under a flame tree (with you & confucius)

 

The Philistine not only ignores all conditions of life which are not his own but also demands that the rest of mankind should fashion its mode of existence after his own --Goethe

Many of the Readers of these Pages will remember how I love to be surprised by mountains. It is probably mainly because I am from the desert-- and in the dry desert air of Los Angeles, the mountains never move. They are ever present-- standing in allurement. Similarly up in the very high plateau of the Himalaya, where the air is crystal clear and it’s quite simply too high up to rain or snow, so too are the mountains always visible, beckening.

In contrast-- here in Japan, where they are often hidden behind clouds, mist and haze, you could forget the mountains are even there for a great part of the year. On particularly clear days however-- like yesterday--- suddenly you are taken completely aback. Wow! Was that mountain always there?

Well, I love that. I love being surprised by mountains. Or being rained on by flowers-- flame trees and sakura. Happy spring.

*

I have been re-reading Mark Lilla's superb article--written in 1999 for the NYRB-- on the publication of the collected letters between Martin Heidegger and Hannah Arendt (thanks Carl). Their correspondance is incomplete with over 3/4 of the letters written by Heidegger, still- as Lilla expertly points out--there is so much of interest in them. Probably more than anything in his article, I appreciated what was a very illuminating discussion of the concept of passionate thinking (where knowing is being or thinking as an end in itself?). It was this commitment to the life of the spirit, says Lilla, that served as the foundation for Heidegger and Arendt's unique and long-lasting friendship.

She called Heidegger a "hidden King"-- and without a doubt, it was his philosophy which drew her to him and it was also that which would create such strong ties as to be almost hard to really understand-- given the circumstances.

Lilla asks, "What does philosophy have to do with love?" and without skipping a beat answers:

"If Plato is to be believed, everything. While not all lovers are philosophers, all philosophers are, for him, lover-- indeed they are the only true lovers because they alone understand what lovers blindly seek."

I agree. And I also like to think of this spiritual place in which love and passionate thinking come together to create bonds between people. This "intellectual passion" perhaps is more than anything pure Hannah Arendt:

"What was experienced was that thinking as pure activity-- and this means impelled neither by the thirst for knowledge nor the drive for cognition-- can become a passion which not so much rules and oppresses all other capacities and gifts, as it orders them and prevails through them. We are so accustomed to the old opposition of reason versus passion, spirit versus life, that the idea of passionate thinking, in which thinking and aliveness become one, takes us somewhat aback."

"Thinking" as an end in itself; "thinking" as passion and life-invigorating-- that this could form the most extraordinary kinds of bonds between people should come as no surprise. And yet, in today's world, maybe it does come as a surprise (so accustomed are we for searching out emotional intimacy based on emotional intimacy...?) What do you think?

Still, no matter how much one may understand the basis of their friendship, that it survived the realities of Heidegger's turn to Nazism is not as easy to grasp, it it? For it has become clear that he was in fact an active participant (and not just swept along with the tide of the times in Germany). Jaspers cut off ties for years with "the King," but Arendt-- for whatever reason-- remained loyal to him in many ways right till the very end of her life.

Heidegger was not the only Nazi with a Jewish lover.

In January, I received a comment from Ken Thomas to my old Hannah Arendt post which included the detail that the infamous Nazi "architect" Eichmann also had a Jewish lover. It is something that has stuck in my mind for months. How do such moral blindspots come about? (Namit emails me this morning to say, "people compartmentalize.")

Many of you will remember our conversations here and here concerning Confucian Virture as "Really Looking." Perhaps you will recall that I tried to argue that, rather than being some kind of internal inward-looking (where outer actions are aimed to be harmonious with internalized moral convictions) that in fact, virtue should always be based firmly on-- indeed, it demands-- a kind of "other-focused" aesthetic seeing. I quote from Ken Thomas' comment here: 

What Arendt claimed-- which she underlines with the fact that Eichmann had a Jewish lover-- was that Eichman was incapable of "seeing things from the other person's point of view"-- of imagining what it was like-- of putting himself into another's mind or experience-- a capacity necessary for political action and the existence of the political realm itself. He-- his flaw, perhaps a modern flaw, or the consequence of totalarianism, or (this is not Arendt:) just a vicissitude of history-- was the banality of his lack of vision, his self-ishness, the cognitive flaw that meant he could not think in a particular way--

The banality of his lack of vision.

Interestingly, Heidegger too warns us against this kind of banality (or habitus). A friend reminds me hat it is the lack of vision that is our undoing (ie "dasein only understands itself in the LIGHT of possibility").

For whatever reason, it seems to me that human ethics require this kind of Other-oriented vision or Other-looking. Heidegger-- ironically-- called for the same thing when he posited that ethical action needs to be based on embodied temporality-- otherwise the dangers of "selective seeing"  (totalitarianism or blindspots in our vision) would be inevitable.

Engaged, embodied seeing...Interestingly, it is something shared by both Heidegger's existentialist concept of "care" (maybe gotten from Kierkegaard's "truth which cannot be objectified but only experienced in relationshp") and Confucian ethics (authentic being found in our everyday relationships).

**

At this point, I turned to the great Gialbo for help. And, he sent along a very interesting paper written by Chenyang Li in which Li argues that the foundation of Confucian normative action as jen 仁 is nothing but a commitment to "caring" 愛 for Other. And, just like with Heidegger, "other" is not just any other (or a universal other); nor is it an other with whom one enters a kind of contract (of mutual benefit, etc.) but rather it is a commitment to caring for those other people who come into our lives. Parents and children, neighbors, friends-- basically all the people who crash into us. (And, I would like to posit that if there is emotion, then this can be a "virtual embodiment" as well). 

In Confucian normative ethics, then, this concept of "care" is mapped on to  jen 仁, however, this is unfortunate as  jen 仁 is signifying more the person who has achieved "care," whereby care is  愛 (love, affection→ care) for Significant Other-- and again, I cannot stress enough, from Heidegger to the Feminist philosophers who made the ethics of care famous to the Confucian philosophers, this Other was not those people we pick and choose but rather treating with care those people who are part of our world. (and it is "the world that decides," he says).

The ethics of care, then, stands in very direct contrast to Kantian and utilitarian ethics. As Li points out, while the Confucians saw this in filial piety, the feminists saw this in a mother's love for a child:

"Relations between mothers and children should be thought of as primary, and the sort of human relation all other human relations should resemble or reflect." --Virginia Held

And with this idea, I enter a beautiful garden.

I have been reading-- and have been overwhelmed by-- Robert Harrison's book, Gardens and the Human Condition. The book significantly (to me) starts off with a chapter titled, "The Vocation of Care." 

If the perfection of human happiness is glimpsed in the vision of an exquisite garden-- if paradise is a garden, which of course I am sure it is-- then what is required of us more than care? Care as feeling (significance) and care as embodied cultivation. I had never thought about this before reading his book, but Harrison's words in fact echoed deeply within my heart: for no matter what kind of garden-- no matter how fertile the soil may be-- in the end, the cultivation of a garden requires one to be committed to giving more than they receive. Indeed, most successful endeavors in life-- even things like writing a book, or a love affair, marriage; true friendship, or philosophy; all kinds of passionate thinking-- I think (actually, I am sure) that all these things have a similar commitment of giving more than you expect to receive. The cultivation is an end in itself-- the flowers being perhaps just a reward....That is to say, I realized "last night as I was sleeping" that it is Ithaka itself which is the garden.

 

Top painting "Going Home" by Le Thanh Son and one of my favorite images of paradise-- again-- below.

Comments

[Manyul]

Actually, you can be quite surprised by the mountains in Los Angeles, every time strangely enough, when the smog is suddenly washed away by a "winter" rain and the San Gabriels suddenly loom in all their glory for a few hours.

Quite right--we don't get to choose most of our Others who are objects of care. Certainly in early Confucian times, choice of spouse for example would not have been "up to us." That aspect--of care recipients being often thrust upon us-- makes care ethics seem sometimes just as demanding (a la Bernard Williams' critique of modern morality) as any other ethical system. Care generates as much obligation as, or maybe even more than, the Categorical Imperative or the Principle of Utility.

The mother-child care relationship is the primary model on the feminist (Nel Noddings) model of care, whereas the Confucian model is more patriarchal (father-son, ruler-subject, husband-wife, etc). Both are demanding; "opting out" of the relationships of care are worse failures, it seems to me, on those models than being careless or inadequate in care-giving.

Just some thoughts, squeezed in between getting the wee care-units ready for school and sending them off.

-M

[Peony]

Hi M,

Thank you so much for your comment-- but also for the paper, and more for the original discussion of 愛 ("love") over at your place last month. It was your colleague Justin's insistence that "care" is the best translation for the concept of pre-Qin 愛 that started me down this path.

At first I was resistent-- you will remember, I am sure! But the more I thought of it, the more I came to be convinced that he was on to something-- so was really glad to read Li's interesting paper!

"care" as significance and affection.... Harrison in his book, talks about the "cura" myth (which Heidegger also talks about). I personally think this is a fascinating instance of "great minds thinking alike" (Heidegger et al, Gilligan et al; and Confucius et al)

And you are right, I think it is a more demanding ethical imperative than Kant's categorical imperative (and of course more than the weaker demands of Utilitarianism). I always think of Ivan Karamazov.... loving humanity but hating his neighbors! To care for those people who crash into us (specific others with whom we have 縁 ) that is the challenge! It is always easier to care about issues or people in the abstract. Embodied affection is more demanding I think without a doubt.

And so I hear you loud and clear regarding the greater pain of failure in opting out of such relationships. It is true. I think, it is more painful and more a necessary feeling of failure.

I heard from our man in Beijing last night. He agrees that there is a similar impertative to give more than you receive in Confucian other-relations as well and says we see evidence of this, for example, in the reason "why Xunzi spent so much time illustrating his arguments about ritual with care for the dead: it's the perfect example of other-regarding care, they can't reciprocate (unless you believe in other-regarding ghosts). There is a similar idea in Judaism, the example of caring for the dead is supposed to be the highest (most moral) ritual. But caring for the dead can be distateful, as Xunzi reminds us, it takes conscious effort"

And mountains.... You are right about the smog. And, everytime we would get on the 101 and catch that rare sight of the San Gabriels my mother would become so delighted, "Look! Look at the mountains-- with snow on them." The air quality, however, has improved so the mountains seem mostly visible nowadays... or maybe it's because I am usually there in winter when the air is better anyway.

I saw on facebook that the weather is improving and people are getiing naked in Connecticut. Sounds good. Have you heard the big news here about Japanese star Kusanagi's one-man naked fest in a Tokyo park? It is HUGE here and in Korea (where he is also very uniquely adored).... Here is a Here's a montage-- no naked pictures though

[Peony]

PS,

Another quick response arrives from the heavenly capital:

The one caveat I would add is that the Confucian model is not only patriarchal: care for the elderly involves care for the mother, and care for the dead also involves both parents.

and when I said that the "patriarchy" is just in contrast with the feminist stress of the mother-child relation:

And we can reinterpret Confucianism to make it less patriarchal, just as Nussbaum does with Aristotle (and it's more of a challenge for Aristotle since he argued that women are the biological inferiors of men). Chan Sin Yee, Li Chenyang, and Henry Rosemont have been doing such work

*
For me, this is an extremely stimulating area of thought: ethics of care in terms of specific other. Also as Beijing hints, the reinterpretion of pre Qin Confucian thought in this way is not such a huge challenge at least(compared with Aristotle). It is very interesting.

[Douglas]

Brilliant!

I will limit my comment to a Buddhist perspective:

On the hinayana level care is the cultivation of love for another.
on a Mahayana level care is the result of the realization of emptiness of the self of subject and all objects as interdependent origination which is caritas or karuna (cognates).
On a Mahayoga level of secret Vajrayana, care arises naturally out of an absorption in the just as it is (deshyin nyi kyi tingédzin), as an absorption in the all pervasive lighting up of being (inseparable from the as-it-is)( küntu nangwé tingédzin) and finally rising as the causal fruitative absorption appearing in the imagination as the bija mantra of the mediation deity form of Buddha male or female(rgyu'i ting nge 'dzin). This developes into the visualization of the mandala as the world in its primordially pure beginning. One only has totally pure perception of everything as the display of divine effulgence and is enlightened thereby.

In Ati Yoga the caritas is the natural energy of the empty ground. It is simply confused into subject and objective dichotomies leading to suffering. But Thugje is the natural expression of being's complete transparency and openness, a natural responsiveness that is integral to being. When it is the minds expression it is partial when it is natural beings pure knowing it is impartial. more or less.

To simplify dogen Zenji said:

To study buddhism is to study the self
to study the self is to forget the self
to forget the self is become enlightened by all things
to be enlightened by all things is to destroy the barrier between ones self and others.

[Peony]

Thank you so much for this comment, Douglas!

I like that a lot: Karuna and caritas as cogates (com-passion). Do you know the myth of the Goddess Cura? Here is Robert Harrison’s version:
http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/317892.html
Once when Care was crossing a river, she saw some clay; she thoughtfully took up a piece and began to shape it. While she was meditating on what she had made, Jupiter came by. Care asked him to give it spirit, and this he gladly granted. But when she wanted her name to be bestowed upon it, he forbade this, and demanded that it be given his name instead. While Care and Jupiter were disputing, Earth arose and desired that her own name be conferred on the creature, since she had furnished it with part of her body. They asked Saturn to be their arbiter, and he made the following decision, which seemed a just one: “Since you, Jupiter, have given its spirit, you shall receive that spirit at its death; and since you, Earth, have given its body, you shall receive its body. But since Care first shaped this creature, she shall possess it as long as it lives. And because there is now a dispute among you as to its name, let it be called homo, for it is made out of humus (earth).”

Until such time as Jupiter receives its spirit and Earth its body, the ensouled matter of homo belongs to Cura, who “holds” him for as long as he lives (Cura teneat, quamdiu vixerit).

Human beings, then, are creatures “held in care’... but I think this is different (as I said above) from the universalist care of the buddhists and catholics. But rather it is the care that is generated in the space between 間specific people(人 ＋二＋仁) As Manyul suggested above, in many ways this particularist (non-abstract) approach is much more rigorous than the Kantian or buddhist persopective (it could be argued at least).