, discussion and political choice occur only against
a background of violence", but also abstention from violence toward those
who are violent is to become their accomplice. 1l6 In his later work
198 HWA YOL JUNO

Adventures of the Dialectic, however, Merleau-Ponty reversed himself

and renounced revolutionary dialectics. He uncovers an insidious
dilemma or contradiction inherent in the historical and political logic
of revolution when he writes:
[r]evolution that becomes institution is already decadent if it believes itself to be accom-
plished. In other words, in a concrete conception of history, where ideas are nothing
more than stages of the social dynamic, all progress is ambiguous because, acquired in
a crisis situation, it creates a condition from which emerge problems that go beyond it
.... There is no dialectic without opposition or freedom, and in a revolution opposi-
tion and freedom do not last for long. It is no accident that all known revolutions have
degenerated: it is because as established regimes they can never be what they were as
movements; precisely because it succeeded and ended up as an institution, the historical
movement is no longer itself: it "betrays" and "disfigures" itself in accomplishing itself.
Revolutions are true as movements and false as regimes. ll7

Nonviolence is not merely a reaction to violence, but it asserts itself

as the alternative to the making of history with the intent to preserve
and perpetuate intersubjective dialogue in humanity. Thus carnival's
playtext decisively takes the side of Albert Camus's "rebel" or man in
revolt who repudiates calculated violence and eventually the totalitarian
outcome of dialectical violence that ends what Merleau-Ponty calls
freedom. For rebellion is "a protest against death" as well as against
tyranny, brutality, terror, and servitude. Camus writes:
[d]ialogue on the level of mankind is less costly than the gospel preached by totalitarian
regimes in the form of monologue dictated from the top of a lonely mountain. On the stage
as in reality, the monologue precedes death. Every rebel, solely by the movement that
sets him in opposition to the oppressor, therefore pleads for life, undertakes to struggle
against servitude, falsehood, and terror, and affirms, in a flash, that these three afflic-
tions are the cause of silence between men, that they obscure them from one another
and prevent them from rediscovering themselves in the only value that can save them from
nihilism - the long complicity of men at grips with their destiny.u s

The true rebel is the one who senses and cultivates his obligation to
human solidarity with no intention of obliterating the Other. His rebel-
lion or nonviolent subversion stands tall in "midway" between silence
and murder in refusing to accept being what he/she is. The rebel will-
ingly acknowledges the dialogical interplay between the ethical principle
of culpability and the epistemological principle of fallibility, whereas
the revolutionary thrives on the monologic absoluteness of inculpability
and infallibility however noble hislher cause may be. Epistemological
dogmatism and moral absolutism have no place in carnival life or the life
of the festive body. They contradict and betray the dialogical principle
 PHENOMENOLOGY AND INTERCULTURAL TEXTS 199

that chooses midway between silence and murder while recognizing

the ever-present, porous moment and zone of ambiguity that resides in
between complete doubt and absolute certainty.

III.S. Marshall McLuhan, who is an apostle of electronic technology,

seems to have been charmed, though mistakenly, by Heidegger's way
of thinking as handicraft which, according to McLuhan, is capable of
making the world "a global village". Unfortunately, however, McLuhan's
postmodernist critique of printing technology is a visualist metaphysics
in disguise and thus is stained by modernism. McLuhan's The Gutenberg
Galaxy: The Making oJTypographic Man 1l9 is a well-tuned postmodernist
critique of the modern typographic culture of the West whose meta-
physician is Descartes. McLuhan writes elsewhere that "[t]he alphabet,
when pushed to a high degree of abstract visual intensity becomes typog-
raphy.,,120 This long typographic era is characterized by the preeminence
of the space-binding power of the eye over the time-binding power of
the ear. The advent of electronic technology - especially television - that
synesthesizes the human sensorium signals the death of the typographic
culture of the eye. For McLuhan, interestingly, the Chinese ideogram
symbolizes a vortex of corporate energy - we might call it ch 'i in Chinese
and ki in Japanese - and arouses the sense of touch rather than that of
sight. He reportedly said that the ideal form of his magnum opus, The
Gutenberg Galaxy, should have been an ideogram or, better, a mosaic
galaxy of ideograms. In reversing typographic visualist culture, McLuhan
associates himself with the side of Heidegger who allegedly surfboards
on the electronic wave as opposed to Descartes who rode on the mechan-
ical wave.
All electronic technology, according to McLuhan, is tactile because
electricity itself is: "[e]lectricity offers a means of getting in touch with
every fact of being at once, like the brain itself. Electricity is only inci-
dentally visual and auditory; it is primarily tactile.,,121 As such electricity
not only has no "point of view" but is also synesthetic. Ultimately, elec-
tronic technology culminates in "cybernation" which Lyotard, too, hails
as an element of "the postmodern condition". For McLuhan, cyberna-
tion restores the synesthetic interplay of the senses; tactility promises
to confer upon a "global embrace" and "a perpetuity of collective
harmony and peace". "The ecumenical movement," McLuhan declares,
"is synonymous with electronic technology.,,122 The quintessential line in
his advocacy of electronic technology for mass communication is: the
200 HWA VOL JUNG

medium is the message. For him, "the 'content' of a medium is like the
juicy piece of meat carried by the burglar to distract the watchdog of
the mind".123 What would be, we might ask, the content of the human
mind and, accordingly, human thinking itself if it is not stuffed with
enframed images "processed" by technology?
McLuhan's metaphorical attribution of tactility to television may be
rhetorically and psychologically evocative and appealing, but it is con-
ceptually impoverishing, uniformative, and misleading. It is a con/fusion
rather than a configuration that discloses the resemblance of dissimi-
lars. In his case, the use of the metaphor "tactility" becomes a sort of
conceptual "moonlighting" or "bootlegging": it is more concealing than
revealing. McLuhan's psychological evocation conceals a fundamental
confusion between two ontological categories: the human and the tech-
nological. With him we agree that the sense of touch is intimate and
associative and that the intensification of visualism diminishes the role
of touch and hearing in modern culture resulting in the anesthetic society
of specialized and psychically impoverished individuals in a mechanistic,
Newtonian world. Moreover, the metaphysical basis of cybernetics is not
the synesthetic flow of electricity but the disembodied and anesthetic
Cogito whose function is seen as collecting and managing knowledge
as discrete bits of information.
From the vantage point of Heidegger's thought, television, which
is, for its name sake, preeminently visual (i.e., teleNISION) rather than
tactile, confirms the modern age as the age of the "world picture"
(Weltbild).124 The visualism of television is nothing but an extension
of the Cartesian Cogito as the metaphysical alliance of the subjective
("I") and the visual ("eye") which seeks cognition as "clear and distinct
ideas". It is, in essence, caught in the logic of identity - "identity" play-
fully spelled as "i(eye)dentity" which looks after "clarity" rather than
"ambiguity" and honours the aristocracy of vision or sight. Sight, too,
may be spelled - playfully again - as "si(eye)ght" with a capital I
in which the "I" is identified with the "eye". Fundamentally, there-
fore, the blind spot of and in visualism is narcissism, that is, social
amnesia. 125
The world viewed as picture in television is an aspect (idea) of what
Heidegger calls "enframing" (Gestell). The essence of technology,
according to him, is Ge-Stell which, as "to set in place" (stellen) , is
eminently spatial and visual. Television, too, is part of this enframing
in the technological Weltanschauung of the modern age. "The funda-
 PHENOMENOLOGY AND INTERCULTURAL TEXTS 201

mental event of the modern age," Heidegger writes, "is the conquest
of the world as picture. The world 'picture' [Bild] now means the struc-
tured image [Gebild] that is the creature of man's producing which
represents and sets before."126 As the essence of technology as enframing
is re-presenting or re-producing, television too re-presents as picture or
structured image the original presence of the world as it is. By repre-
senting, the presence of enframing signifies the absence of the world it
reproduces. Here Ludwig Wittgenstein's distinction between "seeing" and
"seeing as" is instructive and helpful: for him, there is a "categorial
difference" between seeing a real object and seeing a picture object of
an image: the former is fully experienced and thought, whereas the
latter is only half experienced and half thought. 127 Therefore, the idea
of representation involves a double reduction in that not only is the
sensorium reduced to vision but also vision is reduced to mirroring or
copying images. 128
Television viewing or watching belongs to the category of "seeing
as" or seeing a picture-object. As the confusion between seeing a real
object and seeing a picture-object is a categorial mistake, so is the con-
fusion between the human and the technological in terms of tactility as
a connecting metaphor - cybernetics notwithstanding. In short, visual
images are the stuff of television as a "reproducing" medium of com-
munication. To capture the real by means of an anthology of images is
forever a Sisyphean task. Here we would be remiss if we fail to mention
Susan Sontag's superb account of the identity between camera and
chimera in On Photography.129 In reference to photography as a
visual pantheon, she speaks of image as a semblance of knowledge, a
substraction of reality, and an appearance of participation. According
to her, "[a] photograph is pseudo-presence and a token of absence."130
The American Indians understand this well when they do not allow
their kiva to be photographed because photography desacralizes it.
Photography's immobility is its virtue, while the mobility of images as
the imitation of the real is television's vice - and its danger. While
retaining photography's essence of visualism, television - unlike pho-
tography - is not conducive to pensiveness because in it there is no
retardation of vision. As color television is the artificial simulation of
fluorescent light and emanates from the pallets of red, blue, and green,
the assault of its "ray gun" on the human mind is far more intense, aggres-
sive and thus paralyzing than that of photography.131 We can conclude,
therefore, that despite himself and his postmodernist intention, McLuhan
202 HWA YOL JUNO

perpetuates, rather than overcomes the modernist limits of, the Cartesian
legacy of visual and narcissistic metaphysics.
We have indeed become disenchanted with the world whose dominant
prose is written in the language of technology and with the modern -
or, some would say, postmodern - condition of humanity which is
enframed by the hegemony of technology including the cybernation of
knowledge and the computerization of society. We are all wired to, and
became hostages of, the network of technology from whose "channeled
existence" there is no exit in sight. Ours is the epoch when technology
is totalizing, one-dimensional, and planetary (or Westernized) - that is,
undiatactical - when its fundamental project threatens to create a vast
necropolis for the entire earth, and when it claims to have invented
our "second self" whose "soul" may soon become, if it has not
already become, imprisoned behind the invisible walls of a gigantic
Panopticon.
In this connection, the British utilitarian Jeremy Bentham's panvisu-
alism should not be overlooked because it has enormous social and
political implications. It was a meticulous, architectural plan in the
last quarter of the eighteenth century, of the Enlightenment, for the
Panopticon or the Inspection House. 132 By panvisualism, we mean
Bentham's new architectural principle of constructing an establishment
in which anyone may be "kept under inspection" with an alI-encom-
passing plan to manage prisons, factories, sanitaria, hospitals, and
schools. As it is a panvisual, Cartesian plot, it serves as a parable for
the technologization (i.e., Westernization) of the entire globe.
The Panopticon is literally the prison-house of visualism and a pan-
visualist technique. Its prisoners in perpetual solitude in the "islands"
of cells protractedly partitioned by impregnable walls may be likened
to the solitary confinement of the Cogito or epistemological subject as
bodiless substance. Moreover, the Panopticon epitomizes the inextricable
link between visualism and the iron-clad network of what Michel
Foucault calls "disciplinary technologies".133 It is, as the term itself
implies, the all-encompassing or -encircling prison-house of visualism
whose surveillance mechanism or "discipline principle" puts to use the
Cartesian oracle of clarity and certainty: it is the interlocking of the
life in perpetual solitude of the "hypnotized" prisoner and the mechanism
of total control. Inspection is control. In the very words of Bentham
himself: "[s]olitude thus applied, especially if accompanied with darkness
and low diet, is torture in effect, without being obnoxious to the name.,,134
 PHENOMENOLOGY AND INTERCULTURAL TEXTS 203

The grand design of the Cartesian Cogito intends to make philosophy

as the prima philosphia a peculiarly panoptic institution. Indeed,
Cartesianism is the panopticism par excellence in which absolute knowl-
edge or knowledge with absolute certainty is a private possession of
and by sight. The keyword of the Panopticon principle is inspection -
the double idea of perpetual vision and vigilance in which the prisoner
is never out of the inspector's sight: as the anthropologist Marshall
Sahlins puts it elegantly, albeit in different context, "[t]he eye is the
symbolic site of subjection."135 The idea of inspection is regarded as
control by the omnipotent vigilance of "seeing without being seen" in
which seeing and being seen are undiatactically identified. To put it
slightly differently, the inspector who controls has "the unbounded faculty
[and physical facility] of seeing without being seen" and the prisoner
is "awed to silence by an invisible eye" .136 Without doubt there is in
the Panopticon the undiatactical welding of visibility and invisibility, for,
as Foucault put it, it is "a machine for dissociating the seelbeing seen
dyad; in the peripheric ring, one is totally seen, without ever seeing; in
the central tower, one sees everything without ever being seen."137 In a
prison of the seen who cannot "see", a one-eyed inspector is king. 138
Moreover, panopticism is a network of the spectacular manifestations
of discipline as the coercive exercise of power in which "the vigilance
of the intersecting gazes was soon to render useless both the eagle and
the sun".139 In essence, visibility is a technocratic "trap", whereas invisi-
bility is "a guarantee of order". The seeing inspector and the seen prisoner
- not unlike Hegel's master-slave "dialectic" and Todorov's description
of the relation between the Spanish conquistador and the Mesoamerican
- form an undialogical grid although one cannot function without the
other. As an interplay of the force of light and the force of darkness,
the invisible eye of the inspector is the visible "I" of the prisoner. The
"optic/ized" or "objectiv/ized" prisoner in the Panopticon is a passive
and powerless onlooker who is the de-subjectivized object of observa-
tion - that object which is just like the Mesoamerican blindly victimized
by the Spanish conquistador. No wonder, etymologically speaking, there
is an affinity between the "optical" and the "objective". In sum,
Bentham's Panopticon is the architectural parable of modern man as
the passive "functionary" of the technocratic network. It is also a
reminder that we are prisoners of our own making or architectural tech-
nique. In its brightest moment, the Enlightenment is at best a Pyrrhic
victory because, as Foucault points out, it invented the disenchanting
204 HWA VOL JUNO

system of discipline while discovering the brilliant principle of liberty:

as the cliche goes, there is a silver lining around every cloud.
The Enlightenment also invented the Promethean ethos of modern-
ization called progress which is mounted on the fortune wheels of science
and technology. Francis Bacon steered the course of modernization with
the compelling ideology of utility (utilitas) that identified knowledge with
power (Le., scientia et potentia in idem coincidunt).l40 In the course of
modernization, industrialization has been the most practical and visible
effect of the "inquisition" and "conquest" of nature by the power of
knowledge translated into technology. The power of science and tech-
nology has now been extended to the domination by man of man beyond
that of nature. Technology (Technik), therefore, is for Heidegger - as
for Bergson before him - the destiny of Western rationality and the
culmination of Western metaphysics, which permeates every sphere of
modern life. He writes:
[wJhat now is, is marked by the dominance of the active nature of modern technology.
This dominance is already presenting itself in all areas of life, by various identifiable traits
such as functionalization, systematic improvement, automation, bureaucratization, com-
munications. Just as we call the idea of living things biology, just so the presentation
and full articulation of all beings, dominated as they now are everywhere by the nature
of the technical, may be called technology. The expression may serve as a term for the
metaphysics of the atomic age. Viewed from the present and drawn from our insight
into the present, the step back out of metaphysics into the essential nature of meta-
physics is the step out of technology and technological description and interpretation of
the age, into the essence of modern technology which is still to be thought. 141

Indeed, our dilemma lies in the fact that man is human because he is tech-
nological in the most basic sense of the term. And yet, on the other
hand, man's very physical survival hangs in the balance because of the
overproduction and superabundance of his own artifacts. Now, man has
become the victim of his own creation: he has finally succeeded in
manufacturing his own death.
Technological disembodiment spawns banality. Arendt's idea of
the banality of evil may very well be applied to the unintended "evil"
consequences of technology. First of all, the possibility of moral think-
ing depends on the notion that we are responsible agents. To be
responsible means to choose one meaning or value over others in the
configuration of both ends and means. Second, the ethics of responsi-
bility, which Arendt has so eloquently shown to be absent in Eichmann,
must not be equated with an ethics of pure intention and principles
 PHENOMENOLOGY AND INTERCULTURAL TEXTS 205

alone (i.e., ethicism). Nor should it be confused with an ethics of con-

sequences with disregard for intention and principles. One without the
other is insufficient because it is one-sided. We do not have to go as
far as to invoke the uncommon jurisprudential principle that technology
is guilty until proven innocent! The banality of evil points to the "guilt"
or liability of technology despite its allegedly "innocent", "benign", or
"good" intention to serve humanity's well-being. Quite often, good inten-
tions produce unexpectedly bad consequences for which we ought to
be responsible. Therefore, we should examine closely the evil of banality
in the rationality of technology in creating one-dimensional man and
society at the expense of the pluralism of men and women. 142
Now more than ever before, therefore, the Baconian conception of
technology as instrumentum does not tell the whole truth about tech-
nology because technology has become end itself rather than means.
As Heidegger observes incisively, the essence of technology is no longer
technological. To say that the essence of technology is not technolog-
ical is to say that technology as instrumentum has been transformed
into a teleology. Technology is not merely the application of mathematical
and physical sciences to praxis but is rather a praxis itself which char-
acterizes what Heidegger calls "the active nature of modern technology".
It has truly become a Weltanschauung - a "world-vision" which "objec-
tifies" everything and whose "functionary" man himself has become.
As such the traditional rationale of technology as instrumentum is
obsolete. Unfortunately, nevertheless, we continue to justify the "end"
of technology in terms of this outmoded idea of instrumental reason.
In so doing, we still view technology as a morally neutral and impotent
instrument. In today's world which is dominated by technology, this
anachronism constitutes the poverty of moral thinking par excellence -
the evil of banality, as it were. This lag in moral thinking shows that
the advancement of technology is no guarantee for that of moral thinking.
Langdon Winner calls this happening of autonomous technology "reverse
adaptation" in which "technical systems become severed from the ends
originally set for them and, in effect, reprogram themselves and their
environments to suit the special condition of their own operation. The
artificial slave gradually subverts the rule of its master."143 In this process,
the rationality of human action itself is reduced to the calculation of
the most efficient means of achieving its goals. No wonder efficiency
becomes the norm of everything we do and think in the technocratic
society. When we become "automated" and "cybernated", that is, when
206 HWA VOL JUNG

we cease to be responsible agents, history will indeed be a nightmare

from which there is no awakening. This is what we mean by technology
without a handle in spite of what McLuhan says about the "cool" medium
of electronic technology as tactile and embracing.
Heidegger's conception of "meditative thinking" (besinnliches Den-
ken) seems to fulfill Friedrich Dessauer's project of the "philosophy of
technology" as a "fourth" critique added to Kant's three critiques of "pure
reason" (knowledge), "practical reason" (moral conduct) and "judgment"
(aesthetics).144 Heidegger's "meditative thinking" as the critique of the
technological is, I suggest, far more radical in that it is not just an addition
to the other critiques but is inclusive of them and goes beyond them.
Insofar as it goes beyond and comes after the "calculative thinking"
(rechnendes Denken) of modernity, it is a postmodern program: indeed
it is truly a "postparadigm" in the way Thomas S. Kuhn defines
"paradigm". In the backdrop of Friedrich Schiller's "de sacralization of
nature" (Entogotterung der Natur) and Weber's "disenchantment of
the world" (Entzauberung der Welt), Heidegger's "meditative thinking"
that deconstructs the technological and thus the human condition in
modernity is the hope of all humanity on the way toward the reen-
chantment of the world. 145 Is "meditative thinking" or, for that matter,
Gelassenheit a retreat from politics or political praxis? I think not. On
the contrary, it is a deep critique of politics precisely because in our
age, the modern age of technology, politics is reduced to "image making"
and the management of "public relations".

IV. THE HERMENEUTICS OF DIALOGUE AS THE POSTMODERN

WAY OF COMPOSING INTERCULTURAL TEXTS

[EJvery quotation is ... an interpretation

Georg Luk!1cs

The loss of memory is a transcendental condition for

science. All objectification [or reification, Verding-
lichung J is a forgetting.
Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno

Anthropology as the logos (science) of man is an invention of the West,

and its rationality, its telos was inseparably tied to Western logocentrism:
it was invented with the specific view of investigating the societies of
 PHENOMENOLOGY AND INTERCULTURAL TEXTS 207

the peoples in the non-European world which are deemed "primitive"

rather than "civilized". Ethnography as the "field research" of anthro-
pology thrived particularly in the areas and regions colonized by the
Western powers. That is to say, anthropology was invented from the
very outset with an ethnocentric prejudice in one form or another. In
the early part of this century, for example, the influential French philoso-
pher-anthropologist Lucien Levy-Bruhl wrote the book Les Fonctions
mentales dans les societes inferieures which was translated into English
with the softened title How Natives Think.146 In another work, La
Mentalite primitive l47 - some parts of which were given as his lectures
at the Lowell Institute in Boston in 1919 - Levy-Bruhl stressed
"primitives" as those human "beings who are both so far removed from,
and so near to, ourselves" - by "ourselves", he meant "adult", "civilized",
and "white" men. 148 Unlike the civilized mentality, the primitive men-
tality is a "pre-logical" one whose "law of participation" is indifferent
to the "law of contradiction". Levy-Bruhl acknowledged that the
primitive develops a "philosophy" of its own, however "childish and
clumsy" it may be. Nevertheless, he contended that primitive mentality
is clearly different from the mentality of "races which are the product
of 'Mediterranean' civilization, in which a rationalistic philosophy and
positive science have been developed.,,149 Regarding "rationalistic
philosophy" and "positive science", we must keep in mind here that
Levy-Bruhl was a student of the history of Western philosophy, par-
ticularly of French philosophy, wrote extensively on Auguste Comte,
and edited the correspondence between Comte and John Stuart Mill
- Comte who is the father of modern sociology giving it "scientific"
(i.e., "positive") foundation and Mill who considered Oriental socie-
ties (Chinese societies) as conformist and wrote about the logic of the
"moral sciences" (translated into German as "Geisteswissenschaften")
in which he defined "ethology". Interestingly, the idea of primitivity
has a niche in Heidegger's "fundamental ontology" whose centerpiece
is the notion of "care" (Sorge, cura) based on the old Latin fable of
Hyginus. Heidegger, however, is free of the overtone of Levy-Bruhl's
"rationalism" and "scientism", i.e., Western ethnocentrism, although he
retains the flavor of Levy-Bruhl's language and ideas. Heidegger writes:
[tlo orient the analysis of Dasein towards the "life of primitive peoples" can have positive
significance as a method because "primitive phenomena" are often less concealed and
less complicated by extensive self-interpretation on the part of the Dasein in question.
Primitive Dasein often speaks to us more directly in terms of a primordial absorption in
208 HWA YOL JUNO

"phenomena" (taken in a pre-phenomenological sense). A way of conceiving things which

seems, perhaps, rather clumsy and crude from our standpoint, can be positively helpful
bringing out the ontological structures of phenomena in a genuine way.150

Phenomenology may be construed as a conceptual "fieldwork" in

the production of intercultural texts which would in turn be a good testing
ground for its universal applicability to the methodology of the cultural
sciences (e.g., linguistics and anthropology) for no other reason than
that the life-world as sociocultural reality promises to have a set of
invariant structures presumably siphoned out of variant "life-forms"
(Lebensformen). What is required of it is a conceptual housecleaning
in the composition of intercultural texts.
In his lecture in 1931 on "Phenomenology and Anthropology", Husserl
set the tone for developing conceptual requirements for anthropology
on phenomenological insights. 151 In it he recognized the inherent tension
between the "transcendental" and the "anthropological". One is concerned
with "essential" or invariant structures, and the other with variant "facts".
For Husserl, phenomenological apodicticity requires philosophical anthro-
pology to transcend all relativity without ignoring or destroying empirical
integrity. This is, of course, the familiar tension within the history of phe-
nomenology as a philosophical movement: the "transcendental" and the
"existential" approach. The first refers to Husserl's emphasis on the
constitution of the transcendental ego as the prerequisite for radical and
rational reflection on human existence and the world. That is to say,
we must first learn to disengage our consciousness to a transcendental
level in order to discover the invariant structures of our existence and the
world. The second is the claim that we describe directly our conscious-
ness, engaged consciousness, without keeping it at bay in a separate,
theoretical chamber or positionality. Husserl himself explained that when
we turn away from the naive exploration of the world to transcendental
consciousness, we do not turn our back on the world and retreat into
the uninterested, monastic field of theoretical contemplation. On the
contrary, he insists, this transcendental approach is the only way that
makes possible the scientific exploration of the world.
Phenomenology contributes to an ethnography of the cultural life-
forms by way of suspending premature and hasty judgments on things
unfamiliar and foreign. In the manner that is reminiscent of Alfred
Schutz's phenomenological insistence that the sociologist must ground
his/her scientific knowledge in the common-sense constructs of acting
agents on the social scene, Clifford Geertz advocates the idea of respect
 PHENOMENOLOGY AND INTERCULTURAL TEXTS 209

for "local knowledge" or "a local turn of mind" as the conceptual pre-
requisite for the ethnography of the cultural Iife-forms. 152 He calls for
what we would call an "ethnomethodology" for anthropological studies
by means of which the ethnographer would be able to "deprovinciaIize"
or "defamiliarize" his/her own prejudices. As a matter of fact, the
defamiliarization of one's prejudices goes hand in hand with the famil-
iarization of an "other" (foreign) culture. Diatactics as a phenomenology
of alterity, as has been shown in the preceding section, is the logic of
difference as difference rather than as identity. Given the logic of identity,
that is, without "deprovincialization" or "defamiliarization", the ethno-
grapher (e.g., Levy-Bruhl) is found to spill ethnocentrism over the
production of an intercultural text. In this sense, ethnography is the
writing not of difference as identity but of difference as difference. As
it is concerned with the ethics of writing about an "other" culture, the
ethics of producing the intercultural text based on the phenomenology
of alterity, that is, the logic of difference, must meet the following two
requirements.
In the first place, the intercultural text is the product of "translating"
lived experience into textuality, a reportage, as it were, which must at
all cost avoid abstraction since abstraction is the way of producing a text,
any text, with virtually no or little respect for the everyday life-form.
Thus Steven Feld, who considers ethnography not only as field work
but also as detective work after the fashion of Geertz, warns of
the armchair speculation in formal analysis that has "a tendency to
trivialize interpretations from direct experience" .153 Abstraction ultimately
ends in superimposing preconceived categories on experience. It is
conceptual raping, so to speak.
In the second place, more importantly, there is the interrelated question
of reflexivity in ethnography. Certainly the question of ethnocentrism,
be it "Orientalism" or "Occidentalism", is linked closely to the lack of
reflexivity. The uncritical and unself-conscious attitude of an inquirer
in the production of an intercultural text breeds ethnocentrism, albeit
often insipidly. Reflexivity is nothing more than the way of instructing
ourselves about how to be critical and self-conscious of what we are
doing as intellectuals. 154 It is the recognition that the inquirer is
himselflherself implicated in the very activity of inquiry in which he/she
is engaged. Reflexivity intends to overcome the conceptual naivete of
an ethnographer or a foreign observer and thus to fend off the spillage
of ethnocentric overtures and prejudices. In sum: ethnocentrism is the
210 HWA YOL JUNO

penalty that ethnography pays for the lack of reflexivity as well as for
the logic of identity. Speaking of the study of comparative culture, Henry
McDonald intimates that to cultivate "a critical consciousness of one's
own presuppositions" is to acknowledge and accept the fact that we
indeed have prejudices and develop thereby "a heightened critical aware-
ness of them". 155
Phenomenological distancing, that is, suspending judgments or
becoming "presuppositionless", is and remains to be ideal. Its Sisyphean
task may be illustrated by the following two examples. First, the
Australian anthropologist Derek Freeman wrote in 1983 the book entitled
Margaret Mead and Samoa: The Making and Unmaking of an Anthropo-
logical Myth,156 which "seismic event", according to some, sent out
tidal waves to the world of anthropology and ethnography. According
to Freeman, the anthropological paradigm of Mead's Coming of Age in
Samoa (1928) is fundamentally deficient conceptually and methodo-
logically primarily because she was determined to prove from the start
the verity of her preconceived "cultural determinism" as opposed to
biologism. By evoking the Nietzschean theme of the Apollonian and
the Dionysian, Freeman in the end proposed that biology (nature) and
culture (nurture) can cohabit at the Delphic temple of "evolutionary
anthropology". However, Freeman is not without his own preconceptions
because in methodology he himself appears to set out to prove the verity
of the Popperian philosophy of science. He is really piggybacking one
conceptual prejudice on another. 157 Of course, our purpose here is not
to resolve whose approach is correct but simply to point out the diffi-
culty of ethnographic theorizing. However, there is one unforgettable
lesson we learn from reading Mead's famous or infamous book: that
is, that the "advanced" culture of America can learn lessons from, and
be judged and evaluated by, the "backward" culture of Samoa.158
Second, there is the question of perception - the "nascent logos", as
it is called by Merleau-Ponty - which is often regarded as "innocent",
that is, free of any presuppositions, preconceptions, and prejudgments.
Of intercultural perception, Don Ihde observes that

[ilf cross-cultural communication is difficult because it entails our deepest and longest
held belief and perceptions about the world, at least what the paradigm of culturally
informed perceptions shows is that the most basic question is one about how the world
is seen. That, it seems to me, is the primary contribution phenomenology can make to
the problems of cross-cultural communication. The first question is one of how does
one perceive the world. 159
 PHENOMENOLOGY AND INTERCULTURAL TEXTS 211

It is Merleau-Ponty who takes up the challenging theme of Husserl's life-

world and develops it fully into a phenomenology of perception. For
Merleau-Ponty, the perceived world is the presupposed matrix of all
cultural rationality - the rationality of everyday praxis as well as that
of theoria in philosophy and science. As a sedimented repository of
meanings, it is an institution. In The Visible and the Invisible, Merleau-
Ponty is concerned with the "diacritical" dimension of perception and
culture. Neither is totally independent of the other. Perception itself is
a kind of "learning", or it is "always already" informed, of the cultural
or ecological milieu. As unspoken language is silence, so is perception
bereft of culture imperception. 160 Perception is then a set of culturally
informed acts. Patrick A. Heelan is elaborating on the basic insight of
Merleau-Ponty when he rejects the idea that we can see the world with
an "innocent eye". Heelan shows convincingly that perception is already
a "hermeneutical act" .161 As such it belongs to the category of inter-
pretation.
Since complete phenomenological distancing is only ideal and
humanly impossible, we will use the "hermeneutics of dialogue" - which
is, we might add, a "hermeneutics without genuflection"162 - in the
composition of intercultural texts. The hermeneutics of dialogue is an
"application" (Gadamer's sense) of the logic of correlation as differ-
ence (both Differenz and Unterschied) which is meant to "reinvent" the
science(s) of man without ethnocentrism both conceptual and precon-
ceptual.
The composition of an intercultural text is an effective product (prag-
matum) of interpretive understanding. 163 Since all interpretation is an
act of understanding by way of language, an act of linguistic media-
tion, there is no (pure) understanding without being mediated by language
- the idea of hermeneutical "distancing" or "detour". All understanding,
theoretical or life-worldly, is linguistic. By linguisticality (Sprachlichkeit,
Sprachleiblichkeit), we mean to include signs, symbols, gestures, and
even silence. Characteristic of both human specificity and the primary
medium of communication, language - written or spoken - is the priv-
ileged object and medium of culture because all the other objects are
named and understood by means of it. As such language is the first in
the genealogy of the social because ontogenetically we become social-
ized by learning a language or languages. By its very nature, dialogue
is a web of inter/pretations because it is mediated by language. It is an
inter(dis)course between the yang of discourse and the yin of counter-
212 HWA VOL JUNG

discourse. "In dialogue," Gadamer thus writes decisively, "we are really
interpreting. Speaking then is interpreting itself. It is the function of
the dialogue that in saying or stating something a challenging relation
with the other evolves, a response is provoked, and the response provides
the interpretation of the other's interpretation.,,164 Therefore, it is some-
what redundant to use the phrase "hermeneutics of dialogue": dialogue
is indeed hermeneutical.
Interpretation is meant here to be the kind of understanding (Verstehen)
where the acquisition of anthropological knowledge is the result of
attunement to the preconceptual knowledge of native actors themselves
in the context of their own culture. In this respect, interpretation is
ethnomethodological. Nonetheless, interpretation is more than "partici-
pant observation" because it is also the art of listening to the docu-
mentary "voices" of written texts as well. Hermeneutics is an art of
listening to the "active voice" of the Other as heterocentric. Respect
for the active voice of the Other in the composition of intercultural
texts may be called hermeneutical autonomy. Hermeneutical autonomy
demands the art of active listening and calls for lending a receptive ear
to the voice of an "other" culture. Without hermeneutical autonomy,
that is, without listening, an ethnographic dialogue becomes nothing
but a monologue in disguise. To wit: a native's "autonomy" is an ethno-
grapher's "otonomy".165 "Otonomy" as listening recognizes difference
as difference, that is, it is an attunement to a different voice. Walter
Benjamin calls it "translation" which is "removal from one language into
another through a continuum of transformations. Translation passes
through continua of transformation, not abstract areas of identity
and similarity.,,166 So the hermeneutics of dialogue as ethnographic
understanding based on "otonomy" is a contrast to the modernist,
Enlightenment conception of Reason as "explanation" (Erkliirung) ,
"clarification" (Kliirung) and "enlightenment" (Aufkliirung) which, inter-
estingly, are all the idioms of visual metaphysics, of the visual meta-
physics of Descartes - the French "father,,167 of modern philosophy.
While the hermeneutics of dialogue is meant for postmodernity,
scientism is a conceptual idiom of modernity in the West. As much as
it is quantitative and cybernetic (Le., "scientific" or "empirical"), it
goes tete-a-tete with, if it indeed is not an aspect of, the technological
Weltanschauung which has also served as the motor force for "mod-
ernization" everywhere, especially for the "politics of modernization"
in the non-Western world 168 which has created an aura of something
 PHENOMENOLOGY AND INTERCULTURAL TEXTS 213

necessary and inevitable, something progressive, something desirable

and something good, that is, something ultimate. Jean Baudrillard is
right when he characterizes modernity as the "homogenization" of life,
everyday life everywhere.!69 The Japanese "rhetoric of modernization"
during the Meiji Restoration - "Eastern morality and Western technology"
- has eventually become a rhetoric of homogenization, i.e., the rhetoric
of identity with Western technology rather than of difference from Eastern
morality.
Scientism, too, is integral to European modernity. As Husserl argued,
it originates in the Galilean mathematization of nature into the geo-
metric boxes of triangles, circles, and squares, !70 which is the foundation
of Cartesian and Hobbesian "methodism". Geometry that measures the
standard of "objectivity" in science and that grounds "scientific expla-
nation" is the mathematics of objects visualized and visualizable. Like
"explanation" (Erkliirung), objectivity is a visual term in that "objective"
refers to the lens (or a combination of lenses) in an optical instrument
which is nearest to the object.
Scientism is for Husserl fallacious because it is foremost a concep-
tual garb (ldeenkleid) whereby what once was or was intended to be
true in the mathematical formalization of nature as a method has grad-
ually been taken or indeed mistaken for reality itself. Scientism as
practiced in the cultural sciences is doubly removed from the sociocul-
tural life-world because the methodology which may be valid for the
investigation of natural phenomena is naively accepted as true in the
investigation of human and cultural phenomena. Because it is driven to
the certainty of (scientific) knowledge to which methodism or method-
olatry is endemic, it becomes oblivious to the "ontological difference"
between the human and the natural. It inheres in the legacy of what
Richard J. Bernstein calls "the Cartesian anxiety"!7! in finding "an
Archimedean point" of knowledge and a secure "foundation" for its com-
mensurability. As applied to the human sciences such as comparative
politics and ethnography, methodolatry overlooks or ignores the common-
sense or experiential understanding of "local" or "alien" actors in the
context of their own culture: it is indifferent to the hermeneutics of
dialogue. As a result, the cargo cult of so-called "empiricist" method-
ology packages together both conceptual reification and empiricide.
There lurks in ethnocentrism a veil of conceptual reification which
imposes a particular set of preconceived theoretical constructs on the
understanding of an "other" (alien) culture. In his celebrated and often
214 HWA YOL JUNG

anthologized article "Interpretation and the Sciences of Man", Charles

Taylor thus contends that the Western comparative political analyst may
very well conceal his ethnocentric bias of an ideological kind in the
allegedly objectivist language of his methodology - the "ideology"
vouchsafed in the conceptual garb of Western scientific culture. In
warning of the hidden ideological prejudice of a scientific empiricist,
Taylor writes:
[t]he result of ignoring the difference in intersubjective meanings can be disastrous to a
science of comparative politics, viz., that we interpret all other societies in the cate-
gories of our own. Ironically, this is what seems to have happened to American political
science. Having strongly criticized the old institution-focussed comparative politics for
its ethnocentricity (or Western bias), it proposed to understand the politics of all society
in terms of such functions, for instance, as "interest articulation" and "interest aggrega-
tion" whose definition is strongly influenced by the bargaining culture of our civilization,
but which is far from being guaranteed appropriateness elsewhere. The not surprising result
is a theory of political development which places the Atlantic-type polity at the summit
of human political development. 172

Moreover, the conceptual entrapment of scientific empiricism results,

ironically, in empiricide. Empiricide is the result of ignoring the
hermeneutics of dialogue in the study of other cultures. It is inevitable
when so-called "fact" - scientific or otherwise - is taken or, better,
mistaken as crude or raw datum rather than something "made" or
"achieved" (factum in the Vichian sense of the term). Empiricide is the
result of taking for granted the making of "fact" as a "hermeneutical
act" or the "interpretation" of "local know ledge". In conclusion, the
scientific methodology that produces empiricide does not understand
the difference (Differenz) of an "other" culture as difference (Unterschied)
because so-called "facts" are the uncooked and undigested entrapment of
its categoriai grid.

V. EPILOGUE: TRUTH AS ECUMENICAL (ENCYCLOPEDIA)

By nature, men are nearly alike; by practice, they got

to be wide apart.
Confucius

Uniform ideas ongtnating among entire peoples

unknown to each other must have a common ground
of truth.
Giambattista Vico
 PHENOMENOLOGY AND INTERCULTURAL TEXTS 215

Western logocentrism as logos transformed into disembodied Reason

haunts the spectre of ethnocentrism in the composition of intercul-
tural texts in the human sciences. The conquest of knowledge, as the
conquistador Cortes observed, precedes the conquest of power, i.e.,
knowledge is power. In this respect, Derrida has issued an epochal,
postmodernist challenge that the exclusively Western phenomenon of
logocentrism that accords a privileged position to alphabetic, phonetic
writing over, say, Egyptian hieroglyphics and Chinese ideography, has
indeed a touch of ethnocentrism. We have, therefore, proposed diatac-
tics as the logic of correlation without being hitched to the idea of
synthesis as the Aufhebung of contradictions - that idea of synthesis
which favors and justifies, I believe, the "progressive" telos of the West
over the non-Western world. Diatactics is conceived as a new, lateral way
of interpreting culture, especially an alien culture, based on the prin-
ciple of difference (as difference) in the Heideggerian sense of both
Differenz and Unterschied, i.e., heterology. As a result, the hermeneu-
tics of dialogue is applied to the composition of intercultural texts as
the art of listening or attunement that elicits an ethnographer's respect
for local knowledge and "deprovincializes" his/her own baggage of
cultural preconceptions and prejudices. In rejecting logocentrism as
disembodied Reason, moreover, we have attempted to demonstrate the
interplay of mind in both "feminine" East and "masculine" West in
Heidegger's thinking on thinking as a handicraft and, correlatively,
Chinese ideography in general and calligraphy in particular as a chore-
ography of gestures. Above all, diatactics lends itself to a critique of
scientism and technologism because Western logocentrism as disem-
bodied Reason is, for all practical purposes, the Promethean rationality
of science and technology whose holy alliance has in tum become the
hub of "modernization" in the West and the Westernization of the non-
Western world. Scientism in particular signals an ethnocentric spillage in
the composition of intercultural texts.
All the validity-claims for the ascertainment of universal truth -
including Habermas's "universal pragmatics" - must be put to test on
a comparative basis. Or else they are pretentious, arrogant, assuming,
and even ignorant. Arrogance, I submit, is a function of myopia and
ignorance, and as such it begets ethnocentrism. It often occurs that
texts and course on the history of Western philosophy or Western
political philosophy are simply titled the history of philosophy or
political philosophy.173 There are, of course, exceptions to the norm. In
216 HWA YOL JUNO

most instances, I believe, we do it unself-consciously - with benign

neglect or out of ignorance.
From a comparative perspective, the question of universal truth is
the old one of the One and the Many, of Pan and Proteus. During the
Renaissance, Giovanni Pi co della Mirandola in his oration On the Dignity
of Man (De Hominis Dignitate) elegantly addressed himself to the idea
that as Pan is hidden in Proteus, "[m]utability ... is the secret gate
through which the universal invades the particular. Proteus persistently
transforms himself because Pan is inherent in him.,,174 For the ecumenical
spirit of postmodernism, Pico's oration should be renamed "On the
Dignity of Humankind". This new, ecumenical object of postmodernism
is the discovery of what Vico calls "a common ground of truth" which
must be both interdisciplinary and intercultural. The common ground
of truth works as "a regulative principle" in the "chronotopical" fusion
of intercultural horizons.175 As an overarching principle of reality as social
process, synchronicity underwrites and supplements diatactics as the logic
of difference toward the ecumenical conception of truth. For it is the
"ecological" idea - or Heidegger's Zusammengehiirigkeit, "belonging-
together" - that everything is related to everything else in the universe.
As synchronicity works like musical harmony, the ecumenical concep-
tion of truth based on diatactics supplemented by synchronicity may
be defined as a "gathering,,176 or an orchestration of the multiply differ-
entiated or heterogenized. This definition defenestrates the visualist
term identity from intercultural discourses and the composition of inter-
cultural texts. Moreover, the Tao (way) of diatactics itself has been
constructed (con/structed) interculturally or ecumenically because it is
a consequence of the transformation of the Western tradition of dialogue
and the dialectic by the Chinese yin-yang logic of correlation. It is a
differential logic of intercultural (as well as intracultural) transforma-
tion which restores and reappropriates an old category for a new meaning
in order to account for newly emerging historical and intellectual
circumstances.
In the heritage of phenomenology as a philosophical movement, the
question of the East is a pan-philosophical one. The Husserlian phe-
nomenological injunction - "Zu den Sachen selbst" - works like a
pharmacological agent, and serves as a constant reminder against skidding
on the slippery surface of ethnocentrism, conceptual overkill, and con-
ceptual hypostatization. Heidegger's attraction to the appeal of Eastern
thought is unquestionable when he reacted enthusiastically to the writings
 PHENOMENOLOGY AND INTERCULTURAL TEXTS 217

of Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki and when in his famous 1953-54 "A Dialogue
on Language" which was occasioned by the visit of a Japanese scholar, 177
he expressed his bewilderment that the Japanese forget the beginning
of their own thinking and chase after the newest development of European
thought which is an inseparable part of the Europeanization of the entire
earth. Merleau-Ponty, too, questions the untenable division between "phi-
losophy" and "non-philosophy" which draws arbitrarily a geographical
boundary between the East and the West. And he defines non-philosophy
itself as philosophy become experiential. Derrida is the latest addition
in the phenomenological heritage who proposes and promotes his own
philosophical grammatology as a pharmacology or a containment
program for ethnocentrism as well as for Western metaphysics steeply
lodged in phonocentrism. 178
The idea of universal civilization was raised by Ricoeur. Writing for
the Esprit in 1961, he addressed himself to the question of the One
(Pan) and the Many (Proteus), of the connection between the dawn of
"universal civilization" and the waning of "national cultures" in which
he urged in no uncertain terms the abandonment of "the dogmatism of
a single truth".179 The emergence of a single world civilization, if it is
at all possible, signifies for Ricoeur the fact that we have reached the
crossroad between "the twilight of dogmatism" and "the dawn of real
dialogues". According to him, however, it would be premature to
announce the death of national cultures.
Resonating with Ricoeur's voice, an "other" voice comes from the
East: the voice of the Japanese philosopher Kitaro Nishida (1870-1945),
whose unique brand of philosophizing (Nishida tetsugaku) is intrinsically
comparative and who develops "a logic of the East" in relation to, and
in the "other" context of, Western philosophy: it is the voice of a
truly ecumenical philosopher. Fundamental Problems of Philosophy
(1933-34)180 is a summation and culmination of his own system of phi-
losophy in which truth emerges from a "dialectical" encounter between
"Being" (yu) of the Western tradition and "Nothingness" (mu) of the
Eastern tradition. Although the opus is heavily clothed and padded with
the metaphysical language of the West, the depth of his thought is impec-
cably Eastern, i.e., not logocentric. For Nishida, intuition rather than
the intellect is the elan vital of artistic and moral creativity and the Orient
provides the rich soil of experiential knowledge. According to him, Greek
culture was a culture of the intellect (nous), while Japanese culture is
characteristically "emotional". In search of "the immediacy of experi-
218 HWA VOL JUNO

ence" as the locus classicus of philosophical reflection, he resounds

Merleau-Ponty's conception of non-philosophy as philosophy becomes
experiential.
Nishida's approach to the understanding of his own culture exempli-
fies the idea that - to quote Henry McDonald - "[t]o get to know another
culture is to understand better the possibilities of one's own.,,181 In
Nishida's case, it is the essence of Japanese culture. The truth of the
human spirit for him resides in the lateral relationships of one culture
to an "other" or "others". The following concluding passage of Nishida
in Fundamental Problems of Philosophy, which is somewhat lengthy
but worth quoting in its entirety, parallels the (other) spirit of Merleau-
Ponty and Ricoeur:
[c Jultures may be said to be the realized content of the historical world, which is indi-
vidual-qua-universal and universal-qua individual determination. Cultures, of course,
are plural. They cannot be reduced to unity, for when they lose their specificity they
cease to be cultures. But the process of development of a unique culture from the stand-
point of unique culture cannot be a merely abstract advance in an individual direction.
That would amount to the negation of culture. A true world culture will be formed only
by various cultures preserving their own respective viewpoints, but simultaneously devel-
oping themselves through the mediation of the world. In that respect, first deeply
considering the individual ground of each culture, we must clarify on what basis and in
what relation to other cultures each individual culture stands. How do Eastern and Western
cultures differ in their roots? What significance does Japanese culture have in Eastern
culture? Its strong points are at once its weak points. We can learn the path along which
we should truly advance only as we both deeply fathom our own depths and attain to a
profound understanding of other cultures. 182

Whatever the future shape universal civilization may take, it will have
to be orchestrated by an "anthropology" or ethnographic anthology of the
cultural life-worlds. 183 In the postmodernist construction of intercultural
texts, truth can no longer be viewed and taken dogmatically and com-
placently - with the Western kosmotheoros presiding over at the helm
or, better, supervising (supervisioning) the procession of universal ideas.
Humanity is not and cannot be divided into two separate ontological
camps in a linear and hierarchical order - one as the superior or privi-
leged master and the other as the inferior or unprivileged slave in the
life-and-death struggle of humanity'S historical destiny. For it is a dif-
fusion (dif/fusion) of the differentiated and disseminated many. An
integral humanism, as opposed to ethnocentrism, can exist only in the
lateral relationships of all cultures in which the echoes of each awaken
and resonate with all the others. For, again, truth's center is everywhere
 PHENOMENOLOGY AND INTERCULTURAL TEXTS 219

and its circumference nowhere. The idea of ecumenicity is a confirma-

tion of the ontological difference between the One and the Many which
are eternally intertwined and reversible, i.e., "many in one" and "one
in many." "Belonging" (together) to one another is also "be-longing"
for one another. In the end the ethics of ecumenicity, of civility, signals
the end of our "nomadic" journey and ushers us into a "civilized" begin-
ning for philosophy in postmodernity. By opening up the secret gate of
mutability through which the universal frequents the particular, post-
modem thinking becomes - to paraphrase the words of the poet Rilke
on the sculptor Rodin - a movement from the ethnocentric bondage of
the present to the ecumenical freedom of the future. 184
The seductive question of the One and the Many has burdened and
overwhelmed the philosophical soul everywhere throughout ages. It has
elevated the postmodern intellectual world to a new plateau. In the
context of postmodernity, globalization (or the globalization of truth)
acquires and distills a radically new meaning: it is wary of "ethnocen-
tric chauvinism" on the one hand and "faceless universalism" on the other
- to borrow the well-chosen and erudite expressions of Cornel West
who attempts to map out what he calls "the new cultural politics of
difference".185 It cannot be mistaken for and confused with ethnocen-
tric identification or essentializing hierachization. Rather, it subverts
and transgresses the Eurocentric enframing (Heidegger's Gestell) of truth.
It interrupts and interdicts any ethnocentric arrogance whether it be
Eurocentric, Sinocentric, Indocentric or Afrocentric. For it is the result
of a cross-cultural or transversal intertwinement or chiasm in which
one culture can no longer be the "negative mirror" of another. In this
essay, diatactics is proposed as the way of promoting lateral or trans-
versal truth based on the eccentricity of difference and multiplicity as
webs of interdependent relationships.
Global phenomenology and hermeneutics in search of lateral or cross-
cultural universals must be truly of a "cosmopolitan" (cosmopolitical)
nature, of the new "Orient of the mind" - to use Paul Valery's sugges-
tive expression - which allows the fusion of horizons both temporal
(past/old and present/new) and cultural (Western and non-Western) to
take place,186 i.e., cosmopolitanism or cosmopolitics which incorporates
difference as dif/ference (Differenz as Unterschied).187 As differentia-
tion is thoroughly relational, as without difference relationality as well
as multiplicity is unnecessary and inconceivable, harmony (harmoniza-
tion) itself - like making music together - is not inimical to difference;
220 HWA YOL JUNG

it is rather the play of difference(s), of heterogeneity, not of homogeneity.

It may be argued that by eliding difference(s), monologue breeds factions
and divisions. Harmony accentuates the exuberance and eccentricity of
difference. Cosmopolitanism is the question not merely of discovering
a Plato, an Aristotle, a Machiavelli, a Descartes, a Kant, or a Hegel in
the non-Western world but also of finding a Confucius, a Mencius, a
Nishida, a Watsuji, a Hu, a Gandhi, a Tagore, or a Radhakrishnan in
the West. Globalization in search of lateral universals or transversals
is, in short, a matter of confluence, of mutual influence in the recogni-
tion of "heteroglossia" (Bakhtin's term) which makes linguistic or cultural
dialogization (com)possible.1 88 It moves to and fro. The confluential
humanism of postmodernity as the fleshfold of the human spirit exists
only in the transversal relationships of all cultures including emerging
ones in which the echoes of each awaken and are resonant with the others.
In the ecumenical age of postmodernity, the philosopher will embrace,
cultivate, and cherish with care hislher role as - to repeat and dissemi-
nate the old-fashioned but imperishable idea of Husserl - "the civil
servant of humanity," of all humanity on this earth and the natural,
nonhuman world as extended humanity.

Moravian College

NOTES
I Anne H. Soukhanov, "Word Watch," The Atlantic, 260 (September 1987): 108. To
be sure, postmodernism is a Malthusian, decentered cluster of diversified galaxy of voices,
tendencies, trends, and trajectories all with surrounding halos and fuzzy contours whose
interplay often seemingly defies a definition of consistent and coherent themes. Often post-
modernism is equated with as well as differentiated from such other "postparadigms" as
post-metaphysics, post-analytical philosophy, post-structuralism, and - even oxymoroni-
cally - post-philosophical philosophy. For extensive discussions on postmodernism, see
particularly Ihab Hassan, The Postmodern Turn: Essays in Postmodern Theory and Culture
(Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1987); Andreas Huyssen, After the Great Divide:
Modernism, Mass Culture, Postmodernism (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986);
Matei Calinescu, Five Faces of Modernity (Durham: Duke University Press, 1987); and
Steven Connor, Postmodernist Culture (Oxford: Blackwell, 1989).
2 The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, trans. Geoff Bennington and Brian
Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984), p. xxv (italics added).
3 In The Past in Ruins (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1992), David
Gross critically employs tradition as a critique of modernity with the Burkean emphasis
on the generational interconnectedness of contemporaries, predecessors and successors,
that is, of "those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born."
 PHENOMENOLOGY AND INTERCULTURAL TEXTS 221

4 Roland Barthes, The Rustle of Language, trans. Richard Howard (New York: Hill
and Wang, 1986), p. 72 (italics added).
5 Speech Genres and Other Late Essays, trans. Vern W. McGee and ed. Caryl Emerson
and Michael Holquist (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1986), p. 170. Cf. Katerina Clark
and Michael Holquist, Mikhail Bakhtin (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984)
pp. 349-50. Commenting on the nature of Dostoevsky's literary discourse, Bakhtin gives
us a further glimpse of his dialogism as infinitely open or - to use his own word -
"unfinalizable" end in itself which marks itself off from the past dialectics of Plato, Hegel,
and Marx: " ... at the center of Doestoevsky's artistic world must lie dialogue, and dialogue
not as a means but as an end in itself. Dialogue here is not the threshold to action, it is
the action itself. It is not a means for revealing, for bringing to the surface the already
ready-made character of a person; no, in dialogue a person not only shows himself out-
wardly, but he becomes for the first time that which he is - and, we repeat, not only for
others but for himself as well. To be means to communicate dialogically. When dialogue
ends, everything ends. Thus dialogue, by its very essence, cannot and must not come to
an end. At the level of his religious-utopian world-view Dostoevsky carried dialogue
into eternity, conceiving of it as eternal co-rejoicing, co-admiration, con-cord. At the level
of the novel, it is presented as the unfinalizability of dialogue, although originally as
dialogue's vicious circle." Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics, ed. and trans. Caryl Emerson
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984), p. 252 (italics added).
6 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1957).
7 Edward W. Said's Orientalism (New York: Pantheon Books, 1978) has been a focus
of the contemporary academic debate on Eurocentrism. He defines Orientalism as "a
Western sty Ie for dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient" (p.
3). He has recently added a sequel to it: Culture and Imperialism (New York: Alred A.
Knopf, 1993). For an excellent discussion of Orientalism in relation to China, see Zhang
Longxi, "The Myth of the Other: China in the Eyes of the West," Critical Inquiry, 15
(1988): 108-31. For the marginality of Africa in Eurocentrism, see V. Y. Mudimbe, The
Invention of Africa (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988) which underscores
the Foucauldian leitmotiv that there is no pure system of knowledge independent of power
and which shows that many African intellectuals themselves are drowned in the torrent
of Europeanization.
8 Legislators and Interpreters (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1987), p. 110.
9 Essays Moral, Political, and Liteary, ed. T. H. Green and T. H. Grose, 2 vols. (London:
Longmans, Green, 1875), I: 252.
\0 Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime, trans. John T. Goldthwait
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1960), pp. 110-11. I came upon the reference
to Hume and Kant while I was reading Henry Louis Gates, Jr., "Editor's Introduction:
Writing 'Race' and the Difference It Makes," in Race, Writing, and Difference, ed.
Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), pp. 10-11. Hume's
and Kant's racist regime of representation in the modern West may be discredited most
effectively by the Nietzschean-Foucauldian-Lyotardian critique of Enlightenment reason.
For the persisting intransigence of white supremacy in the United States today, see
Cornel West, Race Matters (Boston: Beacon Press, 1993).
11 Jiirgen Habermas, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity: Twelve Lectures, trans.
Frederick Lawrence (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1987), p. 336. Habermas continues the
222 HWA YOL JUNG

tradition of the Enlightenment's modernity which seeks universal truth based on the
autonomy of reason. Isaiah Berlin spells out the nature of the Counter-Enlightenment
movement manifested in the cultural pluralism of Giambattista Vico in opposition to
the rationalistic monism of the Enlightenment. See Against the Current: Essays in the
History of Ideas, ed. Henry Hardy (New York: Viking Press, 1980), "The Counter-
Enlightenment," pp. 1-24 and "Vico and the Ideal of the Enlightenment," pp. 120-29
and The Crooked Timber of Humanity, ed. Henry Hardy (New York: Alfred A. Knopf,
1991), "Giambattista Vico and Cultural History," pp. 49-69. "To a disciple of Vico," writes
Berlin, "the ideal of some of the thinkers of the Enlightenment, the notion of even the
abstract possibility of a perfect society, is necessarily an attempt to weld together incom-
patible attributes - characteristics, ideals, gifts, properties, values that belong to different
patterns of thought, action, life, and therefore cannot be detached and sewn together
into one garment" (Against the Current, p. 129).
12 See Jiirgen Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action, 2 vols., trans. Thomas
McCarthy (Boston: Beacon Press, 1981-1987): vol. 1: Reason and the Rationalization
of Society and vol. 2: Lifeworld and System: A Critique of Functionalist Reason. For
Fred Dallmayr's critique of the work, including its retreat from politics, see Critical
Encounters: Between Philosophy and Politics (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame
Press, 1987), chap. 3, "Life-World and Communicative Action: Habermas," pp. 73-100.
For a critical account of Hegel and Habermas in relation to the question of modernity,
see Fred Dallmayr, "The Discourse of Modernity: Hegel and Habermas," The Journal
of Philosophy, 84 (1987): 682-92. For an open-ended exposition of the connection between
modernity and postmodernity, see Albrecht Wellmer, "On the Dialectic of Modernism and
Postrnodernism" (trans. David Roberts), Praxis International, 4 (1985): 337-61. Wellmer's
exposition concludes with the following "coda": "[t]he dialectic of modernism and post-
modernism is still to be written. Above all it still requires to be put into practice. 'The
age,' writes Castoriadis, 'calis for a change in society. This change, however, is not to
be had without a self-transcendence of reason.' Postmodernity, understood correctly, would
be a project. Postmodernism, however, insofar as it is more than a fashion, an expres-
sion of regression or a new ideology, can best be understood as a search, as an attempt
to register the traces of change and to allow the contours of that project to eme~ge more
sharply" (p. 361).
13 Studies in the Theory of Ideology (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984),
p.298.
14 The question of European ethnocentrism or Orientalism has already been raised in
the author's "The Question of Ethnocentrism and the Production of the Intercultural Text,"
lUJ ([International University of Japan]) Annual Review: After Modernization, 5 (1988):
133-68. Cf. the author's Rethinking Political Theory: Essays in Phenomenology and
the Study of Politics, Series in Continental Thought, vol. 18 (Athens: Ohio University
Press, 1993), pp. 91-110. See also the author's "The Joy of Textualizing Japan: A
Metacommentary on Roland Barthes's Empire of Signs," in Bucknell Review: Self, Sign,
and Symbol, ed. Mark Neuman and Michael Payne (Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press,
1987), pp. 144-167, which is an attempt to show how difficult it is for Barthes, despite
his keen awareness of "Western narcissism," to avoid ethnocentrism.
15 Edmund Husser!, The Crisis Of European Sciences and Transcendental Phe-
nomenology, trans. David Carr (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1970), p. 289.
 PHENOMENOLOGY AND INTERCULTURAL TEXTS 223

16 Ibid., p. 285.
11 See the author's "The Piety of Thinking: Heidegger's Pathway to Comparative
Philosophy," in Analecta Husserliana, vol. 21: The Phenomenology of Man and of the
Human Condition, part 2, ed. Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1986), pp.
337-68.
18 See "Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences," in The
Structuralist Controversy: The Languages of Criticism and the Sciences of Man, ed.
Richard Macksey and Eugenio Donato (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1970),
pp.247-72.
19 Jacques Derrida, Margins of Philosophy, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1982), pp. 134-35.
20 Martin Heidegger, Identity and Difference, trans. Joan Stambaugh (New York: Harper
and Row, 1969), p. 73.
21 Richard Kearney, Dialogues with Contemporary Continental Thinkers: The
Phenomenological Heritage (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1984), pp. 115-16.
The most recent statement of Jacques Derrida on the subject is found in The Other Heading,
trans. Pascale-Anne Brault and Michael B. Naas (Bloomington: Indiana University Press,
1992). Cf. Roy Harris, The Origin of Writing (LaSalle: Open Court, 1986), chap. 2,
"The Tyranny of the Alphabet," pp. 29-56.
22 "Translator's Preface," in Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology, trans. Gayatri
Chakravorty Spivak (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976), p. lxxxvii. For
a Derridean deconstruction of the East, see Robert Magliola, Derrida on the Mend (West
Lafayette: Purdue University Press, 1984). For the author's critical account of Derrida's
Chinese grarnmatology, see "Misreading the Ideogram: From Fenollosa to Derrida and
McLuhan," Paideuma, 13 (1985): 211-27.
23 For the English translation, see Signs, trans. Richard C. McCleary (Evanston:
Northwestern University Press, 1964), chap. 5, "Everywhere and Nowhere," pp. 126-58.
See also Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Texts and Dialogues, ed. Hugh J. Silverman and James
Barry, Jr. and trans. Michael B. Smith et al. (Atlantic Highlands: Humanities Press, 1992).
24 See Claude Levi-Strauss, Structural Anthropology, vol. 2, trans. Monique Layton (New
York: Basic Books, 1976), chap. 1, "The Scope of Anthropology," pp. 3-32. Levi-Strauss's
polemic against Jean-Paul Sartre, The Savage Mind (La Pensee sauvage) (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1966) was dedicated "to the memory of Merleau-Ponty."
Levi-Strauss's contention that the Nambikwara Indians of Brazil had no written language
of their own and that writing from Egypt to China serves as an "artificial memory" that
became an institution of exploitation rather than enlightenment has provoked Derrida's
grammatological critique of Levi-Strauss's "ethnocentric oneirism." See Levi-Strauss,
Tristes Tropiques, trans. John and Doreen Weightman (New York: Washington Square
Press, 1977), chap. 28, "A Writing Lesson," pp. 331-43 and Derrida, Of Grammatology,
pp. 101 ff. Needless to say, however, both Levi-Strauss, and Derrida are self-profess-
edly anti-ethnocentric.
21 Signs, p. 120.
26 Ibid., p. 138.
21 Ibid.
28 Ibid., p. 139 (italics added). Merleau-Ponty's conception of philosophy and non-
philosophy particularly in relation to Hegel and Marx is found in "Philosophy and
224 HWA YOL JUNG

non-Philosophy since Hegel" (trans. Hugh J. Silverman), Telos, no. 29 (1976): 43-105.
Cf. Hugh 1. Silverman (ed.), Philosophy and Non-Philosophy Since Merleau-Ponty (New
York: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1988).
29 Signs, p. 128 (italics added).
30 Ibid., p. 139. For Merleau-Ponty's affirmation of Western values, see G. B. Madison,
The Hermeneutics of Postmodernity (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988), p. 73.
If for Merleau-Ponty the flesh means - in the language of Madison (p. 67) - "the indi-
visible flesh ... of the Earth Mother which englobes us all," what would Merleau-Ponty
say, were he alive today, about the connection between "technopoly" which is the alleged
basis of Western superiority and the engulfing ecological crisis of humanity today? In
The Resources of Rationality (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992), Calvin O.
Schrag invokes and incorporates Merleau-Ponty's notion of "lateral universals" into his
idea of "transversality" which is an attempt to split the difference between modernist
hegemonic universalism and postmodernist anarchic diffusion: "The universal logos of
logocentrism is dead. The transversal logos of communicative rationality is alive and well"
(p. 164). Schrag's transversality in relation to the grammar of intercultural texts deserves
a careful evaluation which must be postponed.
31 In "A Chinese Philosopher's Theory of Knowledge," in Our Language and Our World,
ed. S. I. Hayakawa (New York: Harper, 1959), pp. 299-24, Tung-sun Chang argues that
the logic of correlation is to Chinese thought what the logic of identity is to Western
thought. For a superb and detailed discussion concerning how kinaesthetics or the ener-
getics of the body (ch'i) corresponds to the Sinitic logic of yin and yang, see Manfred
Porkert, The Theoretical Foundations of Chinese Medicine: Systems of Correspondence
(Cambridge: MIT Press, 1974). Scott Warren traces the connection between modem
Western dialectical theory and contemporary political inquiry in The Emergence of
Dialectical Theory: Philosophy and Political Inquiry (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1984).
32 Eccentricity signifies the condition of standing out and moving away from the center.
For a discussion of centricity and eccentricity, see Rudolf Arnheim, The Power of the
Center (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988).
33 Hayden White, Tropics of Discourse (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press,
1978), p. 4. In Desire, Dialectic, and Otherness (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987),
William Desmond coins the term "metaxological" in an attempt to clarify "the problem-
atic, ambiguous status of otherness in an exclusively dialectical approach": "[t]his
neologism [the metaxological], despite its unpleasing sound, has a very specific signifi-
cance for our purposes, for it is composed of the Greek words metaxu (in between, middle,
intermediate) and logos (word, discourse, account, speech). The metaxalogical relation has
to do with a logos of the metaxu, a discourse concerning the middle, of the middle and
in the middle. Thus it has a close affinity with the dialectical relation in as much as this
may involve dialogue (dialectic as dialegein). For, like the dialectical relation, the metax-
ological relation affirms that the self and the other are neither absolutely the same nor
absolutely different. But, unlike the dialectical, it does not confine the mediation of external
difference to the side ofthe self. It asserts, rather, that external difference can be mediated
from side of the other, as well as from that of the self. For the other, as much as the
self, may be internally differentiated, imminently intricate; hence, it too can enter the
middle space between itself and the self and from there mediate, after its own manner,
their external difference" (p. 7).
 PHENOMENOLOGY AND INTERCULTURAL TEXTS 225

34 There is a strong evidence that diatactics as a logic of human thought originates in

the auditory mind before the rise of visual consciousness. See Julian Jaynes, The Origin
of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (Boston: Houghton Mifflin,
1976).
35 Cf. R. G. H. Siu, Ch'i: A Neo-Taoist Approach to Life (Cambridge: MIT Press,
1974), p. 289. It should be emphasized that yin and yang, each individually or both
collectively, do not symbolize singularity but configuration as a web of interdependence
or vectoriality: as Siu writes, "In reality, ... yin does not exist without yang, nor yang
without yin. A truer model, then, would be one in which each of the actual yin and
actual yang numbers is a resultant of many vectors, rather than being a singularity of
its own. Thus, -1 may be the resultant of (+7, -8), (+8, -2, +15, -22), and so on. One
should not be surprised, therefore, to find contradictions within the same person or event.
These are intrinsic to being. A is both A and not-A" (p. 289). In short, yang and yin,
each or both combined, are relational concepts. Benjamin I. Schwartz labels this encom-
passing nexus of yin and yang as "correlative cosmology" which corresponds closely to
what Claude Uvi-Strauss calls the primitive "science of the concrete." See The World
of Thought in Ancient China (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986), chap. 9,
"Correlative Cosmology: The 'School of Yin and Yang'," pp. 350-82. This work of
Schwartz has cross-references to many great thinkers of the West. It is indeed a volume
on comparative philosophy
36 See the author's (with Petee Jung) "The Hermeneutics of Political Ideology and
Cultural Change: Maoism as the Sinicization of Marxism," Cultural Hermeneutics, 3
(1975): 165-98.
37 Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and the Invisible, ed. Claude Lefort and trans.
Alphonso Lingis (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1968), p. 94. For a brief
account of Merleau-Ponty's hyperdialectic and hyper-reflection (sur-reflexion) as the
method of deconstruction, see Rodolphe Gascbe, "Deconstruction as Criticism," Glyph,
6 (1979): 184-89. The composer Leonard Bernstein plays with the term ambiguity in
grafting his theory of music with Noam Chomsky's linguistics. See The Unanswered
Question (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1976).
38 Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and the Invisible, p. 95.
39 For a discussion of European and Chinese thought based on the Heideggerian theme
of ontological difference, see Johannes Lohmann, "M. Heidegger's 'Ontological
Difference' and Language," in On Heidegger and Language, ed. and trans. Joseph J.
Kockelmans (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1972), p. 303-63.
40 Cues for the proposal that the yin-yang logic of correlation has no beginning and no
ending come from David L. Hall, The Uncertain Phoenix (New York: Fordham University
Press, 1982), p. 249 and Italo Calvino, Six Memos for the Next Millennium (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1988), p. 110.
41 See the author's Rethinking Political Theory, chap. 3, "Mikhail Bakhtin's Body Politic:
A Phenomenological Dialogics," pp. 175-89.
42 Mark C. Taylor, Altarity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), p. xxiii.
43 The Adventure of Difference, trans. Cyprian Blamires and Thomas Harrison (Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993), p. 160.
44 See further the author's "Editor's Introduction" to Postmodernity and the Question
of the Other, a special double issue of Human Studies, 16 (1993): 1-17.
45 Of Grammatology, p. 158.
226 HWA YOL JUNG

46 Maurice Natanson, Anonymity (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986), p.

138.
47 "Dante ... Bruno. Vico .. Joyce," in Samuel Beckett et al., Our Exagmination
Round His Factijication for Incamination of Work in Progress (London: Shakespeare,
1929), p. 11.
48 Oliver Sacks's absorbing recent work entitled Seeing Voices (Berkeley: University
of California Press, 1989) is concerned with the body politic of the deaf for their struggle
for "ethnic" recognition.
49 On Boxing (Garden City: DolphinIDoubleday, 1987), p. 11. R. P. Blackmur is most
persuasive in arguing for gesture as indigenous to the linguistics of words. It is worth
quoting him fully: "Language is made of words, and gesture is made of motion. There
is one half the puzzle. The other half is equally self-evident if only because it is an equally
familiar part of the baggage of our thought. It is the same statement put the other way
round. Words are made of motion, made of action or response, at whatever remove; and
gesture is made of language - made of the language beneath or beyond or alongside of
the language of words. When the language of words fails we resort to the language of
gesture. If we stop there, we stop with the puzzle. If we go on, and say that when the
language of words most succeeds it becomes gesture in its words, we shall have solved
the verbal puzzle with which we began by discovering one approach to the central or dead-
end mystery of meaningful expression in the language of arts .... [G]esture is native
to language, and if you cut it out you cut roots and get a sapless and gradually a rotting
if indeed not petrifying language." Language as Gesture (New York: Columbia University
Press, 1981), pp. 3-4.
50 See The Dialogic Imagination, ed. Michael Holquist and trans. Caryl Emerson and
Michael Holquist (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981), "Discourse in the Novel,"
pp. 259-422.
51 Clark and Holquist, Mikhail Bakhtin, pp. 244-45. The implications of Bakhtin's
dialogism for social, political, and moral philosophy is enormous since it is thoroughly
interdisciplinary or, better, intertextual. By interweaving all the links between literature
and culture, Bakhtin's major achievement lies in the establishment of the "horizontal,"
dehierarchicized world of dialogism as opposed to the "vertical," hierarchicized world
of monologism. However, it is beyond the scope of this essay to detail them. I have briefly
discussed Bakhtin's philosophy of language, genealogy of the social, and epistemology
of the human sciences in relation to Giambattista Vi co in "Vico and Bakhtin: A
Prolegomenon to Any Future Comparison," New Vico Studies, 4 (1986): 157-65.
According to Clark and Holquist, Bakhtin's dialogism "is not intended to be merely another
theory of literature or even another philosophy of language, but is an account of
relations between people and between persons and things that cuts across religious,
political, and aesthetic boundaries" (Mikhail Bakhtin, p. 248). On this subject, see also
Tzvetan Todorov, Mikhail Bakhtin: The Dialogical Principle, trans. Wlad Godzich
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984) and Critique de la Critique: Un Roman
d'Appretissage (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1984), "L'Humain et l'interhumain (Mikhail
Bakhtine)," pp. 83-102.
52 Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination, pp. 280-82.
53 Between Man and Man, trans. Ronald Gregor Smith (New York: Macmillan, 1965),
p. 206 n. 2.
 PHENOMENOLOGY AND INTERCULTURAL TEXTS 227

54 I and Thou, trans. Ronald Gregor Smith, 2nd ed. (New York: Scribner's, 1958),
p.4.
55 Emmanuel Levinas and Richard Kearney, "Dialogue with Emmanuel Levinas," in Face
to Face with Levinas, ed. Richard A. Cohen (Albany: State University of New York Press,
1986), p. 27.
56 Ethics and Infinity, trans. Richard A. Cohen (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press,
1982), p. 95.
57 Cf. Jean-Paul Sartre, "Face," in Selected Prose, vol. 2, ed. Michel Contat and Michel
Rybalka and trans. Richard McCleary (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1974),
p. 67: "[iln human societies, faces rule."
58 Totality and Infinity, trans. Alphonso Lingis (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press,
1969), p. 395.
59 Ibid., p. 199.
60 According to Michel pecheaux, unlike the reciprocal working of identification (affir-
mation or acceptance) and counteridentification (negation or rejection) in the structure
of interdiscourse, disidentification is the non-subjective process in which ideological inter-
pellation or a set of ruling discursive practices works "as it were in reverse, i.e., on and
against itself." Language. Semantics and Ideology, trans. Harbans Nagpal (New York:
St. Martin's Press, 1982), pp. 158-59 and 195.
61 See Taylor, Altarity. This is a "deconstructive" masterpiece on alterity in contempo-
rary, postmodernist Continental thought. What Derrida's neologism "differance" is
to difference Taylor's portmanteau word "altarity" is to alterity. Taylor writes that
"Heidegger's Mitte is not the Hegelian mean [Mittel that mediates identity and differ-
ence by securing the identity of identity and difference. The delivery of difference is
also the delivery from every form of all-inclusive identity that negates, reduces, absorbs,
or swallows up otherness" (p. 44). Taylor's discussion is concerned with not only one
of the fundamental issues of postmodernism but also the most fundamental issue of phi-
losophy itself where there is nothing outside of sociality and the question of sociality is
that of alterity. For more ethically oriented discussions of postmodernism as a hermeneutic
project, see John D. Caputo, Radical Hermeneutics (Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, 1987) and Calvin O. Schrag, Communicative Praxis and the Space of Subjectivity
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986).
62 See Luis Villoro, "The Unacceptable Otherness" (trans. Katherine Hagedorn),
Diogenes, no. 159 (1992): 68.
63 See The Conquest of America, trans. Richard Howard (New York: Harper and
Row, 1984), p. 254. Cf. Michel de Certeau, Heterologies: Discourse on the Other,
trans. Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986), chap. 16,
"The Politics of Silence: The Long March of the Indians," pp. 225-62 which discusses
the European "ethnocide" of the South American Indians by the logic of homogenized
identity and the effort to decolonize their land and culture by proposing an alternative
way of living in harmony with not only other human beings but also other things on
earth.
64 The Conquest of America, p. 250. For Emmanuel Levinas's most systematic treatise
on the subject, see Totality and Infinity.
65 The Conquest of America, p. 248.
66 Ibid., p. 253.
228 HWA YOL JUNG

67 Giambattista Vico, The New Science, trans. Thomas Goddard Bergin and Max Harold
Fisch (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984), par. 1045 at p. 393.
68 Ibid., par. 237 at p. 78. As for the anthropomorphization of nature by means of the
body, Vico wrote: "[i]t is noteworthy that in all languages the greater part of the expres-
sions relating to inanimate things are formed by metaphor from the human body and its
parts and from the human senses and passions. Thus, head for top or beginning; the
brow and shoulders of a hill; the eyes of needles and potatoes; mouth for any opening;
the lip of a cup or pitcher; the teeth of a rake, a saw, a comb; the beard of wheat; the
tongue of a shoe; the gorge of a river; a neck of land; an arm of the sea; the hands of a
clock; heart for center (the Latins used umbilicus, navel, in this sense); the belly of a
sail; foot for end or bottom; the flesh of fruits; a vein of rock or mineral; the blood of
grapes for wine; the bowels of the earth. Heaven or the sea smiles; the wind whistles;
the waves murmur; a body groans under a great weight. The farmers of Latium used to
say the fields were thirsty, bore fruit, were swollen with grain; and our rustics speak of
plants making love, vines going mad, resinous trees weeping. Innumerable other examples
could be collected from all languages" (ibid., par. 405).
69 Mikhail Bakhtin, p. 87.
70 For a phenomenological sociology of the body, see John O'Neill, Five Bodies: The
Human Shape of Modern Society (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985). See also
David Michael Levin, The Body's Recollection of Being (London: Routledge and Kegan
Paul, 1985), The Opening of Vision (New York: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1988), and
The Listening Self (New York: Routledge, 1989).
71 Mikhail Bakhtin, p. 175 (italics added). No doubt "the anthropology of the body"
would contribute to the understanding of the body as our primordial linkage to the world
of things, other people, and other cultures. See The Anthropology of the Body, ed. John
Blacking (New York: Academic Press, 1977), especially John Blacking, "Towards an
Anthropology of the Body," p. 1-28. The most comprehensive cross-cultural study of
human gesture and language is found in Andre Leroi-Gourhan, Le Geste et la Parole, 2
parts in 2 vols. (Paris: Michel, 1964-1965).
72 There is no intimation here that the Chinese language as ideography is writing pure
and simple. It is well for us to take the heed of Wilhelm von Humboldt who said that
" ... the scholars who have almost let themselves be drawn into forgetting that Chinese
is a spoken language have so exaggerated the influence of Chinese writing that they
have, so to say, put the writing in place of the language." Quoted in John DeFrancis,
The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1984),
p. 35. As a matter of fact, DeFrancis argues that we should abandon altogether the for-
mulation of the Chinese language as "ideographic" in contradiction to the "phonographic"
(alphabetic). See particularly, chap. 8, "The Ideographic Myth," pp. 133-48. Moreover,
the thirteenth-century authority on Chinese philology Tai Tung argued that there are
six cardinal philological principles of Chinese "ideographic" writing among which one
is phonetic, that is, it is the idea that "[ w]ritten figures spring from spoken sound." See
The Six Scripts or the Principles of Chinese Writing, trans. L. C. Hopkins (Cambridge:
University Press, 1954), p. 27. It is one-sided to say, therefore, that Chinese writing in
its total structure or configuration is a pure grammatology or the study of writing as
independent of the phonetic or speech.
73 I. F. Stone, The Trial of Socrates (Boston: Little, Brown, 1988), p. 195.
 PHENOMENOLOGY AND INTERCULTURAL TEXTS 229

74 This Is Not a Pipe, trans. and ed. James Harkness (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1982), pp. 57-58.
75 R. G. Collingwood, The Principles of Art (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1938), pp. 243-44.
76 In Puzzles and Epiphanies (New York: Chilmark Press, 1962), Frank Kermode writes
that" ... [the American dancer LOle1Fuller is a kind of Ideogram: 'I' incorporation visuelle
de l'idee,' a spectacle defying all definition, radiant, homogeneous" (p. 25).
77 Silence: The Phenomenon and Its Ontological Significance (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1980), p. 111.
78 Love's Body (New York: Random House, 1966), pp. 264-65.
79 Ibid., p. 265.
80 Styles of Radical Will (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1969), "The Aesthetics
of Silence," p. 32.
81 "The Meaning of Philosophical Silence: Some Reflections on the Use of Language
in Chinese Thought," Journal of Chinese Philosophy, 3 (1976): 170.
82 I used the neologism carnal hermeneutics for the first time in "Writing the Body as
Social Discourse: Prolegomena to Carnal Hermeneutics," in Signs of Change, ed. Stephen
Barker (Albany: Stage University of New York Press, forthcoming). It is the volume of
selected papers from the 1991 Annual Meeting of the International Association for
Philosophy and Literature in Montreal, Canada. For the most comprehensive collection
of interdisciplinary and cross-cultural essays on the body politic, see Fragments for a
History of the Human Body, 3 parts in 3 volumes, ed. Michel Feher with Romona Naddaff
and Nadia Tazi (New York: Zone Books, 1989).
83 See Roland Barthes, The Pleasure of the Text, trans. Richard Miller (New York:
Hill and Wang, 1975). For the phenomenological formulation of the body as flesh, see
particularly Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and the Invisible and Paul Ricoeur,
Oneself as Another, trans. Kathleen Blamey (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992).
In Beloved (New York: Penguin Books, 1988), Toni Morrison celebrates the African-
American body as flesh: "Here ... in this here place, we flesh; flesh that weeps, laughs;
flesh that dances on bare feet in grass. Love it. Love it hard. Yonder they do not love
your flesh. They despise it. They don't love your eyes; they'd just as soon pick em out.
No more do they love the skin on your back. Yonder they flay it. And 0 my people
they do not love your hands. Those they only use, tie, bind, chop off and leave empty.
Love your hands! Love them. Raise them up and kiss them. Touch others with them,
pat them together, stroke them on your face 'cause they don't love that either. You got
to love it, you! And no, they ain't in love with your mouth. Yonder, out there, they will
see it broken and break it again. What you say out of it they will not heed. What you
scream from it they do not hear. What you put into it to nourish your body they will snatch
away and give you leavins instead. No, they don't love your mouth. You got to love it.
This is flesh I'm talking abut here. Flesh that needs to be loved. Feet that need to rest
and to dance; backs that need support; shoulders that need arms, strong arms I'm telling
you. And 0 my people, out yonder, hear me, they do not love your neck unnoosed and
straight. So love your neck; put a hand on it, grace it, stroke it and hold it up. And all
your inside parts that they'd just as soon slop for hogs, you got to love them. The dark,
dark liver - love it, love it, and the beat and beating heart, love that too. More than
eyes or feet. More than lungs that have yet to draw free air. More than your life-holding
womb and your life-giving private parts, hear me now, love your heart. For this is the
230 HWA VOL JUNG

prize.' Saying no more, she stood up then and danced with her twisted hip the rest of
what her heart had to say while the others opened their mouths and gave her music.
Long notes held until the four-part harmony was perfect enough for their deeply loved
flesh" (pp. 88-89).
84 The Portable Nietzsche, ed. and trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Penguin Books,
1959), p. 146. For a discussion of Giambattista Vico as precursor of Nietzsche's carnal
hermeneutics, see the author's "Vi co and the Critical Genealogy of the Body Politic,"
Rivista di Studi Italiani, 11 (1993): 39-66.
85 Kagaku Arifuku, "The Problem of the Body in Nietzsche and Dagen" (trans. Graham
Parkes), in Nietzsche and Asian Thought (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991),
p. 215. Yasuo Yuasa's The Body, ed. T. P. Kasalis and trans. Shigenori Nagatomo and
T. P. Kasulis (Albany: Stage University of New York Press, 1987) is an excellent account
of an Eastern theory of the body-and-mind unity as achievement. It should be pointed
out that the best part of Japanese philosophy is the production of an intertext which is
at once Chinese, Indian, and Western as well as Japanese. Yuasa's The Body brings out
not only what is unique and, I might add, phenomenological in Japanese thought but
also what is intertextual in the double sense of being (1) interdisciplinary and (2) inter-
cultural. Yuasa writes that "in the East one starts from the experiential assumption that
the mind-body modality changes through the training of the mind and body by means
of cultivation (shugyo) or training (keiko). Only after assuming this experiential ground
does one ask what the mind-body relation is. That is, the mind-body issue is not simply
a theoretical speculation but it is originally a practical, lived experience (taiken), involving
the mustering of one's whole mind and body. The theoretical is only a reflection on this
lived experience" (p. 18). In this nondualistic account or "molting" of the body and
the mind, Dagen must be singled out. For him, humans have the natural propensity to
view the mind as prior to the body, but they acquire only by cultivation (i.e., zazen or
seated meditation) the knowledge that the body is prior to the mind. See also Shigenori
Nagatomo, Attunement through the Body (Albany: State University of New York Press,
1992). For a discussion of the world as "one body" that attempts to integrate Western
and Eastern views, see Drew Leder, The Absent Body (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1990).
86 Heidegger and the Essence of Man, trans. William McNeill (Albany: State University
of New York Press, 1993), pp. 179-80.
87 The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays, trans. William Lovitt (New
York: Harper and Row, 1977), especially "The Age of the World Picture," pp. 115-54.
See also the author's "Martin Heidegger and the Homecoming of Oral Poetry," Philosophy
Today, 26 (1982): 148-70 which accounts for the auditory tradition of language. Critiques
of ocularcentrism have been attracting the serious attention of philosophy in recent years.
The most outstanding work is Richard Rorty's Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979).
88 Crowds and Power, trans. Carol Stewart (New York: Noonday Press, 1984), p. 217.
89 See Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson
(New York: Harper, 1962) and Die Grundbegriffe der Metaphysik: Welt - Endlickheit-
Einsamkeit, Gesamtausgabe, vols. 29/30 (Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1983). In
The Song of the Earth, trans. Reginald Lilly (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993),
Michel Haar stresses the primary and seminal significance of Stimmung in Heidegger's
thought. An excellent discussion on Befindlichkeit in Heidegger is found in Frederick
 PHENOMENOLOGY AND INTERCULTURAL TEXTS 231

A. Olafson, Heidegger and the Philosophy of Mind (New Haven: Yale University Press,
1987), chap. 5, "Feeling, Understanding, and Discourse," pp. 102-33.
90 Martin Heidegger, Nietzsche, vol. 1: The Will to Power as Art, trans. David Farrell
Krell (New York: Harper and Row, 1979), p. 99.
91 Walter Pater, The Renaissance, ed. Donald L. Hill (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1980), p. 106.
92 Trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Random House, 1967).
93 Hans-Georg Gadamer, Dialogue and Dialectic, trans. P. Christopher Smith (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1980), pp. 18-19. Cf. Martin Heidegger's use of
ZusammengehOrigkeit ("Belonging-together") in "Identity and Difference," passim. For
Alfred Schutz, playing music together has important sociological implications: "a study
of the social relationships connected with the musical process may lead to some insights
valid for many other forms of social intercourse, perhaps even to illumination of a certain
aspect of the structure of social interaction as such that has not so far attracted from
social scientists the attention it deserves." Collected Papers, II: Studies in Social Theory,
ed. Arvid Brodersen (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1964), pp. 159-60. In "Fragments
on the Phenomenology of Music" (ed. Fred Kersten), Music and Man, 2 (1976), pp.
5-71, Schutz laid out his project to discover in music or the auditory field an "ontology"
of the social world which goes beyond phenomenology. See also Helmut R. Wagner,
"Toward an Anthropology of the Life-World: Alfred Schutz's Quest for the Ontological
Justification of the Phenomenological Undertaking," Human Studies, 6 (June-September
1983): 239-46.
94 See Victor Zuckerkandl, Sound and Symbol (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1956). .
9S Mario Praz, Mnemosyne: The Parallel between Literature and the Visual Arts
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970), pp. 83-84.
96 David Sudnow's Ways of the Hand (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1978) is
a sociology of the hand, as it were, which extends the basic insights of Heidegger to playing
improvised music. For Jacques Derrida's critical account of Heidegger's sense of the hand
and its ramifications, see "Geschlecht II: Heidegger's Hand" (trans. John P. Leavey,
Jr.), in Deconstruction and Philosophy, ed. John Sallis (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1987), pp. 161-96. Cf. the author's "Martin Heidegger and the Homecoming of
Oral Poetry." For a phenomenology of the senses, particularly of vision (color) and audition
(sound), see Erwin W. Straus, Phenomenological Psychology: Selected Papers (New York:
Basic Books, 1966), chap. 15, "Phenomenology of Hallucinations," pp. 277-89. Alain
Touraine uses the metaphors of the "voice" (voix) and the "look" (regard) to talk about
the relationship between "action" and "theory" in The Voice and the Eye, trans. Alan
Duff (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981). In The Foul and the Fragrant
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986), Alain Corbin explores the interesting linkage
between the osphresiological sense and the social order in modern French thought.
97 Martin Heidegger, What Is Called Thinking?, trans. Fred D. Wieck and J. Glenn
Gray (New York: Harper and Row, 1968), p. 37. It is noteworthy that Heidegger's
discussion on the question of "how to think" in this work is dominated by auditory
metaphors.
98 Ibid., pp. 16-17.
99 Derrida, "Geschlecht II: Heidegger's Hand," p. 168.
lOll Rodin, trans. Jessie Lemont and Hans Trausil (London: Grey Walls Press, 1946), p.
232 HWA YOL JUNG

33. By now it is evident that Rilke is a conceptual "midwife" between Heidegger and
Rodin, that is, there is a chain that links Rilke to Rodin and Heidegger to Rilke.
Accordingly, we might well imagine writing an essay entitled "Ways of the Hand: A
Metalogue on Heidegger and Rodin."
101 See Karlfried Graf von Diirckeim, Hara: The Vital Center of Man, trans. Sylvia-
Monica von Kospoth (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1962).
102 Gynesis (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985).
103 The Orphic Voice (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1961), pp. 35-36. Sewell calls
Vico "the truest and greatest Orphic progeny" who was anti-Cartesian. For Vico, the
Cartesian Cogito stands on its head rather than on its feet. He writes: "I who think am
mind and body, and if thought were the cause of my being, thought would be the cause
of the body. Yet there are bodies that do not think; so that body and mind united are
the cause of thought. For if I were only body, I would not think. If I were only mind, I
would have [pure] intelligence. In fact, thinking is the sign, and not the cause of my
being mind." On the Most Ancient Wisdom of the Italians, trans. L. M. Palmer (Ithaca:
Cornell University Press, 1988), p. 56.
104 Quoted in Craig Owens, Beyond Recognition, ed. Scott Bryson et al. (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1992), p. 179. In her This Sex Which Is Not One, trans.
Catherine Porter (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985), pp. 23-33, Luce Irigaray
contends that it is wrong to speculate about female sexuality on the basis of the mascu-
line "scoptophilic lens" because it is mUltiple, dispersed, and ubiquitous. She refutes
"phallocratism." For her position on the feminine Geschlecht, see further Ethique de la
Difference Sexuelle (Paris: Minuit, 1984).
105 See Ashley Montagu, Touching: The Human Significance of the Skin (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1971), p. 7.
106 Rev. and enl. ed (New York: Penguin Books, 1977).
107 "Thinking and Moral Considerations: A Lecture," Social Research, 38 (1971): 417-18.
108 Eichmann in Jerusalem, p. 276.
109 Ibid., p. 49.
110 Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, trans. Helene Iswolsky (Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 1984), pp. 285-86. In The Aesthetic Dimension (Boston: Beacon
Press, 1978), Herbert Marcuse maintains that art is radical precisely because it is capable
of breaking up the monopoly of established reality. Cf. Harvey Cox, The Feast of Fools
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1969), p. 82: "[t]he rebirth of fantasy as well as
of festivity is essential to the survival of our civilization, including its political institu-
tions. But fantasy can never be fully yoked to a particular political program. To subject
the creative spirit to the fetters of ideology kills it. When art, religion, and imagination
become ideological tools they shrivel into caged birds and toothless tigers. However,
this does not mean that fantasy has no political significance. Its significance is enormous.
This is just why ideologues always try to keep it in harness. When fantasy is neither tamed
by ideological leashes nor rendered irrelevant by idiosyncrasy, it can inspire new civi-
lizations and bring empires to their knees."
111 On Humor, trans. Antonio Illiano and Daniel P. Testa (Chapel Hill: University of
North Carolina Press, 1974), p. 2.
112 The Failure of Criticism (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1978), p. 8.
113 For Derrida, "freeplay is the disruption of presence." "Structure, Sign, and Play in
the Discourses of the Human Sciences," p. 263.
 PHENOMENOLOGY AND INTERCULTURAL TEXTS 233

114 Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics, p. 160. For an interesting discussion of the

"priestly" and the "jesterly" as two dialectical opposites, see Leszek Kolakowski, Toward
a Marxist Humanism, trans. Jane Z. Peel (New York: Grove Press, 1968), pp. 9-37. He
writes that "[tJhe antagonism between a philosophy that perpetuates the absolute and a
philosophy that questions accepted absolutes seems incurable, ... This is the antago-
nism between the priest and the jester, and in almost every epoch the philosophy of the
priest and the philosophy of the jester are the two most general forms of intellectual culture.
The priest is the guardian of the absolute; he sustains the cult of the final and the obvious
as acknowledged by and contained in tradition .... The jester's constant effort is to
consider all the possible reasons for contradictory ideas. It is thus dialectical by nature
- simply the attempt to change what is because it is. He is motivated not by a desire to
be perverse but by distrust of a stabilized system" (pp. 33-34).
115 Speech Genres and Other Late Essays, pp. 134-35. Cf. Dominick LaCapra, "Bakhtin,
Marxism, and the Carnivalesque," in Rethinking Intellectual History (Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, 1983), p. 323: "Bakhtin's dialogical and carnivalizing rendition of
dialectics provides an alternative to the totalizing incentive of speculative dialectics,
and it substitutes a Rabelaisian for a Hegelian Marx." In his painting Les Vacances
de Hegel (1958) or "Hegel's Holiday," nonetheless, Ren~ Magritte adds a musing to
Hegel's dialectic by hinting at a hidden connection between a glass of water and an
umbrella which are two disparate objects. Of this we might say that philosophical problems
arise when Hegel's dialectic goes on holiday. From Peter Sloterdijk, I learned that there
is a "cheeky" side (Kynismus) of the dialectic, especially in the thought of Diogenes.
See Critique of Cynical Reason, trans. Michael Eldred (Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 1987). For the finest volume on the conceptual genealogy of totality
in "Western Marxism" from Lukacs to Habermas, see Martin Jay, Marxism and Totality
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984). In his Critique of Dialectical Reason,
I: Theory of Practical Ensembles, trans. Alan Sheridan-Smith and ed. Jonathan R~e
(London: NLB, 1976), Jean-Paul Sartre prefers to use the open-ended, existential idea
of totalization in order to avoid - inter alia - the monistic, dogmatic, and materialistic
notion of the dialectic as totality. Levinas's Totality and Infinity, too, must be read as a
critique of Hegel's dialectical totality. Be that as it may, it should be pointed out that
LaCapra ably manages to relate Bakhtin with Marx without ever mentioning the latter's
conception of revolution as the sole means of subverting and transforming the estab-
lished regime.
116 Humanism and Terror, trans. John O'Neill (Boston: Beacon Press, 1969), p. 109.
117 Adventures of the Dialectic, trans. Joseph Bien (Evanston: Northwestern University
Press, 1973), pp. 39 and 207 (italics added).
118 The Rebel, trans. Anthony Bower (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1956), pp. 283-
84.
119 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1962). For the author's critique of McLuhan's
philosophy of media technology, see "The Medium as Technology: A Phenomenological
Critique of Marshall McLuhan," in Phenomenology and the Understanding of Human
Destiny, ed. Stephen Skousgaard (Washington, D. C.: The Center for Advanced Research
in Phenomenology and the University Press of America, 1981), pp. 45-80.
120 Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (New York:
McGraw-Hill, 1964), p. 23. According to Walter J. Ong, S. J., it was Ramus who devel-
oped one of the most systematic visual metaphysics in early modern Europe. See Ramus,
234 HWA YOL JUNG

Method, and the Decay of Dialogue: From the Art of Discourse to the Art of Reason
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1958).
121 Understanding Media, p. 249. In Hand's End (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1993), David Rothenberg uses the metaphor of the "hand" to "soften" the rela-
tionship between the human and technology. Whether it is modern technology,
"manufacturing," or "management," the metaphor of the "hand" is no longer appropriate
to characterize it: as Heidegger is fond of saying, the essence of technology is not tech-
nological.
122 Understanding Media, p. 321.
123 Ibid., p. 18.
124 See Heidegger, The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays, especially
the essay "The Age of the World Picture," pp. 115-54.
125 Merleau-Ponty speaks of "a fundamental narcissism of all vision" (The Visible and
the Invisible, p. 139).
126 The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays, p. 134.
127 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, trans. C. E. M. Anscombe
(Oxford: Blackwell, 1954), p. 197e.
128 In Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, Rorty is very explicit on the question of
(visual) representation: "[ w]e must get the visual, and in particular the mirroring, metaphors
out of our speech altogether. To do that we have to understand speech not only as not
the externalizing of inner representations, but as not a representation at all" (p. 371). Freud
makes the distinction between "thing-presentation" (Sachvorstellung) and "word-presen-
tation" (Wortvorstellung): one is visual and the other is auditory. See The Complete
Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud (Standard Edition), trans. James Strachey, vol.
19 (London: Hogarth Press, 1961), p. 21.
129 (New York: Dell, 1977). See also Stanley Cavell, The World Viewed: Reflections
on the Ontology of Film, enl. ed. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1979).
130 On Photography, p. 16.
131 See Jerry Mander, Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television (New York:
Morrow, 1978).
132 See The Works of Jeremy Bentham, 11 vols., reprinted from the Bowering Edition
of 1838-1843 (New York: Russell and Russell, 1962),4: 39-248.
133 See Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish, trans. Alan Sheridan (New York:
Pantheon Books, 1977), pp. 195-228.
134 Bentham, The Works of Jeremy Bentham, 4: 74.
m Islands of History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985), p. 18.
136 See The Works of Jeremy Bentham, 4: 44, 80, and 79, respectively.
137 Foucault, Discipline and Punish, pp. 201-2.
138 Cf. Clifford Geertz, Local Knowledge: Further Essays in Interpretive Anthropology
(New York: Basic Books, 1983), p. 58: "[i]n the country of the blind, who are not as unob-
servant as they look the one-eyed is not king, he is spectator."
139 Foucault, Discipline and Punish, p. 217.
140 Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment, trans. John
Cumming (New York: Herder and Herder, 1972) is a cutting indictment against the
Enlightenment which is embodied in Francis Bacon's calculative thinking as the logic
of identity and extended to the "culture industry" and anti-Semitism in the twentieth
century.
 PHENOMENOLOGY AND INTERCULTURAL TEXTS 235

141 Identity and Difference, pp. 51-52. See also The Question Concerning Technology
and Other Essays. Don Ihde remarks that "Martin Heidegger is perhaps the philosopher
who has most originally and profoundly rendered the question of technology a central
concern of philosophy." Existential Technics (Albany: State University of New York Press,
1983), p. 29.
142 Herbert Marcuse is one of those few who had the clear insight of the "one-dimen-
sionality" of technology when he observes: "[t]he scientific method which led to the
ever-more-effective domination of man by man through the domination of nature.
Theoretical reason, remaining pure and neutral, entered into the service of practical reason.
The merger proved beneficial to both. Today, domination perpetuates and extends itself
not only through technology but as technology, and the latter provides the great legiti-
mation of the expanding political power, which absorbs all spheres of culture."
One-Dimensional Man (Boston: Beacon Press, 1964), p. 158.
143 Autonomous Technology: Technics-out-of-Control as a Theme in Political Thought
(Cambridge: MIT Press, 1977), p. 227. Cf. the author's "A Critique of Autonomous
Technology," Humboldt Journal of Social Relations, 12 (1985): 31-47.
144 Carl Mitcham, "What Is the Philosophy of Technology?," International Philosophical
Quarterly, 25 (1985): 76.
145 For a critique of modernity and a new metaphysics for reenchanting the future, see
Morris Berman, The Reenchantment of the World (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1981).
146 Trans. Lilian A. Clare (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1925).
147 Primitive Mentality, trans. Lilian A. Clare (New York: Macmillan, 1923), p. 8.
148 How Natives Think, pp. 13-14.
149 Ibid., p. 29 (italics added).
ISO Being and Time, p. 76.
lSI Edmund Husserl, "Phenomenology and Anthropology" (trans. Richard G. Schmitt),
in Realism and the Background of Phenomenology, ed. Roderick M. Chisholm (Glencoe:
Free Press, 1960), pp. 129-42.
152 See Clifford Geertz, Local Knowledge and The Interpretation of Cultures (New York:
Basic Books, 1973).
153 Sound and Sentiment: Birds, Weeping, Poetics, and Song in Kalulu Expression
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1982), p. 15.
154 In Discovering History in China (New York: Columbia University Press, 1984),
Paul A. Cohen wrestles with American historiography on China with a focus on Western
ethnocentrism and the possibility of writing "China-centered" Chinese historiography. For
the search of reflexivity as a postrnodernist project in anthropology in recent years, see
particularly George E. Marcus and Michael M. J. Fischer, Anthropology as Cultural
Critique: An Experimental Moment in the Human Sciences (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1986); Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography, ed. James
Clifford and George E. Marcus (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986); James
A. Boon, Other Tribes, Other Scribes: Symbolic Anthropology in the Comparative Study
of Cultures, Histories, Religions, and Texts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1982); Culture Theory: Essays on Mind, Self, and Emotion, ed. Richard A. Schweder
and Robert A. LeVine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984); and Reason and
Morality, ed. Joanna Overing (London: Tavistock Publications, 1982), particularly Edwin
Ardener, "Social Anthropology and the Decline of Modernism," pp. 47-70.
ISS The Normative Basis of Culture: A Philosophical Inquiry (Baton Rouge: Louisiana
236 HWA YOL JUNG

State University Press, 1986), p. 214. Cf. Theodore H. Von Laue, The World Revolution
of Westernization (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), p. 376: "[t]here exist
... no cultural universals providing a cornmon language for transcultural understanding;
like poetry, cultures are not translatable. We have no choice but to interpret the others
by our own lights, in our own cultural vernacular, never able to see the insiders in other
cultures as they see themselves. Given the inescapability of cognitive imperialism, we
have to ask in all questions of cross-cultural understanding: who understands whom on
whose terms? In the last analysis, cross-cultural understanding is a matter of raw power:
what has the power to make his own understanding prevail?" It must be said that while
I am in complete agreement with Von Laue's critique of the world revolution of
Westernization in the name of modernization as "cognitive imperialism," the hermeneu-
tics of dialogue is proposed here as the middle way between the power politics of
knowledge and cognitive anarchism or even solipsism.
156 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press).
157 Apart from a "trap" of biological reductionism, evolutionary biology as applied to the
human sciences has its own risks because an existing political, social, and economic theory
might be read into it. In this regard, Marshall Sahlins's critique of sociobiology is instruc-
tive: see The Use and Abuse of Biology: An Anthropological Critique of Sociobiology (Ann
Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1976). For the question of nature and history from
a phenomenological perspective, see Marjorie Grene, "The Paradoxes of Historicity,"
The Review of Metaphysics, 32 (1978): 15-36.
158 Cf. Marcus and Fischer, Anthropology as Culture Critique, p. 159: "[w]hat concerns
us ... is not the issues of these debates, but rather the further distortion in the repre-
sentation of Samoan ethnography when it is specifically employed by Mead as a juxtaposed
standard against which to compare and critique American practices. When her purpose
is American cultural critique, the portrait of Samoans, intentionally or not, loses touch
with the full-bodied context of life in Samoa, and the Samoans are thus in d'anger of
becoming symbolic, even caricatured, figures of virtuous or desirable behavior to be
used as a platform of critique in probing aspects of American culture." Is Mead's "one-
sided idyllic portrait of Samoan culture" the reverse of ethnocentrism, that is,
"xenophilism" or "nativism"? The concern of Marcus and Fisher expressed here may be
justified if and only if Mead set out to study Samoan culture in order to do a critique
of American culture as her primary goal instead of understanding Samoan culture itself.
159 Existential Technics, p. 116.
160 The Visible and the Invisible, p. 2l2.
161 "Perception as a Hermeneutical Act," The Review of Metaphysics, 37 (1983): 61-75.
162 The expression "hermeneutics of dialogue" is also found in Richard Kearney's
"appendix" in his Dialogues with Contemporary Continental Thinkers. As for the phrase
"hermeneutics without genuflection," I am alluding to Ernest Gellner's scathing or, I should
say, nongenuflective diatribe against American ethnographic or cultural hermeneutics,
especially Geertz's version of it. See "The Stakes in Anthropology," American Scholar,
57 (1988): 17-30. However, I have no illusions about making hermeneutics genuflec-
tive. Nor does Geertz, I believe.
163 In his Introduction to Political Analysis (Cambridge: Winthrop, 1977), the Africanist
and the theorist of modernization David E. Apter describes his approach as "hermeneutic"
which is offered as a mediation between the "behavioralist" and the "paradigmist" approach
 PHENOMENOLOGY AND INTERCULTURAL TEXTS 237

to political science. "In my view," he remarks, "the danger of the behavioral position, with
its emphasis on quantitative detail, specialization, and fine application, is that it will engage
small minds on small issues, while the paradigmist position with its emphasis on grand
solutions will engineer empty architectural plans for buildings that can never be built"
(p. 537). Apter is in the forefront of the postmodern theory of development. He incor-
porates the philosophical insights of "the postmodern condition" in developing the theory
of modernization. For a compendium volume of his theory, see Rethinking Development:
Modernization, Dependency, and Postmodern Politics (Newbury Park: Sage Publications,
1987).
164 "The Hermeneutics of Suspicion," in Hermeneutics, ed. Gary Shapiro and Alan Sica
(Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1984), p. 63.
165 The neologism otonomy is patterned after Jacques Derrida's discussion of Nietzsche
under the playful title "Otobiographies" (otolbiographies) in place of "autobiographies."
By "otonomy," we wish to preserve the double meaning of "autonomy" without being sub-
jective and the sensibility of the "associative ear" rather than the "collective eye" - to
borrow Eric Havelock's phrases. See Jacques Derrida, "Otobiographies: The Teaching
of Nietzsche and the Politics of the Proper Name" (trans. Avital Ronell), in The Ear of
the Other, ed. Christie V. McDonald (New York: Schocken Books, 1985), pp. 1-38.
166 "On Language as Such and on the Language of Man," in One-Way Street and Other
Writings, trans. Edmund Jephcott and Kingsley Shorter (London: NLB, 1979), p. 117. The
production of an intercultural text as translation is not a process of reproduction but the
creation of an intertext as a new text. For George Steiner, all communicating - speaking,
writing, reading, performing, etc. - is translating: "inside or between languages, human
communication equals translation." After Babel (New York: Oxford University Press,
1975), p. 47. Concerning the question of translation and interpretation in the context of
our discussion here, see Difference in Translation, ed. Joseph F. Graham (Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, 1985) and particularly, Jacques Derrida, "Des Tours de Babel" (trans.
Joseph F. Graham), pp. 165-207.
167 According to I Ching, male or the father figure is characterized as "creativity" (ch'ien)
and female or the mother figure as "receptivity" (k'un). Thus the "receptive"ear may
be considered to be associated with listening which is feminine receptivity. For an argument
for the receptivity and sensitivity of moral development in women, see Carol Gilligan,
In a Different Voice (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982).
168 Peter Berger, Brigitte Berger and Hansfried Kellner, The Homeless Mind:
Modernization and Consciousness (New York: Random House, 1973) is a phenomeno-
logical work that deals directly with the "politics of modernization" in the non-Western
world which is characterized by technology and bureaucratization.
169 "Modernity" (trans. David James Miller), Canadian Journal of Political and Social
Theory, 11 (1987): 71.
170 See The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology and also
Aron Gurwitsch, Phenomenology and the Theory of Science, ed. Lester Embree (Evanston:
Northwestern University Press, 1974). In II Saggiatore, Galileo wrote: "[p]hilosophy is
written in that vast book which stands forever open before our eyes, I mean the universe;
but it cannot be read until we have learned the language and become familiar with the
characters in which it is written. It is written in mathematical language, and the letters
are triangles, circles, and other geometrical figures, without which means it is humanly
238 HWA YOL JUNG

impossible to comprehend a single word." Quoted in Colin Murray Turbayne, The Myth
of Metaphor, rev. ed. (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1971), pp. 101-2.
GaIileo's language is overwhelmingly that of vision including the metaphor of "book."
Following Galileo, Descartes too uses the metaphor of "book" regarding nature. Concerning
the genesis of modernity, Baudrillard remarks that "[t]he invention of printing and the dis-
coveries of Galileo inaugurate modern Renaissance humanism" ("Modernity," p. 64).
171 Beyond Objectivism and Relativism: Science, Hermeneutics, and Praxis (Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania Press, 1983), p. 16.
\72 "Interpretation and the Sciences of Man," The Review of Metaphysics, 25 (1971):
34.
173 One cannot resist commenting on Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987). One severe weakness in his work is that while
he profoundly misreads and misunderstands the postmodernism of Nietzsche, Heidegger,
and Derrida, he is close-minded about the possibility of ideas as ecumenical when he
suggests that American college students should be taught philosophy - by which he
really means Western philosophy - rather than the cultures of the non-Western world.
He seems to assume that there is no philosophy in the non-Western world. Von Laue,
who has adopted a broadly conceived "culturalist" method of analysis, comes to the
conclusion that while the world revolution of Westernization in the name of moderniza-
tion has run its course in the twentieth century, "our Western knowledge of the
non-Western world, so impressively compiled by ethnographers, anthropologists, histo-
rians, and political scientists, is surface knowledge; it is a Western facade tacked onto a
non-Western world. We have westernized the world also in the image of our minds, in
the structures of our thoughts, essentially unchallenged. No other people has [sic] been
able to impose its way of looking at the world on so many others outside its culture"
(The World Revolution of Westernization, p. 376).
174 Edgar Wind, Pagan Mysteries in the Renaissance, rev. and en!. ed. (New York: W.
W. Norton, 1968), p. 196. "The truth," Benjamin I. Schwartz writes, "lies more often in
the nuances than the crude generalizations about global features of x culture or y culture.
It is on this level that, despite the unquestioned distance created by divergent larger cultural
orientations, one discerns again the possibility of a kind of universal human discourse"
(The World of Thought in Ancient China, p. 14). Whether or not one accepts his precise
model, it is worth noting that Charles Morris some years ago designated the future as
the "Maitreyan epoch" after the religion of Maitreya ("future Enlightened One") whose
coming, according to legend, was prophesied by Gautama Buddha. The Maitreyan path
is the balancing of the Buddhist path essentially of detachment from desire, the Dionysian
path principally of abandonment to primitive impulses, and the Promethean path primarily
of creative reconstruction. It is interesting to note here that the Promethean path of
"unceasing making" as the modern soul of the West is rooted in science and technology.
Paths of Life (New York: George BraziIIer, 1956), pp. 30 and 167.
175 The term chronotope is used by Bakhtin to indicate the inseparable unity of time
(chronos) and space (topos). Following Bakhtin, Todorov advocates "dialogic criticism"
(critique dialogique) in which the question of truth is posed as "a common horizon"
(un horizon commun) and as "a regulatory principle" (un principe regulateur). The prin-
ciple that regulates the intersection of literature and criticism is the meeting of the author's
voice and the critic's voice without privileging one over the other. By so doing, Todorov
 PHENOMENOLOGY AND INTERCULTURAL TEXTS 239

attempts to avoid both "dogmatism" and "immanentism" which result equally in mono-
logue. See Critique de La Critique, "Un Critique Dialogique?," pp. 179-93. The idea of
interdisciplinarity is itself a postmodernist accent. It is an attempt to destabilize, cut
loose, or transgress the narrowly fixed boundaries of the disciplinary genres and to reject
today's academic folklore that good fences make good neighbors. Gotthold Ephraim
Lessing's Laocoon (1766), trans. Edward Allen McCormick (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1984) is the first systematic, modernist effort to autonomize such indi-
vidual arts as painting and poetry.
176 J. Glenn Gray reports that the German word Heidegger uses, versammeLn, was trans-
lated with Heidegger's own approval as "to gather" which is rooted in the old German
gattern (to couple, to espouse or join in marriage) which in tum was derived from the
Greek to aqathon (the good). See "Heidegger in Remembering and Remembering
Heidegger," Man and World, 10 (1977): 62-63. According to Thorlief Boman, moreover,
the Greek logos came from lego (to speak) and the root leg- is "to gather." Logos
originally meant "to gather," "to speak," and "to think." Hebrew Thought Compared
with Greek, trans. Jules L. Moreau (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1960), p. 67. In A
Thousand Plateaus, trans. Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,
1987), Gilles Deleuze and F~lix Guattari speak of the rhizomatic or rhizomorphic
principle of assemblage rooted in such notions as connectedness, multiplicity, deterrito-
rialization, the betweenness of the middle, and heterogeneity (or "a binary logic of
differentiation"). In addition, the rhizome has the characteristic of horizontal or lateral,
subterranean, and pererrated growth. "A rhizome," they write, "has no beginning or end;
it is always in the middle, between things, interbeing, intermezzo. The tree is filiation,
but the rhizome is alliance, uniquely alliance. The tree imposes the verb 'to be,' but the
fabric of the rhizome is the conjunction, 'and ... and ... and .. .' ... The middle is
by no means an average; on the contrary, it is where things pick up speed. Between
things does not designate a localizable relation going from one thing to the other and
back again, but a perpendicular direction, a transversal movement that sweeps one and
the other away, a stream without beginning or end that undermines its banks and picks
up speed in the middle" (p. 25).
177 See On the Way to Language, trans. Peter D. Hertz (New York: Harper and Row,
1971), "A Dialogue on Language between a Japanese and Inquirer," pp. 1-54.
178 If the image of the East is markedly feminine, whereas the image of the West is
markedly masculine, then Western ethnocentrism is also phallocentric. Moreover, the
question of modernization and Westernization based on the "masculine" hegemony of
science and technology over "feminine" nature is undoubtedly phallocentric as well.
Thus one should always be mindful or fearful of a logocentric prejudice in dichotomizing
the aesthetic of the feminine principle and the theoretic of the male principle. For a
classic attempt to accent the aesthetic of the East and the theoretic of the West, see F.
S. C. Northrop, The Meeting of East and West: An Inquiry Concerning World
Understanding (New York: Macmillan, 1946).
179 See History and Truth, trans. Charles A. Kelbley (Evanston: Northwestern University
Press, 1965), "Universal Civilization and National Cultures," pp. 271-84. Charles Taylor
speaks of the "transcultural judgments of rationality" in "Rationality," in Rationality
and Relativism, ed. Martin Hollis and Steven Lukes (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1982), pp.
98-105. For a few important pointers in the direction of humanitarianism, see also Herbert
240 HWA YOL JUNG

Spiegelberg, Steppingstone Toward an Ethics for Fellow Existers: Essays 1944-1983

(Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff, 1986).
180 Trans. David A. Dilworth (Tokyo: Sophia University Press, 1970).
181 The Normative Basis of Culture, p. 234.
182 Nishida, Fundamental Problems of Philosophy, p. 254.
183 Cf. Sahlins, Islands of History which attempts to link, inter alia, history and culture
as they mutually condition each other. Speaking of the "anthropology of history," he writes:
"[t]he problem now is to explode the concept of history by the anthropological experi-
ence of culture. The heretofore obscure histories of remote islands [e.g., Hawaiian Islands]
deserve a place alongside of the self-contemplation of the European past - or the history
of 'civilizations' - for their own remarkable contributions to an historical understanding"
(p. 72). William H. McNeill is somewhat a unique voice that brings our attention to the
lateralization of civilization as "diffusion" and the idea of "world history" which is not
based on heavy-headed Eurocentrism but is conceived as a polyphony of cultural immix-
ture and borrowings. For him, the ideal of world history is imbedded in "ecumenical
cosmopolitanism" which envisions the construction of "a credible portrait of the human
past on a global scale." For a summation of his historiographical practice of world history,
see Mythistory and Other Essays (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986).
184 Rilke, Rodin, p. 41.
185 "The New Cultural Politics of Difference," in Out There: Marginalization and
Contemporary Cultures, ed. Russel Ferguson et al. (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1991), pp.
19-36.
186 Here I am extending Hans-Georg Gadamer's well-known idea of hermeneutics as
the fusion of (temporal) horizons (the past and the present) (Horizontverschmelzung).
See Truth and Method, 2nd rev. ed. and rev. trans. Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G.
Marshall (New York: Crossroad, 1991). Cf. Paul Ricoeur, The Conflict of Interpretations,
ed. Don Ihde (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1974), p. 27 and Vattimo, The
Adventure of Difference, p. 153.
187 Stephen Toulmin, Cosmopolis: The Hidden Agenda of Modernity (New York: Free
Press, 1990).
188 Cf. Charles Taylor, Multiculturalism and "the Politics of Recognition" (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1992). In Molecular Revolution, trans. Rosemary Sheed
(New York: Penguin Books, 1984), pp. 11-23, F~lix Guattari employs the idea of trans-
versality to reform institutional therapeutics. In opposition to "pyramidal hierachization,"
transversality means to promote "a new kind of dialogue." For the importance of trans-
versality for intercultural hermeneutics, see the author's "The Tao of Transversality as a
Global Approach to Truth: A Metacommentary on Calvin O. Schrag," Man and World
(forthcoming).
 PART FOUR

THE CONSTITUTIVE FOUNDATION OF

CULTURE: CATEGORIES
 TZE- WAN KW AN

THE DOCTRINE OF CATEGORIES AND

THE TOPOLOGY OF CONCERN
Prolegomena to an Ontology of Culture

1. INTRODUCTION

There is little doubt that the problem of categories has been among one
of the most frequently discussed topics in philosophy ever since Aristotle.
Important as it was, the problem of categories has however become in
the eyes of todays' students of philosophy an old-fashioned or even
out-dated problem. If philosophy itself is for most people a marginal
discipline of little practical value, then the problem of categories would
turn out to be the most abstract and most detached issue of all. But is
the problem of categories really that abstract?
Compared with more sensuous problems such as "Life and Death",
"Freedom" or "Justice", the problem of categories gives us the impres-
sion of being a matter of theoretical technicality that is of mere scholastic
interest. However, we will see bit by bit in the following, that the problem
of categories has in the last analysis a strong relevance to the basic
concerns of philosophy as well as to the very world perspective of man.
We will also show that as man's basic concerns vary from culture to
culture and from one age to another, the respective systems of cate-
gories will take up an utterly different structural outlook.

1.1. The Aristotelian Conception of Language

The problem of categories is related to the problem of language in a
very particular way and it would seem beneficial that we should make
some general observations about the phenomenon of language right from
the start. Since Plato and Aristotle it has long been noticed that language
plays an extremely important role in man's representation of "reality".
However, owing to their philosophical position of metaphysical realism,
the ancients tended to undermine the function of language, taking it as
a mere instrument for mapping realities. This was especially true of
Aristotle, whose conception of language remained authoritative till
centuries later. But what does "the representation of realities through
language" really mean? What is really happening when language is being

243

A-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana Vol. XLVI, 3-143.

© 1995 Kluwer Academic Publishers.
244 TZE-WAN KWAN

used? While most linguists and philosophers of language today are rather
reluctant to give a straightforward answer to these questions, Aristotle
himself seems to be quite forthcoming. In the first chapter of his On
Interpretation, Aristotle makes his point in a most lapidary way:
Words spoken are symbols or signs of affections or impressions of the soul; written
words are the signs of the words spoken. As writing, so also is speech not the same for
all races of men. But the mental affections themselves, of which these words are
primarily signs, are the same for the whole of mankind, as are also the objects of which
those affections are representations or likeness, images, copies.!

Despite the rather clumsy formulation, this passage of Aristotle is

indeed the locus classicus of a conception of language which we can
call an "instrumental view". Here Aristotle is talking about four levels
of entities, namely,
1) external "objects" [1tpay~a.'ta.],
2) mental affections or impressions [1ta.e1'\~a.'ta.],
3) words spoken or spoken language [<\>oovn]' and finally
4) written words, writing [ypa.<\>6~EVa.].
Instead of simply mentioning these four levels, the passage above
shows us further how Aristotle conceives the relation between them.
To put it in simple words. it is Aristotle's view that there exists a simple
one-to-one correspondence between the fours levels, one level being
the sign or symbol of the other, with external objects acting as the
ultimate standard of objective reference. Of these four levels, Aristotle
takes external objects and the affections (and thought) they arouse to
be universal among mankind, while language and writing are said to
be different from nation to nation. Being relative to nationalities and
lacking in any sense of self-identity, language derives its objective
meaning through its correspondence with external objects. And language
so understood is through-and-through instrumental.
This conception of Aristotle is to an extent important, as it reflects
the way most people think what language is. Appealing as it is, this
view of Aristotle bears with it some philosophical implications that turn
out to be extremely controversial. As we have just shown, languages
are according to Aristotle relative to nations while thought and affections
are universal. If this is true, will it amount to saying that clarity and
uniqueness of thought is already well-established before or even without
the use of language? Again if this is true, in what way apart from
linguistic formulations can thought entities be clear and distinct? Here
 THE DOCTRINE OF CATEGORIES 245

we see that the above understanding of language and its relation to

thought and things commits Aristotle to acceptance of the notion of "pre-
linguistic clarity of thought" which is very much questioned in modem
scholarship. This same difficulty, observed from a more practical stand-
point, results in technical problems, such as for instance, the question
whether something said in one language is perfectly translatable into
another.

1.2. In Search of a New Understanding of Language

As regards the problem of language, it is not until the last two cen-
turies when modem linguistics has developed into a self-sufficient
discipline that the role of language and its relation to "external reali-
ties" are reconsidered. In the course of this development, the heritage
of Kant has shown a great influence. Indeed, Kant's refutation of tradi-
tional metaphysics and his rendering of all kinds of talk about external
realms independent of human observation as cognitively irrelevant, put
an end to Aristotle's more or less naive conception of language. In the
eyes of modem linguists like Wilhelm von Humboldt or F. de Saussure,
language is by no means a mere copy of a universal realm of external
realities. They especially criticize the assumption of pre-linguistic clarity
of thought implied by Aristotle. They readily put forward the idea that
language performs a somewhat co-constitutive function which is essen-
tial to the very formation of man's meaningful world-picture. According
to this new understanding, whatever man is aware of or is known by man,
is always something meaningful. And it is always through language
that meaning can be constituted.
In an early treatise on language, Ober das vergleichende Sprach-
studium in Beziehung auf die verschiedenen Epochen der Sprach-
ent-wicklung [1820], Humboldt announces his main objection to the
Aristotelian concept of language with the following much quoted
words:
The interdependence of word and idea shows us that languages are not actually means
of representing a truth already known, but rather of discovering the previously unknown.
Their diversity is not one of sounds and signs, but a diversity of world perspectives
[Weltansichtenj.2

On another occasion, Humboldt put his conception of language this

way: "Language is by no means a mere instrument for communication,
246 TZE-WAN KW AN

rather, it is the seal of the intellect [Abdruck des Geistes] and the world
perspective of the speaker.,,3
Saussure for his part declares in his posthumously published Course
in General Linguistics as follows:
Psychologically our thought - apart from its expression in words - is only a shapeless
and indistinct mass. Philosophers and linguists have always agreed in recognizing that
without the help of signs we would be unable to make a clear-cut, consistent distinction
between two ideas. Without language, thought is a vague, uncharted nebula. There are
no preexisting ideas, and nothing is distinct before the appearance of language. 4

With the same token, Leo Weisgerber, a prominent German linguist

and philosopher, speaks of a Gesetz des sprachbedingten Daseins,5 which,
when rendered into English, will mean a "Law of the linguistic condi-
tioning of human existence". What is meant here can be put in this
way: as long as we want to understand the human being as something
more than a mere animal, as a being capable of culture, language proves
itself indispensable. Here, language is taken as the formative principle
of the cultural conception of the human being as such.
Without being confined to linguistics, this new understanding of
language has gained validity also in the contemporary discussion of
hermeneutics, the best testification of which can be found in Gadamer's
Wahrheit und Methode:
It is true that the historical "worlds" that succeed one another in the course of history
are different from one another and from the world of today; but it is always, in whatever
tradition we consider it, a human, i.e. a linguistically constituted world that presents
itself to us. Every such world, as linguistically constituted, is always open, of itself, to
every possible insight and hence for every expansion of its own world-picture, and accord-
ingly available to others. This is of fundamental importance, for it makes the use of
the expression "world in itself" [Welt an siehl problematical. The criterion for the
continuing expansion of our own world-picture is not given by a "world in itself' that
lies beyond language. Rather, the infinite perfectibility of the human experience of the
world means that, whatever language we use, we never achieve anything but an ever
more extended aspect, a "view" of the world ["Ansieht" der Weltl. 6

1.3. Artikulation vs Verlautbarung, or Phonology vs Phonetics

When talking about language, most layman's understanding tends to

pinpoint just the fact that language is something that is spoken. But
what actually is the phenomenon of speaking? To explicate this point,
let us start with the notion of articulation.
 THE DOCTRINE OF CATEGORIES 247

The concept of articulation is understood by most linguists today as

the process of sound production or sound utterance by the human speech
organs. It is taken basically as a physical-physiological phenomenon.
However, if we look back to the etymological root and to the history
of the term itself, we will discover something very different. The terms
"articulation", "Artikulation" or "articulus" in the works of Kant, of
Humboldt and of Saussure suggest a completely different and indeed
much "deeper" issue than that of sound utterance. The term "articulus"
means originally "member". The full comprehension of the term pre-
supposes the understanding of "system" and internal structure. As a
concept pertaining to structure, articulation is primordially not a physical-
physiological but rather a "psychological" or intellectual phenomenon.
To make it more precise, the problem of articulation explains how the
various units or members of a language system fit together in an organic
and ordered manner to make communication of meaning possible. To
highlight this essential feature of the problem of articulation, Heidegger
differentiates between Artikulation and Verlautbarung. 7 Although both
words refer to the phenomenon of speech in general, they are different
in order. While Verlautbarung, literally "the making or uttering of
sound", is but the surface aspect of the phenomenon, it is Artikulation
that accounts for the deep-structure of the realm of meaning and
communication.
We might just make a note in passing. In modern linguistics, in order
that the true intellectual aspect of meaning communication through speech
be distinguished from the mere physical-physiological aspect of sound
utterance, a new discipline called phonology has been founded. s This new
discipline of study, basically a social science, differs from the more
traditional phonetics in exactly the same way that Artikulation differs
from Verlautbarung. Whereas in phonetics it is not necessary to specify
a natural system, phonology always assumes a particular language system,
be it Russian or Greek or Chinese. Such an investigation is therefore
always connected to some particular culture or tradition. Its final objec-
tive is not to investigate sound as a physical acoustic entity, but sound
as a meaning constituting unit relevant to a social community. I see in
this new discipline a close relation to the doctrine of categories. To my
understanding, categories are in the last analysis bounded by culture. If
the phonological units such as phonemes or distinctive features are the
crudest symbolic codes for meaning, then we may take categories as
symbolic codes for meaning in the highest order. 9
248 TZE-WAN KWAN

1.4. Categories and the Concept of Lexical Field

Another important point we want to embark upon is the introduction

of the concept of system in philosophy and linguistics. In modern phi-
losophy, Kant is the first one to emphasize the concept of system. He
did this by contrasting the concept of "system" with that of "aggre-
gate". For Kant, an aggregate is just a random piling up of indifferent
units following the principle of coacervatio or per appositionem, and
the totality thus formed has no character and no structure whatsoever. On
the contrary, a system is made up of members which are linked up
according to the principle of articulation: the development of a system
is no random heaping up of units, but growth from the inside outward
[per intus susceptionem]lO
Since the rise of structural linguistics, language or la langue is no
longer treated as a mere conglomeration of discrete linguistic utter-
ances, it is understood rather as a system of signs. Within the system
of language, the signs as members of the system are interrelated and
exhibit a particular structure. As members or articulus of a language
system, a word's meaning is not just a one-to-one correspondence of
the signifier to a definite concept. To understand a word, it is not enough
to catch what is signifies; what is more important is to sense its linguistic
value. Under linguistic value, Saussure understands the co-determined or
reciprocally delimited meaning of one linguistic sign through its oppo-
sition or comparison with other related signs. Just as the meaning of
"slow" is co-determined by expressions as "silly", "stupid", "foolish",
"dumb", "ignorant", "innocent", and so on and so forth.
Hooking on Saussure's theory of linguistic value and its underlying
principle of reciprocal delimitation, linguists such as Jost Trier and Leo
Weisgerber further proposed the theory of lexical field [Worifeldtheorie].
Under lexical field Weisgerber understands a matrix of expressions inter-
related to encompass a particular sector or stratum of human experience.
"to be able to use the word sluggish correctly," Weisgerber says, "I
must have other words at hand like lazy, washed-out, tired, exhausted
as measuring rods. To judge a perceived person as sluggish presup-
poses the correct use of this whole series."l1 Different lexical fields might
then be further related resulting in broader fields, the largest of which
is nothing but the lexicon of a given language.
This theory of lexical field, according to my own jUdgement, has
in fact the most important relevance for our present issue concerning
 THE DOCTRINE OF CATEGORIES 249

categories. The lexicon of a language, when understood correctly, is there-

fore not just a heap or an aggregate of words, it is rather an internally
multi-segmented pack of interrelated domains of expression. Unlike the
lexicon you find on your desktop, the lexicon in the mind of a nation
is not arranged in a mechanical way as one of the "alphabet" - it is
arranged but organically according to fields. In phenomenology and
hermeneutics, we can now understand human experience as involved
in an interaction of "internal" and "external" horizons, with the concept
of world acting as the broadest horizon or the most comprehensive
structural framework of orientation. Similarly, we can understand man's
act of speaking or "articulation" as operation of the intellect "within"
and "between" the different field-structures, with the lexicon as the
broadest structural framework of orientation. Understood in this manner,
the lexicon and indeed the system of language (La langue) is nothing
but the linguists counterpart of the phenomenological conception of the
world. In fact it is the view of linguists such as Humboldt and Weisgerber
that in every national language, owing to its peculiar internal structure,
there is a peculiarly orientative world-perspective [Weltansicht] or
"Weltbild of vocabularies" in action.

1.5. The Problem of Categories and the Topology of Concern

Following the footsteps of Kant, one might well be prepared to think

of the categories as having their origin in depths of human understanding
as such. However, the question whether such "categories" are universal
and abiding through the ages remains highly controversial. Without detri-
ment to the basic assumption about the origin of categories in the human
intellect, modern epistemology as well as linguistic theories challenge
strongly the "universality" of categories. Instead, the structure of cate-
gories is open to change throughout time, just as human intellect itself
always undergoes development. Evolutionary epistemology, genetic epis-
temology, ethno-linguistics, diachronic linguistics are titles pertaining
to this kind of scepsis.
Although we do not want to refute the thesis concerning the intel-
lectual origin of the categories, we do want to suggest that discussions
of this sort are bound to be controversial and tentative. To render dis-
cussion about the problem of categories meaningful, it is better that we
suspend the above type of discussion about "origins", but rather raise
questions about the "functions" of the respective systems of categories
250 TZE-WAN KWAN

explicitly stated in the classical works of philosophy. Such explicitly

stated systems of categories can either be the result of a conscious
summary or a consolidation of current philosophical concerns; or at times
of "paradigm changes" in cultural interest, it can well be the result of
an innovative, anticipatory inauguration of a new direction of concernful
awareness. This is what we care about most in this paper.
What the problem of categories is about is not the "categorization"
of objective realities common to all mankind and valid for all ages.
Categories are productive instead of reproductive. Categories consti-
tute so to speak a hidden art of the human mind, molding in the first place
what eventually becomes meaningful for man. To put it in the words
of Ernst Cassirer, "the object, as an object of knowledge, as an object
of appearance, is not determined 'in itself,' but rather its determination
grows progressively with the productivity of the mind. The direction
of this productivity - the categories, which in this endeavor of the mind
are determinative and operative [... ]"12
The problem of categories undertakes in the first place an observa-
tion of the various systems of categories that might be discovered in
the various cultural traditions. Under a system of categories we under-
stand here a consciously enumerated and specially ordered cluster of
fundamental conceptions. In the broadest understanding, the function
of such a system is twofold: first, with such a system, the major concern
of the respective cultural tradition is tabulated into a checklist of relevant
items. This checklist yields us a more detailed description of the domain
of interest cherished by that particular cultural tradition. Second: being
a "system" of fundamental items exhibiting a particular internal struc-
ture, this system of categories echoes the way that tradition conceives
the relationship between the various items concerned. These relations
sum up to constitute the basic world-picture of that tradition. In one word,
a system of categories that a cultural tradition produces functions in
the last analysis as a topology of concern peculiar to that very tradi-
tion at a given period.
The concept of "category" itself is a concept derived from the Greek
philosophical tradition. However, the problem of categories as such is
definitely not confined to the Western philosophical tradition alone. To
put it in other words, we have to assume from the outset that, rather
than being a doctrine peculiar to a particular philosopher like Aristotle
or Kant, the problem of categories is rather a universal issue pertaining
to the ultimate concerns of the respective cultural heritage. Different
philosophical traditions might show different degrees of awareness of the
 THE DOCTRINE OF CATEGORIES 251

problem. They might or might not be able to bring forth thematic dis-
cussion about the problem of categories, but in so far as every major
tradition does exhibit its own focus of concern, categorical systems,
explicit or implicit, thematic or unthematic, are to be found in them.
Therefore, a cross-cultural approach to the problem seems inevitable
and indeed profitable. For this same reason, in the course of our elabo-
ration of the problem of categories, the oriental as well as the occidental
tradition will be taken into account; this being done in the hope of making
manifest the cultural implications underlying the problem.

2. THE WESTERN TRADITION

2.1. The Aristotelian System of Categories

2.1.1. "Manifoldness" and "Change" in Nature as a Basic Concern

for Aristotle

Aristotle is the first philosopher who consciously introduced the con-

cept of category into philosophical discussions. Indeed, even the word
1<.:a't11yopia itself seems to be Aristotle's own coinage. However,
ascribing the problem of categories to Aristotle alone might be an over-
simplification of the whole problem-horizon. Rather, it seems to me
that the problem of categories had long been anticipated since the dawn
of Greek philosophy, although it is not until a much later stage that the
problem was explicitly thematized.
As we have remarked earlier, for each cultural tradition to be identi-
fiable as a tradition, some traits of basic concern can and must always
be discovered, And it is this basic concern that is, in absentia, the real
incentive for the founding of the various categorical systems. To under-
stand the categorical systems of Western Man, a reference to the basic
concern of Western philosophy seems to be of the utmost importance.
What then is the basic concern for Western Man? A question of this
sort can never be answered without some degree of generalization. To
put it in the most generalized manner: right from the very beginning,
to strive for an ever deeper understanding of nature seems to be the
main point of interest of the West.
For Greek antiquity, nature is a wealth of differentiated, mundane phe-
nomena involved in a series of changes. There is little doubt that most
cosmological theories in antiquity aim at grasping a unitary principle
capable of explaining nature as a whole. However, such a unitary prin-
252 TZE- WAN KW AN

ciple is in the last analysis nothing but a "unity of the manifold", an

"abiding among all changes". Unity in this sense is always a hard won
result - hard won since it must be preceded by a detailed observation
of all differentiations and changes. For this to be achieved, the Western
philosophical tradition has long anticipated a scheme for describing nature
in respect of its manifold manifestations and in respect of the under-
lying mechanism of change. The reason for this can easily be understood.
As for the problem of manifoldness, the development from the con-
cept of ckpXT\ to that of (J'totXeux or "elements" signalizes clearly the
increasing awareness of differentiations in nature. Democritus' doctrine
of atoms further confirmed this awareness through a kind of quantita-
tive pluralism. As to the second issue about the mechanism of change,
Anaximander's notion of cosmic retribution seems to be the earliest
testimony. Then follows Anaximenes' idea of "condensation" and
"rarefaction", "cold" and "hot", or Empedocles' concept of "Love" and
"Hate". Even the dynamic contrast between CxPllov{a and 1t6A.eIlO~ of
the celebrated Heraclitus and the "ten pairs of opposites" of Pythagoras
are obviously responses to this concern for the problem of change in
nature.
With Plato and Aristotle, Western philosophy experiences the greatest
synthesis unmatched by any previous endeavour. Although Aristotle
shares to a considerable extent the philosophical terminologies of his
teacher, the basic tenets of his philosophy show some cardinal differences
compared with that of Plato. Both having the greatest respect for human
reason, their attitude toward sensation is quite different. Whereas Plato
remained all his life skeptical about the right of the senses to represent
true knowledge, Aristotle admits of the senses as a means of knowl-
edge in its own right, thus demanding that reason must work in
conjunction with the senses. While Plato, who relies solely on theoret-
ical reason, fails to produce a reasonable account of empirical nature, 13
Aristotle for his part brings about a rehabilitation of empirical individ-
uals ['t68e 'tt]. With his Eleatic influence, Plato's reaction to the problem
of change is a steadfast renouncement of the empirical realm, taking it
as illusive. On the contrary, Aristotle never undermines the reality of
empirical nature because of its changes. Just the opposite, Aristotle
takes all changes of empirical nature as "real processes", or in his own
terms, as ev~PYEt<X, as actualization. While Plato becomes somewhat
helpless toward the empirical, Aristotle's greatness lies precisely in pro-
viding a systematic explanation of natural differentiations and change. 14
 THE DOCTRINE OF CATEGORIES 253

With this in mind, there is no wonder why the problem of categories

finds its final expression not in the philosophy of Plato but in that of
Aristotle.

2.1.2. Aristotle's Table of Categories - A First View

Instead of understanding the problem of categories as a purely meta-

physical issue, many prominent Aristotelian scholars like Trendelenburg
or Apelt recognize right from the outset that the problem of categories
in Aristotle is in principle a linguistic one. Gillespie said for example:
"it was Apelt's great merit to have taken hold of the principle that the
application of the schemata of the categories is primarily determined from
the linguistic point of view, the purpose of which is to meet our verbal
statement about reality."15 Trendelenburg for his part adopts the view that
the Aristotelian categories are derived from grammatical rules. But what
is the true nature of this linguistic issue?
To start with, an etymological account of the word Kutllyopiu itself
is certainly helpful. The Greek word Kutllyopiu, coined by Aristotle
himself, is believed to be derived from a more commonplace locution
KUtllYOPElu, a word that means "to speak against someone", or "to
prosecute". In fact, the expression KUtllYOPElu can be analyzed further
into two finer components, KUteX and ayopEUEtV (ayopa), Whereas
KUteX is a common Greek preposition for "down upon ... ", ayopEUEtv
means "to testify or to speak publicly, for example in the market place
[a.yopd]" .16 Taken together, to "prosecute" means simply pointing to
someone about whom a witness is going to speak from one aspect
or the other. Observed most generally, what really is going on in a
process of prosecution is nothing but a verbal description about a certain
object or a certain state of affairs. Or in other words, it has to do with
language and description. It is precisely this underlying motive that
constitutes the real significance of the problem of categories in Aristotle.
Besides the substantive Ku'tTJyopiu, Aristotle employs frequently the verb
KUtllYOPElcr9at which means exactly to predicate or to describe.
What then is the true nature of the Aristotelian categories? From the
aforementioned we can make the provisional judgement that they have
to do with the problem of linguistic description. However, this way of
understanding the problem is not immediately clear. For many of those
who show a tendency to overemphasize the metaphysical nature of the
problem, this linguistic relevance to everyday description is often under-
254 TZE- WAN KW AN

mined and obscured. Indeed most traditional discussions tend to inter-

pret Aristotle's categories as abstract concept or as "highest classes or
genera" serving the purpose of classification of subsumption. Once
this view is adopted, a lot of theoretical difficulties might arise. For
example: How can these abstract concepts be related to the basic con-
cern about nature in Aristotle's philosophy? Why a classification of
Being? How would these abstract concepts contributed to a principle
of classification? How do they contribute to the main tenets of
Aristotelian philosophy as a whole? We see in Windelband traits of
this kind of entanglement. In his celebrated History of Philosophy,
Windelband has talked very little about Aristotle's problem of categories.
On this topic he wrote:
This collection (making ten categories inclusive of substance), in which, perhaps, gram-
matical observations co-operated, is designed to present the highest classes or genera under
which the contents of all possible ideas are to be subsumed. Yet Aristotle made no method-
ical use of this collection, and his doctrine of categories acquired, therefore, no importance
in his metaphysics . . .17

Windelband, together with some major textbooks on the history of phi-

losophy, enumerates the ten categories of Aristotle as in the following
table:
0IXrux Substanz Substance
TIocr6v Quantitiit Quantity
TIot6v Qualitiit Quality
TIp6<; 'tt Relation Relation
TIou Riiumliche Bestimmung Place
TIO'tE Zeitliche Bestimmung Time
KEtcr9m Sichbefinden Position
~XEtv Sichverhalten State
TIOtEtv Tun Action
TIdcrXEtV Leiden AffectionlPassion
Judging from the way these categories are translated, it seems rather
clear that they are here understood as abstract concepts. Adopting this
understanding, but unable further to figure out what these abstract
concepts are for, Windelband here speaks of them as having "no impor-
tance in metaphysics,,!'8
Over against the above view, we might propose that the Aristotelian
categories are strictly speaking not meant to be abstract concepts. In
this regard, the ten categories are in the first place not supposed to con-
 THE DOCTRINE OF CATEGORIES 255

tribute to metaphysics right away as most interpretations of Aristotle

would suggest. Looking at the issue from this false angle and with this
false expectation will certainly leave the true meaning of the problem
of categories in oblivion. If we examine the original Greek expressions
of the ten categories, we discover that they are not at all abstract con-
ceptual expressions, but rather a checklist of some very commonly used
everyday locutions. Take the categories 1t0'O and 1to't~ for example: if
it was Aristotle's wish to express what we now call Place and Time,
he could have readily used expressions such as 't61to~ and Xp6vo~ which
were already very common in those days.
Taking this point into consideration, one can decide upon another
principle of translation. Instead of rendering the ten categories as ten
abstract conceptions, one might describe them as ten basic patterns of
ordinary locution (or better, interrogation) arriving thus at the following
table: 19
000Ux ['tt Ecr'tt] What it is
TIocr6v How large
TIm6v What sort of a thing
TIp6~ 'tt Related to what
TIo'O Where
TIO'tE When
KElcr9at? In what attitude
~XEtv ? How circumstanced
TImElv What doing
TIdcrXEtv What suffering
Compared with the first listing, this way of representing the ten
categories is remarkably colloquial. It sums up the main paradigms of
everyday description or what Aristotle himself designates as 'tcx crxn~a'ta
't1'\~ Ka't1lyop{a~. 20 We can imagine that the ten categories are the main
aspects according to which we represent things to ourselves or share expe-
rience with others. Owing to the particular philosophical position of
Aristotle, the first category out of the ten is ascribed particular impor-
tance. "Substance" or "What it is" refers here to individuals things.
They are on the one hand the basis of all accidental inherence and on
the other the basis of all further logical predication. Its primacy over
against the other accidental categories means simply that, before any dis-
course can be started, the first to be specified is the subject of discourse,
i.e. the "what is it". Once the subject (or substance) has been speci-
fied, all other accidental categories might assume their function as
256 TZE- W AN KW AN

paradigms of predication. Along this line of thought, Aristotle's ontology

is often said to have finished up as an ousiology.

2.1.3. Emile Benveniste's Interpretation of the Aristotelian Categories

Having clarified the relation of the ten categories to everyday language

we encounter some further problems. For many interpreters, the con-
struction of the Aristotelian categories is a rather loose and unsystematic
one, leaving the real purpose of the scheme of enumeration itself rather
obscure. Kant, for example, speaks of Aristotle's table of categories as
a product of "rhapsodical" composition. 21 Indeed, Kant's complaint about
the unsystematic layout of the ten categories is perfectly understand-
able, for the interpretation of the ten categories has long been a difficult
issue. There are two reasons for this. First, the meaning of some of
these categories, especially KElcr8at and EXEtv, is extremely contro-
versial. Second, as a consequence of the first difficulty, the ten categories
as a whole lack an internal structure, In our second listing of Aristotle's
table of categories, we still have some reservations as to the meaning
of these two categories. Why should KElcr8at be interpreted as "in what
attitude" or "posture"? On this point most critics try to refer back
to Aristotle's own examples of "lying [avdKEt'tat]" and "sitting
[Kd8T\'tat]". For the same reason people tend to call upon Aristotle's own
examples for echein, "is shod [i)1t08~E'tat]" and "is armed [omA.tcr8at]",
thus rendering echein as "having what" or "how circumstanced". Ob-
viously, like the two categories themselves, the "examples" Aristotle
cited, if not properly deciphered, would only make the situation even
more obscure. Noticing these inherent obscurities, many scholars take
refuge in expelling KElcr8at and EXEtV out of the table of categories alto-
gether and assigning them to what are called "predicables". Others like
Gomperz, sticking steadfast to Aristotle's "examples", resorted even to
the view that KElcr8at and hEtv are specially designed to picture the
appearances of human beings. Is this sort of interpretation not a bit too
awkward? Are we to content ourselves with these established views, or
is there still another option for interpretation?
As for a systematic explanation of the table of categories of Aristotle,
Emile Beneveniste, a renowned French linguist and philosopher, has
put forward the possibly most plausible and innovative interpretation. We
are referring to his collection of essays called Problems in General
 THE DOCTRINE OF CATEGORIES 257

Linguistics. In a paper called "Categories of Thought and Language"

in the above mentioned book, Benveniste maintained that all ten of
Aristotle's categories are connected with the grammatical structure ofthe
classical Greek language. They are schemata of predication in the sense
that they are related to the parts of speech of the Greek language. In
fact, a similar view has been represented by Trendelenburg, though in
a less specific form. 22 Benveniste argues for his point from one category
to the other.
As to the first six categories, Benveniste's interpretation is new, but
still broadly in conformity with some existing views. To put it in the
simplest terms: the category of oooia (1) corresponds to the linguistic
class of noun or substantive; the categories of 1toa6v (2) and 1tot6v
(3) correspond to adjectives of quantities and of qualities derived from
interrogative pronouns similar to quantus and qualis in Latin; the category
1tp6~ n (4) corresponds to comparative adjectives; and 1tO'\) (5) and
1to'tt (6) correspond to what we nowadays call adverbs of place and time.
About these first six categories there are two points worth mentioning.
First, instead of being abstract conceptions, these six categories are exclu-
sively interrogative words in everyday language. It is for this reason
that Aristotle occasionally rewrites oooia as 'ti fan. As interrogative
words, the categories are not meant to arouse abstract thinking, but rather
to anticipate a descriptive answer in an everyday manner. Second, as
Benveniste says in his essay, "The first six refer all to nominal forms.
Their unity is to be found in the particular nature of Greek morphology.'023
It might sound awkward nowadays to put the first six categories together
into one group, but if we take into consideration that the Greeks
at the time of Plato and Aristotle differentiated mainly between two
parts of speech, ()volla and 'p1'1lla, the above grouping is not hard to
understand.
The most innovative and most decisive discovery in Benveniste's
paper, however, lies in his interpretation of the last four categories, and
the categories of lCEla8at (7) and £XEtv (8) in particular. Benveniste
rejected the traditional interpretation of these two categories as predi-
cables or as pertaining to posture or state in the ordinary sense. He insists
that these two previously neglected categories should have the same
billing as the categories of 1totElv (9) and mlcrXEtV (10). In fact it is
Benveniste's view that these last four categories form a set of their
own, for they are all derived from verbal forms, or what the early Greek
grammarians called 'p1'1lla.
258 TZE-WAN KWAN

According to Benveniste, KEi0'9at (7) represents a special kind of

Greek verb called the "Middle Voice". This verb form no longer exists
in modern English, but there are still some traces of it in modern German
and French. The so-called reflexive verbs in German and French (those
verbs used together with sich or with se) are somewhat comparable to
the middle voice in Greek. In modern English, although there is no
such grammatical form as the reflexive in German, traits of the distinc-
tion between reflexive and non-reflexive verbal forms can still be found.
In modern English, one still distinguishes between "intransitive" and
"transitive" verbs. Here, the concept of transitivity refers no doubt to
the "transition" of "action" from an agent to a recipient. Deprived of
this kind of "transition", the only effect an intransitive verb can exert
is one that is directed back upon the agent himself. So we can argue
that the intransitive verb in English is at least a distant parallel to the
reflexive verb in German and to the middle voice in Greek. The middle
voice refers to the kind of verb for which, according to Beneveniste,
"the subject is the center as well as the agent of the process; he achieves
something which is being achieved in him - being born, sleeping, lying,
imagining, growing, etc. He is indeed inside the process of which he is
the agent.,,24 Benveniste also points out that in the early stage of devel-
opment of the Greek language, the middle voice was as important as
the active voice: the relevance of this fact to the Aristotelian systems
of categories will be discussed later.
As to EXetV (8), Benveniste maintains that it represents the Perfect.
One point we must note is that the Perfect tense in archaic Greek is
not the same as the Perfect in modern European languages. Modern
European languages distinguish between two kinds of Perfect, the intran-
sitive and the transitive Perfect, of which the latter is a rather late product
of the Indo-European languages. 25 In classical Greek, the perfect always
refers to the intransitive form. Considering the intransitiveness involved
here, it is obvious that this kind of perfect was originally derived not
from the active but rather from the middle verbs. For this reason they
can even be designated as "middle perfect". In fact, the examples of
'll1toM8e'ta,t (he is shod) and li>1tAtO''tat (he is armed) which Aristotle
raises 26 are precisely two typical examples of middle perfect. Therefore,
instead of designating what a person wears or puts on, as most other inter-
pretations suggest, the real objective of the category of EXetv (8) is to
designate its subject as being situated in a certain state or circumstance;
what is expressed here is the mode of being of the subject with respect
 THE DOCTRINE OF CATEGORIES 259

to the "mode of temporality". 27 It is precisely for this reason that the verb
"to have" is chosen as the name of the category.
As to 1tot£lv (9) and 1tOOX£tV (10), they obviously have to do with
the active and passive voice of the Greek verb. The case is rather
straight forward and there is not much room for controversies even for
Benveniste.
To sum up the last four categories, there are also two points worth
mentioning. First, these last four categories are all schemata of verbal
infinitives28 that can be encountered in everyday usage, and in this way
they are as colloquially grounded as the six categories which are derived
from interrogative words. Second, as verbal forms the last four categories
pertain to the different aspects or stages of change. If the Aristotelian
system of categories is supposed to be a scheme of linguistic patterns
that regulates and facilitates the description of nature, then it is by means
of these last four categories that the dynamical aspect of nature is
depicted.
To further clarify this point, we have to go a little deeper into certain
details of Aristotle's philosophy. We all know that contrary to Plato,
Aristotle put great emphasis on empirical nature and on individual objects
of this world. Within this empirical realm, Aristotle differentiates between
two main groups of things, namely, natural things [<proEt b'v'ta] on the
one hand and artifacts ['tEXV£t O'v'ta] on the other. 29 The former com-
prises the celestial bodies in the sky as well as plants and animals on
the ground. The latter includes everything that is made. Aristotle notices
that while both these two groups of things undergo changes, their pattern
of change could be utterly different. Take for example Aristotle's doctrine
of the Four Causes. While the material cause [-tl 1..11] and the formal cause
[1l0P<P1'\1 explain from a relatively static viewpoint how an individual
is constituted, the efficient cause [cipxt1] and the final cause ['tEA.O~]
should supposedly explain how change comes about. Applying the
doctrine of Four Causes to natural things and to artifacts separately,
Aristotle noticed immediately that the last two causes can well be applied
to natural things but not quite to artifacts. To resolve this problem,
Aristotle declares that in the case of natural things, the efficient and
final causes are not external to the things concerned, but are replace-
able by the formal cause which is internal to them.
At this point the relevance of Benveniste's interpretation becomes
most obvious. TIOtE'[V and 1tacrX£tV no doubt embrace changes that
involve external action, with 1tot£tv describing the action from the point
260 TZE-WAN KWAN

of view of the agent and 1tacrXEtv from that of the recipient. On the
contrary, the "middle verb" KE{cr9at is put on the list of the verbal
categories to account for all those changes that take place with natural
things.
Aristotle designates change in the broadest sense as IlE'Ca~oA:n.
Although Aristotle's subdivision of IlE'Ca~OA.at is rather complicated and
inconsistent, it is doubtless Aristotle's view that all changes involve
the transition from one stage to another [~K 'CtvO~ E'{~ n].30 To account
for this aspect of change, Aristotle coined a pair of concepts which are
most important for his philosophy: ouVallt~ and ev~p)'Eta. Insofar as
things always undergo change, the principles of ouVallt~ and ev~p)'Eta
always hold for them, just as Aristotle maintains, "ouVallt~ and €vep)'Eta,
these are different for different things, and apply to them in different
ways.,,31 Looking from this angle, we understand the true purpose of
including the category of echein in the table of categories. While 1tOtEtv
and 1tacrXEtV capture the "artificial" aspect and KE{cr9at the "natural"
aspect of change, the category of €XEtV encompasses the phenomenon
of change as a whole while highlighting its temporal and developmental
meaning.
To sum up Benveniste's observation of the ten categories, we can
end up with the following table:
O\xrta ['C{ ecrn] Substantive
l1ocr6v Adjective (quantitative)
l1ot6v Adjective (qualitative)
I1p6~ n Adjective (comparative)
110'0 Adverb of place
110'Ct Adverb of time
KElcr9at Verb - middle voice
~XEtv Verb - perfect
110tEtv Verb - active voice
I100XEtv Verb - passive voice

2.1.4. Reappraisal of the Aristotelian Categories

After showing the distant parallelism of the ten Aristotelian categories
to the parts of speech of the classical Greek language, the relationship
between the problem of categories and that of language becomes more
and more obvious. In order for the Aristotelian philosophy to unfold itself,
a detailed description of nature is necessary. And the ten categories are
 THE DOCTRINE OF CATEGORIES 261

virtually enunciating a systematic layout of the main linguistic paradigms

relevant to this job of description.
It is Weisgerber's opinion that although both grammar and the basic
vocabularies (lexicon) are constitutive of the world-perspective of a
language, it is the basic vocabularies, especially the so-called "content"
words that are of greater importance. These content words pertain to
nothing other than what we traditionally call nouns, verbs, adjectives,
and adverbs. 32 At this point, the value of Benveniste's new interpreta-
tion of Aristotle again comes to the foreground. The ten Aristotelian
categories are themselves not only examples of these "content" words,
they even turn out to be prototypes for them, thus constituting a lexical
field in the broadest sense. To put the matter in more general terms:
whereas a particular lexical field of a given language defines only a
particular domain of experience, the system of the ten categories as a
global and universal lexical field encompasses so to speak the complete
realm of experience that is of interest to Aristotle. This system of cat-
egories not only echoes the sustained interest about nature for the Greek
world, it also casts the pattern for observation as well as for philosophical
discussion of the Occidental world in the ages to come.
As we have noted at the outset, the main area of interest for
Aristotelian philosophy is nothing but nature itself. In fact this interest
for nature is not a new one for Aristotle; for nature has been the ultimate
concern for the Greek philosophical tradition from the very start. It is
also this same interest that constitutes the spirit of Western science and
culture at large. To facilitate our knowledge of nature, an up-to-the-
point description of it in its different aspects is of fundamental
importance. For the Greeks, especially for the Ionian tradition, nature
manifests itself in a plurality of forms and changes. The importance of
the Aristotelian categories lies precisely in providing norms for a
schematic description of this domain of interest.
To fully capture the intrinsic relation between the need for describing
nature and the problem of language, let us turn to the negative example
of Eleatism. Contrary to the Ionian tradition, the Eleatic tradition headed
by Parmenides exhibits an utterly different concern, namely Being in
the most abstract sense of the term. Eleatism declares from the outset
that sensible knowledge is illusive. Therefore, instead of an observa-
tion of nature (which is bound to be empirical), the only possible
approach to truth, so says Parmenides, is by pure rational thinking on
"being" as such. Frightened by the idea of Non-being which he thinks
262 TZE-WAN KWAN

will logically contradict Being, Parmenides expels one by one the notions
of plurality, of time, of change and motion, arriving at his well-known
doctrine of the "One" [~v]. This atemporal, eternally static, totally undif-
ferentiated One is the "truth" for Parmenides. The pluralistic and ever
changing nature is for Parmenides a mere illusion or a mere "opinion"
[06/;0.]. It is well known that Parmenides' pupil Zeno of Elea finishes
up with a number of paradoxes to refute man's experience of motion.
To explain how this "illusive opinion" comes about, Parmenides for his
part proposes that it is due to Name-Giving [oVOj.1(:X~EtV] that illusion
arises. 33 For Parmenides, the employment of language is the source of
all error and illusion: language is so to speak nothing but the "original
sin of knowledge" [Sundenfall der Erkenntnis].34
To this Eleatic doctrine, Aristotle's reaction is utterly different from
Plato's. While the Parmenidean influence on Plato is obvious, Aristotle
attacks Parmenides severely and openly.35 Parmenides' sceptical position
turns out to have given us a negative lesson. If for Parmenides the use
of language is the first thing to be blamed for our perceptual under-
standing of the world, is it on the other side of the coin not obvious
for Aristotle, that the first thing he has to do to understand nature is
precisely to secure the linguistic paradigms of description?
With respect to the validity of the categories as a tool to represent
"reality", Aristotle's attitude is for modern standards somewhat over-
optimistic and over-simplistic. This of course has to do with Aristotle's
"instrumental" concept of language that we mentioned at the outset.
But historically speaking, it is in the Aristotelian system of categories
that Western Man's interest in nature becomes consolidated. Resting
on this first attempt of Aristotle, subsequent logicians construct one
list after the other, sometimes making subdivisions of what are called
predicables. For a systematic description or articulation of natural
occurrences, a system of categories of one kind or the other is no doubt
of great heuristic, orientative and even anticipatory value. A most inter-
esting testimony to this point can be found in Leibniz. In a letter to
Gabriel Wagner, Leibniz tells us about a cognitive procedure he called
"Tabulations of Knowledge". So he says,
I soon made the amusing discovery of a method of guessing or of recalling to mind, by
means of the categories, something forgotten when one has a picture of it but can not
get at it at his brain. One needs only to ask one's self or others about certain categories
and their subdivisions (of which I had complied an extensive table out of various logics)
and examine the answers, and one can readily exclude all irrelevant matters and narrow
the problem down until the missing thing can be discovered. 36
 THE DOCTRINE OF CATEGORIES 263

Indeed, with the progress in science and technology, the scheme of

description implicit in the Aristotelian system of categories suffices no
longer. The importance of mathematization as a new means of descrip-
tion and correlation increases ever since. However, Western Man's
predilection for nature and natural changes remains. In modern physics,
the distinction between matter and force, between mass and energy3? is
no doubt reminiscence of the distinction between ovoJ..La and 'P1'\J.HX
implied by the Aristotelian categories. In the discipline of philosophy,
owing to the plurality of problems and issues, discussions are of course
not confined to the investigation of nature. However, the problem of
nature remains all the time in the main line of attention. This principle
holds for new systems of categories, as, for instance, that of Kant's
Critique of Pure Reason. It is not until the turn of the century, through
the works of Dilthey, Scheler and Heidegger, that this predilection for
nature is challenged. The one-sided-ness of traditional categorical systems
and its cultural consequences are put under severe criticism. With
this criticism, the crisis of modernity is exposed, leading Western Man
towards a new path of self-reflection.

2.2. The Kantian System of Categories

2.2.1. Transcendental Philosophy and the Problem of Categories

From the theoretical point of view, the treatment of categories witnesses

enormous development in the philosophy of Kant. While the categories
in Aristotle are primarily linguistic categories presumptuously pointing
to objective nature, they acquire in Kant a new validity, namely, as
structural elements of human understanding. In fact, categories are
designated in the Kantian system terminologically as "pure concepts of
the understanding" [reine Verstandesbegriffe]. In Kant's Critique of Pure
Reason, a detailed discussion of the categories is to be found in a chapter
called the "Analytic of Concepts". This Chapter is the first part of the
"Transcendental Analytic" which in turn is the first part of the "Tran-
scendental Logic". The "Transcendental Logic" constitutes together
with the "Transcendental Aesthetic" what Kant calls the "Transcendental
Doctrine of Elements". In fact, these strange terminologies already betray
Kant's conception of categories as such. Here, "elements" refer to the
main constituents of human intellectual faculties. So-called "logic" in
this context is not what we nowadays call formal logic, it refers to what
264 TZE- W AN KW AN

we now call philosophy of mind. 38 Contrary to "Aesthetics", "Logic"

handles that part of our cognitive structure not derived from sensation
but from man's understanding itself. The so-called "Analytic of
Concepts", which is for Kant another name for the doctrine of categories,
is in Kant's eyes nothing but "the dissection of the faculty of under-
standing itself"; and Kant designates this job of analysis as the "proper
task of a transcendental philosophy". 39
At this point, it must be of great interest for us to linger on the concept
of the "transcendental" which Kant employs throughout his teachings.
In the Introduction to the First Critique, Kant gives us the most com-
prehensive definition of this term, "I entitle transcendental all knowledge
which is occupied not so much with objects as with the mode of our
knowledge of objects in so far as this mode of knowledge is to be possible
a priori. A system of such concepts might be entitled transcendental
philosophy.,,40 There is no doubt that the main task of the so-called
transcendental philosophy lies in the analysis of human intellectual
faculty, or in a "critique" of reason. However, some critics of Kant one-
sidedly overemphasize this point and accuse Kant of preaching an
idealism. Indeed, Kant speaks of a transcendental idealism. But what does
this idealism of Kant amount to? Is it an idealism at the expense of
mundane actuality?
In the Appendix to the Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics,
Kant defends himself against this criticism with the following words,
"My place is the fruitful bathos, the bottom-land, of experience; and
the word transcendental, the meaning of which is so often explained
by me, but not once grasped by my reviewer ... , does not signify
something passing beyond all experience, but something that indeed
precedes it a priori, but that is intended simply to make cognition of expe-
rience possible. ,,41
It is true that Kant, unlike Aristotle before him, no longer admits of
external realities independent of the human factor as a meaningful realm
of discourse. However, Kant has never spoken against human experi-
ence as such. For Kant, man's experience is never 'objective reality'
straightaway, but a realm of co-creation in which man's share can never
be ignored. To put it in the words of Leo Weisgerber, the world as we
see and understand it is never "independent of man", but always "con-
jointly shaped by man" [vom Menschen mitgestaltet].42 It is in this
technical respect that Kant surpasses Aristotle. However, as. to the
 THE DOCTRINE OF CATEGORIES 265

ultimate concern about and the predilection for nature, Kant's position
is definitely still Aristotelian. In the "Transcendental Aesthetic" of the
Critique of Pure Reason, Kant insists upon the integrity of experience
and speaks out against the Platonic type of idealism, "When I say that
the intuition of outer objects [...] represent the objects [... ] as they
affect our senses, that is, as they appear, I do not mean to say that these
objects are a mere illusion. For in an appearance the objects, nay even
the properties that we ascribe to them, are always regarded as some-
thing actually given." Then Kant continues with his strongest reprimand
against Plato, "It would be my own fault, if out of that which I ought
to reckon as appearance, I made mere illusion.,,43
At first glance, the categories of Kant differ a lot from those of
Aristotle. This is indeed the case. But from the above citations, we realize
that in respect of ultimate concern or cultural interest, the two systems
of categories are remarkably in line with each other. Resting on this same
ground but perfectly aware of the role of human reason in the constitu-
tion of experience, Kant has taken a giant step beyond Aristotle. Kant
transfigures his concern for nature from the mere naive realistic level
to a reflective or introspective level which he calls transcendental phi-
losophy. For Kant, man can never justifiably talk about an independent
and objective nature in the sense of "things-in-themselves". What we
see and what we feel is always meaning-laden, is always theory and
value-laden. Experience, as experience of something given to us, is of
course not totally a figment of our mind. But in so far as experience
always means something to us, that part of the work furnished by man
himself can never be left out of sight. To do justice to both ends, the
concept of "reality" itself has to be revolutionized. This amounts to the
abolishment of the notion of "absolute reality"; in its stead, only "empir-
ical reality" can be accepted. 44 And transcendental reflection is nothing
but tracing backward looking for the conditions of the possibility of
experience as such. 45 But before any transcendental reflection can
become meaningful, empirical reality itself must first be ascertained
and honoured. So in the Preisschrijt, Kant maintains that "the foremost
vocation of transcendental philosophy is to ask the question, 'How
is experience possible' ".46 With the same token, he declares in the
Prolegomena that the fundamental question of transcendental philosophy
is, "How is nature itself possible?,,47
In this regard, Kant takes up the job of furnishing an ontology of
266 TZE-WAN KWAN

nature. He did this of course by transforming the realistic ous}ology of

Aristotle into an introspective examination of human understanding,
exposing the role and the only role it plays in constituting our experi-
ence of nature. Kant himself puts it this way: "Accordingly the
Transcendental Analytic leads to this important conclusion, [... ] the
proud name of an Ontology [... ] must, therefore, give place to the modest
title of a mere Analytic of pure understanding.,,48
If we are right in maintaining that the main function of a system of
categories is to consolidate a particular area of ultimate concern, then,
despite the plentiful methodological and theoretical differences, the
Kantian system of categories is in the last analysis nothing but a mere
technical readjustment of the Aristotelian one. Nevertheless, we should
not undermine the importance of such a technical readjustment. For
with this readjustment, even though the interest for nature still prevails,
Western Man becomes much more self-conscious in perceiving nature.
With this increase in self-consciousness new currents of cultural ideas
are anticipated.

2.2.2. The Realm Beyond Nature - From the Categories of Nature to the
Categories of Freedom
The system of categories as presented in the Critique of Pure Reason
is mainly concerned with the problem of nature. In fact Kant himself
summarizes the main tenets of this part of the First Critique by the
question: "How is pure science of nature possible?" For this reason, some
scholars of the Neo-Kantian school emphasize this as the core-issue of
the First Critique, coming even to the conclusion that the ultimate concern
of Kantian Philosophy is to lay down foundation for the natural sciences.
However, does Kant's concern for philosophy terminate with the quest
of nature? If we take a more comprehensive look at Kant's opus, the
answer is clearly a negative one. Like Aristotle before him, besides the
interest in nature which is central to the Western philosophical tradi-
tion, the scope of interest of Kant's philosophy is obviously much broader.
It embraces problems about morality, aesthetics, religion, teleology
and so on. Without detriment to its central position with respect to
the Western philosophical tradition at large, the Kantian system of
categories is in this respect obviously not in a position to cover every
corner of this wide scope of interest. For this reason, we discover
that in addition to the main system of categories, clusters or groups of
 THE DOCTRINE OF CATEGORIES 267

fundamental concepts are developed for different fields of interest

to facilitate reflection and discussion of them. Take the problem of
morality as an example: both Aristotle and Kant developed clusters of
basic moral terms such as OPEst~, po'\JA.l1(Jt~ and 1tpoa{pE<Jt~, or
Begehrungsvermogen, Wunsch, and Willkur. Important as they are, these
basic moral concepts are kept outside of the table of categories. As
long as this situation prevails, the problem they represent remains only
a sub-culture, unless and until the main concern of this cultural tradi-
tion undergoes a shift in direction or emphasis.
In fact, Kant is on the point of transfiguring the categorical system
of Western philosophy. As to the ultimate concern of Kantian philosophy,
I am inclined to the opinion that the final keystroke of Kantian philos-
ophy lies not in epistemology. To my understanding, the major
significance of Kantian epistemology is to distinguish clearly what man
can contribute and what he cannot with respect to knowledge. With this
distinction, the finitude of man is exposed. Man presents himself as a
being capable of creating meaning and culture within bondage. It is along
this line of thought that the Critique or Pure Reason of Kant fits into
the rest of Kant's opus. It is therefore not difficult to understand why
Kant, while naming the major questions of philosophy, enumerates "What
is man?" as the fourth and most decisive question in addition to the
preceding three: "What can I know? What ought I to do? What may I
hope for?".49 Taking this concern into consideration, it is obvious that the
system of categories as presented in the Critique of Pure Reason cannot
cover everything.
In fact Kant himself has made some attempt to check this inade-
quacy. In his Critique of Practical Reason Kant introduced another list
of twelve categories which he called "categories of freedom,,50 to dis-
tinguish them from the "categories of nature" of the First Critique. With
this new list of categories, Kant made a great leap forward toward the
final breakthrough eventually realized by Heidegger.

2.3. The Doctrine of Existentialia as "Categories of Life" -

The Heideggerian Transformation of the Problem

If the Kantian system of categories as presented in the Critique of Pure

Reason is a mere technical readjustment of the Aristotelian system, then
Heidegger is the one in modern philosophical thinking who has uprooted
the framework of categorical discussion. His urge to revolutionize the
268 TZE- W AN KW AN

traditional theory of categories is so strong that he started the discus-

sion of "existentialia" proposing that a new doctrine of existentialia
should be established to replace or at least to transform the doctrine of
categories.
It is Heidegger's view that the traditional categorical systems of the
West (this includes that of Kant) are too much confined in or narrowed
down to the issue of natural phenomena; and this happens to such an
extent that most systems of categories are not in a position to cope with
man's own life situations. The natural orientation of the traditional
doctrine of categories, instead of being a mere negligence of the problem
of human existence, even hampered Western Man's attempt at self-under-
standing. In line with his critique of the doctrine of categories, Heidegger
also casts strong reproach on the idea of mathematization of nature which
is essential to modern subjectivism. No matter whether we agree with
him or not, this criticism of Heidegger has made the greatest impact
on the contemporary discussion about the modernity crisis. It is
Heidegger's view that pushing this project of mathematization too far
will result in the loss of life meaning and in reification of mankind at
large.

2.3.1. Following Dilthey's Path

Heidegger's doctrine of existentials has a close relation to Wilhelm

Dilthey's theory of "categories of life" [Kategorien des Lebens]. At the
turn of the century, mankind witnessed an age of great scientific progress.
Living in such an age, Dilthey seems to have noticed the threatened
position of the human sciences. Dilthey's whole academic vocation
seems to lie precisely in reinstating the lost integrity of the human
sciences. In his book Der Aufbau der geschichtlichen Welt in den
Geisteswissenschaften [1910], Dilthey begs the learned world to have
a deeper regard for humanistic scholarship, which he thinks is mankind's
only way of attaining cultural values and historical continuity. Trying
to lay the foundation stone for the human sciences, Dilthey makes an
allusion to Kant by announcing a research program called Aufgabe einer
Kritik der historischen Vernwift. 51 The first part of the program, according
to Dilthey, is to institute discussion of the so-called "categories of the
humanistic world" [Kategorien der geistigen Welt).52 As "categories"
in this sense are nothing but aspects of the intellectual life of the human
being, Dilthey also designates them as "categories of life".53 As to the
 THE DOCTRINE OF CATEGORIES 269

concrete construction of such a doctrine, Dilthey starts off with concepts

such as Leben, Erlebnis, Bedeutung, Wert, Zweck, Entwicklung, Ideal etc.
However, a systematic correlation of these categories seems to be
wanting.
From a historical point of view, the influence of Dilthey's notion of
"categories of life" on Heidegger is tremendous. In some early lectures
which Heidegger held in Freiburg around 1921122, we can find support
for this connection. These lectures were about Aristotle and phenome-
nology and they were published in 1985. In these lectures we find
Heidegger adopting the term "categories of life", a term he later gave
up in favor of the much better known concept of "existentialia". 54

2.3.2. Existence and Existentialia

What then is an "existential" [Existenzial]? (In this case the substan-
tive and not the adjective is meant.) Etymologically speaking, the term
"existential" is obviously derived from the term existence [Existenz]. For
Heidegger, existentialia are the explicable characteristics of the existence-
structure of the phenomenon of being human, a phenomenon Heidegger
calls Dasein. Important as it is, the meaning of the term "existence" as
stated in Being and Time is at least for the layman rather obscure. First
of all, Heidegger is obviously using the term in a way different from
its traditional meaning as external presence. Heidegger's "official" defi-
nition of the term goes somewhat like: "That kind of Being towards which
Dasein can comport itself in one way or another, and always does
comport itself somehow, we call 'existence' ".55 Elsewhere Heidegger
declares in a most lapidary fashion that "The 'essence' of Dasein lies
in its existence".56
To render Heidegger's position more comprehensible, let us put this
concept of existence in more daily terms. For Heidegger, existence is
the mode of being peculiar to the human species, a form of life unmatched
in other beings which Heidegger labeled as nichtdaseinsmiij3ig. Observed
from an etymological point of view, ex-sistence signifies in fact the
"outward bound of awareness", which is a characteristic of being human.
Heidegger also brings to our attention that the origin of the concept of
existence lies not in Latin but in the Greek word EKeJ'ta'ttK6v which
means virtually "stepping-outside-self" [Aus-sich-heraustreten].57 Along
this same line of thought, Heidegger later on even rewrites existence
as "Ek-sistenz" to avoid misunderstanding. 58 For Heidegger, man is the
270 TZE-WAN KWAN

only being who can and does extend its care outward, asking for the
meaning of whatever comes up in one's experiential environment. And
it is this trait alone that really distinguished man from other beings. It
is also this fundamental meaning of "out-boundness" that runs through
the whole book Being and Time. What Heidegger calls "understanding
of Being" [Seinsverstiindnis], "care" [Sorge], "Being-in-the-world" [In-
der-Welt-sein] etc. are all to be interpreted, so Heidegger, "ekstatically".
It is precisely for this reason that Heidegger designates all the explic-
able characteristics of human existence as existentialia.
In respect of its basic intention, Being and Time aims indeed at an
"Interpretation of time as the possible horizon for any understanding
whatsoever of Being."s9 The question of Being was treated in tradi-
tional philosophy in the form of an ontology. Unlike most traditional
metaphysics that used to crown ontology with a system of categories,
Heidegger now announces the advent of a new approach to the question
of Being. He explains, "Existentialia and categories are the two basic
possibilities for characters of Being. ,,60 Of these two, existentialia "are
to be sharply distinguished from what we call 'categories' - character-
istics of Being for entities whose character is not that of Dasein." Whereas
the problem of categories is a matter of "what" or of things present-at-
hand, according to Heidegger, the problem of existentials amounts to a
question of "WhO",61 which is a question of no one but man himself!
Among the many existentialia discussed in Being and Time, one special
group of existentialia is of particular importance. It is a group of concepts
which Heidegger called "ecstasis" [Ekstasen]. With this special order
of existentialia, Heidegger unfolds and links up the "temporal" part of
his book Being and Time, namely the discussion about temporality
[Zeitlichkeit]. For Heidegger, the phenomenon of "care" typical of human
existence always takes place "temporally". It is through temporal
channels that man's meaningful life-world is for the first time constituted.
The concept of ecstasis 62 therefore, is the collective designation of
those temporal structures (i.e. temporality) which is for Heidegger
"EKO"'tU'ttK6v pure and simple".63 As to the concrete discussion of these
ecstases, Heidegger first differentiates temporality into the three ecstases
of "present", "by-gone" or "having been", and "future". Depending on
the concrete life situation, these ecstases can be in the mode of authen-
ticity (i.e. having oneself) or in the mode of inauthenticity (i.e. losing
oneself), making altogether 2 x 3 ecstases. It is through these six ecstases
 THE DOCTRINE OF CATEGORIES 271

that the different facets of man's life-world are made manifest, or, in
Heidegger's own terms, "temporalized" [gezeitigt], "raptured" or "carried
away" [entruckt]. Just as Aristotle or Kant finished up with a "table of
categories", these six ecstases can also be tabulated in the following
manner.64

~
Gewesenheit
Vergangenheit Gegenwart Zukunft
(Having been! (Present) (Future)
Ekstasen By-gone)
Modi

Eigentlichkeit Wiederholung Augenblick Vorlaufen

(authenticity) (repetition) (instant) (anticipation)

Vergessen
Uneigentlichkeit Behalten Gegenwiirtigen Gewiirtigen
(inauthenticity) (forgetting! (enpresenting) (await)
retaining)

A Reconstruction of the Heideggerian Table of Existentialia

Heidegger's emphasis of the problem of existentialia has often been

interpreted as a renouncement of the doctrine of categories. From a devel-
opmental point of view, however, the continuity of the doctrine of
existentialia with that of the categories should not be underplayed. My
own way of conceiving the whole issue is as follows: For Heidegger,
the term "categories" has been stereotyped in traditional Western phi-
losophy as descriptive aspects of "things" or of "whats", thus disclosing
its ultimate concern for material nature. Switching from a discussion
of categories to existentialia doesn't mean giving up the consideration
of ultimate concern altogether, but just the switching from one ultimate
concern to another; and in Heidegger's case, it is the switch from the
concern for external nature to concern for the openness of human exis-
tence in the truth of Being. It doesn't matter whether we are talking about
a doctrine of categories or a doctrine of existentialia, the most impor-
tant thing is the real underlying concern. The path from the categories
to the existentialia is just a change in name, but the background issue
is abiding. In fact, the explication of the existence-structure into exis-
272 TZE- W AN KW AN

tentialia is nothing other than a full implementation of what Heidegger

earlier called "categories of life".
With Heidegger's doctrine of existentialia, that of ecstasis in partic-
ular, the Occidental problem of categories, faces a revolution. By coining
a whole new existential terminology, Heidegger prepared the way for a
new level of intellectual discourse which he called the "existential
analytic of Dasein". However, the most essential thing for a thorough
understanding of Heidegger is that, deeper than the level of existential
analytic there lies an even more fundamental level of "existentiell"
life performance [Vollzug]. For each individual person, according to
Heidegger, what finally matters is not so much a question of the
theoretical analysis of human existence but a question of concrete life
decision. What matters most is not existence in general, but the irre-
placeable person, existence which is "in each case mine" Ue meines].65
Getting more and more skeptical about the basic approach of Being
and Time, the late Heidegger developed further a new way of thinking
that he eventually called "tautological". Heidegger maintains that owing
to the steadfast influence of traditional metaphysical language, he is
falling short of the right expressions. For this reason, the late Heidegger
creates a new flock of terms. Western categories in the broadest sense
have then to face another essential impact. 66 .

3. THE CHINESE TRADITION

In the following, we will leave the Western tradition to embark upon

the categorical systems in oriental philosophy. Instead of aiming at a
detailed discussion of particular systems, what we can do here is simply
demonstrate how such systems might unfold themselves exhibiting a
diversity of cultural concerns. We do this by enumerating some basic
examples, first from the Chinese, and then from the Indian tradition.
As with the Chinese intellectual tradition, it must be explained from
the outset that the Chinese mind seems to be much more preoccupied
with the need for practical guidance than with theoretical contempla-
tion. Anyone who first comes across Confucius' Analects or the Works
of Chuang Tze will certainly be amazed by the abundance of practical,
normative precepts. With this I of course do not mean to undermine
the value of theoretical discussion in Chinese philosophy. The point I
want to make here is that, whatever theoretical discussions might be
proposed, the main concern of Chinese philosophy is not in the theory
 THE DOCTRINE OF CATEGORIES 273

itself, but in its being able to provide a guiding principle for practical
affairs, of which, personal life attitude and social and political order
are the most prevailing ones. To testify to this point, we will mention
three examples from ancient Chinese sources.

3.1. The Book of Historical Documents -

the "Great Plan" for Worldly Business

The first source we would like to take a look at is the Book of Historical
Documents or the so-called Shoo King. In a chapter called "The Great
Plan" [Hung Fan] of the book we can find one of the earliest cate-
gorical systems of the Chinese tradition. In the beginning of the chapter,
the King of Chou Dynasty asked the Viscount of Ke about the origin
and details of the divine constitution for mankind. To this Viscount of
Ke answered that it was in an earlier era that King Yu first received
this constitution from Heaven so that the world could be put in order.
In the Book it states: "To him Heaven gave 'the Great Plan with its
nine Divisions,' and thereby the proper virtues of the various relations
were brought forth in their order."67
It is a point of interest to note here that, the so-called "Great Plan with
its nine Divisions" [Hung-Fan Jiu Chou] is in fact the literal source of
the modern Chinese term for "category" [fanchou], a term which never
existed in the Chinese language before the late Ching Dynasty, but was
coined actually by the Japanese as a translation of the Western concep-
tion of "category". For this reason, we notice the fact that a tradition
can indeed proceed with the enumeration of a categorical system without
having first to thematize the "problem" of categories itself. With or
without being conscious of what one is engaging in, the enumeration
of categorical systems seems to be a sort of "cultural a priori" which
serves to declare and consolidate a certain domain of basic concern.
In this light, we have to raise the question: If the nine Divisions of
the "Great Plan" represent an ancient Chinese categorical system, what
underlying interest or concern can be uncovered? The so-called nine
Divisions are:

Of those divisions, the first is called "The five Elements"; the second is called "The
Reverent Practice of the five Businesses"; the third is called "Earnest Devotion to the eight
objects of Government"; the fourth is called "The Harmonious Use of the five
Arrangements"; the fifth is called "The Establishment and Use of Royal Perfection";
the sixth is called "The Cultivation and the Use of the three Virtues"; the seventh is
274 TZE-WAN KWAN

called "The Intelligent Use of the Examination of Doubts"; the eighth is called "The
Thoughtful Use of the various Verifications"; the ninth is called "The Hortatory Use of
the five Happinesses, and the Awing Use of the six Extremities".68

To put it in simpler language, the nine Divisions handle the following:

1) The mystical power of material nature; 2) personal counsel and
social rituals; 3) public offices; 4) zodiacal signs and calendaric calcu-
lations; 5) perfect Royal administration; 6) principles of government
and tactics in exercising control; 7) the practice of divination; 8) exper-
tise in deciphering meteorological symbolism; and 9) Systems of award
and punishment. Taken altogether, these nine Divisions convey a clear
political or administrative interest. To these Divisions the celebrated
James Legge says, "It will be my object, therefore, simply to elucidate
the meaning of the whole as a scheme of government, intended to guide
all rulers in the discharge of their duties.,,69
As to the internal structure of these nine Divisions, two points are
worth mentioning. First, with the exception of the fifth Division, all other
Divisions are further divided into Sub-divisions thus leading to a full
elaboration of the domain of interest [see Figure 1]. This practice of
sub-division shows a distant parallel to what are known as "predica-
bles" in the Western philosophical tradition. Second and most important
is that, according to many interpretations, it is not a matter of chance
but a matter of deliberation that the Division of "Establishment and
Use of Royal Perfection" is placed in the fifth position. Being situated
in the middle of the nine Divisions, "Royal Perfection" is supposed to
be in a particularly important and crucial position. Legge, for example,
quotes from the Complete Digest of Commentaries on the Shoo that:
The whole exhibits the model for the government of the empire. The fifth or middle
division on Royal Perfection is, indeed, the central one of the whole, that about which
the Book revolves. The four divisions that precede it show how this Royal Perfection is
to be accomplished, and the four that follow show how it is to be maintained. 70

This idea of the central importance of Royal Perfection is further

reinforced by some ancient legends as to the origin of the "Great
Plan". Reports ascribable to Confucius, for example, tell the story that
Heaven sends His mandate to King Yu in graphics and text on the back
of a divine tortoise, in which the number of Five (representing Royal
Perfection) is placed in the middle of the other eight numbers so that each
of the four axes of rotation adds up to give the same number fifteen
(see Figure 2).
 THE DOCTRINE OF CATEGORIES 275

Fig. 1. The "Great Plan" with all its sub-divisions.

276 TZE-WAN KWAN

O~~O
...
.........,
_r
~

O~~.J

.<Q,\. O%i£O
o a
.~ 0
g • • .=E.
O~ ..
~.
0 ,
~/~ 000 0

.
0

..
a a

.
.0

. ..
• •
~. ~ •
• .fti
~ /~
~ 0
•• 3i.
•
iT
Fig. 2. The constellation of the nine divisions with the fifth division in the middle.

Taking the "Great Plan" of the Book of Historical Documents as a

whole, we can conclude that through a detailed itemization of the Plan
with all its divisions and sub-divisions, a meaningful realm of discourse
and concern for the ancient Chinese tradition is discerned. It is a concern
primarily for the "conduct of human affairs" in all practical aspects,
the final relevance of which is the ideal of social and political order
through the administration of Royal Perfection.

3.2. The Book of Changes and the Life Attitude of the Chinese

The Book of Changes is no doubt one of the most mysterious works of

antiquity. As to the question about its origin, there is no final solution
yet. For a discussion about the details of the book, this is certainly not
an occasion. The point I want to make here concerns the possibility to
view the book as an implementation of a categorical system in a very
 THE DOCTRINE OF CATEGORIES 277

special sense. Unlike most other categorical systems in which the cate-
gorical items are plainly enumerated in divisions and subdivisions, the
categorical system implicit in the Book of Changes manifests itself in
the form of a symbolic system with an extremely intricate structure.
And it is this structure instead of the plain list of items itself that is of
the greatest importance.
Basically speaking, the Book of Changes consists of a sequence of
symbolic units, definite in number and exhibiting a definite constellation.
The totality of this sequence symbolizes supposedly the totality of all
possible states of affairs that could happen to nature as well as to
mankind. The sequencing of the symbolic units is in conformity with
the principle of change, which in the Book of Changes is embodied by
the interaction of the two opposites of Yin and Yang, symbolized respec-
tively by the "divided line" (--), and the "undivided line" (-), designating
the Female and the Male. Given this pair of opposites as the ultimate
source of differentiation, the number of possible symbolic units to be
involved is a purely mathematical issue. According to many ancient
sources, the legendary Emperor Fu-Hsi first discovered the eight trigrams,
each trigram being made up of three lines (divided or undivided). The
number of eight is the result of the mathematical combination 23. Later
on, Fu-Hsi, as was reported, or at the latest King Wen doubled the
trigrams and founded the sixty-four (i.e. 82 or 26) hexagrams. Each of
these hexagrams is given a name that symbolizes a particular group of
affairs. A brief look at the names of the hexagrams of the Book of
Changes gives us a strong indication of a distant correspondence of these
hexagrams to the major facets of mundane experience. Here we can come
up with the assumption that if we can discover in the Book of Changes
any pattern of configuration of the hexagrams, then this same pattern
could also be understood as the pattern of mundane life that the ancient
Chinese people apprehended or anticipated. In other words, the hexa-
grams are in the first place a listing of those events that ancient Chinese
people thought deserved attention; furthermore, the pattern of their con-
figuration represents the worldview as well as life attitude of the Chinese
at that time.
As to the constellation of the 64 hexagrams, two possible arrange-
ments might come into question. The first of these is a purely mechanical,
mathematical arrangement which was supposed to be widely known
among Chinese intellectuals before the Han Dynasty, but was lost for a
very long period. 71 Owing to its mechanistic nature, this arrangement was
278 TZE-WAN KWAN

later "rediscovered" by the neo-Confucian Shao Yung by means of

a six-fold yin-yang bifurcation and by Leibniz by means of binary
arithmetic. Owing to the mathematical and mechanical nature of this
arrangement, we see no sign of philosophical deliberation whatsoever.
The constellation of the 64 hexagrams thus understood is supposed to
represent the original state of unchange.
The second major arrangement of the hexagrams known to posterity
is that arrangement which is found in all major versions of the Book of
Changes. Although the number 64 itself is mathematical, the way these
64 hexagrams are ordered is however not a mathematical one. How this
present ordering comes about is highly controversial and will probably
remain an enigma in the ages to come. Precisely because of its non-math-
ematical nature, this actual ordering of the hexagrams admits of, and
can only be rendered comprehensible by, philosophical explanation.
Mythical as it was, the specially ordered pattern of the hexagrams reflects
the way ancient Chinese people looked at the changes in things.
Although there is no straightforward mathematical principle under-
lying the ordering of the Book of Changes, some criteria of arrangement
can nevertheless be traced. If we observe the constituent lines of the
hexagrams very carefully, an interesting fact is revealed. Besides the
six seeming exceptions that we will talk about later, 56 out of the 64
hexagrams can be grouped into 28 pairs. While forming pairs, every
two respective hexagrams are placed one next to the other in the list.
Generally speaking, as the names of the hexagrams reveal to us, the
two hexagrams of a pair are symbols of opposing characteristics; one
symbolizing fortune and the other some sort of misfortune. Take for
examples the pairs
Peace [11] Stagnation [12]
Peeling off [23] Return [24]
Yielding [33] Power of the Great [34]
Progress [35] Darkening of the Light [36]
Obstruction [39] Deliverance [40]
Decrease [41] Increase [42]
Dispersion [59] Limitation [60] etc.72
Looking into the internal structure of anyone of these pairs, we find
that the sequence of the six constituent lines of the one hexagram forming
a pair is always the reverse of that of the partner hexagram. Taking the
pair Peeling off [23] and Return [24] as example; here the lines of the
former are 000 001, while the lines of the latter are 100 000.
 THE DOCTRINE OF CATEGORIES 279

How about the eight "exceptions"? The reason why they do not form
"pairs" in the above sense is simply that reversing their lines yields
nothing but the same line-sequence. Say, for example, the reverse of
The Abysmal [29],s 010 010 is nothing but the same hexagram itself.
These remaining six hexagrams, while unable to form pairs in the above
sense, can nonetheless be coupled according to another principle into four
distinct pairs.
The Creative [1] The Passive [2]
Corners of the Mouth [27] - Preponderance of the Great [28]
The Abysmal [29] The Clinging [30]
Inner Truth [61] Preponderance of the Small [62]
In this case, if we "negated" all the six lines of the one hexagram
respectively, we yield the line configuration of the partner hexagram. For
example, Inner Truth [61] being 110011, Preponderance of the Small
[62] turns out to be 001 100 and they also appear one next to the other
in the list.
What does all this mean together? My observation is a very simple
one, namely, instead of being a mechanical arrangement, the arrangement
of the hexagrams together with the names they bear betrays the idea
that good fortune and misfortune are complementary, and that they take
place in roughly alternate intervals. This basic perception of the periodic
or rhythmic interlocking of good fortune and misfortune can further be
attested if we look deeper into the structure of the lines. In the Book of
Changes the sixty-four hexagrams are indeed not to be taken as inde-
pendent entities each symbolizing a definite fortune-content. A hexagram
can only be defined by taking all six constituent lines together. In this
regard we discover that in the Book of Changes a hexagram is seldom
made up of homogeneously good or bad lines, but rather different com-
binations of them. As a rule, the middle lines of each of the two
component trigrams (ie. the second and the fifth lines) are more favor-
able than the other lines; this signalizes the preference for the Golden
Mean. Furthermore, it is nearly a rule that the last or sixth line of an
overall favorable hexagram becomes unfavorable, and vice versa. To take
for example, the overall "good" hexagram Peace has a sixth line like this:
"The wall falls back into the moat. Use no army now. Make your
commands known within your own town. Perseverance brings humilia-
tion.'m The sixth line of the hexagram Increase reads:"He brings increase
to no one. Indeed, someone even strikes him. He does not keep his
heart steady. Misfortune.',74 For the hexagram Abundance, the sixth line
280 TZE-WAN KWAN

is: "[ ... ] He peers through the gate and no longer perceives anyone.
For three years he sees nothing. Misfortune.,,75 On the other side of the
coin, for an overall unfavorable hexagram like Obstruction, the sixth line
is: "Going [past] leads to obstruction, coming [future] leads to great good
fortune. It furthers one to see the great man. ,,76 For the hexagram
Stagnation, the sixth line is: "The standstill comes to an end. First
standstill, then good fortune.,,77 That of the Hexagram Oppression.
"[... ] Good fortune comes.'>78

With this somewhat retributive principle, what to the common under-

standing is called good or bad becomes relativized. This understanding
of life and changes proposed by the Book of Changes has by and large
a profound influence on the Chinese mind. It affects the way the Chinese
people perceive things, and the way they anticipate the advent of things
and how they cope with their consequences. This basic attitude can best
be depicted by the third line of the hexagram Peace. "No plain not
followed by a slope. No going not followed by a return. He who remains
persevering in danger is without blame. Do not complain about this truth;
Enjoy the good fortune you still possess.,,79
In the "appendices" to the Book of Changes, this same insight is
again emphasized:
The Master said: Danger arises when a man feels secure in his position. Destruction
threatens when a man seeks to preserve his worldly estate. Confusion develops when a
man has put everything in order. Therefore the supervisor man does not forget danger
in his security, nor ruin when he is well established, nor confusion when his affairs are
ordered. In this way he gains personal safety and is able to protect the empire. 80

"Things cannot long abide in the same place; [...] Things cannot be
for ever withdrawn; [... ] Things cannot remain for ever (simply) in
the state of vigor [...]"81
As a symbolic categorical system, the hexagrams with all the lines
constitute for the Chinese a microcosm of life. Whereas the system of
categories of the West provides guidelines for the description and under-
standing of the material universe, the symbolic system in the Book of
Changes provides for the Chinese a reference system to orientate them-
selves in concrete life practices, giving them guidelines when to forge
ahead and when to withdraw oneself. In the Introduction to his own com-
mentaries of the Book of Changes, the Sung Confucian Ch'eng I put it
this way: "Knowing the way good and misfortune recede and advance,
 THE DOCTRINE OF CATEGORIES 281

one knows when to proceed and when to retreat and this is a matter of
life and death."s2
Reflections upon the alternate sequencing between good and bad
luck has bestowed upon the ancient Chinese a peculiar guiding prin-
ciple of life. For example, instead of overreacting to circumstances of
extreme bad luck or becoming too depressed, they are prone to show
more tolerance and endurance awaiting the day when their bad luck even-
tually turns into its opposite. This same token applies to a man blessed
with good fortune. Instead of becoming overproud of (cf. 15~Pt~) and
extravagant with their own good fortune, they tend to be more humble
and more grateful; they tend to keep themselves more alert of the possible
turn of luck and in this way they are better prepared for a fluctuating
and unpredictable life environment.
It is an undeniable fact that in the eyes of most people who are inter-
ested, the Book of Changes is, primarily, a book for divination. This holds
not only for the Chinese people in the fathomless past history, but also
for modern Western intellectuals such as C. G. Jung. To this bare fact,
one observation should however be added: Even as a book for divina-
tion, the Book of Changes is not designed to give a rigid and
straightforward answer or prognostication for any state of affairs, but
rather a general guiding principle to help make judgments on the respec-
tive life situations. Sometimes to make sense of the oracle lines, one
has to exercise a kind of hermeneutical understanding of the text as
well as of one's own existential situations. Thereby the outcome is usually
not so much a rigid answer to a query, but a state of deeper self-under-
standing, and together with this the ease of mind of the questioner
himself.

3.3. The Great Learning and the Link between

Morality and Political Order

In the examples mentioned above, we see how the ancient Chinese people
define their domain of concern by the enumeration and ordering of
items they find important. In contrast to the predominantly theoretical
orientation of Western categories, the Chinese systems are unmistak-
ably "practical" in nature. The "Great Plan" and the Book of Changes are
particularly valuable as "examples" of Chinese categorical systems
because the domain of interest they cover is universal and representative.
In addition to them, we find among the Chinese classics many other
282 TZE- W AN KW AN

schemes of categorical layout. These categorical layouts might cover a

broader or a somewhat regional scope of interest. Take the three books
on the subject of Ceremonial [Li] for example. The book Chou-Ii gives
us a very detailed classification of the different kinds of royal offices,
the book I-li (also known as the Book of Etiquette and Ceremonial)
lists all the manners, rites and formalities to be observed during inter-
personal encounter by different ranks of people on different occasions.
As categorical systems these schemes of ceremonial relate in the last
analysis to the institution and regulation of social and political order.
However, as they emphasize only the problem of ceremonial, leaving
other social and personal factors aside, the categorical systems they
provide are only of "regional"s3 importance.
If besides the "Great Plan" and Book of Changes we were to name
another categorical system that covers a comprehensive scope of interest,
I will certainly decide for the Great Learning (also known as the Ta-
hsueh). The Great Learning makes up together with the Confucian
Analects, The Doctrine of the Mean, and the Works of Mencius what
are known to virtually all Chinese intellectuals as the Four Books, repre-
senting the core teaching of Confucianism. Of these four books, The
Great Learning is briefest in size. In respect of philosophical importance,
it certainly cannot surpass the Analects or the Works of Mencius.
However, the Great Learning provides us with a categorical layout which
has proven itself to be extremely influential for the subsequent devel-
opment of Chinese culture, be this influence a good or a bad one.
In spite of its brevity, the Great Learning has an extremely wide
coverage. As a form of Confucianism, it rests on the basic Confucian
urge for moral cultivation of the Self. But without pondering on the
question about the ground of morality, as did Confucius himself and Kant,
the Great Learning puts great emphasis on the relation between moral
cultivation on the one hand and social-political order on the other.
The main concern for the Great Learning is defined most clearly in
the following famous passage:

The ancients who wished to illustrate illustrious virtue throughout the kingdom, first
ordered well their own states. Wishing to order well their states, they first regulated
their families. Wishing to regulate their families, they first cultivated their persons. Wishing
to cultivate their persons, they first rectified their hearts. Wishing to rectify their hearts,
they first sought to be sincere in their thoughts. Wishing to be sincere in their thoughts,
they first extended to the utmost their knowledge. Such extension of knowledge lay in
the investigation of things. 84
 THE DOCTRINE OF CATEGORIES 283

Looking carefully into the text, we see that here eight different
mundane practices are enumerated, ranging from the quasi-cognition
of things through moral self-rectification to political management. These
eight practices later became well-known to the Chinese mind as Ba
Tiao-mu [The Eight Items]. What is most important is not just the mere
mentioning of these eight items themselves, but the fact that these eight
items are chained teleologically, with the ideal of political virtue of the
kingdom declared as the ultimate goal. On the other hand, if we reverse
the teleological sequence, and start from the other end of the chain, we
discover a casual sequence with one pre-requisite leading to the ideal
of the higher order. This point can further be elucidated by the next
passage:

Things being investigated, knowledge became complete. Their knowledge being complete,
their thoughts were sincere. Their thoughts being sincere, their hearts were then recti-
fied. Their hearts being rectified, their persons were cultivated. Their persons being
cultivated, their families were regulated. Their families being regulated, their states were
rightly governed. Their states being rightly governed, the whole kingdom was made
tranquil and happy. 85

Furthermore, the Great Learning declares that:

Things have their root and branches. Affairs have their end and beginning. To know
what is first and what is last will near to what is taught in the Great Learning. 86

What does this teleological/casual series imply? Here we see that

the first five items deal broadly speaking with cultivation of the moral
Self, whereas the last three items discuss the matter of social and polit-
ical order. And it is the central idea of the Great Learning that, starting
with moral practices, social and political order can eventually be attained.
This applies indeed to the people as well as to the sovereign. "From
the Son of Heaven down to the mass of the people, all must consider
the cultivation of the person the root of everything besides."s7
In the Great Learning, the role of the sovereign is very much empha-
sized:

From the loving example of one family a whole state becomes loving, and from its cour-
tesies the whole state become courteous, while, from the ambition and perverseness of
the One man, the whole state may led to rebellious disorder; - such is the nature of the
influence. This verifies the saying, 'Affairs may be ruined by a single sentence; a kingdom
may be settled by its One man. 88
284 TZE-WAN KWAN

Never has there been a case of the sovereign loving benevolence, and the people not loving
righteousness. Never has there been a case where the people have loved righteousness,
and the affairs of the sovereign have not been carried to completion. 89

From a Kantian point of view, it is common and even inevitable for

human reason to make inferences following both casual and teleolog-
ical lines of thought. However, it is Kant's merit to have pointed out
that casual and teleological reasonings are utterly different in validity.
Whereas reasoning with nexus effectivus pertains to actual states of
affairs, reckoning through nexus finalis is only of reflective, heuristic
of orientative value, and between these two there can be no straight-
forward continuity.90 This Kantian insight seems to be helpful if we are
to tackle the reasoning of the Great Learning, although the subject matter
here is different from that of the Critique of Judgment.
Reading between the lines of the Great Learning, we can point out
that the work fails to recognize that social and political order belong
to a realm of its own right and is not necessarily a function of moral
endeavor. In the General Learning, political practice is regarded as
nothing but a mere "extension" of moral life.9l Without prejudice to
the significance of moral cultivation for mankind, we discover in the
Great Learning a tendency to over-estimate the billing and power of
morality, indeed an attempt to make morality valid and central for the
realm of political order. As for morality as a personal principle, I don't
see any reason why we cannot charge a sovereign with moral indigna-
tion. But expecting a ruler to be moral is one thing, founding political
order on his moral integrity is quite another. In the Great Learning, by
making morality, especially the moral worth of the sovereign, a sufficient
reason for social and political order, is not the Chinese mind commit-
ting a categorical mistake, and indeed a very dangerous one?

4. THE INDIAN TRADITION: - DETACHMENT FROM

THE WORLD FOR THE SAKE OF INNER BEATITUDE

In the aforementioned, we have shown that the spirit of Western cate-

gorical systems lies in the description of nature, and that of the Chinese
categorical systems lies mainly in the practical realm of worldly affairs.
Contrary to these two, the Indian tradition exhibits a completely
different domain of interest, and this interest has brought about count-
less categorical systems. What then is the main concern for Indian
civilization?
 THE DOCTRINE OF CATEGORIES 285

In his monumental work A History of Indian Philosophy, the renowned

Indian scholar Dasgupta embarks upon this problem in an opening
chapter: "General observations on the systems of Indian philosophy".
In that chapter Das Gupta sums up this issue in two phrases: pessimistic
attitude towards the world and optimistic faith in the end. 92 These two
phrases indeed encompassed what is to be meant as the ultimate concern
of Indian philosophy. It is a general perception of the Indian people,
according to Das Gupta, that

pleasure is mere appearance and the attempt to keep ourselves in a state of pleasure renders
us painful. [... J The only way out of this turmoil is first to cultivate moral greatness
and then strive for true wisdom which is nothing other than the thorough uprooting of
sorrow once and for all. [... J Through the highest moral elevation a man may attain
absolute dispassion towards world-experiences and retire in body, mind, and speech
from all worldly concerns. 93

Of the many Indian systems, I will just embark on Buddhism to demon-

strate how the problem of categories unfolds itself in such a particular
cultural context.

4.1. The Three Seals, The Four Noble Truths,

The Five Skandhas and the Twelvefold Dependent Origination

As we see from all the previous examples, the construction of a cate-

gorical system is brought about by the enumeration of a definite number
of items according to a definite order. If this is the case, we are lucky
to encounter three categorical systems right at the very earliest phase
of Buddhism. These are in fact the basic teachings ascribed to Buddha
himself. They form in a sense the common ground of all subsequent
developments of Buddhist doctrine. These three basic teachings are "The
Three Seals", "The Four Noble Truths", and "The Twelvefold Dependent
Origination". Unlike the complex conceptual discussions of abhidharma
theories which were developed later, these original teachings of Buddha
are simple, straightforward, but therefore powerful. Without much ado
they speak out in the most undisguised form about what matters most
for Buddhism.
There are different versions ofthe doctrine ofthe "Three Seals". Their
main tenets are: "[1.] all the constituents of being are transitory; [2.]
all the constituents of being are misery; [3.] all the elements of being
are lacking in an ego.,,94 As simple as it is, the doctrine of the "Three
286 TZE-WAN KWAN

Seals" brings forth a "universal" negation of the constancy of things as

well as an overall judgment about their miserable nature.
The doctrine of the "Four Noble Truths" keeps in line with the above
teaching, but points further to a way out of the misery. "What are these
four? - [they are] The announcement, teaching ... [1.] manifestation
of the Noble Truth of suffering - [2.] of the origin of suffering - [3.]
of the cessation of suffering - [4.] of the path that leads to the cessa-
tion of suffering.,,95 The first Truth of suffering is so to speak the
irreducible final perception of Buddhism. To explicate this point, Buddha
says: "Birth is suffering; decay is suffering; death is a suffering; grief
and lamentation, pain, misery and tribulation are sufferings; it is a suf-
fering not to get what is desired; - in brief all the factors of the fivefold
grip on existence are suffering.,,96
The so-called fivefold grip or skandha is an extremely important
concept in Buddhism. In other translations, it is also rendered as
"aggregate" to emphasize its original meaning as non-substantial and
conditioned gathering or as concatenation of transitory factors. For
Buddha, the five aggregates are aggregates of bodily or psychical states
which have no self [atman] of their own. These five skandhas are:
1) rupa, or aggregate of materiality;
2) vedana or aggregate of feelings;
3) samjna or aggregate of cognition;
4) samskara or aggregate of motivational dispositions; and
5) vijnana or aggregate of consciousnesses. 97
While lacking a self but being mere aggregates, mundane objects as
well as mundane activities are doomed to be transitory and lamentable.
It is also along this line of thought that the second Truth of the origin
of suffering is raised. This second Truth traces the origin of suffering
back to the fact that man's craving or grip on things has no indepen-
dent nature.
Whereas the first two Truths in a sense recapitulate what has already
been expounded in the Three Seals, the last two truths declare and
describe the way out. We can put them together in Buddha's own words:
"Next, what is the Noble Truth of the cessation of suffering? - It is the
utter and passionless cessation of this same craving, - the abandon-
ment and rejection of craving, deliverance from craving, and aversion
from craving. Lastly, what is the noble Truth of the Path that leads to
the cessation of suffering? - It is just the Noble Eightfold Path, consisting
of right outlook, right resolves, right speech, right acts, right liveli-
 THE DOCTRINE OF CATEGORIES 287

hood, right endeavor, right mindfulness and right rapture of concentra-

tion.,,98 With all these, we witness how original Buddhism defines its
domain of concern, a concern that not only cares about how to pene-
trate or look through the illusive nature of worldly distress, but one
that also cares to look for a way of attaining spiritual salvation and
inner beatitude.
As to the so-called "Twelvefold Dependent Origination", it suffices
to know that this doctrine is a further elaboration of the main tenets of
the Four Noble Truths. It expounds further the chain of dependent con-
catenation of mundaneness. This quasi series, when seen from one
viewpoint, shows us the way sorrow and suffering come about; when
seen from the opposite viewpoint, it reveals the path along which this
grief might be uprooted.

4.2. Dharma and Abhidharma - the Buddhist Ontology

To catch up with the later development of Buddhist categories, we have

to say a few words about the concept of dharma. In most Buddhist
commentaries, the concept of dharma is usually twofold. From the
layman's point of view, dharma is by and large taken as the collective
designation for the teaching of Buddha. But later on in the period of elab-
orated debates, the concept of dharma is taken as the general designation
for whatever issues might come up in one's consideration within the
central doctrine of Buddhism as such. 99 In addition to its more superfi-
cial meaning as "teaching", the concept dharma assumes gradually the
more subtle meaning of "being" or "entity", as in the Western philo-
sophical tradition. Indeed, the Buddhist discussion of abhidharma, which
means literally "about (abhi-) the dharmas", develops to such an extent
that it is very comparable in problem and theory to what is known to
the West as "meta-physika" or "onto-logia".
Despite all these resemblances, one main point about the abhidharma
theory distinguishes it. The dharmas or "entities", if we might borrow
this term from the Western philosophical tradition, comprises not only
natural and psychological phenomena as is the case in most Western
systems of categories. Dharmas also include the various ways or states
of awakening, of non-action, of sunyata or even of nirvana. To put this
matter in the terms of the "Four Noble Truths"; If we are to talk about
a Buddhist ontology, then we must realize from the very start that what
this ontology cares about is not a plain description of mundane objects
288 TZE- WAN KW AN

and mundane activities, but also the urge for a termination of our bondage
to them.
This is the most important part of Buddhism and it sets it apart from
other philosophical positions and theories prevalent in the Occidental
tradition. This problem makes manifest the Buddhist attitude of life and
world; it shows how Buddhism, while confronting the same empirical-
psychological context as that of the other traditions, sees this context
differently. To sum up, Buddhism's main concern lies not merely in the
phenomenal description of the world, but primarily in revealing the
transitory, miserable and illusive nature of this world and in showing a
way out of this miserable concatenation and illusion.

4.3. The Heideggerian and the Buddhist Conceptions of World

In describing the Buddhist concept of world, a comparison with

Heidegger is helpful. The analysis of the "worldhood of the world" in
Heidegger's Being and Time is parallel to that of the Buddhist world con-
ception. For both, the phenomenon of "world", as far as it is a "world"
meaningful to man, should be taken, instead of as "things present-at-
hand", rather as a concatenation of human intentions. While Heidegger
called this kind of concatenation "involvement" [Bewandtnis] , the
Buddhist doctrine explains it as the result of "dependent origination"
or "aggregates" [skandhas].
However, given this major resemblance, Heidegger and Buddhism
develop their understanding of world in totally opposite directions.
In Being and Time, Heidegger holds steadfast to the view that the
significance of the "world" is mutually linked up with a "totality of
involvements" [Bewandtnisganzheit]. This "totality of involvements
itself", according to Heidegger, "goes back ultimately to a 'towards-
which' [Wozu] in which there is no further involvement."loo This ultimate
'toward-which' is a "for-the-sake-of-which(whom)" [Worum-willen]
which is nothing but Dasein itself. Here, it is obviously Heidegger's
aim to emphasize Dasein as the true source of signification. In the
practical aspect, Heidegger pleads for a state of "Self-constancy" [Selbst-
stiindigkeit] or a state of self-conscious and self-decisive life performance.
What he called "un-Self-constancy" on the other hand can be taken as
a state of losing oneself in the midst of the crowd 101 which Heidegger
described as "the They" [das Man]. Be it a state of self-mastery or a state
 THE DOCTRINE OF CATEGORIES 289

of losing one's self, what is underlying is the concept of "constancy"

as the ground for man's context of meaning.
It is at this point that Heidegger and Buddhism are most divergent.
For Buddhism, the phenomenal world is the result not only of a causal
series of intentions but also of blind will. For Heidegger, everything earns
its meaning for the sake of Dasein. But for Buddhism, Hinayana as
well as Mahayana, everything happens for no final purpose and the
concatenated causal series itself is nothing but a mark of illusion and
sorrow. Buddhism denies from the outset the Self as the point of ultimate
reference for the meaning of life. In Buddhist terms, there is no "atman"
whatsoever. Further, whereas for Heidegger the Worumwillen of human
Dasein is the source of existential significance [Sinn], it is the view of
all Buddhist schools that consciousness is the source of all sorrow, and
persistence in a self leads to further sorrow and meaninglessness. For
this reason, human consciousness is classified as the crucial aggregate
that is finally to be overcome. Whereas for Heidegger "resoluteness"
[Entschlossenheit] in life means the getting hold of one's self, Buddhism's
ultimate resolution lies in the complete extinction of any grip on the
constancy of the self. Consequently, Buddhist philosophy tries to empha-
size a realm beyond this whole concatenation of the skandhas, to
the realm of nirvana, of sunyata and asamskrta. The notion of sunyata,
often rendered "emptiness", contains no positive assertion of "extra-
mundanity". Sunyata signifies nothing other than the very perception
of or insight into the illusive nature of worldly occurrences. It is in this
new domain of concern that Buddhism as such is instituted.

4.4. The Testification of Vasubandhu

To unveil the illusive nature of human experience and to discover the

possible way of self liberation, generations of Buddhist scholars have
labored to enumerate and classify all conceivable sorts of entities or
dharmas. As we have noted earlier, this kind of metaphysical treatment
of dharmas is called abhidharma in the Buddhist tradition. In the long
history of this discussion, Vasubandhu has played an extremely impor-
tant role. Among his countless works on Buddhism, there are two works
which explicitly deal with the enumeration and classification of dharmas.
While the first work, Abhidharma Kosa, is written before Vasubandhu's
conversion to the Mahayana, the second work represents his position after
his conversion. This second work exists no longer in its Sanskrit original,
290 TZE-WAN KWAN

but a Chinese translation called Bai Fa Ming Men Lun (by Hsiian-
tsang) is preserved to this day, and the work has recently been trans-
lated into English as Shastra on the Door to Understanding the Hundred
Dharmas. 102 For Brevity's sake I call the first book Kosa and the second
book Shastra in the following. In these two works of Vasubandhu, two
elaborated categorical systems of Buddhism are to be found.
Without going into detail, which would need a book to explicate, we
just mention the basic structure of these two systems. As far as the
scheme of classification is concerned, the Kosa differentiates between 75
and the Shastra between 100 "entities" or dharmas, both grouped under
five major divisions or avastha. They cover the complete realm of dis-
course conceivable to Buddhism. Disregarding the number of dharmas
included in each case, the five major divisions are in fact identical in
the two works, with however a slight difference in their sequence.
The five major divisions of dharmas in the Kosa are (number of
derivatives in parenthesis):
Rupa, or material forms (11)
Citta, or Consciousness (1)
Citta-samprayukta-samskara, or consciousness associated events (46)
Citta-viprayukta-samskara, or entities not associated with conscious-
ness (14)
Asamskrta, or the unconditional (3)
And those of the Shastra being:
Citta, or consciousnesses (8)
Citta-samprayukta-samskara, or consciousness associated events (51)
Rupa, or material forms (11)
Citta-viprayukta-samskara, or entities not associated with conscious-
ness (24)
Asamskrta, or the unconditional (6)
Among the many points of interest concerning these two Buddhist
categorical systems, we just need to emphasize two points. First: com-
paring the two categorical systems, we see that rupa ("material forms")
is reallocated from the first position in the Kosa to the third position
in the Shastra. Here, Vasubandhu is putting the blame of suffering and
mischief back to consciousness. This move is to this extent significant,
that it makes clear that on the way of awakening or the way leading to
nirvana, it is man's own consciousness and not an external realm that
is to be overcome at last.
The second and indeed more important point we want to raise concerns
 THE DOCTRINE OF CATEGORIES 291

the fifth division of dharmas in both systems, the asamskrta. What indeed
is asamskrta? Like many Indo-Germanic philosophical concepts, asam-
skrta is a privative derivative of the word samskrta. Literally translated,
asamskrta means the deprivation or absence of all sorts of conditioning
or aggregation. For this reason we can understand it as the "uncondi-
tional", as the "uncompounded" or as the "inoperative.,,103 This fifth
Order of asamskrta dharmas stands over against the first four divisions
of dharmas which are collectively known as the samskrta dharmas.
These four divisions are so to speak the realm of mundane occurrences
entangled in the flux of illusive aggregates. Being mutually dependent
and spiritually defiling, they are also called "impure dharmas". On the
contrary, asamskrta are those dharmas that do not take part in the illusive
chain of aggregates 104 and are for this reason called "the pure dharmas".
But in what sense are they "pure"? If the first four divisions of
dharmas are constitutive of the mundane realm, does the so-called asam-
skrta or the unconditional pertain to a somewhat extra-mundane realm?
To these questions, the Shastra gives us a prompt answer. The Shastra
points out that asamskrta represents no independent realm of realities;
it is nothing but a state of realizing the illusive nature of the first four
divisions of dharmas. It is precisely through this insight or awakening
that the "unconditional" frees itself from further entanglement into the
miserable chain of the aggregates. Making allowance for asamskrta as
a new aspect of discourse is of utmost importance for Buddhist doctrine.
It opens up a new way of looking at and reassessing things we used
to encounter. And for Buddhism this is the only way to spiritual
beatitude.

4.5. Asamskrta as a New Aspect of Discourse

Obviously, concepts like asamskrta or nirvana are not empirical concepts.

However, being states of mind or states of ultimate awakening, they
are still some sort of intellectual entities (geistige Gegenstiinde) that
are to be conceived, objectives to be attained. In this regard, notions
like sunyata, nirvana and asamskrta can and should also be included
in the pantheon of the dharmas, forming that "extra" part of many a
Buddhist categorical system not to be found in any Western or Chinese
Confucian categorical system.
Indeed, as we have already pointed out, it is this "extra" or "surplus"
part that shapes and characterizes the Buddhist philosophy as a whole.
292 TZE-WAN KWAN

It is through these notions that the real concern of Buddhism is made

explicit, namely the concern for man's possible way out of the blind
will of worldly sorrows. Furthermore, being the most crucial part of
the Buddhist system, notions like nirvana and asamskrta can never be
left out without changing the "lexical field" of Buddhism as a whole.
Imagine, if we truncate the fifth order of dharmas from Vasubandhu's
systems, what is left behind might well be an Aristotelian or Kantian
system, but never a Buddhist one. These notions are so to speak pivotal
concepts around which the whole system revolved and "upgrades".
As conceivable "entitles", the Buddhist notions of sunyata or nirvana
are dharmas in a very special sense, namely dharmas that are not entan-
gled in the sorrowful concatenation of the illusive aggregates [skandha].
In the central teachings of Buddhism, this group of concepts, while having
the same ultimate concern, are often employed for reciprocal explana-
tion. los Murti, for example, points out in this regard that for all schools
of Buddhism nirvana is never taken as "nothing" pure and simple, but
always as asamskrta dharma. 106 With the same token, the various schools
of Buddhism differentiate even between different aspects or facets of
sunyata and asamskrta. Nagarjuna, for instance, differentiates between
twenty aspects of sunyata 107 ; Vasubandhu for his part speaks of three
kinds of asamskrta in the Kosa, and even of six in the Shastra.
Some critics of Buddhism might query at this point whether speaking
of "emptiness", of nirvana or of asamskrta on the one hand, but then
getting involved in an elaborate differentiation between them, is not
self-defeating? In reply to this query, the following observation can be
made. As far as the ultimate concern of Buddhism is considered, we
should realize that it is not at all for theoretical purposes that Buddhism
develops such elaborate distinctions: it is out of "practical" considera-
tions that the manifold meaning of sunyata or nirvana is expounded.
For Buddhism, the path of awakening and freeing ourselves from worldly
bondage is a painstaking one. On such a path one has to overcome hin-
drances of different sorts, one has to face a multitude of self-queries
and self-negation. With the itemization of different modes of self-deceit,
we get the idea in what way we are indulged. With the itemization of
the modes of sunyata or asamskrta, we can orientate ourselves on the
arduous path of awakening. Rather than for the sake of theory, the estab-
lishment of categorical systems is for Buddhism purely of heuristic and
orientative value.
 THE DOCTRINE OF CATEGORIES 293

5. CONCLUSION: CATEGORIES AS CULTURAL MANIFESTATIONS

- WORKING FOR AND ONTOLOGY OF CULTURE

A cultural tradition is an abiding entity with social and historical validity.

As an abiding entity a particular cultural tradition finds her identifica-
tion in the ultimate concern that the people of that tradition share with
each other for a considerable period of time. This concern encompasses
a body of basic issues and values the people of that nation cherish. In
order that this abiding interest be preserved over the course of time, it
has to be repeatedly heard of and reckoned with, repeatedly expressed
and reaffirmed. And all this relies on language. It is no wonder that nearly
all leading linguists of our time understand language as a kind of social
institution. As far as the use of language is concern, the various systems
of categories are no doubt the most precious fruits a cultural tradition can
bear. And the influence they cast back upon the tradition is profound
and far-reaching.
Once integrated into the language of a nation, a particular cate-
gorical system becomes part of the tradition and part of the culture.
The values implicit in a system of categories become part of the
collective unconscious active among all members of that language
community. In this way, the categorical systems of a tradition exercise
an abiding influence over the ages without their being conscious. Just
as one doesn't have to know anything about physiology to be able to
digest food, one doesn't need to learn philosophy to become influenced
by the categorical systems.
A system of categories, as a deliberately constructed list of funda-
mental items, helps to define the meaningful realm of discourse of a
cultural tradition. This realm of discourse represents the basic domain
of empirical or intellectual awareness of that tradition. As a system,
the categories themselves exhibit a certain internal structure, constituting
practically the most condensed, most comprehensive and most "articu-
lated" lexical field a language can produce. Just as a larger lexical field
can embrace smaller fields, a system of categories might, if circumstances
require, be divided further into sub-systems called predicables. In this
way, a system of categories might find its way to relate to the most distant
and regional issues. Just as the internal structure of a regional lexical
field helps our judgment in that particular stratum of experience, a system
of categories, as the broadest lexical field performs an orientative function
in the broadest sense of the term. It reflects, consummates or consoli-
294 TZE- W AN KW AN

dates the way a nation perceives and assesses things that they have a
concern for, empirical as well as intellectual! In times of a "crisis" or
"paradigm change" in culture, if I might borrow these expressions from
Kuhn, a new constellation of categorical structures might even antici-
pate the advent of a new domain of interest or concern. I hope the few
examples mentioned in this article have made this point clear enough.
I have no intention to make value judgments about these various
systems and the traditions they represent. However, I do intend to show
one thing: precisely because of their difference in concern, each cultural
tradition brings along problems of its own. Through the observation of
the problem of categories, we learn that what a cultural tradition even-
tually turns out to be is not a matter of sheer chance, but rather the
result of an abiding tendency. As social realities existing in space and
time, no society, no cultural tradition is perfect. Merit in one aspect is
usually well balanced by shortcomings in another.
To clarify this point, let us recapitulate the examples we have just
given. Notwithstanding the profound insight and spiritual blessedness
of Indian philosophy, the Indian nation has to pay the high price of a
persistent lack of vigor in managing her mundane affairs. Anyone who
gets in touch with the deeper aspects of Indian culture will unmistak-
ably find that there prevails in these people a general attitude of
detachment from the world and together with this a strong yearning for
inner beatitude. If the way of life most Indian people lead nowadays is
a well-thought-out and self-chosen one, then we can only admire them
for the inner beatitude they enjoy. But if it is the Indian nation's wish
to strive for a better material standard, then, in addition to economic
and social reforms, what the Indian nation needs is a deeper self-under-
standing in regard to her cultural concern, and also a decisive measure
to counter-balance what has already been prevailing for thousands of
years.
The Chinese, these quiet but hard working people, have repeatedly
shown their patience and endurance in the most difficult situations.
They also have demonstrated that they can strive to become engaged
and outstanding in all walks of life when given the right opportunities.
Such a nation has however its own problem. Compared with the European
nations, it is obvious that the political consciousness of the Chinese is
underdeveloped. The idea of personal rights and the idea of a democ-
ratic constitution have never been truly raised. For the Chinese people,
social and political well-being is not something they can strive for, but
 THE DOCTRINE OF CA TEGORIES 295

something bestowed upon them or something they have to take chances

with. In contrast to the ordinary people, most Chinese political leaders,
past and present, are suffering from the complex of self-sanctification.
They create for themselves the image of an infallible sage. They think
they can justifiably manipulate the people for the people's own good.
From antiquity up to the present, the political rule of the Chinese is
predominantly charismatic. Throughout China's long history, no real con-
trolling power has ever been established to counter-balance the might
ofthe sovereign/sage. The opinion of a 'sage' can overrule anything insti-
tutional. The Tiananmen Square crackdown is just the most drastic
expression of this deep rooted issue. The trauma of this incidence has
been enormous for all Chinese. We don't know how long it will take
for us to recover from this nightmare.
If something similar is not to happen again, the Chinese are desper-
ately in need of a deeper understanding of the basic shortcomings of their
own culture. Unlike Western intellectuals such as John Locke and
Rousseau, the Chinese have over-estimated the power of morality and
under-estimated the preponderance of the radical evil in man. As to the
problem of moral values itself, I don't think we have the right or need
to make a scapegoat out of it. It is my conviction that moral cultiva-
tion of the self is and will always remain the basis of any true
inter-personal relation worthy of man. But misusing morality in politics
is dangerous. Without prejudice to the idea of moral values, what the
Chinese mind needs in the future is a rational, independent notion of con-
stitutional and political practice not saturated with moral greatness.
Let me now turn to a brief observation about Western culture. I think
no one can deny the fact that progress in science and technology has
brought about enormous changes in the way of life of our society. We
also cannot deny the fact that this same technological culture, first stip-
ulated by the Modern West, has now conquered the entire world. Indeed,
as we have shown in the Aristotelian system of categories, the interest
in and concern for nature is as old as Western civilization. In the modern
age, Western Man step by step creates for himself the self image of a
"subject'. Correspondingly, nature is objectified and disenchanted. It
readily looses its charm, becoming at last nothing but "resources' for
mankind. Western Man's interest in nature turns out to be a strong
desire to conquer and to master nature. lOS Man begins his reckless
program in promoting the material well being at the cost of altering
the equilibrium of nature. As we have said, this program of manipu-
296 TZE-WAN KWAN

lating nature has won influence over the entire world. What the devel-
oping countries understand as "modernization" is the best testimony to
this cruel fact.
With all the benefits in material well-being, the adoption ofa tech-
nological or technocratic culture has also its price, namely, the breakdown
of traditional values, the loss of a grip on the meaning of life, the dis-
integration of social relations, in one word, the reification of man; and
last but not least, serious pollution of the entire globe. Trying to manip-
ulate things, man finds himself manipulated by things. For this very
reason, while the rest of the world is striving for modernization, the
Western nations begin to sense the so-called modernity crisis. In 1972,
I was invited by the American State Department to take part in a so-called
"Asian and Pacific Student Leader Project". During our seventy days tour
around the states, I was very much amazed by all sorts of things around
me. But the greatest impact on me was a bestseller by Alvin Toffler,
Future Shock. In that book I noticed for the first time what the moder-
nity crisis means. Toffler vividly shows us what a high price the American
people have to pay for the prosperity they enjoy: a high transience society,
the modularization of human relationships, man's loss of orientation in
the midst of "overchoices", a throw-away culture with man himself
rendered as a "disposable person".l09
When talking about the merits and shortcomings of a cultural tradi-
tion, we are not evincing moral indignation. For who are we going to
blame? What we need is an ontology of culture. Under "ontology of
culture" I understand a thematic study of the respective cultural tradi-
tions, not merely in their regional aspects, but in their totality. What
we first have to do is to recognize a cultural tradition as an abiding social
historical entity, identifiable by the ultimate concern that underlies
and characterizes it. As this ultimate concern varies from tradition to
tradition, an ontology of culture can only be accomplished through
concrete analysis of this or that particular tradition, just as in structural
linguistics we must "specify" a particular system as object of study.
As an implementation of such an ontology of culture, a thorough study
of the leading categorical systems is no doubt of great value. For
nowhere is the ultimate concern of a cultural tradition more clearly dis-
played than in the categorical systems. To fully exhaust the cultural
implications of these systems, we need both a synchronic and diachronic,
nay even a panchronic analysis. Only in this way can we be respon-
sible to own tradition, reinforcing what is beneficial, checking what is
 THE DOCTRINE OF CATEGORIES 297

hazardous and making correctives at a stage before everything goes out

of control.

The Chinese University of Hong Kong

NOTES

1 Aristotle, De lnterpretatione, translated by Harold P. Cooke, in: Aristotle in Twenty-

three Volumes, Vol. I. (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1973), 16a4-a9.

2 See Wilhelm von Humboldt, Ober das vergleichende Sprachstudium in Beziehung

aUf die verschiedenen Epochen der Sprachentwicklung [1982), in: Werke infunf Biinden,
Band III (Stuttgart: Cotta, 1963), pp. 19-20. English translation see Robert Miller, The
Linguistic Relativity Principle and Humboldtian Ethnolinguistics: A History and Appraisal
(The Hague: Mouton, 1968), p. 29.
3 See Wilhelm von Humboldt, Ober den Dualis, in Werke infunf Biinden. Band III, p.
135. English translation by the present author.
4 F. de Saussure, Course in General Linguistics, ed. by Ch. Bally and A. Sechehaye,

transl. by Wade Baskin (New York: Philosophical Library, 1959), pp. 111-112.
5 See Leo Weisgerber, Das Menschheitsgesetz der Sprache als Grundlage der

Sprachwissenschaft (Heidelberg: Quelle & Meyer, 1964), p. 16.

6 Hans-Georg Gadamer, Wahrheit und Methode (Tiibingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1960), p.
423; English translation Truth and Method (New York: Seabury Press, 1975), p. 405.
1 See Martin Heidegger, Sein und Zeit (Tiibingen: Niemeyer, 1972), 12. Auflage, pp.

155-160.
8 For general information on this topic, please refer to N. Trubetzkoy, Principles of
Phonology. See also Roman Jakobson, Six Lectures on Sound and Meaning, prefaced
by C. Levi-Strauss (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1978); also Jakobson and Morris Halle,
Fundamentals of Language (The Hague: Mouton, 1971).
9 In his regard, I am very much stimulated by Levi-Strauss' comparison ·between
phonology and mythology. Just as "my theme" stands in relation to "phoneme", we can
append "category" to form a triad. Unlike mythology, whose internal structure is somewhat
irrational, the internal structure of categorical systems is in most cases the result of rational
deliberation. Nevertheless, once explicitly formulated and handed down as part of a
tradition, a categorical system can become part of the unconscious in culture, thus per-
forming a function comparable to that of myths. Levi-Strauss depicts this function this
way: "a myth sets up a grid, solely definable in terms of the rules by which it is con-
structed. For the members of the culture to which the myth belongs this grid confers a
meaning not on the myth itself but on everything else: i.e., on the picture they have of
the world, on the society and its history about which the group members might be more
or less accurately informed, and on the ways in which these things are problematic for
them." See, Levi-Strauss preface to Roman Jakobson's Six Lectures on Sound and Meaning
(Cambridge: MIT Press, 1978), p. xxiv. The preface is now also available as "The Lessons
of Linguistics", in: The View from Afar (Oxford: Blackwell, 1985), pp. 138-147.
10 See Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, A833/B861.
11 See Leo Weisgerber, Vom Weltbild der deutschen Sprache (Diisseldorf, 1950), cited
from Miller [1968), p. 60.
298 TZE- W AN KW AN

12 Ernst Cassirer, "Die Kantischen Elemente in Wilhelm von Humboldts Sprach-

philosophie", in: Festschriftfiir Paul Hensel (Greiz i. V., 1923), pp. 117-118. English
translation by Robert Miller, p. 25.
13 With the exception of the late dialogue of Timaeus, Plato never gave us any positive
account of empirical nature elaborate enough to be persuasive. Even his Timaeus is far
from plausible in this respect. See F. M. Cornford, Plato's Cosmology.
14 For a detailed discussion of Aristotle's philosophy of change and movement, see Walter
Brocker's Aristoteles: Die Aristotelische Philosophie als Frage nach der Bewegung
(Frankfurt!M: Klostermann, 1964).
IS See C. M. Gillespie, "The Aristotelian Categories", in: Classical Quarterly 19, 1925),
pp. 75-84. Original paper not to hand, quotation reconstructed with the help of the German
translation of the paper. See, F. -Po Hager (hrsg.), Logik und Erkenntnislehre des Aristoteles
(Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1972).
16 In many of Heidegger's work, the concept of category was made a topic for discus-
sion. See, for instance, "Vom Wesen und Begriff der Physiks. Aristoteles, Physik B, 1
(1939)", in: Wegmarken (FrankfurtlM: Klostermann, 1976), p. 252; Nietzsche, Zweiter
Band (Pfullingen: Neske, 1961), p. 7lf; Einfilhrung in die Metaphysik (Tiibingen:
Niemeyer, 1953), p. 143f.
17 See Wilhelm Windelband, Lehrbuch der Geschichte der Philosophie, hrsg. v. Heinz
Heimsoeth (Tiibingen: Mohr, 1957), p. 121, English translation, A History of Philosophy.
translated by James H. Tufts, p. 142.
18 See Wilhelm Windelband, A History of Philosophy (trans!. by James Tufts), 1968,
p.142.
19 See Aristotle's Categories, translated by Harold P. Cooke, Aristotle in Twenty-three
Volumes, Vo!. 1; The Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1938/1973), pp.
16-19.
20 See Aristotle, Met. Book 5, 1016b34, 1017a23 ...
21 See Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, A81IBI06.
22 See Adolf Trendelenburg, Geschichte der Kategorienlehre (Berlin: Verlag Bethge,
1846), pp. 23-24.
23 See Emile Benveniste, "Categories of Thought and Language", in Problems in General
Linguistics, trans!. by Mary E. Meek (Coral Gables: University of Miami Press, 1971),
p.58.
24 See Emile Benveniste, "Active and Middle Voice in the Verb", in Problems in General
Linguistics, ibid. p. 149.
2S See Benveniste, "The Linguistic Functions of 'To be' and 'To have' ", in: Problems
in General Linguistics, pp. 164-179, especially p. 179.
26 Aristotle, Categoriae, 2a3; In Chapter 9 of the same work, Aristotle repeats these
two examples but puts them in their infinitive form as '07to~£o~o9at and c67tA.io9(lt
(11b13).
27 Benveniste, "Categories of Thought and Language", op. cit., p. 60.
28 Please note that, contrary to most modem European languages, the classical Greek
language consists of more than one form of verbal infinitive.
29 Met. Book VII, Ch. 7, 1032a13.
30 Phys. Book V, Ch. 1, 225a1.
31 Met. Book XXII, Ch. 5, 1071al-3.
 THE DOCTRINE OF CATEGORIES 299
32 See Robert L. Miller [1968], op. cit. p. 57.
33 Parmenides, Proem, in Diels-Kranz, Fragmente der Vor-Sokratiker. Vot 1 (Ziirich:
Weidmann, 1989). pp. 217ff.
34 The term "Sandenfall der Erkenntnis" is coined by Karl Reinhardt, see his, Parmenides
und die Geschichte der Griechischen Philosophie (Bonn: Cohen, 1916), p. 26.
3S For Aristotle's reply to Parmenides, see Met. Book XIV-2, 1089al-28; see also Met.
Book XII-2, 1069b28; Phy. Book 1-7, 191b14. Please pay special attention to Aristotle's
own version of understanding the concept of "Non-Being".
36 See Gottfried W. Leibniz, a letter to Gabriel Wagner [1696], in: Philosophical Papers
and Letters, Selection trans!. and ed. by Leroy E. Loemker (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1976),
p.464.
37 For this point, refer to Ludwig von Bertalanffy, General System Theory (New York:
Braziller, 1968), especially the concluding chapter on "The Relativity of Categories",
p.223.
38 For this context, see Heinrich Scholz, Abriss der Geschichte der Logik (Freiburgl
Miinchen: Alber, 1931); English translation by Kurt F. Leidecker, Concise History of Logic
(New York: Philosophical Library, 1961).
39 Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, A651B90.
40 Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, All-12/B25.
41 Kant, Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics, trans!. by Paul Carus (Chicago:
Regnery, 1951), p. 128.
42 Leo Weisgerber, Das Menschheitsgesetz der Sprache als Grundlage der Sprach-
wissenschaft, 2., neubearbeitete Auf!age (Heidelberg: Quelle & Meyer Verlag, 1964),
p.38.
43 Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, B69.
44 See Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, A36/B53. For a more detail discussion of
this problem, see Tze-wan Kwan, "On Kant's Real/Problematic Distinction between
Phenomenon and Noumenon", in: Tunghai Journal 26, Taichung, 1985, pp. 171-210.
4S This motive of stepping backward being central to the notion of transcendental
philosophy can be documentated by a fragment out of Kant's Nachlaj3. "In der tran-
szendentalen Wissenschaft ist nicht mehr darum zu tun, vorwarts, sondern riickwlirts zu
gehn." See, Reflexionen zur Metaphysik, Zweiter Teil, KGS, Band XVII, Ref!. 5075,
p.80.
46 Kant, Preischrift iiber die Fortschritte der Metaphysik, in KGS, Band XX (Berlin:
de Gruyter, 1942), p. 275.
47 Kant, Prolegomena ... , op. cit., p. 68.
48 Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, A246-247/B303.
49 See Kant, Logik. Ein Handbuch zu Vorlesungen, Einleitung, in KGS, Band IX (Berlin:
de Gruyter, 1968), p. 25.
so See Kant, Kritik der praktischen Vernunft, KGS, Band V (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1968),
pp.65-67.
51 Wilhelm Dilthey, Der Aufbau der Geschichtlichen Welt in den Geisteswissenschaften
(Stuttgart: Suhrkamp, 1970), p. 235.
S2 Ibid., pp. 236-237.
53 Ibid., p. 28lff.
S4 Martin Heidegger, Phanomenologische Interpretationen zu Aristoteles. Einfiihrung
300 TZE-WAN KWAN

in die phiinomenologische Forschung. Friihe Freiburger Vorlesung Wintersemester

1921122. Hrsg. von Walter Brocker und Kate Brocker-Oltmanns (FrankfurtlM: Kloster-
mann, 1985), pp. 84ff.
55 Martin Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, 12. unveranderte Auflage (Tiibingen: Niemeyer,
1972), p. 12.
56 Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, p. 42. "Das 'Wesen' des Daseins liegt in seiner Existenz."
Text italicized in original German.
57 See Heidegger, Die Grundprobleme der Phiinomenologie, Marburger-Vorlesung SS-
1927 (FrankfurtlM: Klostermann, 1975), p. 377. English translation by A. Hofstadter
(Bloomington: indiana UP, 1982).
58 Heidegger, Platons Lehre von der Wahrheit. Mit einem Briefaber den "Humanismus"
(Bern: Francke, 1975), p. 70.
59 Sein und Zeit, untitled first page.
60 Sein und Zeit, p. 45.
61 Sein und Zeit, pp. 44-45.
62 Fascinatingly enough, this word shares the same etymological roots as words such
as "existence", "EK(J1:c:xttKOV", and even the word "ecstasy" in ordinary English. Umberto
Eco has given a stimulating reflection on the concept of ecstasis. Cf. Eco's The Name
of the Rose.
63 Sein und Zeit, p. 329.
64 It was my teacher Otto Poggeler, who first brought to my attention the inherent rela-
tionship between the Kantian categories and the Heideggerian doctrine of existentialia. On
the occasion of a Hauptseminar on Heidegger held in the Ruhr-Universitat Bochum in
1978, Poggeler himself conceived the idea of having the ecstases tabulated.
65 See Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, pp. 12-13; 47-48.
66 See Tze-wan Kwan, Die hermeneutische Phanomenologie und das tautologische
Denken Heideggers, included as Band 174 of the book series, Philosophie, Psycho log ie,
und Padagogik (Bonn: Bouvier, 1982).
67 The Shoo King or The Book of Historical Documents, Translated with critical and
exegetical notes etc. by lames Legge, second edition (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University
Press, 1960). p. 323.
68 The Shoo King, ibid. p. 324.
69 The Shoo King, ibid. p. 321.
70 The Shoo King, ibid. p. 321.
71 Bing-he Shang, Zhou-yi Shang-shi-xue (Beijing: Zhonghwa, 1980), pp. 9-10.
72 In this paper, I am using the translation by Richard Wilhelm rendered into English
by Cary F. Baynes, The I Ching or Book of Changes, Foreword by C. G. lung, in
two Volumes (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 195111965). Hereafter cited as The I
Ching.
13 The I Ching, ibid. p. 53. Peace, Line 6-VI.
74 The I Ching, ibid. p. 176. Increase, Line 6-IX.
75 The I Ching, ibid. p. 230. Abundance, Line 6-VI.
76 The I Ching, ibid. p. 164. Obstruction, Line 6-VI.
77 The I Ching, ibid. p. 57. Stagnation, Line 6-IX.
78 The I Ching, ibid. pp. 196-197. Oppression, Line 6-VI.
79 The I Ching, ibid. p. 52. Peace, Line 3-IX.
 THE DOCTRINE OF CATEGORIES 301

80 The I Ching, ibid. p. 366. "The Great Treatise", Part II.

81 See James Legge's translation of the I Ching, second edition (New York: Dover, 1963),
"The Orderly Sequence of the Hexagrams", Part I, p. 436.
82 See "Introduction" to Cheng I's Commentary of the I Ching (Taipei: 1972). Translation
mine.
83 I am using the term "regional" in the sense used by HusserI who differentiates ontology
into "formal ontology" and "regional ontologies". See HusserI's Ideen zu einer reinen
Phlinomenologie und phlinomenologischen Philosophie. Erstes Buch (Den Haag: Nijhoff,
1950), pp. 23-39. Here Husserl also puts forward the idea that for each "region", regional
categories can be established.
84 The Great Leaning, in: The Four Books, translated by James Legge (New York:
Paragon Reprint, 1966), Ch. 1, Paragraph 4. pp. 310-312.
8S The Great Learning, ibid., Ch. 1, Paragraph 5, p. 313.
86 The Great Learning, ibid., Ch. 1, Paragraph 3, p. 310.
87 The Great Learning, ibid., Ch. 1, Paragraph 6, pp. 313-314.
88 The Great Learning, ibid., Ch. 9, Paragraph 3, pp. 330-331.
89 The Great Learning, ibid., Ch. 10, Paragraph 21, pp. 343-344.
90 See Kant, Kritik der Urteilskraft, in KGS, Band V (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1908, 1968),
p. 372, p. 389. English translation by Werner S. Pluhar, Critique of Judgment (Indianapolis:
Hackett, 1987), pp. 251, 269.
91 See Lao Sze-kwang, Zhongguo Zhexueshi, Vol. 1 (Hong Kong: Chung chi College
Press, 1971), p. 47.
92 S. D. Das Gupta, A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 (Cambridge UP, 1969),
pp.62-77.
93 Das Gupta, ibid., pp. 75-76.
94 See S. Radhakrishnan and Charles Moore, A Source Book in Indian Philosophy
(Princeton: Princeton up, 1957), pp. 273-274.
9S Radhakrishnan and Moore, ibid., p. 275.
96 Ibid.
97 For the translation of the five skandhas Stefan Anacker's work is most reasonable.
See Stefan Anacker, Seven Works of Vasubandhu. The Buddhist Psychological Doctor
(Delhi: MotHal, 1984), p. 65.
98 Radhakrishnan and Moore, ibid., p. 277.
99 At the end of his commentary on Asanga's Abhidarmasamuccaya, Sthiramati defines
the job of the abhidharma as "to collect exhaustively whatever is conceivable in all the
scriptures of the Mahayana abhidharma." See Sthiramati, Dasheng Apidamo Zajilun,
in: The photoprinted Grand Buddhist Tripitaka (Taipei: The Chinese Buddhist Culture
Institute, 1957), Vol. 62, p. 774.
100 Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, p. 84.
101 For the concepts of self-constancy and unself-constancy, refer to Heidegger's Sein
und Zeit, pp. 322-332.
102 Recently, the work is also translated into English by the Buddhist Text Translation
Society; See Shastra on the Door to Understanding the Hundred Dharmas, edited by
Master Hua Tripitaka (Talmage, CA: Buddhist Text Translation Society, 1983).
103 Asamskrta has been translated in different ways. In the French translation of the
Abhidharma Kosa, Louis de La Vall6e Poussin renders it as "l'inconditionne". In the Seven
302 TZE-WAN KWAN

Works of Vasubandhu. The Buddhist Psychological Doctor, Stefan Anacker translates

the term as "the uncompounded". In the Central Philosophy of Buddhism, Murti puts it
as "inoperative".
104 This point is repeatedly emphasized in most Buddhist literature. In the case of
Vasubandhu, see his L'Abihdharmakosa, trad. Louis de La Va1l6e Poussin, Tome 1
(Bruxelles: Institut Beige des Hauptes Etudes Chinoises, 1971), "L'inconditionn6 ne pas
nomm6 ~ propos des skandhas, parce qu'il ne correspond pas au concept." p. 41. In his
later work "A Discussion of the Five Aggregates", Vasubandhu repeated this dictum,
"What are included within the aggregates" All of them except the uncompounded." See
Seven Works of Vasubandhu. The Buddhist Psychological Doctor. Translated by Stefan
Anacker, op. cit., p. 74.
lOS This way of reciprocal elucidation between a group of "pivotal" concepts can be found
in the late Heidegger, namely, in what he eventually called "tautological thinking". See
Tze-wan Kwan, op. cit.
106 T. R. V. Murti, The Central Philosophy of Buddhism. A Study of the Madhyamika
System (London: Allen and Unwin, 1970), p. 272.
107 See Murti, ibid. Appendix: "A Note on the Twenty Modes of Sunyata". Although
this division is found in a text Pancavimsati dated later than N agarjuna, it is highly probable
that they are proposed by the sage himself. In fact, among the Chinese scriptures there
is a treatise called Shiba Kung Lun [On the Eighteen Modes of SunyataJ ascribed to
Nagarjuna and translated by Paramartha. There exists also a Japanese version of the
work which distinguishes only between sixteen modes.
108 At this point, it might be of interest to recapitulate a well-known passage taken
from Descartes' Discourse on Method, "But as soon as I had acquired some general notions
concerning Physics, and as, beginning to make use of them in various special difficul-
ties, I observed to what point they might lead us. [... J For they caused me to see that
it is possible to attain knowledge which is very useful in life, and that, instead of that
speCUlative philosophy [... J we may find a practical philosophy by means of which,
knowing the force and the action of fire, water, air, the stars, heavens and all other
bodies that environ us, as distinctly as we know the different crafts of our artisans, we
can in the same way employ them in all those uses to which they are adapted, and thus
render ourselves the masters and possessors of nature." In: The Philosophical Works of
Descartes, translated by Elizabeth S. Haldane and G. R. T. Ross, Vol. 1 (New York: Dover,
1955), p. 119.
109 See Alvin Toffier, Future Shock (New York: Bantam Edition, 1981).
 INDEX OF NAMES

-A- Bennett, J. 58, 63

Aaron, R. I. 11, 14, 29, 30, 33, 45, 47,48, Bennington, G. 220
63,92,132 Bentham, J. 202,203,234
Adorno, T. 206, 234 Berger, B. 237
Alexander, P. 93 Berger, P. 237
Anacker, S. 301, 302 Bergson, H.-L. 154, 204
Anaxamenes 252 Berkeley, G. 6, 9-11, 12, 14, 15,32,33,
Anaximander 252 37-39, 45-48
ApeJt, D. B. 253 Berlin, I. 222
Apter, D. E. 236, 237 Berman, M. 233
Ardener, E. 235 Bernstein, L. 225
Arendt, H. 194-196, 204 Bernstein, R. J. 105, 213
Arifuku, K. 230 Bieri, P. 131
Aristotle 117, 124, 153, 155, 174, 195, Bing-he Shang 300
220, 243, 244, 245, 250-267, 269, Blacking, J. 228
271, 292, 295, 297-299 Blackmur, R. P. 226
Armstrong, D. M. 29, 45 Bloom, A. 238
Armstrong, R. L. 154 Boman, T. 239
Arnheim, R. 224 Boyle, R. 79, 93, 98
Attali, J. 179 Brandt, R. 29
Austin, J. L. 9 Brocker, W. 298, 300
Ayers, M. R. 28, 29 Brocker-Oltmanns, K. 300
Brodersen, A. 231
-B- Brown, N. O. 179, 187
Bacon, F. 204, 205, 234 Brueghel, P. 197
Baillie, J. 166 Bryson, S. 232
Bakhtin, M. 170, 181, 183, 185, 186, 193, Buber, M. 183, 184
197, 220, 221, 226, 228, 232, 233, Buddha 176, 238, 285-292
238 Burke, E. 220
Bally, C. 297
Barker, S. 229 -C-
Barry, 1. 223 Calinescu, M. 169, 220
Barthes, R. 170, 173,221,222,229 Calvino, I. 225
Baudrillard, J. 213, 238 Camu, A. 198
Bauman, Z. 171 Canetti, E. 189
Beardsley, M. C. 45 Caputo, J. D. 227
Beckett, S. 182, 186, 226 Cassirer, E. 250, 298
Beneviste, E. 256-261, 298 Castoriadis, C. 222
Benjamin, W. 212 Cavailles, J. 147

303

A-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana Vol. XLVI, 303-308.

304 INDEX OF NAMES

Cavell, S. 234 Donato, E. 223

de Certeau, M. 227 Dostoevsky, F. 221
Cheng I 301 Diirckeim, K. v. 232
Chomsky, N. 225
Chuang Tzu 176, 272 -E-
Clark, K. 186, 226 Eco, U. 300
Clifford, J. 235 Eichmann, A. 194-196,204
Cohen, P. A. 235 Embree, L. 237
Cohen, R. A. 227 Emerson, C. 221
Collingwood, R. G. 186,229 Empodocles 252
Comte, A. 207 Epicurus 83, 102
Confucius 180, 214, 220, 272, 274, 280,
282, 291 -F-
Connor, S. 220 Feher, M. 229
Constable, J. 7 Feld, S. 209
Contat, M. 227 Fenellosa, E. 176
Copernicus 183 Ferguson, R. 240
Copleston, F. 132 Feuerbach, L. 182
Corbin, A. 231 Fischer, M. M. J. 235, 236
Cornford, F. M. 298 Forster, E. M. 169
Cort~s, H. 185 Foucault, M. 173, 186, 202, 203, 221,
Cox, H. 232 234
Craig, E. J. 45 Fraser, A. C. 14, 29
Freeman, D. 210
-D- Frege, G. 119
Dallmayr, F. 222 Freud, S. 234
Das Gupta, S. D. 285, 301 Fuller, L. 229
Dauenhauer, B. P. 187 Furlong, E. J. 47
Davidson, D. 7, 13, 104
da Vinci, L. 190 -G-
Davis, J. 55, 56 Gadamar, H.-G. 211, 212, 231, 240, 246,
DeFrancis, J. 228 297
Deleuze, G. 239 Galileo 213, 237, 238
Democritus 93, 189, 252 Gandhi, M. K. 220
Derrida, J. 173-176, 181, 182, 197,215, Gasch~, R. 225
217,223,227,231,232,237,238 Gassendi, P. 93
Descartes, R. 100-105, 121, 123, 125, Gates, H. L. 221
129, 130, 132, 185, 188, 189, 193, Geertz, C. 208, 209, 234-236
194, 199, 200, 202, 203, 211, 213, Gellner, E. 236
220, 232, 238, 302 Gillespie, C. M. 253, 298
Desmond, W. 224 Gilligan, C. 237
Dessauer, F. 206 Gompertz, T. 256
Dewey, J. 130 Goodall, J. 154
Diels, H. 105 Goodheart, E. 197
Dilthey, W. 263, 268, 269, 299 Graham, J. F. 237
Diogenes 233 Gray, J. G. 239
Dogen Kigen 188 Green, T. H. 29, 122, 123, 131, 221
 INDEX OF NAMES 305

Greenlee, D. 79, 80, 92 Hu Shih 220

Grene, M. 236 Huygens, C. 98
Grose, T. H. 29, 131,221 Huyssen, A. 220
Gross, D. 220 Hwa Yol Jung ix, 222, 223, 225, 229,
Guattari, F. 239, 240 233, 235, 240
Gurwitsch, A. 237 Hyppolite, J. 163

-H- -1-
Haar, M. 188, 230 Ihde, D. 210, 235, 240
Habermas, J. 173, 215, 221, 222, 233 Irigaray, L. 194, 232
Hager, F.-P. 298
Hall, D. L. 225 -J-
Halle, M. 297 Jakobson, R. 297
Hanson, N. R. 9, 13, 49-56, 59, 60 James, W. 169
Hardy, H. 222 Jardin, A. A. 193
Harris, R. 223 Jay, M. 233
Hassan, I. 220 Jaynes, J. 225
Havelock, E. 237 Jessop, T. E. 14
Hayakawa, S. I. 224 Jewell, A. 154
Heelan, P. 211 Jung, C. G. 281, 300
Hegel, G. W. F. ix, 130-132, 147, 152, Jung, P. 225
153, 160-163, 166, 170, 172-174,
176-181, 203,220-223,227,233 -K-
Heidegger, M. ix, 148, 173, 175, 181, Kambartel, F. 51, 53
182, 184, 189-192, 199-201, 204- Kant, I. ix, 6, 10,62,63, 121, 171, 172,
207,215,216,219,223,227,230, 195, 206, 220, 221, 245, 248-250,
231, 234, 235, 238, 239, 247, 263, 256, 263-268, 271, 284, 292, 297-
267-272, 288, 289, 297-302 299, 301
Heraclitus 152, 153, 252 Kasalis, T. P. 230
Lord Herbert of Cherbury 97 Kaufman, W. 230
Herman, D. J. 152, 154, 163 Kearney, R. 175, 223, 227, 236
Hill, D. L. 231 Keller, H. 194
Hobbes, T. 213 Kellner, H. 237
Hollis, M. 239 Kermode, F. 229
Holquist, M. 186, 221, 226 Kockelmans, J. 225
Hooke, R. 79 Koehler, W. 154
Horkheimer, M. 206, 234 Koestler, A. 197
Horstmann, R.-P. 131 Kolakowski, L. 233
Hua Tripitaka 301 Kranz, W. 105
Humboldt, W. v. 228, 245, 247, 249, 297 Kripke, S. A. 91
Hume, D. 9-12,15,29,64,131,171,172, Krueger, L. 131
221 Kuhn, T. 206, 294
Huot, J. L. 164
Husserl, E. 6, 11, 13, 18, 29, 30, 44-46, -L-
48,60,62,63,94,95,105,147,148, Lacan, J. 193
153, 154, 155-163, 174, 175, 177, LaCapra, D. 233
208, 211, 213, 216, 222, 235, 301 Lao Sze-Kwang 301
306 INDEX OF NAMES

Laudan, L. 87 McDonald, H. 210, 218

Leder, D. 230 McNeill, W. H. 240
Lee, M. 7 Mead, G. H. 186
Lefort, C. 225 Mead, M. 210, 236
Legge, I. 274, 300, 301 Mencius 200
Leibniz, G. W. 175,262,278,299 Merleau-Ponty, M. 147, 176, 177, 178,
Leroi-Gourhan, A. 228 180, 181, 185, 197, 198, 210, 211,
Lessing, G. E. 239 217, 218, 223-225, 229, 234
Lessinger, 1. 169 Mill, 1. S. 45, 207
Leucippus 93 Mitcham, C. 235
Levin, D. M. 227 Molyneux, W. 50, 51, 55, 56
Levinas, E. 181, 184, 185, 227, 233 Montagu, A. 232
LeVine, R. A. 235 Montesquieu, C. L. de S. 170
L6vi-Strauss, C. 176, 223, 225, 297 Moore, C. 301
L6vy-Bruhl, L. 207, 209 Morano, D. V. 154, 163
Lik Kuen Tong 187 Morris, C. 238
Locke, I. ix, 3-143, 295 Morrison, T. 229
Loernker, L. E. 299 Mudimbe, V. Y. 221
Lohmann, I. 225 Murti, T. R. V. 292, 302
Luce, A. A. 14
Lukc1cs, G. 206, 233 -N-
Lukes, S. 239 Naddaff, R. 229
Lyotard, I.-F. 169, 199, 221 Ngarjuna 292, 302
Nagatomo, S. 230
-M- Natanson, M. 182, 226
MacDonald, C. V. 237 Nathanson, S. L. 29
Machiavelli, N. 220 Neuman, M. 222
Mackie, I. L. 14,45-47,59, 63, 91-93, Newton, I. 98, 200
107, 119 Nidditch, P. H. 13
Macksey, R. 223 Nietzsche, F. 173, 188, 189, 210, 221,
Madison, G. B. 224 230, 237, 238
Magliola, R. 223 Nishida, K. 217, 218, 220, 240
Magritte, R. 233 Northrop, F. S. C. 239
Makeba, M. 186
de Malebranche, N. 59,92 -0-
Mallarm6, S. 186 Oates, I. C. 182
Mander, I. 234 Olafson, F. A. 230
Mao Tse-Tung 180 O'Neill, I. 228
Marcus, G. E. 235, 236 Ong, W. J. 233
Marcuse, H. 232, 235 Osler, M. J. 93
Martin, C. B. 29,45 Overing, I. 235
Marx, K. 147, 148, 151, 170, 173, 179- Owens, C. 232
181, 221, 223, 233
Massumi, B. 220 -P-
Mauss, M. 176 Pancavimsati 302
McCluhan, M. 199-201, 206,233 Paramartha 302
 INDEX OF NAMES 307

Parmenides 190, 261, 262, 299 de Saussure, F. 245-248, 297

Pater, W. 189,231 Scheler, M. 263
Payne, M. 222 Schiller, F. 206
Pecheaux, M. 227 Scholz, H. 299
Picasso, P. 186 Schrag, C. o. 224, 227
Pico della Mirandola, G. 216 Schutz, A. 208, 231
Pirandello, L. 196 Schwartz, B. I. 225, 238
Plato 18,29,97,174,220,221,252,253, Schwartz, S. P. 107-110, 114, 119
257,259,262,265,298 Schweder, R. A. 235
Poggeler, O. 300 Searle, J. R. 120
Pokert, M. 224 Sechehaye, A. 297
Popper, K. 210 Sellars, W. 6, 9, 13, 122-124, 130, 131
Poussin, L. de V. 301 Sewell, E. 193, 232
Praz, M. 231 Shapiro, G. 237
Ptolomy 183 Sica, A. 237
Putnam, H. 107-120 Silverman, H. 223, 224
Pythagoras 252 Siu, R. G. H. 225
Skousgaard, S. 233
-Q- Sioterdijk, P. 233
Quine, W. V. o. 13 Socrates 195
Soles, D. E. 74
-R- Sontag, S. 187, 201
Rabelais, F. 233 Soukhanov, A. H. 220
Radhakrishnan, S. 220, 301 Spiegelberg, H. 240
Ramus, P. 233 Spivak, G. C. 176
R6e,1. 233 Stanley, T. 93
Reid, T. 122, 124 Steiner, G. 237
Reinhardt, K. 299 S thiramati 301
Ricoeur, P. 217, 218, 229, 240 Stone, I. F. 228
Rilke, R. M. 192, 231 Straus, E. W. 231
Rodin, A. 192,219,231 Sudnow, D. 231
Rogers, G. A. J. 93 Suzuki, D. T. 175, 216
Rorty,R. 13, 116, 120, 121-132,230,234 Swabey, W. C. 28, 29
Rosenberg, H. 169 Sydenham, T. 79, 98
Rothenberg, D. 234
Rousseau, J. J. 170,295 -T-
Russell, B. 6, 131 Tagore, R. 220
Rybalka, M. 227 Tai T'ung 228
Ryle, G. 59, 63, 91 Taylor, C. 214, 239
Taylor, M. C. 225, 227, 240
-S- Tazi, N. 229
Sacks, O. 226 Theophrastus 105
Sahlins, M. 203, 236, 240 Thompson, J. B. 173
Said, E. W. 221 Tipton, I. C. 92, 93
Sallis, 1. 231 Todorov, T. 174, 184, 185,203,226,238
Sartre, J. P. 147,223,227,233 Toffier, A. 296, 302
308 INDEX OF NAMES

Tomida, Y. ix, 7, 14,73, 131 Watsuji, T. 220

Toulmin, S. 240 Weber, M. 173, 206
Touraine, A. 231 Weisgerber, L. 246, 248, 249, 261, 264,
Tran Due Thao ix, 147-154, 163 297,299
Trendelenberg, A. 253, 257, 298 Wellmer, A. 222
Trier, J. 248 West, C. 221
Trubetzkoy, N. 297 White, H. 179,224
Tung-sun Chang 224 Wind, E. 238
Turbayne, C. M. 238 Windelband, W. 254, 298
Tymienieeka, A-T. 223 Winner, L. 205
Tze-wan Kwan ix, 299, 300, 302 Wittfogel, K. 170
Wittgenstein, L. 11, 100, 201, 234
-V- Woolhouse, R. S. 14, 30, 105, 132
Valery, P. 219 Woozley, A. D. 59, 63, 79, 92
Vasubandhu 289, 290, 292
Vattimo, G. 181, 240 -Y-
Vieo, G. 185, 214, 216, 222, 226, 228, Yolton, J. W. 29, 46, 59, 63, 79, 80,
230,232 86-88, 92, 93, 120
Villoro, L. 227 Yost, R. M. 87, 93
Von Laue, T. H. 236, 238 Yuasa, Y. 230

-W- -Z-
Wagner, G. 262, 299 Zeno of Elea 262
Wagner, H. R. 231 Zhang Longxi 221
Warren, S. 224 Zuekerkandl, V. 231
 Analecta Husserliana
The Yearbook of Phenomenological Research
Editor-in-Chief
Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka
The World Institute for Advanced Phenomenological Research and Learning,
Belmont, Massachusetts, U.S.A.

1. Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.), Volume 1 ofAnalecta Husserliana. 1971

ISBN 90-277-0171-7
2. Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.), The Later Husserl and the Jdea of Phenomenology.
Idealism - Realism, Historicity and Nature. 1972 ISBN 90-277-0223-3
3. Tyrnieniecka, A-T. (ed.), The Phenomenological Realism of the Possible
Worlds. The 'A Priori', Activity and Passivity of Consciousness, Phenomenol-
ogy and Nature. 1974 ISBN 90-277-0426-0
4. Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.), Ingardeniana. A Spectrum of Specialised Studies
Establishing the Field of Research. 1976 ISBN 90-277-0628-X
5. Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.), The Crisis of Culture. Steps to Reopen the
Phenomenological Investigation of Man. 1976 ISBN 90-277-0632-8
6. Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.), The Self and the Other. The Irreducible Element in
Man, Part I. 1977 ISBN 90-277-0759-6
7. Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.), The Human Being in Action. The Irreducible Element
in Man, Part II. 1978 ISBN 90-277-0884-3
8. Nitta, Y. and Hirotaka Tatematsu (eds.), Japanese Phenomenology.
Phenomenology as the Trans-cultural Philosophical Approach. 1979
ISBN 90-277-0924-6
9. Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.), The Teleologies in Husserlian Phenomenology. The
Irreducible Element in Man, Part III. 1979 ISBN 90-277-0981-5
10. Wojtyla, K., The Acting Person. Translated from Polish by A. Potocki. 1979
ISBN Hb 90-277-0969-6; Pb 90-277-0985-8
11. Ales Bello, A. (ed.), The Great Chain of Being and Italian Phenomenology.
1981 ISBN 90-277-1071-6
12. Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.), The Philosophical Reflection of Man in Literature.
Selected Papers from Several Conferences held by the International Society for
Phenomenology and Literature in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Includes the
essay by A-T. Tyrnieniecka, Poetica Nova. 1982 ISBN 90-277-1312-X
13. Kaelin, E. F., The Unhappy Consciousness. The Poetic Plight of Samuel
Beckett. An Inquiry at the Intersection of Phenomenology and literature. 1981
ISBN 90-277-1313-8
14. Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.), The Phenomenology of Man and of the Human
Condition. Individualisation of Nature and the Human Being. (Part I:) Plotting
 Analecta Husserliana
the Territory for Interdisciplinary Communication. 1983
Part II see below under Volume 21. ISBN 90-277-1447-9
15. Tymieniecka, A-T. and Calvin O. Schrag (eds.), Foundations of Morality,
Human Rights, and the Human Sciences. Phenomenology in a Foundational
Dialogue with Human Sciences. 1983 ISBN 90-277-1453-3
16. Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.), Soul and Body in Husserlian Phenomenology. Man
and Nature. 1983 ISBN 90-277-1518-1
17. Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.), Phenomenology of Life in a Dialogue Between
Chinese and Occidental Philosophy. 1984 ISBN 90-277-1620-X
18. Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.), The Existential Coordinates of the Human Condition:
Poetic - Epic - Tragic. The Literary Genre. 1984 ISBN 90-277-1702-8
19. Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.), Poetics of the Elements in the Human Condition. (Part
1:) The Sea. From Elemental Stirrings to Symbolic Inspiration, Language, and
Life-Significance in Literary Interpretation and Theory. 1985
For Part 2 and 3 see below under Volumes 23 and 28. ISBN 90-277-1906-3
20. Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.), The Moral Sense in the Communal Significance of
Life. Investigations in Phenomenological Praxeology: Psychiatric Therapeutics,
Medical Ethics and Social Praxis within the Life- and Communal World. 1986
ISBN 90-277-2085-1
21. Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.), The Phenomenology of Man and of the Human
Condition. Part II: The Meeting Point Between Occidental and Oriental
Philosophies. 1986 ISBN 90-277-2185-8
22. Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.), Morality within the Life- and Social World. Interdis-
ciplinary Phenomenology of the Authentic Life in the 'Moral Sense'. 1987
Sequel to Volumes 15 and 20. ISBN 90-277-2411-3
23. Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.), Poetics of the Elements in the Human Condition. Part
2: The Airy Elements in Poetic Imagination. Breath, Breeze, Wind, Tempest,
Thunder, Snow, Flame, Fire, Volcano ... 1988 ISBN 90-277-2569-1
24. Tymieniecka, A-T., Logos and Life. Book I: Creative Experience and the
Critique of Reason. 1988 ISBN Hb 90-277-2539-X; Pb 90-277-2540-3
25. Tymieniecka, A-T., Logos and Life. Book II: The Three Movements of the
Soul. 1988 ISBN Hb 90-277-2556-X; Pb 90-277-2557-8
26. Kaelin, E. F. and Calvin O. Schrag (eds.), American Phenomenology. Origins
and Developments. 1989 ISBN 90-277-2690-6
27. Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.), Man within his Life-World. Contributions to
Phenomenology by Scholars from East-Central Europe. 1989
ISBN 90-277-2767-8
28. Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.), The Elemental Passions of the Soul. Poetics of the
Elements in the Human Condition, Part 3. 1990 ISBN 0-7923-0180-3
 Analecta Husserliana
29. Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.), Man's SelJ-Interpretation-in-Existence. Phenomenol-
ogy and Philosophy of Life. - Introducing the Spanish Perspective. 1990
ISBN 0-7923-0324-5
30. Rudnick, H. H. (ed.), Ingardeniana II. New Studies in the Philosophy of
Roman Ingarden. With a New International Ingarden Bibliography. 1990
ISBN 0-7923-0627-9
31. Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.), The Moral Sense and Its Foundational Significance:
Self, Person, Historicity, Community. Phenomenological Praxeology and
Psychiatry. 1990 ISBN 0-7923-0678-3
32. Kronegger, M. (ed.), Phenomenology and Aesthetics. Approaches to Compara-
tive Literature and Other Arts. Homages to A-T. Tymieniecka. 1991
ISBN 0-7923-0738-0
33. Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.), Ingardeniana /II. Roman Ingarden's Aesthetics in a
New Key and the Independent Approaches of Others: The Performing Arts, the
Fine Arts, and Literature. 1991
Sequel to Volumes 4 and 30 ISBN 0-7923-1014-4
34. Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.), The Turning Points of the New Phenomenological
Era. Husser! Research - Drawing upon the Full Extent of His Development.
1991 ISBN 0-7923-1134-5
35. Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.), Husserlian Phenomenology in a New Key. Intersubjec-
tivity, Ethos, the Societal Sphere, Human Encounter, Pathos. 1991
ISBN 0-7923-1146-9
36. Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.), Husserl's Legacy in Phenomenological Philosophies.
New Approaches to Reason, Language, Hermeneutics, the Human Condition.
1991 ISBN 0-7923-1178-7
37. Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.), New Queries in Aesthetics and Metaphysics. Time,
Historicity, Art, Culture, Metaphysics, the Transnatural. 1991
ISBN 0-7923-1195-7
38. Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.), The Elemental Dialectic of Light and Darkness. The
Passions of the Soul in the Onto-Poiesis of Life. 1992 ISBN 0-7923-1601-0
39. Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.), Reason, Life, Culture, Part I. Phenomenology in the
Baltics. 1993 ISBN 0-7923-1902-8
40. Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.), Manifestations of Reason: Life, Historicity, Culture.
Reason, Life, Culture, Part II. Phenomenology in the Adriatic Countries. 1993
ISBN 0-7923-2215-0
41. Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.), Allegory Revisited. Ideals of Mankind. 1994
ISBN 0-7923-2312-2
 Analecta Husserliana
42. Kronegger, M. and Tymieniecka, A-T. (eds.), Allegory Old and New. In
Literature, the Fine Arts, Music and Theatre, and Its Continuity in Culture.
1994 ISBN 0-7923-2348-3
43. Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.): From the Sacred to the Divine. A New Pheno-
menological Approach. 1994 ISBN 0-7923-2690-3
44. Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.): The Elemental Passionfor Place in the Ontopoiesis of
Life. Passions of the Soul in the lmaginatio Creatrix. 1995
ISBN 0-7923-2749-7
45. Zhai, Z.: The Radical Choice and Moral Theory. Through Communicative
Argumentation to Phenomenological Subjectivity. 1994 ISBN 0-7923-2891-4
46. Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.): The Logic of the Living Present. Experience,
Ordering, Onto-Poiesis of Culture. 1995 ISBN 0-7923-2930-9

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