Uprightness and Humanity:

Uprightness and Humanity:

The Primoridal Language of Tao

Lik Kuen Tong

[Editor’s Note:] A versatile and ingenious mind as poet, scientist, economist, and philosopher, Professor Lik Kuen Tong is teaching in the Department of Philosophy, Fairfield University, Fairfield, CT. Born in Hongkong, he majored in Electric Engineering at the National Taiwan University for his undergraduate studies; but graduated with Ph.D. from the New School of the Social Sciences Research Institute, New York, N. Y., where he studied with Dorian Caines and Aron Gurwitsch, outstanding disciples of Hurssel. He served as President of International Society of Chinese Philosophy; and founder of Field and Being: The Comparison and Fusion of Chinese and Non-Chinese Philosophies. His works include Between the I-Ching and Whitehead and an contribution to Lewis E. Hahn (ed.), The Philosophy of Paul Ricoeur (1997), etc. We regret that, owing to technical difficulties, we are unable to display the Diagrams in the concluding section of this celebrated paper of Professor Tong’s.

Once upon a time a field of sky-and-earth unfolded itself and man found himself standing upright therein. Man has no choice but to play the field: he is in substance a fielding power—a power which is as much his as it is not his.

"Power" is the ability to make a difference. In this fundamental sense, all philosophy is at heart an articulation of power—and all power is in essence fielding power. To "be" is to make a difference in the field. The difference that man make-the difference that properly be1ongs to man as man—is the difference that occurs from the moment he stands upright, both individually and as a species.

Between the fielding power that man is and the fielding powers that things are, there lies manifested a realm of double openness—what we habitually call the world. For what is manifested as the world is concurrently an openness of significance and an openness of reality. There is no reality without significance, and there is no significance without reality. We appropriate the significance of things, while we posturalize their reality. Man is a being in the world in so far as he is an appropriator of significance and a posturalizer of reality. More exactly, what is appropriated is, in the final analysis, the proper/righhtness of things, while what is posturalized is always some figure in a configuration. For proper/ rightness is the thread of significance, and figure/configuration the quintessence of reality.

Life is enjoyment in the appropriation of proper/rightness; life is sufferment (from Latin sufferre, to bear under, to undergo, to endure) in the posturalization of figure/configuration.

Between the fielding power that man is and the field powers that transcend him there plays out an unceasing drama on the stage of double openness: a drama of belonging and severance from belonging. For it is in the nature of fielding power that what belongs must come to sever itself from belonging, and what parts itself from one belonging must remain itself in another. Identity or sameness is the openness of belonging; difference or otherness is the openness of severance.

We live a life of care in the power of belonging and identity; we live a life of wonder in the power or severance and differentiation.

The lexicon of significance, proper/rightness, appropriation and enjoyment; the lexicon of reality, figure/confiouration, posturalization and suffermert; the lexicon of belonging, identity and care; the lexicon of severance , difference an wonder: these four lexicons of words and mean ings are universally contained in one way or another in our civilized languages. And what do these universal lexicons constitute and represent? They constitute in each civilized language the "language of tao," and they represent in their symbolic unity the four-fold complexion of the world.

Philosophy is an excercise in the language of tao in drawing out the four-fold complexsion of the world.

In care and in wonder, in enjoyment and in sufferment, man speaks the metaphysical language of tao. Here "metaphysical" is not to be confined to its usual or traditional sense. For man was metaphysical long before he created metaphysics: indeed metaphysics is man.

"Metaphysics" means beyond physis—that is, beyond his physical configuration. Like the Chinese word sheng, the Greek physis means originally emergence or growth, before it acquires the sense of nature. Or, to put it in another way, the primordial meaning of "nature" is sheng. or physis: the process of up-rising or up-growing whereby the pre-primordial man emerges or arises towards his upright position—the position that marks him off from other animals, the position that makes him man in the proper sense of the word. The philosophical concept of origin or beginning or source or firstness has its primordial locus here: the upright man in the inception of his uprightness is the t’ai chi, arche or principle (from Latin princeps, first in rank). And what does the word tao primordially mean? Tao signifies the upright-standing, upright-walking man, who, having attained the status of uprightness, is able to see himself distinctly in relation to the world, leading and comporting himself in his uprighting and uprightalizing activities. The Greek logos has basically the same signification: but while tao emphasizes the uprightal (uprighting and uprightalizing.) man as a self-leading power, and comes to signify the way it leads in its self-dispensation, logos lays stress on the dynamic and configurational self-collectedness or self-gathering of the same power that confers unity and coherence on the uprightal process. This self leading and self-collecting power the Primordial man equates with the power of speech. Upright-growing, and uprighting-uprightalizing is concurrently an act of saying and speaking. Is it a coincidence then that both tao and logos—and one must include also the Sanskrit Brahman—conjoin in their essential meaning the implications of growth and speech?

In the beginning was tao or logos, and tao or logos was t’ai chi or arche, which has itself arisen in sheng or physis.

The "inception of uprightness"—that is what we mean by the term "primordial." The primordial is the beginning of heaven and earth, the beginning of the word and metaphysics, the beginning of "the epoch of God": for it is the beginning of the uprightal.

"Uprightal" means as a consequenc of, on the basis of, or proceeding from, the position of uprightness. "Uprightalization" is the uprightal appropriation and posturalization of man in relation to himself, to other things and to the world. Thus defined, uprightalization is "how" the fielding power of man is primordially structured or organized. And the uprightal phase of man in which man lives his life in a constant struggle of self-uprighting and uprightalization is the proper phase in which his humanity is both constituted and consummated. Humanity, indeed, is the uprightality of man.

Uprightalization is essentially a metaphysical process. "Metaphysics" means projecting beyond physis—that is, the body that has grown to its upright position. This is what the I Ching means by hsing-shang, or "above shape." Philosophy is the metaphysical learning of the uprightal man carried to the limits. And metaphysical learning is in essence "great learning" (Ta Hsueh, or Da Xue )--learning to be great (ta).

For "great" means upright: the original graph for Chinese character ta (or da, great) pictures an upright-standing man. Greatness means primordially simply the ability to stand upright, to walk upright, to see upright. A great man is a master of his own uprightness, and goodness consists in the virtue or cxellence (te or areté) of the great man’s uprightality. The metaphysical beginning of the word and the epoch of God is also the beginning of te, the realm of morality. "When the primoridal (pre-uprightal) tao is lost, only then does te prevail." (An analysis of the etymology of the word te will disclose unmistakably its uprightal implications.) [uprightmindedness or, as its Indian counterpart notion, equi-mindedness.] But to be upright is to bear the burden of a "mounted gravity."The upright and uprightalizing man is the center, the focus and the pivotal point of his metaphysical projections which inevitably fall into the patterns of a pre-configurated frame determined by the deep structure of his uprightality. We call this frame the "square of uprightality." It is characterized as a "square" because the square is a perfect figure for the representation of opposites—the confrontation and crossing of opposites: up and down, right and left, front and rear (before and after), inner and outer (inward and outward), freedom and necessity, body and soul, body and mind, subject and object, useful and useless, truth and falsity, right and wrong, good and evil, beauty and ugliness, profane and holy—and so on, and so on. The uprightaI man 1ives precariously within the square of his uprightalitv, being torn in all directions by the opposing forces generated from the depth of his own being. The uprightal man is vulnerable: he is engaged in a constant struggle to gather and re-gather himself for the preservation of his uprightness. In the symbolism of uprightality, the circle, in contradistinction to the square, is the symbol of perfection—that is, the perfection of uprightness. Uprightal perfection means: the unceasing round of uprightness. Uprightal perfection and renovation. Thus conceived, uprightal perfection (the "cicle of uprightality") is the basic meaning of the Confucian concept of ch’eng in the Chung-Yung. Ch’eng is at once the rounding of the square and the squaring of the round: this mutuality between the square and the circle of uprightality may be represented by combining the mandala and the cross—the two supreme svmbols of humanity. Ch’eng as symbolized by the "uprightal mandala"

Means: in the unity of uprightal (the square in the middle) perfection between heaven (the outer circle-the perfection of heaven) and man (the inner circle—the perfection of man) is the crossing of the cross—that is, the burden, the dignity, the suffering, the deception, the anxiety, the despair and the hope of humanity.

The civilization of man is the working out of the uprightal mandala in history, as reflected in the history of logocentrism in thought and humanism in action. Whether in the form of sagely care or the form of heroic wonder, it is the orthodox (from Greek orthos, straight, regular, upright) tradition in every culture that bears the cross. But the heterodox or unorthodox dissention from orthodox uprightalism has also its basis in human nature—that is, in the desire to return to the pre-primordial state of infancy, or even to the womb or to the dust. Such forms of heterodoxy endorse the extreme postures of anti-uprightalism—the horizontal or reclinging postures of man at birth or at death, the postures of "deuprightal" peace, tranquility or nirvana. The "uprightal mandala" stands for bliss of perfection without the cross.

But between the strict uprightalism of orthodoxy and the extreme deuprightalism of the unorthodox there lies a middle position—the "middle way" which endorses aeither uprightness nor horizontality. It wants to preserve the freedom of posturalitv in life, the freedom to move freely through all postural variations, without being fixated in any of them. The "differential mandala", as we may call it, preserves the cross; but the differential cross has taken the form of the swastika the cross that turns freely in all directions.

Which way is the truth? Primordially speaking, truth refers neither to the correctness of a proposition nor to unhiddenness as such, but to the proper/rightness of our natural or fated upright posturality whose adumbration in experience is what provides the basic coordinates in the double openness of the world. That is why the word "right" is contained in the word "upright." Truth, in order words, is originally a matter of "morality"—the "morality" of the human configuration, before it becomes a matter of metaphysical or philosophical strategy in the politics of uprightalization. In philosophy, indeed, the truth of strategy has been confounded with the strategy of truth.

Man is born upright: this statement has not been properly understood. The whole history of philosophy is marked by a profound and colosal oversight—an oversight of what is most obvious and nearest to his being: indeed the very being that is properly his own. And what is being? To primordial man, being is no mystery at all—or perhaps that is why it is so mysterious.

Being is what is spoken of by him as tao, brahman, logos; as sheng, prakriti, physis; as yu, sat, on; as t’ai-chi, purusha, arche, and so on, and so on. 0 yes, Being is one, but man calls it by many different names!

When all is said and done, it will be discovered that a philosophical term or concept is either synonymous with tao or is implicated in the language of tao—the language of man’s uprightality and uprightaliza-tion. For philosphy is but the tautology of the uprightal man.

Comments and Elaborations

Upright is right—chih (literally) becomes chih (figuratively). All our thinking of rightness is ultimately derived from our primordial recognition of the proper/rightness of our physical uprightness. The generation of the sense of rightness from the sense of uprightness is the first figure of speech, the first determination of significance.

Thinking begins—and ends—as the postural appropriation of "configurated significance." Behind every idea there is always a figure—and ultimately the figure of man in the field of sky and earth. Reality is configurated significance for thought.

The primordial language of tao, universally formed around the first figure of speech as its semantic neucleus and developed through a sedimented process of metaphoric analogy, is the soul of all languages and expressions.

Consider, for example, the generation of shen (spirit, god; spiritual, holy, divine) from shen (to stretch upright or straight). Originally, the upright body is what is divine or holy; upright standing is as much a "spiritual" as it is a "moral" act—"moral perfection" and "spiritual perfection" are primordially one and the same.

The story of pan-ku and similar myths of the world-opening giant represent at once a recollection of the primordial situation and of the primordial divination of the upright body

According to Levi-Strauss, all the names of Oedipus in the various versions of the famous myth have this in common: they all "refer to difficulties in walking straight and standing upright." Not only does our consciousness of shame and honor have its primordial origin in the uprightality of the human body, but perhaps the whole unconscious mind is originally shaped by it.

Uprightality is the literal core of all symbols and metaphors. The phallus is in truth an image of the upright body in the symbolism of sex. We must distinguish between "Postural sexuality" and "biological sexuality." In the language of postural sexuality, the "male" refers upright, vertical or straight, whereas the ‘female" stands for what is bent, folded, or crooked—as, for example, when we have to bend down in order to pick up something from the floor.

The two primary symbols of Yin and Yang—represented, respectively, by the "broken" and the "unbroken" line—is initially a symbolism of postural sexuality, before it comes to incorporate in its semantic matrix the biological meaning of sexuality.

The mandala is a figure of the human condition considered from the standpoint of "problematicity." But the meaning of problematicity varies, depending on whether one adopts the uprightal, deuprightal or differential standpoint. Jung’s account of the mandala falls short of precisely the most decisive element—namely, what gives the mandala its meaning and form.

The Pythagoreans called the normative case the "upright case." The Greek notion of "subject" (á pokamenon, hypoka-menon)—hence the Aristotelean theory of substance—also has its primordial origin in man’s reflective recognition of his uprightality. The "subject" or "substance" refers originally to the permanent possibility of uprightness—hence the notion of the "thing-in-itself."

Both the Aristotelean and the lantian categories are in the final analysis articulations of man’s uprightality and uprightaliza-tionality.

From Heidegger’s An Introduction to Metaphysics:

"The words posis (Latin: casus) and enklisis (Latin: declinatio) mean falling, tipping, inclining. This implies a deviation from standing upright and straight. But this erect standing-there, coming up [zum Stande kommen, coming to stand] and enduring [im Stande bleiben, remaining in standing] is what the Greeks understood by being." (bold face mine)

what follows is an interpretation of the meaning of peras (limit), telos (end), and morphe (form).

The chi in t’ai-chi (great limit=upright limit) is what the Greeks mean by peras.

Ch’eng as the fulfillment of the limit corresponds to what the Greeks mean by telos—Aristotle’s entelecheia.

Heideggar: "That which places itself in its limit, completing it, and so stands, has form, morphe. Form as the Greeks understood it derives its essence from an emerging placing-itself-in-the limit." Form, in this sense, is the primordial meaning of hsing (xing) in the I Ching.

Heideggar fails to pursue further this significant insight. He has no doubt made his conception of being unnecessarily difficult.

"Matter" and "mind" in their primordial meaning, corresponds to the two sides of the double openness. "Matter" is the subject-matter which matters—that is, the human figure-configuration. "Mind" is the mindfulness directed to the subject-matter. "Matter" then is the power of posturalization, and "mind" the power of appro- priation. The "nature" (hsing) of man is the coordinate unity of the two sides of openness.

The ideoaram for hsin (heart-mind) on the left side of the character; hsing stands for the "mental" side of significance and appropriation. The graph for sheng (emergence, coming-to-stand) on the other side of the word denotes, of course, the material side of configuration and posturalization.

Everything is, in its own way, proper and right. That is why there is li (principle/reason) in each and every thing. The li of a thing is its own strand of proper/rightness. The t’ai-chi or Great Limit in Neo-Confucianism, conceived as the source and origin of proper/right-ness, is not void.
But the t’ai-chi is also the t’ai-ho—the Great Harmony which makes what is compatible compatible and what is not compatible also compatible. The Great Harmony is the ultimate and universal skell procuring the seminal fitness in all proper/rightness. In this sense, the Greek Limit is void, because the Great Harmony is no-thing. Skill and fitness is no-where.
The Taoist conception of Tao as "non-being" remains in the tradition of the I Ching. Tao is void in the sense that the Great Harmony is void.
"Problematicity" is the frustration of harmony—an appropria tional aporia and posturalizational ineffecacy. The "non-problematic" in "de-uprightalism is identified with the horizontal position. The problem then lies with not in one’s inability to stand upright but precisely in one’s desire or inclination to do so.
The "three bodies": we have a "body of significance," "a body of configuration," and " body of harmony." How is the self to be understood?