CHAPTER XI
METAPHYSICS
AND PRACTICAL LIFE
YU XUANMENG
The
question of the relation of philosophy to the civil world evokes two opposite
poles: one is real social life and the other is the speculative world. If asked
to choose between the two, few would prefer the latter, especially in a consumer
society, for who would give up his or her real interest to live in a speculative
world? As a result, philosophy, especially metaphysics, is not only widely
neg-lected by ordinary people, but is asserted to be at its end, even by some
philosophers of different orientations.
But
is metaphysics really at its end? We do see people becoming more engaged in our
times. However, to strive for a better future requires an ideal or faith: to
judge what is better, people also should have an idea of the good and of values.
All these are subjects of metaphysics which cannot be resolved by science. We
cannot live a life without a faith or ideal we set for ourselves and toward
which we dynamically create our own history. Scientific pro-jection cannot
replace faith or ideals, for scientific projection is marked by relativity and
ceases to be ideal or faith as soon as it is realized; a metaphysical faith or
ideal, in contrast, is absolute in the sense that it is our ultimate concern.
Thus
we have the dilemma that, on the one hand, metaphy-sics is an essential element
in our life; on the other, it is considered to be separated from practical life.
This moves us to look into meta-physics once again. We ask: What is metaphysics
considered as separated from practical life? Do we have any other kind of
meta-physics? This paper will be concerned to show that the separation of
metaphysics from practical life is due mainly to ontology, but that ontology is
not the only way of doing metaphysics. Some patterns of metaphysics without
ontology will be discussed.
THE ORIGINS OF
METAPHYSICS
The
decline of philosophy is due to the decline of metaphy-sics. This is a point of
agreement between both positivists and hu-manists. The title of one of R.
Carnap’s papers "Eliminating Meta-physics through Logical Analysis of
Language"1
came to be almost the common task of the positivists in past decades. Heidegger
added, "What we say about the end of philosophy means the com-pletion of
metaphysics", because, "philosophy is metaphysics".2 We should then make clear what is meant by
metaphysics, because people have the right to make their own definition of
metaphysics; we had better trace its origins from their beginning.
The
term metaphysics was first formulated as the title of one of Aristotle’s books
by those who edited his papers; originally it meant "meta ta physica"
(i.e., the location of these papers after those concerning the physical
universe). Simplicius was the first to interpret the word as the name of the
science of all things, including what lies beyond nature and, hence, treats
reality not according to its physical realizations, but simply as real.3
This may be the reason people emphasize the following paragraph of Aristotle as
the main point of the book and hence the meaning of metaphysics:
There
is a science which investigates being as being and the attributes which belong
to this in virtue of its own nature. Now this is not the same as any of the
so-called special sciences; for none of these others treats universally of being
as being. They cut off a part of being and investigate the attributes of this
part; this is what the mathematical sciences for instance do. Now since we are
seeking the first principles and the highest causes, clearly there must be
something belonging to these in virtue of its own nature. If then those who
sought the elements of existing things were seeking these same principles, it is
necessary that the elements must be elements not by accident but just because it
is being. Therefore it is of being as being that we also must grasp the first
cause.4
The
above quotation has led people to conceive that meta-physics is the universal
science which seeks the first principles. For instance, G. Baumgarten put down,
"Metaphysics is the science which contains the first principles of that
which is within the com-prehension of human knowledge."5
Since
the development of the term metaphysics, understood according as Aristotle
discussed it in that book, a great and by no means harmless change took place.
As Heidegger said, "It has forced the interpretation of these treatises in
a particular direction and thereby has determined that what Aristotle discusses
therein is to be understood as metaphysics."6
What
has happened here? Let us compare metaphysics as the first principles with
philosophy in its original meaning, i.e., "to love wisdom". As
knowledge, wisdom differs from first principles in that it is the description of
man’s own ability in both knowing and practice. "To love wisdom means to
seek the development of one’s own abilities. Of course, knowledge is the
illustration and the effect of one’s wisdom. Knowledge always concerns some
object, and we can learn knowledge from others. But it seems hardly possible to
talk about wisdom as something positive. As the proverb goes, "The first
one who speaks out something is a genius, the second one who follows the same
way is the fool." It is the same for wisdom: as soon as wisdom is spoken,
it is no longer wisdom but knowledge.
As
a result, when metaphysics took shape as the universal science seeking the first
principles, and was considered as pure philosophy, the direction of philosophy
was changed from seeking wisdom to seeking knowledge. This happened even earlier
in Plato’s philosophy, so that Heidegger could say, "All metaphysics,
including its opponent, positivism, speaks the language of Plato."7
Again,
we have the question: what does is meant by first principles? Principle, in
Greek "arché", also means ground or cause. Metaphysics would
have proceeded properly had wisdom been understood as the arché of all
knowledge. Unfortunately, since Plato, arché is taken to be true
knowledge in contrast to mere opinion: true knowledge is found in the realm of
ideas; it is the object of intelligence. As ideas are the models for the things
in our world, the knowledge formed by ideas is a priori or transcendental
know-ledge. In Plato’s dialogues, Parmenides and The Sophists,
we read how the ideas formed transcendental knowledge by combining with or
separating from each other automatically.
The
Western languages played a very important role in the constitution of an a
priori philosophy, or at least some of their characteristics accord with
Western metaphysics. In English, as an example, "being" is a key word
in philosophy. Since Greek times Being (on) has been taken as the most
general and universal cate-gory, hence it provides the starting point for the
whole deductive system of logic, i.e., a priori knowledge. This makes
Western meta-physics the science of Being, i.e., ontology. If Western
metaphysics leads philosophy to seek knowledge instead of wisdom, it is in
onto-logy that a priori knowledge is formulated. We need to look into on-tology
in more detail.
ONTOLOGY AND
METAPHYSICS
There
are various definitions of ontology, but literally it is the science of Being.
Its definition by the German philosopher, C. Wolff, is as follows: Ontology is
"the treatment of abstract and quite ge-neral philosophical categories,
such as Being and its being the One and Good: in this abstract metaphysics
further there come accident, substance, cause and effect, the phenomenon,
etc."8
Though
metaphysics covers a broader area than does ontology, as pure philosophy people
usually consider them to be the same or at least inseparable. In Baumgarten’s
definition of meta-physics as "the first principles of that which is",
being is mentioned. Heidegger also maintained that, "Philosophy is
metaphysics. Meta-physics thinks Being as a whole--the world, man and God--with
respect to Being, and with respect to beings belonging together in Being."9
Though here the word ontology is not mentioned, there is no doubt that they
speak of ontology.
The
above excerpts indicate that ontology is pure metaphy-sics and deals with the
first principles of all sciences. As concerned with the first principles,
ontology should not be a generalization of the special sciences, but rather
should be constituted by itself. The dynamics of its constitution is logic,
which presupposes that the meaning of each category lies in its logical
determination, by which a category distinguishes itself from a mere name whose
meaning is hidden from that to which the name refers.
Hegel’s
"Logic" unfolds as a perfect category system, i.e., ontology. His
first step is from Being directly to Nothing, for as the most general and
universal category Being is no particular determi-nation, and hence it equals
Nothing. In each stage of change there must be a particular determination, i.e.,
Dasein. This must have its quantity and quality, which, in turn, are
united in dimension. This introduces the relation of reflection which shows the
Absolute Spirit developing from the realm of existence to that of essence. For
essence is determined as reflection, just as a subject is reflected through its
object. However, existence and essence are abstract and one-sided, and hence are
without actuality. Only when they unite together into a concept does the
absolute idea achieve concrete completeness.
We
saw that logic is so powerful that few could deny its necessity. The movement of
absolute idea from the abstract to the concrete, from the simple to the complex,
from the one-sided to the complete, seems to accord with the real development of
the cosmos and with the scientific process of human knowing. However, as Hegel
would say, the system of the absolute idea is worked out by the movement of the
concepts themselves, without appealing to experiential facts. It is a matter of a
priori principles and the general laws for all the special sciences; the
concrete principles are merely the externalization of the Absolute Spirit. Of
course, Absolute Spirit is a world other than our life world.
However,
there have been doubts about ontology. For in-stance, the quarrel between
nominalism and realism is essentially with regard to whether ideas really exist
outside our world. Also, taking ideas as descriptions of perception, empiricism
absolutely denied the existence of a transcendental world. Though Descartes
never doubted the necessity and validity of logic in ontology, he required
clarity of the ideas and proceeded inward in "I think, I am." This
means that it remained a problem for him how we can really get the meaning of
ideas beside their logical determinations, especially the meaning of the idea of
Being as the starting point in deductive logic.10
A
heavy blow was made to ontology by Kant in his criticism of the ontological
proof of the existence of God, in his Critique of Pure Reason. The
ontological proof of the existence of God supposed the premise that God is the
perfect or almighty Being. If this is the case, existence must belong to Being;
so God exists. Kant criticized the proof in many ways. The decisive way was to
point out that here concept is identified with possibility, whereas what we
really seek here is the real. The difference is like that between a hundred
dol-lars as an idea in my mind and a hundred dollars in my pocket. As Kant said,
"In my financial position no doubt there exists more by one hundred real
dollars, than by their mere concept (that is, their possibility)."11
Kant’s
criticism disclosed that ontology was constituted by pure ideas in a world
separated from our life world. The propositions in ontology are only logical
possibilities and have nothing to do with our real world. Hence, the so-called
first principles should be dis-missed as of no use in our world.
But
if ontology is the essential part of metaphysics, then the decline of ontology
is the decline of metaphysics; in turn, if meta-physics is pure philosophy, then
the decline of metaphysics is the decline of philosophy.
METAPHYSICS IN THE
CHINESE TRADITION
If
ontology were the only way of doing metaphysics, then with the end of ontology,
metaphysics, and hence philosophy, should have ended. But if we ask whether
there could be metaphysics without ontology, I would like to introduce here
traditional Chinese metaphysics which is a metaphysics without ontology.
When
our predecessors translated "metaphysics" as "Xing Er Shang
Xue", they got its meaning most probably from Yi Jing. In what was
supposed to be put down by Confucius’ The Great Com-mentary to the Yi Jing,
we read, "That which ascends from the Hexagram is called Tao; what
descends from the Hexagram is called a vessel."12
Here vessel means concrete, individual things; Tao is the supreme aim to
be pursued while the hexagram is something between the vessel and Tao. On
the one hand, it is not like Tao which is unseen; on the other hand, as a
symbol, it is not tangible. Rather it is a bridge from the vessels to Tao:
this is the way of ascending. The basic meaning then of "Sing Er Shang Xue",
i.e., metaphysics, should be learning concerning the way of ascending from the
vessels to Tao. Roughly speaking, thus understood, meta-physics in
Chinese philosophy is not merely knowledge, but the striving for Tao in
all of one’s life. That means, it is then not merely knowledge, but also
practice.
Since
it is characteristic of Chinese metaphysics to be strongly related with the
concept of Tao, this should be treated at greater length. But it is
difficult to elaborate it positively and in detail, and perhaps no one could do
so. Rather we read from the book "Lao Tsu" at its beginning:
"Tao might be spoken out, but what is spoken out is not the constant
Tao. . . . So, people usually reach its subtle meaning in the light of
nothingness, and trace its indication in the light of being there."13
By this negative characteristic, Chinese phi-losophy distinguishes Tao
from real things. Tao seems in a sense similar to Being in Western
philosophy, for in Hegel’s Logic we read that pure Being as the most
universal Being equals nothingness. But Being as such in Hegel’s philosophy is
determined logically, while Tao has nothing to do with logical
determination. Just as Tao is not determined logically, it is not pure
knowledge; or to put it in other words, one cannot deduce from the concept Tao
the other concepts. Though we read the following saying in "Lao Tsu"
that, "From Tao, one is brought forth; from one, two; from two,
three; and from three, everything is brought forth",14
this is by no means a logical deduction, i.e., it does not mean that Tao
logically implicates the concepts of one, two, three and everything. Rather, it
indicates the phenomenon that everything develops from the simple to the
complex, of which Tao is the general source. Everyone of us also is
included in the concept "everything", so one can traces the
indi-cation of Tao even from one’s own experience.
We
should point out that when Chinese philosophy took its shape at the very
beginning there was no copular in the Chinese language corresponding to English
"to be". Though we have the copular "shi" in modern
Chinese, it has no modifications as the par-ticiple and the gerund; even today
people experience difficulty in thinking the abstract "shi" as
a concept independent from its con-text, whereas something like Being is
indispensable for ontology.
Perhaps
the only positive character we could say is that of Tao, "tao
follows nature".15 That means that Tao is in accord with nature’s way of being
itself, but what is nature’s way? We do not know it unless we ourselves follow
it. Nature’s way is the way of being itself. We experience nature’s way when
we behave in accord with nature’s way, as Confucius said, "At 70, I can
follow my heart’s desire without transgressing what is right."16
From
an epistemological point of view, it seems absurd that as the supreme aim and
the general source Tao would be uncertain and that its existence would be
doubtful. But for traditional Chinese philosophy, just as Tao is
uncertain, it will not be exhausted in our search for it. Practical striving for
Tao is the most powerful justifi-cation of its existence. So in searching
for Tao, people do not take as their purpose merely gaining more
knowledge. Rather, in doing philosophy, i.e., in striving for Tao, people
feel that their life is elevated to a higher and more meaningful level. This is
what the sages or saints strive to be.
A
basic point in the traditional Chinese philosophy about Tao is that Tao
prevails in everything, which allows people to search for Tao in all
sorts of practical lives. For instance, there is Tao in serving tea which
is called the Tao of tea. Also, there is Tao in sword play, in
playing chess, in doing calligraphy, and so on. Similarly, doing Qi Gong is a
way for experiencing Tao. Everything will be fit so long as Tao is
followed. In doing Qi Gong, following Tao means to bring oneself into
harmony with nature both mentally and phy-sically.
Since
Tao is not separated from practical life, everyone, whether politician,
merchant, scholar, staff, and so on, can search for Tao in his own
career. One should take Tao as the most im-portant aim in one’s life,
rather than as that which one seeks for directly in one’s professional work.
People have many different pro-fessions, but Tao is the aim of all
people, namely, to make their per-fect. It is called simply the Tao of
being a man.
Given
the fact that Chinese philosophy is not separated from the practical life, why
is philosophy depressed in China today. The answer is twofold. Firstly, while
prevailing over and being shown in, everything, Tao has at the same time
the characteristic of con-cealing itself. Chuang Zi said, "Tao is
concealed as soon as one thinks he has advanced even a little." This
happens easily when one focuses one’s eyes only on the practical part of life
and indulges in one’s interest. As we all know, the point of central interest
in our times is the development of the economy. This situation calls us to pay
more attention to Tao. Otherwise, Tao is easily concealed. Even
though Tao cannot be destroyed, the new problems caused by economic
development, such as pollution, population, educa-tion, urbanization,
alienation, etc., remind us that humanity will be punished by its own actions
against nature. This shows that Tao can neither be denied nor subjected
to man’s will.
Secondly,
since Western philosophy was introduced to China, many scholars began to write
the history of Chinese philoso-phy according to the pattern of Western
philosophy, just as in the realm of grammar, some grammarians tried to formulate
Chinese grammar according to English grammar. This has proved a failure. Earlier
in 1918, Cai Yuanpai, a famous scholar, wrote in the Preface to Hu Shi’s
"An Outline of the History of the Chinese Philosophy" that, "We
have to take the history of Western philosophy written by the Western
philosophers as the model in writing our own work, for we have no
predecessors." His opinion exerted a great influence on the later scholars.
For instance, we see such book titles as "The History of Categorical
Development in Chinese Philosophy", and "The Logical Development of
Ancient Chinese Philosophy". The in-fluence of Hegel is evident in such
books. This is worse than neglecting the original Chinese philosophy.
But
I do not think that Chinese metaphysics will end in our time because it has
melted into practical life and is the spirit of the entire Chinese culture. So
long as life goes on, the metaphysical spirit of the Chinese people will
continue.
AN EXISTENTIAL
METAPHYSICS
If
metaphysics is as we have elaborated above, i.e., the hu-man being’s striving
to elevate his or her life, ascending to a higher and more meaningful level,
then every nation is sure to have its metaphysics despite the declaration of the
end of metaphysics made by some philosophers. Since metaphysics permeates the hu-man
being’s practical life, the spirit of metaphysics appears not only in
philosophy, but also in religion, art, and so on. Metaphysics in philosophy is
only the theoretical expression of the metaphysical spirit of life. From this
point of view, though certain patterns of tra-ditional metaphysics have ended,
the real metaphysical spirit permeating practical life will exist forever, and
perhaps may enable us also to elaborate theoretically the real metaphysical
spirit.
For
this I would like to take Heidegger’s philosophy as an example because, while
Heidegger criticized traditional metaphysics, his own philosophy is criticized
as a metaphysics by, for in-stance, R. Carnap. If then Heidegger’s thought is
still a metaphy-sics, it must be a new one different from traditional
metaphysics.
Hence,
let us begin with Heidegger’s criticism of the old meta-physics. His criticism
could be summed up in one statement: "Meta-physics persists in the oblivion
of Being."17 At first sight, it seems that Heidegger is still
in the field of ontology, and hence would be in the old metaphysics. This
impression might be rein-forced by the central problem of his philosophy which
he repeated many times, i.e., "the question of the meaning of Being."
But, as a matter of fact, what he means by Being is thoroughly different from
that found in ontology. As we know, Being in ontology is the most universal con-cept
or the most general category. But for Heidegger, Being is neither a category,
nor even a concept. To put it more clearly, for Heidegger Being is not
"what" it is, but that what which "is". As Heidegger points
out, in ontology Being as category or concept is a "what" which he
calls entity (das Seiendes). Because ontology takes Being as an entity,
rather than in the sense of "is", it is the oblivion of Being.
According to Heidegger, the meaning of Being is more primordial than that of
entity. But as Being is only a copular, whence and how can we find its meaning?
When
we say "it is so and so", this means that we see, recognize, judge or
understand something. We can take the same thing differently according to our
ways of dealing with it. That is, through our different ways of dealing with it,
an entity will be re-vealed differently. This different way of revealing is what
Heidegger calls the meaning of Being, i.e., the basic meaning of Being is Re-vealing.
And the different ways of revealing, i.e., the different ways of dealing with
things, are our ways of Being, which Heidegger calls Dasein’s
existence. This leads to the conclusion that to inquire into the question of the
meaning of Being is to analyze the existential reality of Dasein.
Heidegger calls this fundamental ontology in the sense that the question of the
meaning of Being is more primordial than that of entity; it goes deeply into the
ground of ontology. As Heidegger wrote, "Basically, all ontology, no matter
how rich and firmly compacted a system of categories it has at its disposal,
re-mains blind and perverted from its own most proper aim, if it has not first
adequately clarified the meaning of Being, and conceived this clarification as
its fundamental task."18
With
regard to how existentials analysis goes to the depths of ontology, Heidegger
mentions, as an excellent example, the cate-gory of nothing compared with the
nothingness in existentiality. As a category, nothing is supposed to be without
any determination; it is the complete negation of the totality of being. But
since nothing "is" a category, it is a being, i.e., an entity after
all. This shows that in ontology the category of nothing cannot reach the real
meaning of nothing. Only in our own existentiality can we really reach
nothing-ness.
One
of the special existentials analyzed here is anxiety. Heidegger says:
Anxiety
robs us of speech. Because beings as a whole slip away, so that just the nothing
crowds round, in the face of anxiety all utterance of the ‘is’ falls silent.
That in the malaise of anxiety we often try to shatter the vacant stillness with
compulsive talk only proves the presence of the nothing. That anxiety reveals
the nothing to man himself immedi-ately by the person demonstrates when anxiety
has dissolved. In the lucid version sustained by fresh re-membrance we must say
that in the face of which and for which we were anxious was ‘really’
nothing. Indeed, the nothing itself as such was there.19
One
might wonder, what is the significance of clarifying the nothing in the way of
fundamental ontology as compared with that of traditional ontology? In
fundamental ontology, philosophy is called back from the other world to our life
world; it deals no longer with abstract logical determinations, but with our own
situation and the meaning of life.
Of
course, philosophy does not limit itself to describing the situation of human
beings; it should also deal with the general problems of the whole world. This
is what Heidegger wants to do. Not long after his Being and Time,
Heidegger began to seek the meaning of Being in new ways. The essential point of
his later philo-sophy is that Being reveals itself in the four folds opening:
man, God, heaven and earth. Everything is included in the opening of the four
folds. Thinking, art works, language, poetry, technology, etc., all of these are
considered the ways in which the four folds opens.
This
means that the meaning of Being is nowhere but in our own practical life.
Searching for the meaning of Being is searching for the fate of men and women.
Heidegger does not deny that Being has the characteristic of mystery: while it
reveals, it also conceals. Though in a Western language, all of this reminds us
of the Tao of Chinese philosophy. Indeed, Heidegger himself says in one
of his books that the way in which Being reveals itself is the Tao of Lao
Tsu.20
No
one would deny that Heidegger says something metaphysical. But it is surely not
metaphysics in the sense of the traditional Western metaphysics. This confirms
our point that so long as life goes on, metaphysics will go on, and that
ontology is not the only way of doing metaphysics.
Follow
your own metaphysics in practical life: ascend!
Institute of
Philosophy
Shanghai Academy of
Social Sciences
Shanghai, PRC
NOTES
1.
"Erkenntnis", vol. 2, 1932.
2. Martin
Heidegger: Basic Writings, ed. by D. Krell (New York: Harper and Row, 1977),
pp. 224, 103, 374,
3.
E. Zeller, Aristotle and the Earlier Peripatetics (New York: Russell and
Russel, 1962), vol. 2, p. 80.
4.
Aristotle, Metaphysics 1003a 20-32 (Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, 1966).
5.
A.G. Baumgarten, Metaphysics, 2nd ed. (Halae, Magdeburgicae: Hemmerde,
1743), p. 1,
6.
M. Heidegger, Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1962), p. 10.
7. Martin
Heidegger, p. 375.
8.
Excerpt from Hegel, Lectures on the History of Philosophy (London:
Routledge and Kegan Paul; New York: Humanities Press, 1974), vol. 3, p. 353.
9. Martin
Heidegger, p. 374.
10.
See Hegel, Logic (London: Oxford University Press, 1892).
11.
Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, tr. by M. Muller (New York: Anchor Books,
1966), p. 402.
12.
"Yi Jing, Great Commentary", section 1.
13.
"Lao Tsu", chapter 1.
14.
Ibid., chapter 42.
15.
Ibid., chapter 25.
16.
The Confucian Analects, 2, 4.
17.
Martin Heidegger, p. 224.
18.
M. Heidegger, Being and Time, tr. by John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson
(New York: Harper, 1962), p. 31.
19.
Martin Heidegger, p. 103.
20.
M. Heidegger, On the Way to Language, tr. by P.D. Hwerz (New York: Harper
and Row, 1971) p. 92.
DISCUSSION
1.
There is a significant parallel between the history metaphy-sics as presented
here and the history of civil society. The paper of G. Mclean showed how the
reality of civil society was developed in the democratic context of Athens in
which all (free men) participated in the decision making process or governance
of society. In the context of modern rationalism this was recalled as a safety
net to protect those victimized by the capitalist economy developed in a
rationalist utilitarian fashion, but even this was largely frustrated by the
rigor of technical reason as reflected in the evolving ideologies.
Hence,
if civil society needs now to be redeveloped, this must be done by going beyond
technical reason to a sense of human awareness that is more open and integrates
all with the uniqueness and effectiveness of creative human freedom. This must
include not only theory, but practice, not only the individual but the social.
To encompass all of this requires, in Kantian terms, not merely the te-chnical
and practical reason of the first and second critiques, but aesthetic judgement
of the third critique as well.
Professor
Yu’s paper traces a similar trajectory for metaphy-sics and proposes a similar
step forward. He sees that metaphysics was taken as theory only and was
transformed into a system of categories under the title of ontology as the logos
of beings. If this be the case then there is need now with Heidegger to
reintegrate into metaphysics the fullness of life by turning from essence to
existence or esse which would integrate the practical order, action,
creativity and the aesthetic. This engagement in life is essential for
rebuilding civil society, not as a fragile house of categorical ab-stractions or
legal rights, but as a dynamic outreach and inter-change between people.
2.
This raises the question of whether the political and the economic reality
should be removed from the discussion of civil society. That suggestion could be
the result of the ideologies which use only technical reason and approach these
spheres of life by de-ductive theories as mutually exclusive categories. If, on
the con-trary, one begins from the engagement of people, then their economic
interaction is foundational, as was noted by Marx, though not all determining as
he came to believe. Similarly, the political alignments, rather than being
determined abstractly by theories of the exercise of power without attention to
people’s lives and con-cerns, should be seen to evolve from the engagement of
persons with others in life.
To
think of a civil society while excluding economic and political engagement would
be to envisage not the life of a free citizen, but precisely that of a prisoner
whose punishment consists precisely in such exclusions from participation in
major forces shaping the life of one’s community.
3.
It is important then to consider what the horizons of this engagement will be.
If civil society, understood as the comity or solidarity of persons in a
particular place and time, were to be the full extent of one’s horizons and
hence of one’s concern, then one would be trapped. All would be relative to
what we are, all would be limited to what we could make or do; other peoples
would be simply alien and interpersonal; relations as well could degenerate into
animosity.
A
metaphysical stance in the sense of Professor Yu then appears essential. His
sense of the practical and existential en-gages every dimension of our everyday
life, but, rather than leaving this by itself or making it absolute, relates it
to the Tao. It is essential that this not be seen as another thing for
then it would compete with our daily life, which would then be rendered
insignificant. On the contrary, it is not another thing, but is expressed in the
perfection with which we accomplish our daily tasks.
In
this light, attention to civil society is not in competition with the Tao,
nor is it a secularization of life, but an effort to integrate all dimensions of
our life so that, cumulatively and in harmony with others, they might constitute
a more perfect reflection of the absolute, the Tao or the divine in our
daily life.
This
encourages people to participate fully. Indeed, all have a sense of value in
their life and some form of ultimate concern, for otherwise they would be unable
to choose, or to possess the passionate concern to galvanize behind a worthy
cause or simply to carry out the wearing tasks of everyday life.