[Editor’s Note:] Professor Antonio S. Cua is teaching at the School of Philosophy and Theology, Catholic University of America, Washington D. C. Born in the Philippines, he graduated with Ph.D. from University of California, Berkeley, CA., as one of the last class students of Stephen C. Pepper, who directed his dissertation Reason and Virtue: A Study in the Ethics of Richard Price in the early 60s and prefaced it as published in book form. He is an outstanding figure especially in comparative ethics. He served as President of International Society of Chinese Philosophy.

In The Chinese View of Life, Professor Fang presents a highly original thesis on the unitary spirit of Chinese morality and ancient Chinese morality and ancient Chinese ethical thought.[1] A historian or textual scholar will probably find Fang’s exposition unpersuasive, but a philosopher sympathetic with hermeneutical method may find Fang’s thesis a promising experiment in creative hermeneutics, or in the familiar language of the I-Ching, a deployment of sheng sheng zhi li (????), i.e., an exhibition of the principle of creative vitality in philosophical reconstruction. However, from the analytical point of view, Fang’s thesis is interesting mainly in suggesting an integrative approach to classical Chinese philosophy. While Fang, like many contemporary Chinese scholars, has not been impressed with the contributions of analytic philosophy, I believe that he would have endorsed a method combining hermeneutical insights with relatively clear and deep analysis, especially of the principles of the value-centered ontology in primordial Confucianism. In one of his addresses on Chinese philosophy, his complaint against analytic method has less to do with the method per se, than with the tendency of the practitioners of the method toward aspect-obsession, that is, the tendency to engage in superficial, partial" rather than in penetrative, exhaustive analysis." [2] And in the case of analytic ethics, because of the influence of the scientific attitude of value-neutrality, there is an evident neglect of the genuine spirit of morality. What we have instead is a play with ethical words without regard to the value implicit in their intelligible uses.[3] Later, I shall say more about the nature of Fang’s dissatisfaction with analytic method.

Fang’s thesis on the unity of the spirit of Chinese morality or moral theory, to my knowledge, has not been subjected to systematic analysis. For this reason, we confront a difficulty in interpretation and evaluation. It is puzzling to me that despite his critique of a lack of logical acumen among most Sung Confucians, with respect, say, to their careless use of ji, as in such expressions as xing ji li (???) and xin ji li (???),[4] he makes no attempt at providing a holistic or "penetrative" analysis. In its place we have a general judgment: "as a matter of fact, the Neo-Con-fucians in the Sung dynasty were weak in logic; they often, if not always, committed a logical fallacy by saying A is B, thereby to express the analytic identity between two entities."[5] It is possible, however, indeed, even plausible, to construe the Neo-Confucian uses of ji as quasi-identity expressions, as related attempts to amplify the Confucian vision of the unity and harmony of man and nature (????), rather than as literary identities that offend the logical canon governing the uses of analytic distinctions. At any rate, in the case of such widespread use of ji in Wang Yang-ming (???), one can propose an interpretation consistent with Fang’s emphasis on holistic or integrative analysis.[6]

Let me now focus on Fang’s thesis on the unitary spirit of Chinese morality and moral theory as a thesis in axiological or ethical metaphysics. I use the term "ethical metaphysics" in order to distinguish it from Professor Mou Tsung-san’s notion of a moral metaphysics, a notion invented as a critical contrast with Kant’s notion of a metaphysics of morals. Unlike Kant’s notion, which takes morality as a subject matter of metaphysics, for Mou, moral metaphysics (inclusive of ontology and cosmology) considers metaphysics as a subject matter to be approached through a conception of human moral nature.[7] Fang’s ethical metaphysics, on the other hand, is more markedly inspired by Whitehead and Bergson in his conception of organicism and flux in nature. it is quite evident, however, that both Fang and Mou are concerned with the basic issue of the metaphysical foundation of Chinese morality and moral theory. Unlike Mou, Fang is quite explicit on this issue, construed as one concerning the coherent inheritance of the insights of classical Confucianism, Taoism, and Mohism. The inclusion of Mohism is somewhat problematic, since we have no such discussion in Fang’s Chinese Philosophy: Its Spirit and Its Development. Even in the earlier The Chinese View of Life , we find few references to Mo Tzu or to the later Mohists. At any rate, the issue, while not a live one in contemporary Western moral philosophy, is germane to understanding some recent works. I have in mind, for example, Paul Weiss’ work entitled Toward A Perfect State. [8] Much of this work, in my view, presupposes a solution to the problem of axiological or ethical metaphysics.[9]

This passage offers a succinct statement on the metaphysical foundation of morality. In effect, it is Fang’s interpretation of the Confucian vision of the unity and harmony of man and nature (????). The statement is as profound as it is difficult to elaborate in a systematic way. In The Chinese View of Life, it is one of Fang’s alternative expressions of his philosophy of comprehensive harmony, or as I would like to call it, a statement of the nature of an axiological metaphysics.[11] With respect to Chinese morality, it is a statement of the background vision that renders intelligible her thought and practice. In what follows, I shall inquire into the possibility of systematic elaboration of this vision.

For this purpose, we are fortunate to have two complementary guides in Fang’s Chinese Philosophy and The Chinese View of Life. In the former, we find an approach in terms of his discussion of three ostensibly common features among primordial Confucianism, primordial Taoism, and Mahayana Buddhism, namely, (1) the doctrine of pervasive unity, (2) the doctrine of Tao, and (3) the exaltation of the individual, along with an emphasis on a conception of the human individual "in terms of observed actualities and idealized possibilities."[12] The doctrine of pervasive unity, according to Fang, is implicit in Confucius’ saying that "the Tao inherent in me is that of an all-pervading unity" (The Analectics, 15:2). And significantly, in Confucianism this theme is diversified into the Tao of Heaven (???), the Tao of the Earth (???) and the Tao of man (???), reminiscent of Hsün Tzu’s distinction, though it is the Tao of man that occupies the center of Hsün Tzu’s ethical inquiry.[13] For my present purposes, it is on the Tao of man that I shall focus, with a reminder, of course, of its interplay with the Tao of Heaven and Earth. With the supposition that it is the tao of man that pervades Confucian thought, we can appreciate the different approaches to the tao in Taoism and Chinese Buddhism as different, yet complementary versions of the holistic character of the Confucian tao, made explicit in Hsün Tzu and in Sung-Ming Confucianism.

While Fang seems to reject this interpretation, it is quite consistent with his view that Confucianism is "a constructive philosophy of comprehensive harmony invested with creative energies of life."[14] Indeed, the philosophy of comprehensive harmony expounded in can hardly be rendered intelligible without such a presupposition. And this means that the principal insights of primordial Taoism and Chinese Buddhism can be considered as eligible candidates for absorption and integration within the framework of primordial Confucianism. The primary focus on the tao of man provides a criterion for determining the ethical contributions of classical Taoism and Chinese Buddhism, i.e., for testing their concrete significance for human life, and for assessing the claim that they may be considered as different versions of Tao. On this line of thinking, we may even include Mohism as suggested by Fang’s remark that Confucianism, Taoism, and Mohism are "different versions" of his philosophy of comprehensive harmony.[15] If I am not far from the mark, the exaltation of the individual, Fang’s third common feature, simply brings out the locus and point of departure for pursuing the realization of the tao of man, the thread (i-kuan, ??) that runs through Confucius’ teachings.

However, Fang’s approach of ascribing three common features to major Chinese philosophical traditions is problematic. In the first place, particularly in light of Fang’s devaluation of the contributions of Neo-Confucianism, with the possible exception of Wang Yang-ming’s thought, it is difficult to lay out in a clear and convincing manner the view that these ways of thinking can be explicated in a co-equal and interdependent fashion without espousing in some sense the primacy of one over the other two. My own inclination to assign a preeminent status to classical Confucianism is probably not subject to the same critique. For however we conceive tao, for the Confucian, any pretended version must have a concrete significance for changing human life, a cash-value, so to speak, in terms of its relevance to actual thought and practice within a moral community. For the Confucian, while saying this is not altogether informative, it is an important truism, a reminder that the exaltation of the human individual is something to be done only within the setting of a moral community."[16] Any attempt to show the concrete significance of tao must pay heed to actual, living humans as members of a community of persons. The transformation of "human actualities into idealized possibilities" depends largely on the respect accorded to each human actuality as having potentialities for ideal transformation. More-over, there is also the need to accept human limitations, particularly in relation to the constraints imposed by natural order. However we conceive this natural order, the very notion of transforming actual humanity into idealized possibility depends, in part but in a crucial way, on acknowledging the constraints of nature upon human thought and action.

Let me turn to another guide in The Chinese View of Life, a guide that is complementary to the one in Chinese Philosophy, and to a large extent, adopted in the latter with little additional elaboration. I have in mind the chapter on cosmology. Before proceeding to this guide, let me offer a preface and also record my admiration upon reading Fang’s brilliant and incisive use of what appears as a perplexing distinction—the ti-yong distinction (????), which is commonly rendered as "substance and function." At issue for Fang is the plausible articulation of the essential features of Chinese cosmology. Says Fang, "The Universe ... is a kind of well-balanced and harmonious system which is materially vacuous but spiritually opulent and unobstructed. Its physical form may be limited in extent, but its ideal function is infinite in essence." Here Fang points out, we have a characterization of Chinese cosmology as "a conception of finite substance which is, withal, a conception of infinite function." [17]

Fang urges us to think of a lecture-hall as "a vast expanse of hollow space scented with pure air," of a Chinese poem that contains the line "a silent lover before you is most charming," of Laotzu’s comparison of cosmic vacuity (xü,?) to bellows: "It is hollow, yet it loses not its power; being active, it sends forth air all the more" (Tao Te Ching, Chap. 5). [18] And we may add, Chuangtzu’s notion of the usefulness of the useless (wu-yong zhi yong, ????).[19] "The whole mystery lies in the attempt to transform what is substantially solid, to annul what is physically impenetrable and to realize what is ideally vacuous in spiritual function."[20] For Fang, the possibility of such a transmutation lies in keeping our attention on the pivot of Tao, in "intending to be thoroughly impartial and sympathetic to the rest of the universe. And, therefore, we are in a moral position to enable all things in the universe to be in a state of essential relativity and mutual sympathy, acquiescing in the feeling that there is a sense of infinite joy and bliss permeating every form of existence."[21] Indeed in Chinese wisdom, the universe has attributes of both morality and art; it is "fundamentally the realm of value." For this reason, we can properly characterize Chinese cosmology as "essentially a value-centric philosophy."[22]

Fang goes on, in a more perspicuous way, to offer a set of principles, which in my limited understanding is more a project for systematic exposition than a detailed explication of his theory of axiological or ethical metaphysics. My difficulty in embracing this project in toto, however, does not affect my appreciation of his insightful use of the ti-yong distinction, for so often Chinese philosophical distinctions such as ti-yung, li-qi (??), or jing-quan (??) have caused a great deal of Western misunderstanding owing to the predominant tendency in the West toward bifurcation, as Fang recurrently stresses. And perhaps, more fundamentally because of the implicit acceptance of the logic of genus and species as having a fixed categorical reference and use independent of the context of discourse. So often, useful distinctions, e.g., mind and body, means and end, action and consequences, are readily transformed into dichotomies, thus precluding a serious inquiry into their interconnection. Instead, external relation is more the typical concern among Western philosophers, with Whitehead and Dewey as notable exceptions. Regardless of the truth of this observation about Western philosophy in general, most useful philosophical distinctions among concepts, for Chinese philosophers, are contextual rather than categorical. And this is unsurprising given the shared, common vision of the unity and harmony of man and nature (tian-ren he-yi, ????), which encourages the exploration and establishment of interconnection rather than mere external connection. As Fang forcefully points out in his introductory lecture on primordial Confucianism and primordial Taoism:

These remarks on analysis provide us a clue to a systematic way of understanding Fang’s set of principles, for articulating his vision of comprehensive harmony. Fang lists and briefly explains six principles, earlier given in a Chinese article entitled "Three Types of Philosophic Wisdom" (zhe-xue san hui, ????):[24]

P1. Life (sheng zhi li, ???).

P2. Love (ai zhi li, ???).

P3. Primordial unity (yuan-shi-tong-hui zhi li, ??????).

P4. Creative advance (hua-yu zhi li, ????).

P5. Equilibrium and Harmony (zhong-he zhi li, ????).

P6. Extensive Connection (pang-tong zhi li, ????).

In The Chinese View of Life, these principles are proffered as a compendious statement. Only four principles are deemed relevant in his Chinese Philosophy. In his exposition of the second phase of primordial Confucianism for instance, P2 and P5 are ignored for the reason that he is mainly concerned with "their bearing upon the philosophy of change [I-Ching, or Yi-Jing, The Book of Creativity]."[25] Notably, Fang reminds us that these principles are interrelated, for "from the viewpoint of organicism, no set of fundamental principles formulated in a system of metaphysics can be cut and thrust into an airtight compartment without interpenetration." [26] The exposition of the four principles quotes extensively from The Chinese View of Life. For a moral philosopher, this is quite surprising in view of Fang’s recurrent emphasis on the value-centric character of Chinese ontology and metaphysics. The omission of P2 and P5 (principles of love and principle of equilibrium and harmony), in effect, relegates the Confucian ethical concern to a position subordinate to the metaphysical one.

P3 and P4 (primordial unity and creative advance) are not really two distinct principles of co-equal status, for the former, conceived as the principle of universal flux, already involves the idea of one special characteristic of emergent novelty, except that the principle of creative advance suggests progress toward the development and realization of Tao. But this suggestion is misleading, for as Fang is wont to stress, creative novelties cannot always be regarded as emergent, assuming a character completely divested of its association with the source of emergence. To use Stephen Pepper’s term, emergent novelties crucially depend on intrusive novelties, for how else can we identify the former without attending to the latter, novelties that have a historical past?[27] Process is not always progress or spontaneous exhibition of creative advance.

For developing a more viable conception based on Fang’s insights, I suggest that we recast his concern with principles in a different set, incorporating some of his principles. Before I give such a list, I must warn you of its provisional character. Over the past three weeks, I have discarded more than two different versions. The present one represents no-thing more than a proposal for further discussion and not a final formulation. For the present, the principles are offered as a point of departure for further inquiry, as an initial inkling toward a satisfactory solution to the current issue on the metaphysical foundation of Chinese morality. The sketch includes some of Fang’s principles and acknowledges one of his insights on Chuang-tzu’s notion of qi-wu ??), which he marvelously renders as "levelling up all things." And like Fang, I drop out the principle of love and the principle of equilibrium and harmony, not because I desire to subordinate the ethical to the metaphysical perspective, but because of a presumption that these principles are best regarded as alternative, complementary expressions of the Confucian tao, which is basically an ethical vision. In my view, at issue in providing a metaphysics as the foundation of morality or moral theory is the question of the employment of metaphysical inquiry in elucidating an ethical vision.[28] This assumption is indubitably open to challenge. However, it is one implicit in Fang’s characterization of Chinese cosmology. Recall his view that for the Chinese the universe has the attributes of morality and art. Again, like Fang, I take it as unproblematic to think of this universe as a realm of flux, "a concurrence of universal life." Against these background assumptions, here is my list of principles:

Both the limitation of space and time, not to say of my present uncertainty in exposition, allow me only a few brief explanations. An alternative expression of PI is Fang’s sheng zhi li [Principle of Life, ???], which is a collapse of sheng-sheng zhi li [Principle of Creative Creativity, ????] in the I Ching. In one of his lectures, Fang thinks that this expression means "unceasing, continuous creativity."[29] I take this principle also as implicit in Hsüntzu’s notion of "using rightness to cope with changing circumstances" (yi-yi ying-bian, ????)[30] I have added to Fang’s principle of life a notion of interplay of the creative activities of different entities, for their activities do affect one another. Here we have an articulate aspect of Confucian ethical vision. For me P2, the principle of essential relativity and transcendence, which is a fundamental insight of Chuangtzu,[31] involves an acknowledgement of the value perspective of each entity and yet at the same time makes explicit the nature of the ethical vision as an object of inspiration and aspiration toward the transcendence of such limited perspectives. Value-transcendence is what one can learn from Chuangtzu’s reminder that it is ming (clarity, enlightenment) that enables us to "level things up" (qi-wu).

However, such a transcendence is possible because of our acceptance of P3, the principle of extensive connection. For it is such an acknowledgement of interconnectedness of all existent things that enables us to appreciate the limitation of individual value-perspectives. In this light, we may observe here that it is this acknowledgement in Chinese ethics that is incompatible with the Western notion of exclusive, atomic individuals, particularly in political liberalism. For the Chinese, the exaltation of the individual is not the exaltation of discrete, atomic individuals. On the contrary, the respect for the integrity of individual persons does not entail exclusiveness, because each is an embodiment of a limited good complementary to other limited goods in the light of the vision of comprehensive harmony. In my view, such a vision is essentially an ideal of ethical excellence. In this manner, P4 and P5 (the principle of rectification and the principle of reconciliation) are needed to articulate the concrete significance of the ideal of ethical excellence. [32]

Value-transcendence thus involves value-restoration and rectification. There are no fixed rules for "levelling things up" (qi-wu). However, given the reality of human conflict, the concrete significance of the ideal of ethical excellence, for the Confucian, lies in the possibility of reconciliation. Stated as a principle of reconciliation (P6), it urges individuals in conflict to view their disagreement as a subject for transformation into agreement, rather than as a set of insoluble and essentially contested issues. Moreover, given the omni-possibility of resentment, the principle of reconciliation redirects the attention of the parties in conflict toward the possibility of developing personal relationships where disagreements are deemed as a subject for mediation or voluntary arbitration rather than for adjudication. Notably, this focus on the primacy of mediation over adjudication provides a concrete significance to Fang’s notion of transforming "human actualities into idealized possibilities" in the light of his vision of comprehensive harmony.

The foregoing sketch of principles contains brief pointers for further inquiry rather than a final, determinate solution to the difficult problem of the metaphysical foundation of Chinese morality. To forestall misunderstanding, the principles are not intended to have the status of normative principles of conduct. They are offered primarily with a view to elucidating the concrete significance of Tao as a vision of ethical excellence. They are, so to speak, principles for mediating the ideal and the actual world of humanity. In Confucian ethical theory, the development of normative principles of conduct pertains to a different mode of inquiry.[33] I am confident, however, that such an endeavor will ultimately make use of these mediating principles.

[1] Thomé H. Fang, The Chinese View of Life: The Philosophy of Comprehensive Harmony (Taipei, The Linking Publishing Co., Ltd., 1980), chapter V. Hereafter cited as The Chinese View of Life.

[2] See Fang, Collected Lectures and Speeches of Professor Thomé H. Fang (Taipei: The Dwan Cultural Enterprise, Co., 1980), p. 56.

[3] See Fang, Primordial Confucianism and Primordial Taoism (Taipei: The Dawn Cultural Enterprise Co., 1983), p. 164.

[4] Fang’s renderings are "Nature is Reason" and "Mind is Reason." See Chinese Philosohy: Its Spirit and Its Development (Taipei: The Linking Publishing Co.,1981), p. 397. Hereafter cited as Chinese Philosophy.

[5] Ibid., pp. 396-97.

[6] For such an attempt, see A. S. Cua, The Unity of Knowledge and Action: A Study of Wang Yang-ming’s Moral Psychology (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1982), pp. 79-91. Hereafter cited as The Unity of Knowledge and Action.

[7] See Mou Tsung-san, Xin-Ti yu Xing-Ti [Editor’s Note: rendered as Mind in Itself and Creativity in Itself, or The Reality of Mind and Creativity] (Taipei: Zheng-zhong Books Co., 1973), vol. 1, pp. 136-40. For an assessment of Mou’s term with a different interpretation, see my "Reflections on Moral Theory and Understanding Moral Traditions" in Eliot Deutsch and Gerald Larson (eds.), Interpreting Across Boundaries: New Essays in Comparative Philosophy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988); Chinese translation by Li Teng-hsin (deng-xin) in Philosoophy and Culture, vol. 13, no. 8 (1986).

[8] Paul Weiss, Toward A Perfect State (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1986).

[9] For a critical study of Weiss’ book, see my essay "The Structure of Social Complexes," Review of Metaphysics, vol. 41, no. 2 (1987).

[10] The Chinese View of Life, pp. 95-96.

[11] The essential points pertaining to different systems of Chinese philosophy are these; "(1) The world is not taken for what it is in natural regard; it waits to be transmuted into a moral universe for the Confucians, and especially for the Neo-Confucians, into an aesthetic realm for the Taoists, and into a religious domain for the Buddhists. All of these differentiating realms or domains ultimately go into the make-up of the integral universe or the world as a whole which, philosophically considered, should be a transfigured world. The task of Chinese metaphysics is an analysis of facts issuing in an understanding of destiny. The transfigured world is nothing less than a teleological system of axiological importance. (2) The human individual is a very complicated concept; its richness of meaning is not exhausted by a simplified unitary procedure of approach." Chinese Philosophy, p. 35.

[12] Ibid., p. pp.23-27.

[13] Hsüntze (Xünzi), Ju-Hsiao P’ien (Ju Xiao Pian, Chapter on the Efficacy of the Confucian Paradigm ).

[14] Chiense Philosophy, p. 33.

[15] The Chinese View of Life, p. 115.

[16] For further discussion, see my "Confucian Vision and the Human community," Journal of Chinese Philosophy, vol. 11, no. 3 (1984); and "Between Commitment and Realization: Wang Yang-ming’s Vision of the Universe as a Moral Community," Philosophy East and West, vol. 43, no. 4 (1993).

[17] The Chinese View of Life, p. 35.

[18] Ibid., pp. 37-38.

[19] Chuangtzu, Ren-chian-shi (Ren-Jian-Shi, Chapter on "The Human World" in his Works).

[20] The Chinese View of Life, p. 38. My edition contains a misprint: "annual" instead of "annul."

[21] Ibid., p. 39.

[22] Ibid., pp. 40 and 43.

[23] Fang, Primordial Confucianism and Primordial Taoism, p. 19.

[24] See Fang, Creativity in Man and Nature: Collected Essays (Taipei: The Dawn Cultural Enterprise Co. Ltd., 1982). Below I give the Chinese terms in this article.

[25] Chinese Philosophy, p. 105.

[26] Ibid., p. 109.

[27] For this distinction between intrusive and emergent novelties, see S. C. Pepper, World Hypotheses (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1948), pp. 256-57.

[28] See my Unity of Knowledge and Action, chapter 4; and my essay cited in note 7 above.

[29] Fang, Collected Lectures and Speeches of Professor Thomé H. Fang, p. 182.

[30] See Hsüntzu, pu-kou p’ien and chih-shih p’en (bu-gou pian and zhi-shi pian). For its significance in ethical justification, see my Ethical Argumentation: A study in Hsüntzu’s Moral Epistemology (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1985), esp. pp. 61-87.

[31] See Chinese Philosophy, chap. 5, and my "Forgetting Morality: Refections on a Theme in Chuangtzu," Journal of Chinese Philosophy, vol. 4, no. 4 (1977). Cf. Weiss, Toward A Perfected State, p. 353f.

[32] This use of ethical excellence differs from Weiss’. For him, it is a principle rather than an ideal theme. The mediating principles I have formulated for Weiss are quite different, since they have a status peculiar to Weiss’ metaphysics. (See my essay "The Structure of Social Complexes".) For the notion of ideal theme as distinct from that of an ideal norm, see my Dimension of Moral Creativity: paradigm, Principles, and Ideals (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1978), chap. 8, For the use of "ideal theme" in connection with Wang Yang-ming’s notion of jen or tao, see my book The Unity of Knowledge and Action.

[33] For a preliminary discussion of this problem, see my essay "The Status of Principles in Confucian Ethics," Journal of Chinese Philosophy, 16 (1989).