Suchergebnisse

In comparative philosophy, there arises the problem of ground for comparison. Qualitative comparison is based on a certain qualitative ground for comparison, e.g., weight. Quantitative comparison brings more clarity into the qualitative comparison, introducing discrete and homogeneous units: how much does it weigh? How much does it cost? Both qualitative and quantitative comparison start from a ground that is already given and clear; they simply apply it to the case at hand (Is this one heavier than the other? If so, by how much?). In other—and more interesting—cases, the common ground is obscure: we have the feeling that A and B can be compared, but how exactly? The inability to immediately proceed to application creates a tension, and this opens the intensive dimension of comparison. The intensity has two sides: obscure and clear. The obscure side has its articulations, but they interpenetrate each other. Our task is to unfold, unravel, unpack. Then we will bring something to clarity where the elements do not interpenetrate so much but are juxtaposed (in different qualities and quantities). This will give rise to new tensions and new unfolding. The obscure articulations do not resemble the clear ones, and their unfolding is a creative process.

AbstractIn this article, I bring together the famous American semiotician Terrence Deacon and the most famous proponent of Neo-Confucianism, Zhu Xi 朱熹 (1130–1200). I focus on two of Deacon's central concepts, constraints and work. All systems are constrained in some way, i.e. they behave in certain ways, but not in all ways. And "work" means that in their existence they make some difference: a gas in thermal equilibrium does not produce work. I bring these notions together with Zhu Xi's concepts ofli理 andqi氣.Lican be understood as internal articulation of a system or an event, its "veins." Andqiis the power of existence of a system or an event, its "energy." In this light, I discuss the topics of the priority ofli, the coagulation ofqi, the normativity implied in theli, and self-cultivation. A connection to Deacon can give us new tools to make sense of those ancient topics of Chinese philosophy, and a connection to Zhu Xi can give semiotics in general and Deacon's theory in particular an extension to certain fields that have been underdeveloped in Western thought, for instance self-cultivation.

I propose an interpretation of Zhu Xi 朱熹 (1130–1200) seen through the ontology of Gilles Deleuze. Zhu Xi is one of the most prominent Chinese philosophers, the figurehead of the so-called Neo-Confucian school, and Deleuze is arguably one of the most important Western philosophers of the twentieth century. Both philosophers presented an ontology of differentiation, whose main aspects or stages I try to analyse in the paper: Deleuze's notions of the virtual, dark precursor, field of individuation, intensities and the actual; and parallel to these, Zhu Xi's notions of the veins (li 理), supreme ultimate (taiji 太極), energy (qi 氣), and things (wu 物). It is argued that a Deleuzian (re)interpretation of Zhu Xi is possible and that it may open new tools of analysis for studying Chinese philosophy as well as create a conceptual space that can bring together concepts and practices from different traditions.

Deleuze has presented one of the richest ontologies in 20th century philosophy, and its conceptual machinery could be more fully used also in Sinology. This article focuses on two of his concepts: actualization and counter-actualization. Actualization proceeds from the virtual and through the intensive processes of individuation moves towards actual structures. Counter-actualization proceeds in the opposite direction, and starting from the actual, through creative involution discovers intensities and the virtual. It has the aspects of making a body without organs, creating intensities, and diversifying them. Actualization by differentiation is a common understanding of genetic processes in the Chinese tradition in general, and in the Zhuangzi in particular. In this article, Deleuze's concepts are used to (re)interpret the account of differentiation in the story of the death of Zhuangzi's wife, and the strange story from the chapter "Ultimate Joy" where "horses engender men." Counter-actualization by discarding, dismantling, forgetting, thawing of forms and reaching towards the intensive and the virtual, a merging with the Dao, is a recurrent theme in the Chinese Daoism, and it is shown on the example of Yan Hui's "sitting and forgetting," master swimmer of Lü, and the thought of death, how they project beyond the actualized rigid and metric forms toward a more intensive, plastic, and joyful existence.

The main purpose of the present article is to explicitly link the Analects to the embodiment theory (ET). As indicated in the introduction, embodiment has been an important topic in recent Sinological research, but until now rather few explicit connections have been made with the ET. In relation to the embodied knowledge, the article discusses the following topics: embodiment, embeddedness, enactment, extendedness, emotivity, implicitness, emergence, joy and apprenticeship or self-cultivation. The same themes are found to be important in the Analects, with a plethora of examples. Arguably ET could thus be a useful paradigm for discussing several important themes of the Analects. And the Analects being one of the founding texts of the Chinese philosophical tradition (though similar concerns are manifest also in other texts), it could also be beneficial to further developments in the ET itself, on the condition that its proponents familiarize themselves with the Chinese philosophical tradition where important issues of ET have been explicitly discussed for two and a half millennia.