Re: [xmca] critique of pure tolerance (Chinese, Illich, Brasil))

[yuan lai <laiyuantaiwan@gmail.com>]

Jay and all, Zhuangzi's idea of freedom from attachment to any particular
perspective, including one's own (rather, one does not develop a fixed
perspective), perhaps would help with engaging respectfully positions one
strongly disagrees with. This is taken from Graham's translation (and
anything other than literal translation requires some degree of
interpretation) in the entry in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: "What
is It is also Other, what is Other is also It. There they say, "this is true
and that is false" from one point of view; here we say, "this is true and
that is false" from another point of view. Are there really It and Other? Or
really no It and Other. Where neither It nor Other finds its opposite is
called the axis of the Way." But I wonder how possible it is to act without
egotism in the world. Save for participation in the community one wishes to
engage in dialogue, and where words and reason may entrench division, the
medium of fiction with simulation of lifeworlds (a recent discussion thread)
or movies may bring us together, one step at a time.

I agree that Zhuangzi is more than simply a follower of Laozi and Daoists
sure left earnestness to the Confucians; involvement in alchemy may replace
getting drunk and writing poetry in practice. I think the Chinese literati
had little choice but being Confucians (being a Daoist or Buddhist is a
different matter). My understanding is that the texts for students were
basically the Confucian Classics, and civil servants were chosen via the
imperial examination system that valued Confucianist thought above all. From
what I learned in a Chinese History course, the court long adopted
confucianism because the school of thought meshed well with the idea of
hierarchy. One Confucian ideal is the relationship between benevolent rulers
and loyal civil servants (or the emperor acts like what the emperor should,
the subjects act like what they should), mirroring that between benevolent
fathers and loyal sons, but I bet the rulers were thinking more of loyal
subjects without the necessity for them to be benevolent.

Speaking of Daoism, the Story of the Stone opened and ended with a Daoist
monk. There was a Chinese custom (I'm not aware whether it is still
practiced), infants were presented, on the day they turned one year old,
with small items to predict their future, based on what they grabbed or
played with. For example, abacus (miniature perhaps) would mean a future in
business. Not sure if this was practiced across classes, but it was
described in the novel, about an upper class family. The father (a civil
servant) of the hero wanted to predict his son's future when he turned one
and ordered many items; the child fails the father when he grasped only
powder boxes and bracelets. It's probably hard to imagine a Chinese father
in those days being pleased that his son's future condition or occupation
may have anything to do with the items associated with women. An example of
non-linearity of cultural time perhaps?

Yuan

On Fri, Jan 8, 2010 at 8:36 AM, Tony Whitson <twhitson@udel.edu> wrote:

> On Thu, 7 Jan 2010, Jay Lemke wrote:
>
>  I read Zhuang-zi, as Chuang-tse in the older spelling, when I was quite
>> young, and I generally think that while he took up the critical spirit, he
>> was a follower of Lao-zi and the Dao-ist tradition, in which the height of
>> wisdom was getting drunk and writing poetry, letting go of convention, being
>> silly, and in doing so finding the flow, the Way of being at one with the
>> nature of things. They left earnestness to the Confucians. A society that
>> could find the balance between Kung-zi and Lao-zi would be the one I'd like
>> to live in. Maybe even the society that tried to do so.
>>
>> The Anglo-Saxon cultural tradition, I regret to say, does not have much of
>> a sense of humor.
>>
>> JAY.
>>
>
> Zhuangzi is more complex than simply a follower of Laozi. Also, it must be
> remembered that he wrote in contention against contemporary Legalists
> (Fajia), Mohists, etc., so that the meaning of his work at the time would
> have to be considered in that context.
>
> The Chinese literati did not need to choose between being a Confucian
> (Rujia) or a Taoist or a Buddhist, the way Europeans had to choose between
> Roman Catholicism or some sect of Protestantism. I expect that over the
> centuries there were civil scholars/administrators whose work and lives
> involved that kind of balancing. I can't give examples. It would be great to
> have biographies of those. I can't believe that they did not exist.
>
> As for the West, a reconsideration of the Patristic Jesuit Ivan Illich
> (Deschooling Society, etc.) might be of interest. He attributed to the
> Church Fathers his ideal of "drunken sobriety." And he himself was nothing
> if not earnest.
>
> I'm studying Brazilian Portuguese now, and Brasil maybe stands out for the
> kind of national culture that you're looking for. The work of poet Carlos
> Drummond de Andrade might be an example to start with, and there are many
> wonderful Brazilian cinema examples.
>
> Not that they don't also have problems in Brazil ...
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