Throughout his scholarly life, Li Zehou was a philosopher with an extremely broad scope of interests, which he followed on the basis of his wide range of knowledge in different segments of philosophical theory. These include ontology, epistemology, social and political philosophy, ethics, psychology, comparative thought, Chinese ideational history, theories of modernization etc. In the late 1970s, he developed a strong interest in epistemology, theory of perception and aesthetics. Later on, during the eighties, aesthetics and philosophy of Chinese art gradually shifted into the center of his theoretical endeavors. In the 1980s, he played a most prominent role in the aesthetic debates and “fevers,” which dominated the Chinese intellectual discourses of the time.1 Li has constructed his aesthetics based on his anthropo-historical ontology, which gradually became the central theoretical and methodological approach of all his analyses and interpretations. In the light of the inherent structure of his philosophical development, it is completely logical that the questions of ethics as one of the most important specifically human capacities and a precondition for human social life gradually, but consistently, shifted into the very focus of his philosophical studies. This book aims to critically introduce and explain Li Zehou’s ethical thought, to highlight its inventive elements and to posit it into current developments of ethical theories on the global level. However, in order to apprehend the explanations and interpretations of these questions, readers need to know and understand the basic features of Li’s general theoretical system2 and to become familiar with its crucial concepts and approaches. The main ideas, notions and methods contained and applied in this system are simultaneously forming an important part of the basic framework of his ethical theory. Therefore, before submerging deeper into the special themes of Li’s ethics, one has to become acquainted with the main attributes of his general philosophy.
1 Anthropo-Historical Ontology and the Question of Becoming Human
Li’s overall philosophy is grounded on the so-called anthropo-historical ontology (renleixue lishi benti lun 人類學歷史本體論).3 It represents his central research method and the elementary paradigm of his general philosophical system, which also denoted the practical philosophy of subjectality (Zhutixing shijian zhexue 主體性實踐哲學). A newer, shorter form of the phrase—and also the subject and title of one of his major works—is Historical Ontology (Lishi bentilun 歷史本體論).4 At the beginning of the twenty-first century, Li shortened the name but emphasized that this abbreviation had no impact on the original meaning of the phrase, which still remained the same (2008c, 318).
Anthropo-historical ontology can be understood as a kind of post-Marxist methodological tool, because Li shaped it in order to upgrade and modify the traditional Marxist theory, which for him was too one-dimensional and insufficient to fully explain the complex course of human evolvement. He accepted and advocated Marxist historical materialism while at the same time opposing his mechanistically abstracted schema of dialectical social development. The phrase anthropo-historical ontology expresses his specific theory of human existence, including ethics and morality. In this framework, Li saw human development through the lens of a different, modified method of historical materialism. In his system, the question about what makes human beings human is of primary importance, and the field of anthropology is serving as the key approach in comprehending this problem. In this context, Li intensely opposed not only analytical philosophical accounts, but also all explanations of human life from a strictly biological point of view. Following the elementary Marxist configuration of material basis and ideational or spiritual superstructure, Li places particular values and moral standards as well as culturally determined concepts, ideas, ethical norms, and aesthetic inclinations into a twofold structure: one structure consists of individual lives and the other consists of general material existence of the entire humankind.
In this framework—similar to Marx—Li has also emphasized the ideal of “humanization of nature” (zirande renhua 自然的人化). However, he complemented the concept by an oppositional one that was inspired by Daoist treatises; Li called this a corresponding antipode of the humanization of nature “naturalization of humans” (rende ziranhua 人的自然化).5
According to Marx, the humanization of nature is a process in which human beings through their self-initiated action convert their physical nature into an integral part of humanness.6 However, besides complementing it with the “naturalization of humans,” Li has also slightly transformed this original Marxist notion. In contrast to Marx, who has accentuated the relation between human beings and the external nature, Li understood the concept of the humanization of nature as a process that was not only directed toward the external, but also toward their internal realms. For Li, both dimensions constitute parts of humanness in the sense of the traditional Chinese notion ren xing 人性.
In order to understand Li’s anthropo-historical ontology, and especially his ethical thought, we must first clarify the concrete meaning of this traditional notion. In traditional China, it referred to innate features or dispositions that “makes us distinctively human” (Ames 2018), i.e., different from other species. In Western sinology, this notion has traditionally been translated as “human nature.” As the writings of A.C. Graham7 grew in influence, traditional Western translation of ren xing as human nature has gradually fallen out of favor (Makeham 2001, 21). For Graham, the term “human nature” was a rather problematic translation of ren xing, in part because it has frequently been discussed in essentialist terms as a “given,” i.e., as “some innate endowment present in us from birth” (Ames 1991, 154) rather than being understood, as preferred by Ames, to mean “an achievement concept” (ibid.). Ames argues that xing is not a static nature but dynamic and changeable. He also points out that it is a relational term, which is culturally and historically conditioned. Therefore it is by no means an unchangeable innate status, but rather a creative act; in traditional Western understanding the term “human nature” has predominantly static or fixed connotations. However, in Christian theology—which belongs to the main ideational pillars of classical Western thought—human nature is viewed as originating in God (or creator). Hence, translating ren xing as human nature does not seem appropriate. Thus, I propose replacing in the English translation of ren xing the phrase “human nature” with the term “humanness,” in the sense of something that makes us human, or simply in the sense of “being human.”8
In Li Zehou’s view, humanness was shaped through making and using tools. This practice, which in fact belonged to the process of humanization of (inner and outer) nature, represented the origin of humankind. Li believes that it constitutes the specific supra-biological (chao shengwu 超生物) nature of human beings. This supra-biological characteristic manifested itself as a universal necessity,9 because the tools that were produced and applied in the process of this practice became an indispensable part of the human body, a kind of extension of human limbs and other organs. In this way, they became a vital constituent of human production and reproduction, without which human species could no longer do without. But the supra-biological feature as a product of such humanization of nature also pertains to human inwardness, for it shapes human subjectality—a notion that will be introduced and further treated in the following sections of this book.
Li criticizes the fact that the leading theoretic fields dealing with humanness and human mind still belonged to transcendentalism and idealism. He aimed to absorb and to digest both Kant, through historical ontology, and Marx, by applying certain specific features of the Chinese tradition, which in his view, was based upon a strong drive for survival and the resilient consciousness of history.10 Li also modified the rigidly formal and mechanic nature of the Marxian system by incorporating into his own system of historical materialism the Kantian notion of the active and autonomous human subject that was placed into the center of the abovementioned concept of subjectality.
Li called such an anthropo-philosophical approach “post-philosophical” (hou zhexue 後哲學) ontology (Li Zehou 2016b, 377), especially considering the fact that in its own traditional philosophy, China never created a metaphysical ontology. Another reason for such a description lay in the fact that the starting point of this approach was linked to the alleged fourth basic question of Kant’s philosophy, a question that apparently pertained to the essence of humanness.11
For Li Zehou, this was the foundation for the examination of three different problems, which mark the most important accounts of his system. He emphasized that the crucial aim of the anthropo-historical method is to explain the following questions: (a) How is it that human beings are alive? (Ren ruhe huo 人如何活?); (b) Why (or for what reason) do human beings live? (Ren wei shenme huo 人為什麼活?); (c) How do human beings live? (Ren huode zenmeyang 人活得怎麼樣?).
To Li, these three questions are rooted in the simple fact that human beings are alive. However, each question also represents a particular and unique discourse. We could say that the first question pertains to epistemology, the second to ethics, and the third to aesthetics. While the first question explores the subjectality of humankind, the second tackles issues belonging to the shaping of the human subject. The third question is linked to axiology and deals with the aesthetic realm of human life and its ultimate meaning. In his discussion of the first question, Li offered a solution to the riddle that makes us wonder why we are alive or what we are living for. His essential point here is the fact that the meaning of human life is not derived from death (or from that which happens after it), but from the life itself. The elaboration on the third question leads us to the aesthetic realm of our life and to the understanding of our most intimate, individual inner world. In this study, we are mainly exploring Li Zehou’s ethical thought; we shall elaborate in detail his explanations as to the reason why human beings live.
In his reply, Li proceeds from the following consideration: even though our life is the ultimate reason for our existence, we know that we will eventually die. This conviction that we are alive and that we will be dead automatically leads to the question of whether or not life is worth living at all. Li highlights that people can find several possible answers to this question. People find the meaning of their lives in different significant tenets: some live for money or fame, others for their descendants, and many live for God or because they believe in an eternal existence. Such codes of belief are what every individual follows. Thus, the absoluteness of these notions is often coupled with principles such as “truth,” “God’s will,” “the way of heaven (tian dao 天道),” “inner (or inborn) knowledge (liang zhi 良知)” or other notions of religious morality that form a part of the “condensation or solidification of reason (lixing ningju 理性凝聚).”12 These rationalized mental forms often take on the form of absoluteness, which obliges every human being to follow them (Li Zehou 2016b, 30). In the framework of Li Zehou’s anthropo-philosophical ethics, different notions pertaining to such forms are linked to the meaning of life and to individual values. All these significant systems are subsumed under Li’s specific model of categorical imperative. The basis of such imperative is individual responsibility, for Li emphasizes that irrespective of our particular individual values, we are ultimately always responsible for our own lives:
Ultimately, everybody has to find out, to choose, and to decide upon the purpose of their life by themselves … This is “free will”: every human being decides consciously and freely upon his or her actions and attitudes. In this regard, no one is limited or restricted by the causal laws of the phenomenal world.
究竟為什麼活，仍然需要自己去發現、去選擇、去決定……這也就 是「自由意志」: 每個人自覺地自由地做出自己的行為決定，而不為現象世界的因果規律所約束、限制.
Li Zehou 2016b, 389
Li Zehou’s concept of free will is similar to Kant’s notion, which forms a vital part of his categorical imperative and his notion of practical reason. In Kant’s framework, human behavior is only moral if it is founded upon maxims that could serve as a basis of universal law. However, there is a crucial difference between Li’s and Kant’s view of human mind, and therefore also between their particular views on the essence of the categorical imperative. For Kant, it is tightly linked to practical reason, which belongs to the a priori forms of human mind. Li, on the other hand, sees human morality as something that is rooted in dynamic pragmatic reasoning. Pragmatic reason, which is typical for Chinese tradition, is quite different from Kant’s notion of practical reason. It functions in the human mind within the emotio-rational structure and is grounded upon the emotion-based substance.13 Li also highlights that such forms cannot be seen as steadily inborn in human mind, since they are the results of a dynamic, socially determined process in which human beings accumulate experiences over long periods of time and across many generations. Li calls this process “sedimentation,” and we shall elaborate upon it more in detail in the corresponding section.
Li’s categorical imperative is still transcendental, and in a certain, broader sense, it is not essentially (or directly) bound to experiences. In Li’s view, reason still requires empirical feelings—such as love, respect or belief—for its functioning and realization. We find this throughout classic texts that underlie the works of major world religions, for instance, in the New and the Old Testament of Judaism and Christianity, or the Koran of Islam, and in ancient China’s Analects (Lunyu 論語) or the Classic of Family Reverence (Xiaojing 孝經). Thus, the basic question of ethics, namely the question of why one is alive, has a special foundation that transcends the individual and the humankind and offers us some kind of response (Li Zehou 2016b, 32). Religious moralities contained in such sacred texts are taken as standards for individual self-conscious decisions and actions as well as criteria that help people decide and behave in accordance with their values.
Hence, Li’s answer to the second question that he raised in the framework of his anthropo-historical ontology, i.e., the question “why (or for what) are human beings alive” is closely connected to the interactions and relations between religion and society, absolute and relative ethics, and between individuals and humankind. Such an approach is deeply rooted in a strong awareness of one’s inseparable connection to or identity with all of humanity as well as in the awareness of one’s own transitoriness that can be surpassed only through our specifically and uniquely human potential to love, to feel this identity, and to perceive and to experience beauty.14
Here, we should also mention another specific feature, which marks the innovativeness of Li’s methodology. Anthropo-historical ontology is different from most traditional philosophical approaches, which commonly proceed from feeling toward reason. It rather applies the opposite approach. It proceeds from reason, which manifests itself in humankind and its history, and in the laws of necessity. Ultimately, it explores the final stage of human evolution, namely qing (情), i.e., emotion, expressed through and reflected in individuals, contingencies, and human psychology (Li Zehou 2016b, 401).
For Li the material conditions of human existence are formative factors of human psychology and existence, humans are—as we have seen in his elaborations—unique in their ability to act in accordance with rational principles and in shaping these conditions by themselves. In this framework, in which the free will and the active role of individual human subject play a central role, mind and the material conditions of human existence are mutually interacting in and through social practice. Anthropo-historical ontology’s emphasis on the concrete actuality of human existence as the origin and basis of moral principles therefore also serves to affirm the significance of historically specific circumstances in moral judgment, since a concrete circumstance, in fact, still takes precedence to any supposedly “a priori” principles.
In this context, it is also important to know that Li’s anthropo-historical ontology is based upon the Marxist differentiation between the material basis (which is primary) and ideational superstructure (which is secondary). In his anthropo-historical ontology, Li has therefore assumed Marx’s emphasis on the crucial role of social practice. However, he opposed the Marxist view of class struggle and violent revolutions as the crucial driving force of social development. He also eliminated the Marxist notion of abstract or theoretical praxis from the primary role of social practice, which was, for him, a purely material activity (Rošker 2019, 228). As we will see later, anthropo-historical ontology is—in many different ways—also a development and an upgrading of the Chinese intellectual tradition. In this sense, Li emphasized that “after God dies, Chinese philosophy will appear on the stage” (Li Zehou 2016b, 649).
2 Sedimentation
Li Zehou’s concept of sedimentation is crucial to understanding the basic structure of his anthropo-historical ontology. This pivotal notion regards an elementary philosophical idea, linked to several other central concepts, which constitute the fundamental theoretical platform of Li’s system. He describes this notion as “the accumulations and deposits of the social, rational, and historical in the individual through the process of humanizing nature” (Li and Cauvel 2006, 94).15
As mentioned earlier, the term denotes the process of accumulating human experiences in the course of evolution, i.e., the progression of the shaping of human mind. In her article entitled “Li Zehou, Kant and Darwin: The Theory of Sedimentation” (2016, 141), Marthe Chandler shows that “the evidence from anthropology, studies of child development, primatology, linguistics and the behavior of our closest living primate relatives is highly suggestive and appears consistent with Li’s theory of sedimentation.”
The mental and spiritual formations established and stored in this process are significantly differ from Kant’s a-priori forms. The main difference between Kant’s and Li’s understanding of such formations lies in their respective disposition. In contrast to Kant, Li saw them as dynamic and modifiable, although their modifications can sometimes be much too slow to be perceived by human beings: thus, they seem as something, which is more or less fixed (and thus, it is easy to miscomprehend them as being a-priori).
Li mainly distinguishes between three basic levels of sedimentation (Figure 1). The fundamental layer, which is by far the largest one, is the “sedimentation of species” (wuzhong jidian 物種積澱). It includes universal forms that are common to all people. The second layer is the layer of “cultural sedimentation” (wenhua jidian 文化積澱). This narrower level consists of forms that are formed by specific thought and behavioral patterns, linguistic structures, and other factors shared by people belonging to particular cultures. The third layer is the smallest one. It is called “individual sedimentation” (geti jidian 個體積澱), and consist of our intimate worldviews, value systems, habits, emotions, as well as individual modes of thinking and feeling (Cauvel 1999, 156). All three layers form a dynamic entity: the changes in the topmost (individual) layer are the fastest and appear in the course of specific life experiences. The changes are the slowest in the most fundamental, deepest universal, bottommost layer of sedimented forms of human species. “From the viewpoint of an individual life, or even from the viewpoint of many generations, this level is fixed and static, since our limited sense organs cannot perceive or comprehend changes that took place gradually over a long historical evolvement that lasts several millions of years. Hence, these forms falsely appear to us as static and unchangeable” (Rošker 2019, 33).
Three levels of sedimentation
Rošker 2019, 33
The concept of sedimentation is also connected with Li’s view on the human subject (and with his notion of subjectality, which will be treated later). In his system, sedimentation is the very process that shaped the contemporary human subject. For him, the life of modern people in contemporary societies is lacking a meaningful context (Jensen 2005, 463). In order to provide them with new possibilities of self-awareness and self-perception, Li wished to expose and to highlight the experience of the individual as a historicized, activist subject. “The ‘subject’ of ‘subjectality’ is not merely able to ‘think’ or to ‘know,’ but can also act, work, invent, produce, congregate, cooperate, desire, feel, remember, and so on.” (Van den Stock 2020, 62). By shaping the neologism of sedimentation, he aimed to emphasize the historical identity of human beings as living parts of the evolvement of the entire humankind.
In their book titled The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise on the Sociology of Knowledge, Peter Bergman and Thomas Luckmann (1991, 85) also apply and describe the term sedimentation in a similar way, pointing out that only a small part of the totality of human experiences is retained in consciousness. Such experiences become sedimented, i.e. congealed in recollection as recognizable and memorable entities.
However, it is unlikely that Li Zehou had adopted their terminology, because he had earlier described the process of sedimentation in his first theoretical essay, Lun meigan, mei he yishu 論美感、美和藝術 (On Aesthetic Feeling, Beauty and Art), which was published in 1956, whereas Bergman and Luckmann’s book came out for the first time ten years later in 1966.16 In the essay Li emphasized the historical development of people’s social and cultural life by comparing it with the gradual layering of silt that accumulates along riverbanks and nourishes life around it:
Therefore, social life is like a long river. Slowly and endlessly, it flows towards new depths and vast, faraway places. It is always moving and ever changing. Yet, in tracing it to its very source, we see that its nature is to irrigate life. And in its endless changing there are also motionless and accumulations of firm forms and standards.
所以，社會生活是一條長河，它滔滔不絕地流向更深更大的遠方，它是變動的；但是，追本溯源，生活又有著它的續承性，變中逐漸積緊著不變的規範、淮規.
Li Zehou 1956, 71
As we could clearly see from the quote above, as early as in his twenties Li was borrowing from geological terminology to describe this idea of historical accumulation of human experiences. But the term “sedimentation” as such was mentioned for the first time in his book Pipan zhexuede pipan (Kangde shuping) 批判哲學的批判 (康德述評) (Critique of Critical Philosophy: A New Approach to Kant), which was first published in 1979 but written during the Cultural Revolution.
Regarding ethics, it is important to understand that according to Li, sedimentation enables human experiences to fuse into a complex and coherent entity, which unifies form and content, the natural and socio-cultural, and the senses and reason. In this context, we have to point out Li’s firm belief that the collective consciousness exists logically and historically prior to the individual self. For him, humanity is thus the amalgamation of reason as a social phenomenon into sense experience, which is natural in essence. In this way, reason is condensed, sedimented, internalized, and accumulated into sensual experiences, incorporating sociality and naturality into one concordant unity (Li Zehou 1994, 460). Li also elaborated on the ethical dimensions of sedimentation. He emphasized that in this regard, the process had wide implications: inter alia, the collective psychological formations created by sedimentation provided the groundwork for human empathy, which, in Chinese culture, manifests itself in the central Confucian virtue of (co)humaneness (ren 仁).
As Marthe Chandler (2016, 140) shows, Li’s theory of sedimentation could therefore effectively explain how Homo sapiens developed empathy. She founds her study on the theories by Michael Tomasello and Steven Mithen. According to them, the origin of language lies in the human cognitive ability, which manifests itself in the individual capacity of perceiving other humans as being the same as oneself (Tomasello 1999, 15 and Mithen 2006, 117). Yet, one could also presuppose that human brain has set up this kind of knowledge in the opposite way, namely, that a human being first recognized herself as an individual separated from other human beings (or the community as the elementary entity of self-identification), because s/he perceived him or herself as being “just like the others.” Many recent anthropological theories are still based upon the primary position of individual self-awareness (Rošker 2019, 61).
Li Zehou did not overtly state that the opposite was true. He did not explicitly claim that the social awareness is predominant but merely pointed to the complementary and correlative connection between the individual and their social environment (Li Zehou 2007, 186–187). Many contemporary neurologic research studies also emphasize this correlativity. There is evidently a “chicken-or-egg problem” regarding the question of which developed first. However, “the main point is that the two co-evolved, mutually enriching each other to create the mature representation of self that characterizes modern humans” (Ramachandran 2009, 2). Therefore, Li’s theory of sedimentation certainly “provides a perspective from which to remedy some of the individualistic assumptions of much contemporary social science” (Chandler 1916, 140) for it is consistent with contemporary scientific evidence.
Hence, sedimentation as a form of gradual development throughout human history certainly provides basic grounds for the shaping of human ethics and morality in the human mind.17 In this respect, it is important to recall that Li’s theory of sedimentation relies on the accumulation and condensation of experience. It aims to illuminate the historical nature of what was regularly misperceived to be “innate” or “transcendental” for the individual. Li accentuated that what was experiential for humankind later became “a priori” for the individuals (Li, Zehou 2016, 1094). This is the most important dimension of his central proposition according to which “the empirical is being transformed into the transcendental” (jingyan bian xianyan 經驗變先驗). This also (or especially) holds true for ethics and morality; Li firmly believes that the absolute nature of the mental formations such as Kant’s universal laws is typical of the rational structures of all of humankind. Li sees morality as that which makes human inwardness human and as that which enables us to continuously exist in groups and communities. Hence, the sedimentation of absolute moral laws is of utmost importance. The absolute aspects of sedimented human morality can then manifest themselves in all particular cultural environments. This is possible because morality is being sedimented as the vital part of what Li called the individual “psychological substance” (xinli benti 心理本體). Li emphasized that this was “precisely the absolute aspect of moral human psychology sedimented within relative ethical culture.”18 Li points out that even though conceptions of good and evil alter over time and in different societies, they also advance within constant accumulation following social advance and progress. This progress is visible, for instance, in the taking care of elders replacing the norm of killing them and in funerary objects replacing the burial of living humans to accompany the dead. Foot binding has also ended, and romantic love has become more accepted. Additionally, due to the ongoing homogenization of market economies, numerous ideas of good and evil are also slowly becoming similar. Our ethical views have an increasing amount in common. The ideas of good and evil produced through the sedimentation of human history move from human culture to human mind, becoming a part of shared humanness and permeating into human capacities and emotions (ibid., 1120).
However, for Li, the absoluteness of moral mental formation is not grounded in any kind of supernatural or divine entity. In this respect, he criticized the majority of Western theories because they are founded upon a common belief that only divine transcendence of humankind is absolute. He points out that even Kant’s “pure reason” transcends humankind.19 In Li’s view, this misconception is rooted in the fact that all principles, conventions, norms, and laws of human societies are changing and thus relative. In his view, these theories overlook the importance of the certainty and absoluteness sedimented by humankind through millennia of experience, history, and education (Li Zehou 2016, 1123). For him, there is absoluteness in the conception of “supreme goodness” in the sense of the preservation of human existence. This conception has fundamental or ontological value (benti jiazhi 本體價值) and does not necessitate any linkage to divine intentions. In this way, Li aimed to fill the empty space left by “the death of God” with “the continuous extension of human existence” (ibid.).
In Li Zehou’s system, central moral principles like free will are shaped through the condensation or solidification of reason and, in contrast to the common views of modern philosophers, can be explained and verified through neurocognitive science. Li was convinced that the issue here was one of mind-body dualism. For instance, according to Kant, reason (or the free will) was independent and divorced from the phenomenological world. In such a view, it was logical that science, which explains the sensory world, could not explain reason or free will. But in Li’s understanding, free will is a mental formation and a psychological state. As such, it is certainly related to the neurons through which this psychological state occurs. Hence, Li believes that in the future, neurology will be able to offer certain explanations of this occurrence, and he is convinced that through laboratory studies and experiments, it will be able to reveal the neurological activity that makes humans different from animals. He expects that science will confirm the existence of complex mental structures shaped through historical sedimentation and individual education.
I hope that the development of brain science in the next century will unveil this ability of humanness and hence further confirm the accurateness of my philosophical perspective of the “theory of sedimentation.” On this basis, people will have more and more opportunities to effectively develop their cognitive capacities and their creativity. They will have more opportunities to grasp their destinies.
我期望未來世紀腦科學的發展，將科學地揭開這一人性能力問題，進一步證實我這個 “積澱論” 的哲學視角的確當性，來更好地更有效地幫助人們去發展自己的才智能力，去創造、把握自己的命運.
Li Zehou 2006a, 17
In Li’s view, history is accumulative. The progressive nature of history means that for humankind as a whole the development of material life is followed by progression of ethics and morality. The sedimentation of certain collective conceptions of good and evil and the shaping of analogous emotions arises through the history and education of humankind (Li Zehou 2016, 1103). Through the long-lasting process of sedimentation, people can therefore gradually come to possess common ethical norms and moral principles.
3 Subjectality
Another central concept of Li Zehou’s philosophy, which is of immense importance for the understanding of his ethical thought, is the concept of subjectality. Like sedimentation, it belongs to the key notions in his theoretical framework, around which his entire theoretical system is constructed. In addition, it is one of the most important ideas forming the contemporary Chinese intellectual treatises (Lin 1992, 977).
Li’s notion of subjectality implies a radical reconceptualization of the subject. Just like his concept of sedimentation, it also became very influential in the Chinese academic world with the publication of his book Pipan zhexuede pipan: Kangde shuping 批判哲學的批判, 康德書評 (Critique of Critical Philosophy).
In shaping this concept, Li upgraded the notion of the self in postrevolutionary avant-gardism. Subjectality arose by sedimentation, and it surpasses individual consciousness, since it includes all facets of the humankind—the individual, communal, historical, natural, social, biological, sensual and rational. Even though the concept continues to be translated as subjectivity in most English editions of Li Zehou’s work and in the English secondary material, Li himself has frequently emphasized that this translation was misleading (see e.g. Li, Zehou 1999e, 174 and Li Zehou 1985a, 14). He exposes the basic discrepancy between the Chinese notions of zhuguanxing 主觀性 and zhutixing 主體性: while the former is an epistemological term, the latter one is ontological. Their diverse semantic connotations imply substantial dissimilarities in meaning. Translating both expressions as subjectivity can result in misunderstandings and reduce the precision of thought. Hence, Li suggests translating the notion zhutixing with a term of his own coining, “subjectality.”20
Li has positioned his concept of subjectality into the framework of his “practical philosophy of subjectality” (zhutixing shijian zhexue 主體性實踐哲學), a designation that accentuates the dynamic (but not dialectical) nature of his specific historical materialism and his entire philosophy of anthropo-historical ontology. In this philosophical framework, he sought the answer to the question about what were the foundational constituents of humankind and what establishes the notion of the human subject (zhuti 主體) as an active, autonomous agent. “In Li’s system, the answer to this question revolves around the central concepts of practice (shijian 實踐)” (Rošker 2019, 68).
The notion of subjectality as an objective characteristic of human existence cannot be reduced to the individual level. In the first place, it pertains to different types of human communities (classes, groups, organizations, nations, states societies, etc.). Hence, Li identifies two categories of subjectality. However, these two aspects cannot be completely and strictly separate from one another: the first one refers to humankind as a whole and the second to each individual’s identity. The former precedes and conditions the latter. The first category empowers humankind to generate for itself a configuration of subjectality, which comes into existence through the material practice of making and using tools. This feature is supra-biological and is rooted in a universal necessity (Li, Zehou 1986, 136) because without the tools, which represent a kind of extension of limbs, human beings would not be able to survive. The second category of subjectality constitutes the individual inwardness of a human subject who is defined by her ability to supersede the laws of external nature, and simultaneously to act upon it and to modify it through autonomous decisions.
Subjectality is thus a dynamic and historically evolved form of humanness, which is made up of two binary dimensions (Figure 2). While the first one is an ontological structure, the second dimension pertains to the relation between individual and society. The binary ontological structure consists of the techno-social or instrumental substance (gongju benti 工具本體), which occurs within the techno-social formation (gongyi-shehui jiegou 工藝—社會結構) of the human mind, and of the psychological substance (xinli benti 心理本體), which arises within a cultural-psychological formation (wenhua-xinli jiegou 文化—心理結構). The second dimension contains human collectivities, such as societies, organizations, nations, groups, or classes, (da wo 大我) as well as individuals (xiao wo 小我).21 These four elements are interrelated and they interact, even though the previous two precondition the latter two and are therefore of primary nature. However, each of them is composed in a complex and multifaceted way. In his philosophy, Li Zehou has explored the development of humanity as well as of individuals with the help of these two double structures (Li, Zehou 1999, 30).
The two double dimensions of subjectality
author: Jana S. Rošker
In Li’s anthropo-historical system, the active dimension of subjectality is rooted in free will.22 It is also grounded upon particular structural laws and objective principles. Subjectality is not a mere reflection of sensual experiences since it evolves from the basic activity of producing tools and using them in the constant procedure of social production. For him, this is the main reason why humans are not determined by their biological existence but are seen as evolving from the concrete historical process of social practice (Lin 1992, 979). On the other hand, humanness, i.e., the human nature in terms of what essentially characterizes human beings, is by no means identical to social nature in the simple sense of group nature, as the latter is also distinctive for animals. Li emphasizes that many kinds of animals create certain models of organization and divisions of labor, and even a kind of “moral behavior” or certain types of “altruism” with individual sacrifice for the preservation of the group or the kind (Li, Zehou 1986, 135). Li is a historical materialist, and hence, he frequently points out that human beings must primarily ensure their bodily existence before they occupy themselves with anything else. Nevertheless, the cultural-psychological aspects that manifest themselves in various social, ritual and linguistic scopes characteristically detach humans from other animals. According to Li Zehou, this difference arises precisely because humans—through their engagement in practice—possess subjectality.
Proceeding from Kant’s three Critiques, Li also aimed to explain his notion of subjectality through the lens of epistemology, ethics, and aesthetics. Because of the specific focus of the present study, we shall concentrate in this respect upon Li’s ethical connotations of the term.
For him, a coherent philosophy of mind cannot be reduced to epistemological issues. Therefore, Li’s subjectality necessarily includes the ideals, intentions, and sense of responsibilities of the subjects. All these important elements pertain to human ethical principles and the free will of the human subject (Li Zehou 1994, 469).
In this context, Li Zehou proceeds from the significance of Kant’s categorical imperative and emphasizes the elementary value of human beings: each individual life is meaningful simply because it is human (ibid., 468). In his view, the fundamental construction of human psychology is defined by the factors of qing 情 (sensitivity and emotions), will, and concepts. The latter two belong to the concept of human reason: while the will establishes its form, the concepts constitute its content. This fundamental structure, which has been formed through historical sedimentation, is absolute and can in this respect be compared to Kant’s categorical imperative.
Li admires Kant for demanding that individuals autonomously establish and follow free will. This requires the human subject to subdue him or herself to assume responsibility for the entire humankind and to fulfill their corresponding duties (ibid., 471). But in contrast to Kant, who saw these forms as completely independent from experiences, Li points out that they merely appear to be transcendental. In his view, they are still influenced by historical, social, and cultural conditions and concerns. Hence, they are still products of social developments throughout history, even though their alterations and modifications are much too slow to be noticed by concrete individuals. Similarly, the basic structure of free will also belongs to the agglomerations of human reason, which manifest itself in each individual and in all humankind. The sublime quality of free will, however, merely appears to exceed all social and individual interests and causal laws. Free will is transferred from generation to generation throughout the long-lasting course of human evolution as a universal form of reason, which can only be realized by autonomous human subjects. It is not connected to any ethical or moral contents, because these contents can divergently differ from culture to culture or from generation to generation.
Besides, reason alone is not something that would decidedly separate people from their sensuality and thus from other animals, for Li also regards human beings as “rational animals.” The difference between human beings and other species primarily occurs somewhere else, namely in the very realm of specifically human social existence, which is defined by subjectality and includes specific human values. Our mental capacities as such are not essentially divergent from our animal origins, because human psychological formations include an emotio-rational structure (qingli jiegou 情理結構), in which reason is melded into animal sensibility. However, here Li—once again—emphasizes that the difference between humans and other species does not depend on language, symbols and information systems, but rather occurs due to the material practice of making and using tools. This practice converts natural laws and struggles for survival into humanness and particular forms of human society. For Li, human reason has been shaped over millions of years, and it is still unceasingly accumulating and changing (ibid.). Li’s philosophical ethics does not deal with the animalistic individual, but rather with one who is a part of a collective social existence, including its various mental structures (Li Zehou 1994, 470).
Li Zehou’s notion of subjectality is thus based upon a philosophy that regards both the entire humankind and the individual human beings as subjects. Subjectality naturally includes the so-called inter-subjectivity of human relations. “Subjectality” and “inter-subjectivity” cannot be separated. Hence, “subjectality” itself indicates the product of the interaction between humans as part of communities and natural subjects.
On this basis, Li aimed to reinstall the traditional Chinese concept of humaneness, which he viewed as a specifically Chinese form of humanism (Li Zehou 1980, 89). For him, this was important, because he understood humanism as a significant element of universal human ethics, which has to be preserved and further developed (1985, 19). However, he warns that the classical notion of traditional European humanism was theoretically weak, because sentiment, cognition, emotion, and moral judgment cannot satisfactorily illuminate the enormously multifaceted developments of the relations between the individual and the society (Gu Xin 1996, 982). Hence, he distanced himself from Rousseau’s or Sartre’s largely individualistic kind of humanism. On the other hand, he also strongly opposed the rise of subjectivist forms of Western Neo-Marxism and the so-called contemporary Chinese or “socialist” humanism that became fashionable in the prevailing Chinese ideologies at the time. In this context, he warned against its exaggeratedly romanticized and idealized forms. For him, these forms of humanism were dangerous because they could not serve as a suitable tool of social change that could lead to truly substantial results due to their overly sentimental nature. He emphasized that such forms of ideology degraded the traditional Chinese notion of humaneness, which was truly humanistic in its essence. Besides, such idealized and ideologized variations of humanism had nothing to do with his own notion of subjectality, which he regarded as the real basis of everything that is truly human.
On the other hand, however, Li also sharply disapproved the criticism of humanism that came from neoconservative Chinese intellectuals. In his view, they did not understand the actual social and historical background underlying its basic theory. In his schema of subjectality Li intended to explain the moral and ethical interpretations of humanism through the lens of historical materialism in order to supersede the contradictions between individual and social as well as between uniqueness and universality. In this context, Lin Min (1992, 984) claims that with his specific notion of subjectality, Li aimed to bridge the ideological gap between the progressive and the conservative intellectuals in contemporary China. Simultaneously, he highlighted the axiological value of this idea.
In the contemporary societies that are marked by a highly developed technology, the most important questions are increasingly linked to culture and psychology. The problems we face are not problems of economic poverty, but those of spiritual poverty, of loneliness, isolation, and dullness. All these will become the most severe problems of the future world.
在現代科技高度發展的社會，文化心理問題卻愈來愈迫切而突出，不是經濟上的貧困，而是精神上的貧乏、寂寞、孤獨和無聊，將日益成為未來世界的嚴重課題.
Li Zehou 1994, 474
Li’s notion of subjectality aimed to offer a solution for these new kinds of social alienation. In the scope of this idea, he refused to elaborate on the Marxist analysis of capitalist economy but rather followed the Marxist idea of the person as a self-creative being. In this way, he created new paths for an innovative, critical, and humanistic reinterpretation and development of Marxism.23 He also criticized voluntarist tendencies of Mao Zedong’s ideology and clearly showed that they could be traced back directly to Confucianism (Chong 2005, 246).
4 One-World-View and Du 度 as a Dynamic Method of “Grasping the Proper Measure”
Li Zehou’s anthropo-historical ontology is based upon the holistic Chinese paradigm of the so-called one-world-view (yige shijie guan 一個世界觀), according to which there is only one world, namely the one we experience in our concrete life. In such a view, there is no possibility (and neither a necessity) of establishing another, transcendent, intangible world governed by a “Heavenly Kingdom,” by a personalized god, or by any kind of supernatural power. In contrast to the “two-world view,” which prevailed in the history of Western philosophy, this holistic paradigm does not include a fix and static differentiation between noumenon and phenomena or body and mind.
Numerous crucial concepts of Li’s philosophy—such as the emotio-rational structure, subjectality, sedimentation, or the concept of du 度 (which will be explained below)—can only be established and understood within this realm. The “one-world-view” is the very model that enables the complementary functioning of individual humans and the entirety of humankind, reason and emotion, and objective cognition and subjective judgment. This is because the one-world-view is also structured in accordance with a double dimension that comprise both material and spiritual aspects (Li Zehou 2016d, 8). This double dimension manifests itself on the most basic levels of the traditional cosmology: its central notion tian 天 can refer either to a non-anthropomorphic deity (in the sense of Heaven) or to the concrete heaven (in the sense of men’s natural environment that influences their actual material life).
The Chinese one-world-view is not limited to ontological and epistemological factors but also includes ethical implications. In the one-world-view, the thinking subject cannot be separated from the acting subject and the human mind cannot be divorced from its concrete bodily existence. In Chinese philosophy, there is no clear and fix or stagnant separation between epistemology and ethics.
Another important difference between the ethical implications of the Chinese one-world-view and Western ethics pertains to the relation between reason and emotion. In this respect, Li emphasized: “I believe that the focus on the integration of emotion and reason rather than mere reason is the philosophical basis for the major divergence between Chinese ethics and Western ethics” (Li, Zehou 2016, 1069). In his view, traditional Chinese ethics is essentially different from all those discourses that derive their ethical and social principles from some transcendent ideas or deities. There is almost no conception of “pure truth” or “pure reason” in Chinese philosophy. Li claims that because of such a worldview, traditional Chinese ethics puts emphasis on the value of “pragmatic reason” (shiyong lixing 實用理性). This kind of rationality differs from the practical or speculative reason24 because it is a historical product of human empirical existence. Thus, it is not completely a priori, nor is it separated from emotions (or intentions) and it does not pursue to detach human beings from the network of the relationships to which they belong. Therefore, it is tightly connected to the so-called culture of pleasure (legan wenhua 樂感文化) that marks traditional Chinese culture.25
A typical discourse belonging to the “one-world” model are the Confucian teachings, which advocate an ethics of pragmatic reason and offer people possibilities to strive for a society that upholds the values of human life, concrete experience, and emotion. In Li’s view, such a society enables people to discover pleasure and meaning in the worldly life.26 Hence, he believes that “Confucianism can function as a corrective to curb certain shortcomings of modern thought associated with liberalism, formal justice, abstract reason, and notions of the atomic individual” (ibid.).
Here, it is important to note that such a unity of beings naturally also predicates the unity of facts and values. In this context, the contemporary Chinese philosopher Yang Guorong, for instance, also highlights that even though at first glimpse, the real world seems to be determined by diversity rather than by oneness, beings in a world of diversity still do not exist in isolated and disconnected settings (2008, 272). He also points out that although each being is composed of multiple different dimensions, all beings necessarily succeed in holding these dimensions together within themselves. The variety of different features belongs to the level of fact, whereas the unity is rooted in the one world, which, in addition to the facts, also includes values and represents a complex network of relations.
Other theoreticians see the holistic character of traditional Chinese worldview in a different way. For example, the main representative of the second generation of Modern or New Confucianism (xin rujia 新儒家), Mou Zongsan 牟宗三, attempted to explain it with the concept of immanent transcendence (neizai chaoyue 内在超越), in which spiritual and rational notions have a double ontological nature and can simultaneously belong to both the transcendent and the immanent realm. Li opposed this notion and believed that it is incompatible with the one-world paradigm.
He claims that the idea of immanent transcendence is problematic, especially because Mou tried to elaborate on it within the Kantian framework. On the one hand, Mou followed the Confucian tradition and aimed to establish the moral imperative based on a unity of human and spiritual nature. In Mou’s view, the noumenon is rooted in inherent human morality. Therefore, he believes that notions such as the human heart-mind (xin 心) and humanness (or “human nature,” ren xing 人性) were “transcendental.” On the other hand, however, he believes in the Western “two-world view,” which separates the realm of noumenon from that of phenomena. In such understanding, transcendent abstract entities were rooted and developed in the concrete actuality of the material or physical world. They belonged to the noumenal world and simultaneously to the inwardness of concrete human beings. In contrast, Li emphasizes that in this Western framework “transcendence” necessarily means a realm that surpasses experience (Li Zehou 1999, 9).
According to Li, it is completely wrong to lay stress, on the one hand, upon the traditional Chinese notions of the unity of Heaven and people, and, on the other, to explain concepts that are originally confined to the sphere of sensuality and emotions such as “humaneness” or “inborn knowledge” (liangzhi 良知) as something immanently “transcendent” or “transcendental.” Further, Li stresses that, precisely because of the “one world-view,” the social and ideational development in ancient China could have led to the culture of pleasure, because in this framework human beings have no tensious relation towards external Deities or fears of god.
Rošker 2019, 137
Because of these reasons, Li claims that Chinese philosophy is exclusively immanent and the one-world is merely the concrete world in which we live. The unity of human beings with their social, cultural, and natural environment is achieved within this discrete, empirical, and sensual realm. This unity naturally tends toward harmony or equilibrium, which is not a state but a dynamic process. According to Li, harmony can be accomplished through the dynamic balancing of the ever-changing configuration of what Li denoted as (du 度) in the sense of a dynamic “grasping the proper measure,” which is another important idea constituting the core structure of his philosophical system.
However, we must be careful not to interpret these notions, which differ from the prevailing Western philosophical approaches, too superficially. Proper measure is a kind of the “golden mean,” but just as the holism of the one-world-view does not imply that everything in the universe is connected with everything else and that nothing can be separated from anything else, this “golden mean” has nothing to do with mediocracy. In the logic of the one-world-view, du is not entirely comparable to the Western notion of “proper measure” but rather represents the starting point and, at the same time, the fundamental approach of the pragmatic reason, which enabled people to implement their practical activities in a way that allowed them to obtain knowledge (and wisdom) necessary for their survival.
Du is a typical classical Chinese category, which is tightly linked to the contents and basic approaches of the Confucian classics Zhong yong 中庸 (The State of Equilibrium or Doctrine of The Mean). In Li’s system, it is a type of experience-based reasonableness, which is not determined by a priori reason. It is a dynamic criterion, which seeks to achieve the “middle way” in the mastering of every situation requiring judgments or decisions. Li describes du as a vibrant structure of proportions, as something that changes according to the discrete conditions of a certain time and space. He highlights that it is by no means an eternal mediator and it does not always remains always neutral. From an overall perspective, du can sometimes be extreme. Due to multifarious human experiences, it is easy to see that in righting wrongs, for instance, it is easy to exaggerate, but on the other hand, without exceeding the proper limits it is difficult to right wrongs. However, here it is important to note that not all wrongs must necessarily be righted. In such contexts, we always need to consider the situation. According to Li (2012b, 58), this is “the art of du” (dude yishu 度的藝術). In his view, we cannot approach problems of justice or moral duty through abstract conceptions of equality. In general, societies are characterized by various modes of integration and unrelenting diversity rather than equality. Therefore, we should strive to evaluate and grasp the du of different actual situations from the stance that takes into consideration the tension between history and morals in order to offer regulations and standards for moral behavior. Since it can only be applied within actual practice, this grasping of the “middle way” is necessarily defined by particularity than by universal laws of some abstract principles. Hence, it involves dealing with situations differently according to their particular conditions.
Therefore, the notion du cannot be understood as a simple and stagnant mathematical middle between two different possibilities, but rather a vibrant situational principle (Li Zehou 2012a, 2). It must be found and appropriately applied because in Li’s view concrete problems require concrete analyses. The inner logic of du is operational rather than transcendental. Hence, it is not identical to any form of dialectical logic, which is based upon oppositions, but can rather be expressed by the form A ≠A±, which is different from A = A, but also from A ≠ Ā (ibid.). This means that it is based upon and functions in accordance with the premise that A is not equal to any form of A, which refers to a kind of general contingency.
The historical experience of humankind (and this is especially clearly visible in China’s social development) can be summarized in the implementation of du on different levels of technological development, or, in Marxist terms, the development of the productive powers. Li (2016, 1091) is convinced that we should support economic development insofar as it betters human life, but simultaneously, we should remain emotionally aware of the misery that still remains in the world and preserve a sense of compassion toward others in order to allow moral emotion to guide our hold of “proper measure.”
In Li’s view, the concept du is of vital importance for all human beings because in the process of its development humankind could not have survived if it had not learned to apply it. Even in contemporary societies, du is of utmost importance. When reasonably applied, it can help balance, correct, and possibly even replace those aspects of social morality that are potentially harmful or dangerous. It could serve as an alternative criterion to the absolute rule of normative laws, abstract and thus void principles of equal rights, or of a mechanically constructed rational concept of justice. In this context, he suggested that societies should be guided “through virtue rather than utilitarian benefit, free choice, and the market” (Li, Zehou 2016, 1085). He has often emphasized that he valued harmony more than justice, explaining that “‘justice’ was chiefly a ‘rational structure,’ while ‘harmony’ encompassed both, emotion and, reason” (Li Zehou 2014, 2). Li claims that all harmony is to be found in the “regulation and proper constitution” of (modern) social morals by means of human emotio-rational structure and the system of relationalism. For him, this is the highest level of preserving the elementary “common good” and “good life” (Rošker 2019, 155). He also believes that this level is “higher than, though not a replacement for, fair and reasonable notions of justice and their distinction of right from wrong” (Li Zehou 2016, 60). On the other hand, it is important to note that Li’s idea of social harmony involves transforming humans through education and cultivation, and hence, it is still established on the basis of justice. As such, harmony is only a “regulative and properly constitutive”27 standard and can by no means be applied as a decisive criterion defining or dominating “justice.” Similarly, Li’s abovementioned notion of relationalism (guanxizhuyi 關係主義), which must be channeled by du in the Chinese sense,—dynamically grasping of a “proper measure”— cannot be understood as a negation or a complete annulment of the modern idea of individualism. It merely represents a denial of its absolute dominance. Hence, du as a part of the emotio-rational structure could function as a regulative principle for the individualism inherent in modern social morals.
Here, we must not forget that du is not a transcendent external force or a pure abstraction, but a genuinely human creation. Therefore, it also plays an important role in controlling human desires, but without pursuing to minimize or even eliminate them. The “State of Equilibrium or the Mean,” in which it is grounded, is thus of paramount importance, for it makes people aware of our limits, while simultaneously inspiring us to see and explore the unlimited space within this limited framework (Li Zehou 1985a, 298). This quest for a “middle way,” for an equilibrium between our desires and the actual boundaries of human life, which presumes negotiating with actuality and aiming to adapt oneself to it without losing one’s own uniqueness and originality, can also be detected in Li’s political philosophy. In this respect, he has always argued for sensible reforms instead of sudden shifts, evolution instead of revolution, and gradual adaptations instead of explosive changes:
Actually, I would like to highlight that all revolutions are harmful, irrespective of the question whether they are leftist or rightist. I have learned this from Chinese experiences.
其實我的主要觀點就是說, 因為再革命, 不論是左的革命, 右的革命, 帶來的都是禍害。我這個想法就是吸取中國的經驗教訓.
Li Zehou 1999a, 133
Besides, he strove for a “middle way” between two predominant streams of political thought in modern China, namely the liberalist and the essentialist national current:
The appropriate way for China is to choose the abovementioned “du.” Both of these currents are exaggerated. The former stresses the market economy and the latter the risks that such economies bear in themselves. The former emphasizes global unification and the latter warns against it. They are both right. Now we have to ask ourselves how to find a du to evaluate them. In order to do so, we have to surpass them, because both of them include some severe problems.
中國正確的道路就是我剛才講的, “度”。這兩個都是過了。這個強調市場經濟, 那個強調市場經濟帶來的危害, 一個強調全球一體化, 一個反對, 都對啊。怎麼掌握這個東西的度, 才是重要的。要超越這兩種東西, 因為這兩種理論都有問題.
ibid.
In this sense, du also offers an important tool for the establishment of the abovementioned culture of pleasure, for its basic nature is not only epistemological but also ontological. In this context, Li highlights that the Chinese tradition lays stress upon “du,” the “middle way,” “harmony,” and “pleasure,” because it does not merely value the balance of external social relations but also the harmony and the feeling of pleasure in the psychology of the members of society.
Du (dynamic grasping of a proper measure) has to be seen as being in a correlative and complementary relation with particular situations and the people’s emotions occurring in these situations:
The core part of the techno-social (or instrumental) substance is “du” (the dynamic grasping of a proper measure), while the core element of the psychological substance is “qing” (emotion or emotional response to concrete situations). This double substance is mutually shaping one another and is appearing as a unity, similar to the symbol of the double fish that form the unity of the Taiji diagram, in which yin and yang are in complementary relation.
工具本體以 “度” 為核心，心理本體以 “情” 為核心，雙本體互相塑造而實為一體，好比雙魚負陰抱陽以合成太極圓圖.
Li Zehou 2012c, 72
For a more detailed description of the general characteristics of these discourses and Li’s role in them, see for instance Li Zehou 2008b; 2016, 284–290; Rošker 2019, 185ff; Samei 2010, ix–xix; Wang Jing 1996, 93–117; etc.
For a detailed account of Li’s philosophy in English language, see my book on Li Zehou (Rošker 2019), and the anthology Li Zehou and Confucian Philosophy (2018), edited by Roger T. Ames and Jia Jinhua.
Originally, the name was shorter. In his earlier works, Li denoted this methodological framework simply as anthropological ontology (renleixue bentilun 人類學本體論) (Li Zehou 2002).
Actually, there are three books that bear the name of this paradigm—one with the shorter title (Historical Ontology) and two with the longer title (Anthropo-Historical Ontology); most of the content of the latter is a reworked, expanded, and completed versions of the material collected in his book Outline of My Philosophy.
Through the process of naturalization, human beings might turn back to nature and so emancipate themselves from the omnipresent “control of instrumental rationality, from alienation by material fetishism, and from enslavement by the system of power, knowledge, language, and so forth” (Wang, Keping 2007, 251). The process of naturalization enables human beings to achieve and enjoy freedom in an aesthetic and spiritual sense. In doing so, the original biological concepts pertaining to the human body are turned into aesthetic notions (Li, Zehou 2010, 114).
In the original version of his Economic and Philosophical manuscripts, Marx writes about “Menschlichkeit” (2005, 59), which is translated as “human nature” in the English version (2007, 46), although “human nature” is “menschliche Natur” in German.
A.C. Graham first published his innovative view on the term in 1967 in his essay, “The Background of the Mencian Theory of Human Nature,” which was originally published in Tsing Hua Journal of Chinese Studies. Almost two decades after the first publication, the article was reprinted in his Studies in Chinese Philosophy and Philosophical Literature in Singapore. Later, Roger T. Ames developed this debate further in his essay, dedicated to his teacher titled “The Mencian Conception of Ren Xing: Does It Mean ‘Human Nature’?” and in “Reconstructing A.C. Graham’s Reading of Mencius on xing 性: A Coda to ‘The Background of the Mencian Theory of Human Nature’” (1967). Some Sinologists, such as Irene Bloom, did not accept this interpretation and provided several well-founded arguments against it. Nevertheless, the notion has still been translated in different ways. However, I follow Graham’s and Ames’ interpretation of the term ren xing because I agree that translating the phrase as “human nature” is not only controversial but also problematic. In contrast to most other authors, I decided to translate it into “humanness” in order to show that it is something that “makes us distinctively human,” as pointed out by Ames. In this sense, it is important to see that it is also the outcome of human culture as the primary source of human cultivation and development. On this account, ren xing as humanness can be associated with Li’s theories of sedimentation and with his notion of cultural-psychological formation.
For a rather comprehensive explanation and discussion of the ren xing problem, see Graham 1986, Ames 1991, Bloom 1994, and Ames 2018.
Li sees the root of such “universal necessity” in objective sociality.
In order to emphasize the importance of concrete individual realities within the overall schema of historical materialism, he denoted these approaches as the “philosophy of eating” (chi fan zhexue 吃飯哲學; Li Zehou 2016b, 648–649).
As is well known, Immanuel Kant tried to summarize his theory in three basic questions, namely “What can I know?” (epistemology), “What should I do?” (ethics), and “What can I hope for?” (theology). Li points out that, toward the end of his life, Kant added to these a forth question, namely “What is a human being?” This question obviously belongs to anthropology. Li emphasizes that his own anthropo-historical ontology begins with Kant’s fourth question by proposing as its central tenet the fact that humans are alive (Rošker 2019, 224).
Condensed or solidified reason is an important notion of Li’s theory, and especially of his ethical thought; therefore, we will further discuss it in later chapters. For now, we shall only highlight that it belongs to the crucial forms of human mental structures, which are transmitted from one generation to another. Although the concrete contents, included in these forms, are different according to specific societies, periods of time, nations, or classes, the substance of human ethics is being developed and accumulated precisely through these formal principles (Li Zehou 2015c, 20).
The concepts of pragmatic reason (shiyong lixing 實用理性), emotio-rational structure (qingli jiegou 情理結構), and emotion-based substance (qing benti 情本體) will also be further explained in this book.
Hence, it is by no means coincidental that Li Zehou’s theory of anthropo-historical ontology has led to a critical reconsideration of the conformist version of the Marxist epistemology and theory of perception by several Chinese theoreticians.
As already mentioned, Li Zehou has completed the early Marxist concept of humanization of nature (zirande renhua 自然的人化) with his own idea of the naturalization of human beings. In Li’s view, humans are formed through the process of material practice and mental sedimentations, which manifest themselves in specific “cultural psychological formations” (wenhua xinli jiegou 文化心理結構), reconceptualizing both their environment and their inwardness into something called “humanized nature” (renhuade ziran 人化的自然).
In the following years, the term “sedimentation” gradually became a common expression with which various theoreticians from the field of sociology, anthropology, and other related fields have described the process in which information and experiences were encoded and stored in the human mind (see for instance Giddens 1981 and 1984, Butler 1988 etc.).
In this context, Li’s translator Paul D’Ambrosio points to the fact that in Li’s theory, the individual’s own moral understanding and psychology is an accumulation of experiences in education (D’Ambrosio’s note in Li, Zehou 2016, 1145).
However, in this respect, it has to be emphasized that even though Li accepts and even appreciates plurality and relativity in certain aspects of ethics and morality, he strongly opposes ethical relativism.
Although Li’s critique is directed against a “majority” of Western theories and against a “common” view, which means that it only operates with the most influential and most dominant theories, it still seems to be a bit essentialistic. It completely ignores the extent to which the modern Western self-understanding—beginning with the very Kant!—has been ever more re-shaped and re-moulded through a continuous critique and problematization of the idea of God and transcendence and through a progressive diminishing of their importance.
Actually, I am not completely sure whether it was truly necessary to coin a new, previously inexistent term to express the Chinese notion of zhutixing. In this regard, Li could have also considered the existing English term “subjectness,” which also pertains to the specific human quality of being a subject.
Li Zehou has first applied the notions of the individual in the sense of a “small self” (xiao wo 小我), and the humans as collective or social beings (da wo 大 我) in his book Critique of Critical Philosophy: A New Approach to Kant. Here, Li Zehou was quoting Kang Youwei’s 康有為 (Li Zehou 2001, 52). However, at the threshold of the 20th century, the two categories were also often mentioned by Liang Qichao 梁啟超 and Sun Yat-sen (Sun Zhongshan 孙中山).
Because of this emphasis on the social nature of subjectality, some scholars (e.g., Wang Jing 1996, 21) criticize the philosopher, pointing out that this kind of subjectality could “hardly be associated with any sense of autonomy, since it is conceived first and foremost as an end product of socialization” (ibid.). However, they seem to overlook the fact that, for Li, social practice, education, and other crucial dimensions of the socialization process were anything but absolutely determining, for they included the component of free will.
Besides, Li Zehou’s concept of subjectality also directly influenced the then emergent shaping of subject-related theories in Chinese literature and literary theory (Lin 1992, 975).
We will comprehensively explain this specifically Chinese non-transcendental form of moral reason in a separate section.
In Li’s view, this has been thoroughly reflected in both Chinese literature as well as Chinese philosophy, in the lacking of fear of the unknown and unknowable ultimate spiritual realm, and, hence, in the absence of the sense of guilt or shame. Chinese people were satisfied with the peaceful and harmonious pleasures provided by this unification of body and spirit. Because they didn’t possess faith in an external supreme God, they had to find the meaning and the value of their lives by themselves, without the help of any external forces (Li Zehou 2016, 159). Besides, such culture does not value sacrifice, self-abnegation, or the feeling of failure because of the impossibility of reaching a more desirable realm or state (D’Ambrosio, Carleo, and Lambert 2016, 1059).
In Li’s view, this is also the reason because of which Chinese people find it difficult to accept the formalism in Kant’s ethics: “Filled with a sense of history, the Chinese mind always searches for some historical interpretation. Thus, the ‘transcendental’ and the a-priori must also have their roots in this world, in the movement of history” (Li, Zehou 1999g, 180).
Some readers might wonder how anything could be regulative and constitutive at the same time, for the two notions in question are mostly used contrastively as opposites. However, the stress in this phrase is on the word “properly,” and thus the phrase has to be understood as a succession and not as an opposition. First, the society has to be well-regulated, and then after the right conditions have been established in this way, it can be constituted in a proper way.