In studying human and social phenomena, three concepts are essential for the understanding human action: the structure in which it happens, the meaning of the action in question and the critique of its subconscious determining forces. In contemporary philosophy, the structuralist approach emphasizes the structural dimension of society; the phenomenological approach cherishes the meaningful dimension of human action; whereas the critical school endeavors to reveal the subconscious forces distorting the production of meaning. These concepts are not exclusive one of another, for none of them is capable separately of explaining the complexity of social phenomenon. On the contrary, they constitute an integral three level analysis concerning man and society.

STRUCTURE, STRUCTURALISM AND CONTRAST

The concept of structure is understood as the intelligible relationship between the constitutive elements of an object. With the appearance of Ferdinand de Saussure's Cours de linguistique-générale, a shift in the paradigm of scientific explanation took place from causal to structural explanation. Before this, "explanation" was viewed by W. Dilthey as a kind of epistemological operation active in natural sciences which had to establish a permanent causal relationship between natural phenomena in order to explain them. This notion of causal explanation had extended its influence even to the domain of human and social sciences. But the paradigm shift effected by structuralist semiology indicates that there is explanatory power in the intelligible structure between the composite elements of the phenomenon or object in question. Structural explanation provides the human and social sciences with a distinctive new scientific mode. There is no need to appeal to natural sciences for a paradigm of explanation.

Since then, structuralism has been used not only as a strategy of explaining texts, but also as a framework for looking at society and culture. Elementary structures constituted by opposing elements are taken as the only intelligible logos determining particular societies and cultures in the history of mankind. Consequently, any type of social organization or social action is to be treated as merely a determinate mode of combining possibilities permitted by the elementary structure. For example, a certain version of myth is seen as one of the possible ways of resolving contradictions displayed by the oppositions constituting the myth in question.

Now, one of the major difficulties of structuralism is that it recognizes only structures constituted of oppositions.¹ For example, C. Levi-Strauss' structural analysis of the myth of Oedipus ascribes the mythèmes into four columns: in the first column, the overestimated kinship (Oedipus marries his mother, Antigone buries Polyneices); in the second, under-estimated kinship (Oedipus kills his father, Eteocles kills Polyneices); in the third, human autonomy denying man's rooting on earth (Cadamos kills the dragon, Oedipus slays the Sphinx ); in the fourth, Man rooted on earth like plants (Oedipus' foot swells). In the combination of these oppositional relations, there appears the mathematical proportion: 1:2 = 3:4, and this mathematical proportionality is the structural principle of the myth in question.² Another example is A.J. Greimas' schematization of Propp's morphology of folk tale into a logic of narrative determined by the model of transformational linguistics, which in fact remains a structure of oppositions such as: interdiction versus violation, fraud versus complicity, confrontation versus success . . . etc.³

But structure is not limited to oppositional elements. In addition to these, there might be complementary structures, hierarchical structures, structure in serial order, etc., the complexity of which is not to be discussed in the limited space of this paper. But we do have to discuss the fundamental presuppositions of the structurist vision of human reality.

The first presupposition is the priority of structure over agent. The meaning of human action is determined by the combination of structural elements, not by the subjective intention of the agent in action.⁴ As it is the speech which speaks, it is the communication which communicates. The actor and his subjective meaning have no importance and are treated as illusions. The author is either dead or seen as mere signature. There is nothing meaningful except the structure determining action and history.

The second presupposition is the priority of synchronicity over diachronicity.⁵ The structure itself is systematic and atemporal, Any succession in time or temporal development is intelligible only when seen through the glass of elementary structure. Any new action or novelty in action is but another way of combining possibilities permitted by the structure. The third presupposition of structuralism is the principle of unconsciousness. The agent of action suffers from the overwhelming determination of an anonymous structure without knowing it consciously. Individual and society cannot produce with conscious effort any meaningful work, since meaning itself is determined by structure in an unconscious way. In this sense, structuralism has always carried with it an anti-humanistic overtone.

Structure is necessary for manifesting objects as intelligible just as it is in need of a more comprehensive reconstruction. Chinese philosophy in general has a contrastive vision of structure which emphasizes the dialectical interplay between opposition and complementarity, unity and difference, continuity and discontinuity. For example, the Book of Changes says:" The rhythmic interplay of Ying ( ) and Yang ( ) constitutes what we called the Way (Tao )." Lao Tzu teaches something similar to this: " All things carry the Ying and embrace the Yang, and through their blending interplay they achieve harmony."⁶ The traditional presentation of Tai Chi ( ) can give us a concrete image of contrastive structure:

Figure I

Analysis shows that this image of contrastive structure contains the following characteristics:

1. Bipolarity: Just as the relation between Ying and Yang as shown in the figure I, a structure is constituted of sets of opposing elements, for example, male and female, mind and body, etc.

2. Complementarity: Ying and Yang, though opposing one another, are complementary in forming one unity, even achieving what Lao Tzu called "harmony". They form a Concordia Oppositorum, in which bipolar oppositions are united to an organic whole.

3. Open Totality: Ying and Yang, as complementary opposing elements, constitute as they do a moving totality. The whole is always there to render intelligible any constitutive part. As moving and becoming, the whole is an open whole, not a closed one.

Figure I represents only what we call "structural contrast". But, taking into consideration the last point concerning open totality, we have to put it into movement on the axis of time and thereby we have the image of "dynamic contrast" in Figure II:

AXIS OF TIME

Figure II

Structural contrast means that in any moment of analysis, the human phenomenon is constituted of elements in interaction, apparently opposing, but structurally complementing, one another. It is synchronic in the sense that these elements appear simultaneously to form a systematic whole. As opposing, each enjoys a certain degree of autonomy; as complementary, they are mutually interdependent.

Dynamic contrast means that, on the axis of time, the human (social) phenomenon is in a process of becoming through the interplay between the precedent and the consequent moments. It is diachronic in the sense that the movement of interplay on the axis of time constitutes a history, not in a discontinuous succession but in a contrasting development. As discontinuous, novel elements have their own originality which can never be reduced to any precedent element. As continuous, they always retain something from the precedent element as residue or sedimentation of experience in the process of time.

The mediation between structural contrast and dynamic contrast is human subjectivity and intersubjectivity. In the initial state and final interpretation of each structure, there is always the function of an actor or a group of actors. In this sense we differ from the structuralists who take structure as anonymous and determining human action without the actor's awareness of it. On the contrary, a structure is the outcome of an act of structuration by an actor or a group of actors in the process of time. Under the priority of actor, the process of history could also be analyzed through structural properties and integrated into a structural whole in order to work out its configurational intelligibility. Nevertheless, the initial state of each structure must be the work of an actor's (or actors') act of structuration. No structure could deny the actor's subjective interpretation of its meaning.

MEANING, PHENOMENOLOGY AND

THE CONFUCIAN VISION OF MEANING

The consideration about the agent of action lead us to the dimension of meaning. On the level of structure, we have only the sense as determined by structure, syntactical structure for example. But the problematic of meaning in the context of human subjectivity refers either to the subjective intention or to the existential and historical situation in which human actions take place. Husserl's phenomenology puts emphasis on the subject's intentionality and its meaning constitution activity, whereas in Heidegger's phenomenology the existential situation is more important for the understanding of meaning.

The greatest discovery of Husserlian phenomenology, realized by the method of phenomenological reduction, is intentionality and the realm of meaning constituted by it. This discovery reveals not only the primacy of the consciousness of something over the consciousness of self, but also the truism that the act of intending something cannot achieve itself except through the identifiable and re-identifiable unity of the intended meaning-what Husserl called the "noema", the intentional correlatum of "noesis". Phenomenological reduction operates through the regressive movement of tracing the noesis-noema complex to the original starting point of intentionality--the transcendental ego--whence to constitute the meaning of things.

In other words, in order to understand the meaning of action, science and culture, it is important to uncover the meaning constituting dynamism implied in every actor's subjectivity. Intentionality is what every actor has as his inner dynamism towards the ideal and objective realm of meaning and the capacity to constitute it in an original way through his personal effort. For example, in the process of communication, the message to be communicated is a result of meaning constitution by the sender. But the receiver has his own background of anticipation and interpretation. The lesson of Husserl's phenomenology is that the more one returns to one's own transcendental ego through the epoché of one's empirical ego, the more authentic and objective the constituted meaning will be.

Husserl inquired about the question of meaning on the cognitive and perceptive level. But Heidegger, following Dilthey, asks it on the existential and ontological level. The ground of meaning is not the residue, as in the case of Husserlian phenomenology, but the pre-given. It is because we are in the world and belong to it in a participative way that we can oppose objects to ourselves in order to know and control them intellectually. Heidegger notes:

When entities within-the-world are discovered along with the Being of Dasein--that is, when they have come to be understood--we say that they have meaning. . . . Meaning is that wherein the intelligibility of something maintains itself. . . . Meaning is the upon-which of a projection in terms of which something becomes intelligible as something; it gets its structure from a fore-having, a fore-sight and a fore-conception.⁷

With this there took place a shift of the paradigm of understanding. Before Heidegger, the notion of understanding is fashioned after Dilthey's epistemological conception: understanding is a kind of epistemological activity with which the Geisteswissenschaft operates to grasp the meaning of a singular person or society. The meaning of a work or an action is understood when the psychological process of its author is reconstructed subjectively by the investigator. After Heidegger, the notion of understanding takes on ontological import. To understand is not to grasp the subjective motif of an action, but to grasp the possibilities of existence this implies, to reveal the existential situation or the historical world in the context of which the action or work takes place.

It is interesting to note that, after Heidegger's location of the problematic of meaning in the hermeneutic circle between Dasein and Sein, his master, Husserl himself proposed, in his last masterpiece, Crisis of European Science and Transcendental Phenomenology, the concept of "Lebenswelt" to install a global milieu of meaning production and meaning understanding. Life-world contains several fundamental layers of the soil of all meaningful enterprise: the kinesthetic and perceptual activities of our living body, the world in the co-making by human subjectivity and intersubjectivity in the temporal constituting process, the practical prescientific framework and ground of all scientific project and praxis, and finally the ultimate horizon for the becoming of human beings in their effort to achieve a universal self-understanding and self-responsible humanity.⁸ Husserl's concept of Life-world is the most comprehensive effort to lay down the foundation for the meaning of human activities.

If Husserl views the problematic of meaning from the cognitive side, and Heidegger from the ontological perspective, Confucianism concentrates especially on the meaning of human action emerging from man's moral praxis.

One of the main problematics of Confucianism concerns the meaning of social order and the meaning of human existence within that. Confucius himself had endeavored to revitalize the ancient social order instituted by Chou-li ( ) by rendering it meaningful in a transcendental way. In pre-Confucian China, Chou-li embraced both the ideal and actual aspects of religious, ethical and political life. Ideally speaking, it represented a cultural tradition, and even a comprehensive ideal of human life in general, as was the concept of Paideia for the ancient Greek people. But in the time of Confucius, Chou-li began to lose this deeper meaning while still keeping its actual and superficial meaning as a code of behavior, social and political institutions and religious ceremonies. Confucius tried to revitalize Chou-li by translating its ideal meaning into the concept of Jen ( ), which represented the sensitive innerconnectedness between man's inner self with other men, with nature and even with Heaven. Jen manifests man's subjectivity and responsibility in and through moral awareness, and through the intersubjectivity supporting all social and ethical life. Thereby, Confucius provided a transcendental foundation for our interaction with nature, society and even with heaven. Then, from the concept of Jen, Confucius deduced the concept of Yi ( ), which represented for him moral norms, moral obligations, our consciousness of them and even the virtue of always acting according to them. And from the concept of Yi, Confucius deduced that of Li ( ) which represented the ideal meaning and actual codes of behavior, political institutions and religious ceremonies. Through this procedure of transcendental deduction, Confucianism reconstitutes and thereby revitalizes the ethical and social order and man's sense of meaningfulness within it.

CRITIQUE, CRITICAL SCHOOL AND

THE TAOIST CONCEPT OF CRITIQUE

Both explanation through structure, and understanding of meaning are intellectual works to be carried out on the conscious level of our mind. But there are unconscious factors and mechanisms which determine and sometimes distort the production and interpretation of meaning. "Critique" is an act of reflection conducted either by an individual or by the society as a whole upon those unconscious factors and mechanisms in order to thematize them into the realm of consciousness and thereby render their distorting function ineffective.

In contemporary philosophy, Critical theory greatly emphasizes this critical operation vis-a-vis such unconscious factors as tradition and prejudice. According to it, these factors are not only the vehicle of our understanding, but also a mechanism for deforming communication. For example, J. Habermas notes:

We know from depth-hermeneutics, however, that the dogmatism of the traditional context is the vehicle not only for the objectivity of language in general, but for the repressiveness of a power relationship which deforms the intersubjectivity of understanding as such and systematically distorts colloquial communication.⁹

If explanation and understanding envisage only sense and meaning which can be seized on the conscious level, the act of critique has to reveal the determining forces acting on our unconscious level. These forces are of two sorts: the individual unconsciousness and the collective unconsciousness. The individual unconsciousness represents desires and their conflicts or repressions performing on the unconscious level of an individual as discussed in the Freudian psychoanalysis. Collective unconsciousness represents such determining factors as tradition, social relationship and value system in their dissimulating function. These are false consciousness or ideology in its pejorative sense, and their critique is a critique of ideology, as Habermas would call it.

In order to be succinct, we could synthesize both levels of critique and schematize them in the following figure:

present (1)

(3)------------past---------------------------|-------------------> TIME

| (2)

In this figure, we could discern a structural determination of (1) by (2) and a genetic determination of (2) by (3). For example, in the case of individual unconsciousness, (1) represents the symptoms and behaviors of an individual at the present time, (2) represents the conflict and distortion of his desires, (3) represents the repression and frustration of his infantile experience. In the case of collective unconsciousness, (1) represents the social phenomenon of a society at the present time, (2) represents its social relationship and value system, and (3) represents its social and cultural tradition developed in its history tracing back to its origin in the past.

In other words, the individual's desire has structural determination over its present symptoms and meaning production, whereas his personal history in the past (especially in childhood) has genetic determination over them. The ideology constituted of social relationship and value system has structural determination over social behavior and the social production of meaning, whereas historical tradition has genetic determination over them. The function of critique is to reveal by thematizing reflection those structural and genetic determining forces on the individual as well as on the collective level. This kind of critical reflection can not cancel their existence or nullify them. It can only render them ineffective by translating them to the conscious level, so as no longer in an unconscious way to distort the production and interpretation of meaning.

In Chinese philosophy, Taoism is the most critical of all the philosophical schools. For example, under Lao Tzu's penetrating criticism the society of his time was revealed to be full of social problems provoked by political domination:

The people suffer because their rulers eat up too much in taxes; that is why they starve. The people become difficult to govern because those in authority have too many projects of action; that is why they are difficult to govern. The people take death lightly because their rulers have too many desires; that is why they take death lightly.¹⁰

It seems that for Lao Tzu social problems were produced by the political domination of rulers themselves, rather than by the disproportion between desired values and their channels of realization. Chou-li was in Lao Tzu's eyes only the means of social domination, hindering and distorting man's communication with other men and most importantly, with Tao. Power domination was manifested par excellence by vehement wars: "Whenever armies are stationed, briers and thorns become rampant. Great wars are inevitably followed by famines." "The weapons of war are instruments of evil, and they are detested by people . . . when a multitude of people are slaughtered, it should be an occasion of the expression of bitter grief. Even when a victory is scored, the occasion should be observed with funeral ceremonies."¹¹

Deeper critical reflection shows that power domination comes from desire and the instrumental rationality it manipulates. At that time the lust for goods and the desire of power were highly elevated. People strived for fame and position. Intellectuals rendered service to political power and became instruments of political domination. People sacrificed their spiritual freedom for the prize of lustful desire and instrumental rationality. Lao Tzu even criticized Confucian ideology in that it overemphasized deliberate actions taken with anthropocentric self-consciousness, which by so doing were inclined to forget the spontaneity of man and his root in Tao. The Taoist concept of Critique has an ontological dimension in that it bases all social critique and critique of ideology on man's relation to Tao. Domination, instrumental rationality and ideology are but consequences of having forgotten Tao. What Heidegger calls Seinsvergessenheit,¹² forgetfulness of Being, is for Lao Tzu rather Taovergessenheit, forgetfulness of Tao.

CONCLUSION

We must resituate our study of human action in the context in which man understands and makes himself. Human and social sciences should not be abstracted and thereby alienated from man's process of self-formation and self-understanding. In this practical process, structure, meaning and critique are three inner-connected steps through which people achieve a reasonable understanding of themselves and of the society in which they exist.

Of course, any study of man and society must begin with a preunderstanding of man himself and his social environment. But this pre-understanding must be mediated and developed by an effort at explanation through intellectually grasping the intelligible structure constituting human and social phenomena. But a structure should not be anti-humanist and oppositionist as structuralists would conceive; rather it is the outcome of human acts of structuration and open to subjective or inter-subjective human interpretation. A structure is not only synchronic and static; on the contrary, with its contrast configuration, it tends to move on the axis of time and to form a history which results from intervention by individual or collective actors.

The need to take human subjectivity and inter-subjectivity into consideration leads us to the issue of understanding and its object, namely, meaning. We understand when, having grasped the sense as determined by structure, we refer to the subjective intention and the existential situation of an actor or a group of actors. But the individual and collective construction of a meaningful life might be dissimulated and even distorted by false consciousness acting in the unconsciousness. Here we need the operation of critique to render ineffective the distortion and to mediate the unconscious determining forces into the realm of consciousness, where they become conscious dynamisms for constructing a meaningful life.

Beginning by pre-understanding, and mediated by structural explanation, we come ever closer to an understanding of meaning, even by making explicit and conscious those unconscious forces. This is a process of understanding and constructing a meaningful life. Human and social sciences are but the praxis of understanding through which we not only can lead a meaningful life, but also lead it in a conscious and self-aware manner. In this way human and social sciences return, as they should, back to the dynamic process in which a person makes himself or herself more fully human, individually, socially and historically.

National Chengchi University

Taipei, Taiwan

1. "Tout le mécanisme du langage . . . repose sur des oppositions". F. de Saussure, Cours de linguistique générale (Paris: Payot, 1978), p. 167.

2. C. Levi-Strauss, Anthropologie structural (Paris: Plon, 1965), pp. 235-240.

3. A. J. Greimas, Semantique structurale (Paris: Larousse, 1970), pp. 172-221.

4. As envisaged by the distinction between langue and parole, cf. Cours de linguistique générale, p. 30.

5. Ibidem, p. 117.

6. The Works of Lao Tzu, Chinese texts with commentaries by Wang Pih, ch. 42.

7. M. Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. by J. Macquarrie and E. Robinson (London: SCM Press, 1962), pp. 192-193.

8. Vincent Shen, "Life-World and Reason in Husserl's Philosophy of Life", Analecta Husserliana, XVII (Reidel, 1984), 105-116

9. J. Habermas "On Hermeneutics' Claim to Universality", in The Hermeneutics Reader, K. Mueller-Vollmer, ed. (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1985), p. 314.

10. The Works of Lao Tzu, ch. 75.

11. Ibidem, chapters 30, 31.

12. M. Heidegger, Holzwege (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1972), p. 336; "Uber den Humanismus", in Wegmarken (Frankfurtam Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1964), p. 159.