Abstract
Beginning with David Hall and Roger Ames’s critique of Mou Zongsan’s concept of “immanent transcendence,” this paper examines the meaning and importance of this concept in Mou’s assertion that Chinese philosophy is unique and superior, through his engagement with the philosophy of Immanuel Kant and his comparisons of Chinese and Western philosophical traditions. Rejecting Kant’s “epistemological path” as deficient, Mou argues that knowledge of the transcendent is possible through moral practice, as demonstrated by the Confucian tradition. His merging of immanence and transcendence implies a different relation between ethics and religion compared with the way Kant himself conceived that relation. Despite the emphasis on practice in his understanding of Confucian spirituality, Mou’s approach is significantly different from a Dewey inspired Pragmatist approach to claims about transcendence. The paper contextualizes the theoretical choices in the development of Mou’s philosophy within China’s historical encounter with Dewey’s Pragmatism, and Mou’s own perception of his mission in a period of cultural crisis.
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Notes
For an example of a philosopher who use the two terms interchangeably, see (Hansen 2001).
Cf. (Bunnin and Xu 2001, pp. 1009–1010) translates “transcendent” as chao-yan 超驗 (emphasizing beyond experience), and “transcendental” as xian-yan 先驗 (before experience).
I deliberately leave “nei-zai 內在” and “chao-yue 超越” untranslated; the translation in brackets (italics added) were given by Mou himself in the original text. The translation of chao-yue as “transcendent” was reiterated in vol. 28: 38. Translations of Mou’s works are the author’s own unless stated otherwise. Future in-text citations of Mou’s work from his Complete Works will give only (volume: page) numbers.
I have not come across any explanation from Mou himself on this but I confessed I have yet to read every volume of his collected works.
Mou himself translates ti 體 as “substance” – in the sense of that which underlies all existents to render them real, not material substance. I have chosen to deviate from Mou’s own translation here because the philosophical baggage of the term “substance” is heavier when one is writing in English.
Mou’s claim that he was “completing Kant’s project” is debatable; it is arguable that he changes the subject, and actually replaces Kant’s project with a quite different project – but that is a topic for another occasion. For an excellent discussion of Mou’s views about intellectual intuition in relation to Kant’s philosophy, see (Bunnin 2008).
Mou detected in post-Kantian German Idealism and certain forms of existentialism a recognition of such immanent-transcendence and human infinitude, which leads it in the same general direction as Neo-Confucianism (5: 187–192).
There is only difference of one character between them (pronounced similarly with only difference of lighter and heavier stress). Furthermore, the two characters are often used interchangeably, even in Mou’s own works. Strictly, de’ 底 (pronounced di in other uses of this character) only substitutes for one possible use of de, where X de Y means Y belongs to X, e.g. door of the school = school’s door, hence dao-de (Morals) de’ 底 xing-shang-xue (metaphysics) means metaphysics of morals or Morals’ metaphysics where the emphasis is on morals or morality which have or requires a metaphysics. In X de 的Y (the usage relevant to Mou’s distinction), X qualifies Y, e.g. Life of bliss = blissful life, hence dao-de (moral) de 的xing-shang-xue (metaphysics) means moral metaphysics where the emphasis is on metaphysics, qualified by ‘moral’.
The character 良 liang on its own means “good,” but (Chan 1963, p. 80) translate liang-zhi as “innate knowledge” in the Confucian context through an implicit reference to a passage in the Mencius 7A15: “The ability possessed by men without their having acquired it by learning is innate ability (liang-neng 良能), and the knowledge possessed by them without deliberation (suo-bu-lü-er-zhi-zhe 所不慮而知者) is innate knowledge (liang-zhi).” The term liang-zhi is used in the modern Chinese language to translate “conscience.”.
Mou himself translated yin-zheng 引證 as “verification.”.
Intellectual Intuition and Chinese Philosophy was inspired by Heidegger’s Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics and Introduction to Metaphysics. Mou (20: vi) criticized Heidegger for truncating the metaphysical domain by neglecting the significance of Kant’s discussions of the thing-in-itself and autonomy, thereby “mislocating metaphysics.”
Translation modified from (Lau 1970).
Cf. Chad Hansen’s account of “how a naturalistic, social, pragmatic outlook can lead to a unique conception of moral transcendence.” Focusing on the pre-Qin period, Hansen argues that the Chinese thinkers had the “pragmatic moral transcendence’ which is “what matters – and all that matters” (Hansen 2001, pp. 199, 227).
See Mou’s contrast between scientific language, emotional language, and heuristic language in his lecture on “Two kinds of truth and the differences in their universality,” in Nineteen Lectures in Chinese Philosophy (29: 19–43).
In Lee’s evaluation, there is much overlap between the Hall and Ames team and the contemporary Neo-Confucians in their understanding of Confucianism, but the former objected to “transcendence” because of a different use of the concept that is both too narrow and too loose.
Translation of “ontological reality” and “ontological substance” given by Mou himself.
Importance of rituals in Confucian spirituality is acknowledged and emphasized in several chapters in (Tu and Tucker 2003–2004).
Hansen also argues that “the ancient Chinese theorists who do rely on claims to have special capacities of transcendence (epistemological) or access to a transcendent realm (ontological) to justify their moral insights are essentially dogmatic and authoritarian” (Hansen 2001, p. 200, see also pp. 226–227).
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Tan, Sh. Mou Zongsan’s concept of immanent-transcendence. Int. Commun. Chin. Cult 8, 213–231 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40636-021-00226-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40636-021-00226-0