Metapolitics of China: The Existential Perspective

Good evening, friends and colleagues. At our last meeting on the same topic, my report was on the agenda, so I listened to Alexander Dugin's and Alexander Sekatskiy's talks and chatted with Daria Dugina at the same time. She sent me a message: "What a shame, I'm not ready at all. It will be a complete failure!" I replied, "My report is a collection of some common knowledge. I'm sure Daria would have given a great talk. However, I have left my report generally unchanged, so please treat it with... kindness.

I'm going to talk about fairly common knowledge. Nevertheless, it seems to me that when we talk about China, we often still have to face the fact that people don't know much about China. We talk a lot about this country, but somehow it remains a mystery to us. What does China have to do with the Great Russian Name Rectification? First of all, name rectification is a basic Confucian practice. In fact, when Confucius was asked by his disciples, "What are we going to do tonight?", he said, "We are going to rectify names". That was the beginning of it all. There are also elementary facts that always surprise Russian students. A very simple example is that the Chinese and we have been living in the same country for 80 years. People can't get it into their heads, but 80 years is a long time. In fact, the history of China is partly the history of Russia, and the history of Russia is partly the history of China. Besides, it is our big neighbour. Well, I also remember the words of Alexander Dugin, who said that there are two kinds of people in the world today: Russians and non-Russians. By Russians he meant 'Russian' Russians, as well as Chinese, Indians and all those who oppose this anti-human force, the destruction of humanity as such, the transition to post-humanity and so on. The Chinese turn out to be our brothers in values.

Dasha Dugina also loved Chinese culture. Once she went to China and said that the Chinese were "airy", that there was such lightness in them. We are a bit grounded by the existential burden. The Chinese, on the other hand, always seem to be ready to take off. That's how she saw the Chinese. Once I gave her a book called Introduction to Chinese Hieroglyphics. Daria loved it. She even drew Chinese characters with her body. For example, she showed the character 大 (big) - a man with outstretched arms - standing up and spreading his arms. Or the character 人 (man) - standing up and presenting that character. At first, I thought she was joking, but then she somehow showed me a thick notebook with characters written on it. She had just taken several hundred characters and learnt them by heart, as one does in the first year of university. And she acquired a basic knowledge of hieroglyphics, so that she could easily become a second-year Chinese student.

Turning to the subject of my talk, when I was asked to reflect on the socialist orientation of Chinese political thought in general, I was even a little puzzled. At first glance, Confucian thought and existentialism seem to be completely opposite poles. I even asked my friends, the sinologists and Olga Bonch-Osmolovskaya, whom you all know well, "What existentialism is there? You're a sinologist, I'm a sinologist". She had no idea, so I had to wrack my brains a bit.

However, this being at opposite poles is only visible at first glance. When we talk about existentialism today, we turn first to Heidegger's philosophy. But the first person that comes to mind is Jean-Paul Sartre. It is considered vulgar to mention Sartre in today's decent society, but nevertheless, Sartre's key work, the most popular and familiar to every student, is Existentialism is Humanism. In it, Sartre gives a brief overview of approaches to existentialism and argues that existentialism has nothing to do with nihilism. On the contrary, existentialism is first and foremost humanism, because it leads man to absolute freedom. But where does the category of humanity come from in the history of thought? It was Confucius who introduced it. Of course, this is not the humanitas of the Enlightenment to which we are accustomed. But there are similarities. Humanity, or benevolence (仁), is a key category in Confucian thought. And, accordingly, Sartre's maxim could be slightly modified to "existentialism is humanity/benevolence/仁".

It is even more interesting to read classical Confucian treatises through the prism of Heideggerism. Much has been written about Martin Heidegger's inspiration by Eastern thought. Here I have drawn mainly on the articles of the eminent Russian sinologist, Buddhist and religious scholar Evgeny Torchinov. At the beginning of the twentieth century a collection was published under his editorship, entitled Heidegger and Eastern Philosophy - The Search for Complementarity of Cultures. In general, I recommend this book to anyone who is interested in both Eastern and Western philosophy, because it allows you to change your perspective on both the East and the West a little.

The Confucian approach is based on the idea that Heaven has an absolute existence. Heaven is an impersonal absolute, but a human being can also have access to this pulse of Being. Martin Heidegger wrote: "Being is revealed from within and the mystery of the inexpressible is put into words by poets and philosophers. But even they can say little about it. All the ways of expressing Being that they have found or have coined in the course of history are true in this case, because truth is inseparable from its historical expression, and thought without expression thinks nothing". In China, it was the philosopher Confucius who was able to put the unspeakable into words. Confucius spoke mostly apophatically about Heaven, about Absolute Being. Here is a quote from Lun Yu: "The Master said, "I would rather not speak. Zi Gong said, "If you, Master, do not speak, what are we, your disciples, supposed to record?"  Master said, "Does Heaven speak? The four seasons go their course, and all things are constantly being produced, but does Heaven say anything?" (17-19). And another quote: "When the Master visited Nan Zi, Zi Lu was displeased, and the Master swore and said, 'If I have done wrong, may Heaven reject me! may Heaven reject me!'" (6-28). It seems that on the one hand Confucius says that Heaven is silent, it does not speak to anyone. But on the other hand, there is a kind of connection with it. Obviously, Confucius was not the only one in history to have a monopoly on communication with Heaven. The wise rulers of antiquity were able to listen to Heaven (listen to Being). And Confucius always said that he did not actually invent anything new. He was just repeating the teachings of the ancients - those who could listen to the pulse of Being.

What does this have to do with politics (i.e. the transfer of power and, more generally, access to heaven)? Mencius, the second most famous Confucian philosopher, explains it well.
“Wan Zhang said,
"Was it the case that Yao gave the throne to Shun?"
Mencius said, "No. The sovereign cannot give the throne to another."
"Yes - but Shun had the throne. Who gave it to him?"
"Heaven gave it to him," was the answer.
'"Heaven gave it to him:" - did Heaven confer its appointment on him with specific injunctions?'
Mencius replied, "No. Heaven does not speak. It simply showed its will by his personal conduct and his conduct of affairs."
"It showed its will by his personal conduct and his conduct of affairs" - how was this?"
Mencius's answer was, "The sovereign can present a man to Heaven, but he cannot make Heaven give that man the throne. A prince can present a man to the sovereign, but he cannot cause the sovereign to make that man a prince. A great officer can present a man to his prince, but he cannot cause the prince to make that man a great officer. Yao presented Shun to Heaven, and Heaven accepted him.  He presented him to the people, and the people accepted him. Therefore, I say, "Heaven does not speak. It simply indicated its will by his personal conduct and his conduct of affairs."'

This means that anyone who follows the path of a gentleman, as Confucius said, "junzi", an anthropological ideal, can feel this pulse of Being and even become a sovereign, without belonging to an aristocratic family. But what can one do to become a ruler? It is necessary to exist in an authentic mode of being - not to be a "das Man", as Heidegger would put it. And if you are not das Man, then you become a gentleman, then you begin to listen to Heaven, and you actually understand the whole essence of things and can rule the Celestial Empire.

Everyone has this chance, but how can we introduce the inhabitants of the Celestial Empire to this source of Being? This is possible through the construction of a special social reality, through political practice. One often hears that Confucianism is only an ethical philosophy. But I think it's still a religion, but a very special religion. The philosopher Herbert Fingarette once wrote about Confucianism and used the formula "secular as sacred". For me, this defines the peculiarity of Confucianism quite well: Secular as sacred.

The question may arise: if Heaven is an impersonal absolute, what does this have to do with Heidegger's Being at all? Well, there are difficulties for Heidegger in defining Being in general. Heidegger himself was repeatedly asked: "Is Being God?" He answered "no" or somehow evaded answering. But late Heidegger had no such definitive answer. Experts on Heidegger's philosophy should help us here.

It seems to me important to mention again that in the Chinese tradition the opposition of spirit and matter exists in an eliminated form. The most basic: spiritual and material are different modalities of the One. One can condense and become matter, or thin out and become spirit. Accordingly, there is no gap between the material and spiritual worlds. There is no conflict here for the Chinese. And in general, this Chinese metaphysical naturalism, as many scholars write about it, is largely consistent with Heidegger's idea of a return to pre-Socratic thought.

There is no such thing as apolitical Confucianism. Confucianism is all about constructing some kind of social reality around political action. But at the same time, politics always has a sacred character. However, this sacredness is somewhat different, not the way we used to perceive it. Well, accordingly, Confucian thought turns out to be, in my opinion, such a political theology. And within the framework of the Fourth Political Theory, which is based on the category of existence, existence is not only characteristic of an individual, but also of peoples, cultures and civilisations. Thus, in China, in Confucianism, Being is revealed in a conciliatory way - in the totality of the actions of the people involved in the culture of the Heavenly Empire. Moreover, if for a Western person the concept of "culture" has a secular character, for Confucianism it is precisely this secularity that is sacred.

Another quote from Lun-Yu.

When under siege in K'uang, the Master said,

"‘With King Wen dead, is not culture (wen) invested here in me? If Heaven intends culture to be destroyed, those who come after me will not be able to have any part of it. If Heaven does not intend this culture to be destroyed, then what can the men of K'uang do to me?"

And here we come to one of the most important links between Heidegger and Confucianism. Heidegger argues that the being of Language is the language of Being, indeed that Language and Being are one and the same. The classic saying is " Language is the house of Being". The Confucian understanding of language as a sacred reality is expressed primarily in this category of Wen. Wen expresses the idea of culture as such. Etymologically, the word 文 (wen) originally meant a shaman's tattoo. Later it began to refer to any pattern or decoration. But what are these patterns? Where do they come from? It is just a projection of the heavenly into our world. And so what Confucius is talking about is reading the manifestations of the heavenly in our reality, in these patterns. Then the word itself begins to mean not just a pattern but a written sign, writing as such. And, accordingly, written culture is what language is as such. If Heidegger speaks of language as primarily speech, then for Confucius, of course, it is writing. This is such a mental difference, and a very strange one. Do you know that in China there are many different dialects and that the Chinese do not understand each other? But they all understand one thing. What is it? Hieroglyphics are common to all Chinese. And who is considered a barbarian? Anyone who can't read and doesn't understand these signs from Heaven. And it is only through these signs that one has access to Heaven. So it turns out that Chinese culture is not closed, as it is often thought, but actually open to everyone. The only requirement is to learn the characters, because without that it is impossible to see Heaven (from the Chinese point of view).

The most important practice for understanding Being is, of course, ritualism. And it is on the basis of ritual that it is possible to build a society that corresponds to homomorphism, that is, the equality of society and pure Being. The relationship between people is based on a ritual, but the condition for their interaction (be it husband-wife, father-son, ruler-subordinate) is the presence of this very humanity / benevolence / ren. This is an interesting point, because we find a similar scheme in another existentialist philosopher who corresponded with Heidegger, Martin Buber. Buber wrote that being is first revealed in the encounter with the Other. And by the Other he did not mean the "great" Other, but the person literally on the street, in the tram, the most ordinary person. Being is revealed when we realise that the other is an abyss that opens up in front of us. And it is this humanity / benevolence / ren that makes it possible to feel that the father / son / husband / wife / emperor / subordinate are also involved in this pulse of Being.

Today I made a small attempt to read classical Confucianism through the prism of Heideggerism, but Heidegger himself was much more interested in Taoism. Torchinov writes about this in the article "Carefree Wanderings in the World of the Hidden and Mysterious. Martin Heidegger and Taoism". And indeed, Heidegger's interest in Taoism is understandable. When we talk about the connection between Confucianism and Heidegger, we assume that being is universal. When we talk about Taoism, we have to bear in mind that Tao is generally a similar category, i.e. an impersonal absolute. But it is revealed to individuals. Early on, Heidegger was quite seriously interested in Taoism. It was first noticed in the late 20s, as evidenced by an episode in which he read a fragment from Zhuang Zi after giving the famous Bremen lecture "On the Nature of Truth" in 1930. I can't quote it, it's quite long, but curious. I recommend looking up "Zhuang Zi on the Joy of Fish".
It is likely that this interest was related to Heidegger's attention to medieval mysticism. In particular, he explored the writings of Meister Eckhart in relation to the problem of openness to Being as expressed in his mystical experiences and texts. At least we can be sure that by 1930 Heidegger was familiar with the text of Zhuang Zi. This is the second most famous Taoist text, interpreted by Martin Buber, whom I've already mentioned.

An important milestone in Heidegger's acquaintance with Taoist thought was his meeting with the Chinese scholar Xiao Shiyi in 1942, when the latter began to attend Heidegger's seminars at the Sacro Cuore University in Milan, Italy. At the same time, Xiao Shiyi gave Heidegger his translation of the Tao Te Ching, the foundational text of Taoism. Heidegger then suggested that Xiao work with him to translate Lao Tzu into German. But this project was not completed; it was only partially completed in 1946, when they met regularly in Freiburg. They only managed to translate 8 of the 81 chapters of the text.

What is this connection between Heidegger and Taoism? That is a subject for another conversation, another lecture. I would like to end my talk today with the words of Evgeny Torchinov, who has thought a lot about the Chineseness of Heidegger's thought and Heidegger's engagement with Chinese thought:
"It seems that traditional Chinese thought, with its suggestibility expressed in the text, its existential and praxeological intentions, and its holistic and naturalistic "metaphysics", corresponded almost perfectly to that "pre-Socratic" type of philosophising that was close not only to Heidegger. Moreover, he was actively opposed to the classical Western (New European) model of philosophy, which he did not regard as archaic and exhausted, but rather as the way to return philosophy to its sources, to renew it and to recover its lost, but true and existentially profound meanings".

Speaking of the Fourth Political Theory and parallels with Heidegger, I would like to boldly state that for me, Confucian thought, Confucian sacred political science and political theology are actually the embodied Fourth Political Theory. When we talk about the Fourth Political Theory, it is usually said that it is something speculative and unreal. That is, when we talk about Marxism, fascism and liberalism, we see these ideas, these political theories, unfolding before our eyes and ceasing to exist. But the Fourth Political Theory is so complicated that it is impossible to put it into practice. However, to me, what we have seen in China from the 2nd century BC to 1905, when the history of Confucian government came to an end, those 2,200 years were exactly an implementation of the Fourth Political Theory. And we have to think a bit and realise that this is not a political fantasy. It existed and we can come up with our own version of it.

One more thing about the West and what Heidegger thought about the problem of China. Not long ago, an American congresswoman, Nancy Pelosi, visited Taiwan. It was widely discussed. Everyone was waiting for something extraordinary to happen, but it didn't. Then one of the liberal Telegram channels wrote that this visit was a test of how the People's Republic of China meets the standards of a twenty-first-century state (just the question of time). Russia failed this test, now let's look at China. This is an absolutely typical example of liberal stupidity and ignorance. China, of course, pays no attention to all these cries from all sides and acts according to its own cultural attitudes, which all the liberals on the planet may consider a million times exhausted and archaic. None of these matters to Heaven anyway.

Q & A

Question: Pavel, you compared the Confucian philosophy of ancient China with pre-Socratic thought as a metaphysical philosophy. Is there a counterpart in Chinese thought to the fall of being that occurred after Socrates in Greek thought, or did metaphysical natural philosophy continue uninterrupted there?

Answer: That's a tricky question. One could say that of course there have been some periods of rupture. At least when China fell into the power of unexpected modernity (1966-1976). It was a period of the Cultural Revolution, when everyone decided that we are now going to live by Trotsky, we are going to start the revolution in the morning, and it is going to last, and it is going to be cool, at the same time we are going to destroy all the statues, we are going to criticise Confucius, and so on. Of course there have been such periods in China. There were also periods of invasion by some barbarian peoples, but they usually learned to perceive the will of Heaven and became involved in Chinese history quite quickly. Sometimes there were internal conflicts.

We often say that in China there has never been conflict between the different traditions, that the three teachings exist harmoniously together. But there have been times when the Buddhists have pulled the rug out from under themselves, and sometimes the Confucians have done the same. As the great Han Yu wrote of the Buddhists, "How long can you worship the bones of a barbarian?", referring to the relics of Siddhartha Gautama. Sometimes the authorities stuck to Buddhism, sometimes, on the contrary, they began to destroy Buddhist temples and monasteries. Later, there was a gradual return to the triune unity of Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism. Well, Heidegger's connection with Buddhism is a big topic for another lecture.

Question: You mentioned that the Confucian state begins in the 2nd century B.C. and corresponds in some respects to the parameters of the Fourth Political Theory. Could you elaborate on the parameters of the (Confucian) state that existed at that time?

Answer: From the 2nd century BC, the Han dynasty appears, which adopts the Confucian ideology. Before that there was a brief period of the Qin dynasty, and then there was a period of the triumph of legalism. Before that, there was a period of fragmentation, but from the 2nd century BC, a period begins in which Confucianism defines the policy of the Celestial Empire.

And also a very important practice at that time was the imperial examinations, the examinations for statesman positions. And it seems to me that this is one of the things that we could easily borrow. Liberals are always saying that we need electoral democracy, which is the basis of everything. For some reason it is necessary to have a representative electoral democracy so that a person can sit in the chair for another four years. Why exactly four years? What's the point? I could never understand it.  In China, on the other hand, they came up with this brilliant idea. Where do all the statesmen and politicians come from? They take an exam to test their knowledge of Confucian philosophy and their ability to write poetry. If you know philosophy and can write poetry, you'll be a good official. Of course, there can be different options here. Let's say we can include a game of lapta. We ask our statesmen to write poems in the style of Alexandre Pushkin and to play lapta. Would that be bad for them? On the contrary, it would be perfect. As a certain practice, I think it is very important for the reception.

These examinations existed in China until 1905, when the forces of modernity proved to be stronger. At that time, China was really behind the Western countries in terms of technology. It had been in an absolutely terrible state for 50 years after the First Opium War, the Second Opium War, the civil wars, the Taiping Rebellion, the Boxer Rebellion and so on and so forth. In 1905 they decided that China had to borrow everything from the West. And that went on for a while. But today we can see that in recent years China has been gradually returning to these Confucian attitudes, starting with Deng Xiaoping, often using certain Confucian concepts, not Marxist ones. Clearly, China is not going to change from the PRC to something else. Nevertheless, it is a state that in many ways relies primarily on its own concepts of Chinese culture and the worldview that is characteristic of China.

Translated by Sophia Polyankina