Conversation with François Jullien. Wikileaks Conversation with François Jullien. 
Conversation with François Jullien.
conversation picked up by Bill and Richard Gater Plorunski Daiichi Hotel Tokyo, Shimbashi, January 25, 1998.
might start talking about her? Tell us what was your path, what was his training as a philosopher would say. Then what has led to interest in Chinese thought, what the Chinese thought has made its thoughts and where conducted.
You know that philosophy tends to stop in its application to form a tradition, and my choice to move to China is a world to go back over the history of European philosophy. I often say, a bit 'as a paradox, although in truth it is not, I passed by China to better read the greek, because in reality they are a Greek scholar. Then I worked in the realm of philosophy, especially Greek philosophy, and I became aware that there was a sort of familiarity with Greece, which kept me from knowing her. Basically I wanted to find a way back to re-examine the philosophy.
So why China? For the simple reason that it was necessary that got out of the frame Indo-European language from that kind of great Indo-European, should not therefore be Sanskrit. It should also be out of the historical relationship, so could not be in any way nor the Arab world or the Bible, Hebrew, which are tied to our history. It was necessary at the same time move towards an idea that was, like the greek thought, explained, commented, developed in very early writings. Now, if you take these three characteristics, we have to China. There is no question therefore of interest to China as such, for the sake of China, is not an interest in exotic character: it is an interest method. Method, means, basically, to find a frame of thought that is outside the mine, out of the contingency of my thinking. Often quote a phrase I find appropriate to Pascal when he says: "Moses or China." E 'in Pascal, "Who is more credible of the two, Moses or China?" And this I like it because it is a kind of theoretical alternative, Moses or China, but at the same time that it is a bit' lopsided, a bit 'unbalanced because one side is Moses, a figure of monotheism, a person, and the other China, a sort of horizon of thought. And when he says: "China worries me, is not it?
So I would say that I have a dual-use in China. On the one hand, what interested me is that when you switch European thought by the Chinese thought, one is bewildered. Which is not to say that the Chinese thought is so different from ours, but leaving the two thoughts are indifferent to each other. Indifferent: you do not know, are ignored. And then the difficulty is to ensure that they meet, to ensure that we can compare, because in the beginning, if you will, there is a common framework within which I can place the Chinese and European thought. I'm not on the same page. I can not split the page and say: on the one hand China, on the other Europe. It is not a common history, there is a common linguistic framework. So there was a certain
interest in an external frame, double interest for me. On the one hand, to discover other ways of intelligibility possible. I say intelligible, I mean consistency of thought, not to speak of truth - the truth is a very European concept. How else can you conceive of intelligibility? For example, the features I consider essential: how Chinese thought is passed to the side of the concept of being, ontology, while here the notion of being the starting point of philosophy or Chinese thought has passed through the tension between myth and discourse, mythos-logos, which is the origin of the Greek tradition, or as the Chinese thought is passed to the hand of God .. in other words, large objects of philosophy. Well, this does not mean that there is a certain idea of \u200b\u200bGod in China, but it is certain that very soon was dropped, transformed, set aside. Chinese thought has gone the opposite. This "move to the side" of concepts which we have knowledge of, say, the fundamental philosophy of upset because it seemed interesting philosophy. And then for a feedback effect: For me, China is a detour. A detour that does not end because the Chinese do not stop reading and working, but a detour because I aim for a return, to return the parties took the European reason that, through China, I rediscover. Why is everything I thought Europe has so assimilated by it for granted, and will not ask again. Passing from this difference of Chinese thought back to be the salient issues and things that otherwise seem mundane and go without saying, universal, all this has been verified. So there is a kind of return, which is a return on the parti pris of European thought and return to the mountain of philosophy, trying to perceive better the implied choices from which you came to build a philosophy in Europe. It 'clear that?
E 'clear. But before we can continue to explain how he learned Chinese and what is expected to find dealing with the Chinese language? What the surprised and confirmed that he found from what you expected? Trying to remember a little 'practice his experience ...
In fact, I studied French classics: the Scuola Normale higher education, teaching. And instead of beginning a thesis - I was thinking of doing a thesis on Aristotle, Greek philosophy - I have always said that I had time to do a thesis on Aristotle - there were already others before me - and that d 'On the other hand, I was still young, I was still in front of years of study at the Normal-perhaps they could offer me the opportunity to experience the most crucial or most radical thought that no prejudice in the context of Greek studies. And then I knew, deep down, that today our culture, our humanism as we said before, are no longer limited to the horizon in Europe. I was looking for some sort of new dimension, another dimension to my culture. When you have twenty years, when you have the life ahead, or so they believe, rather than fall in the wake of, say, the university, I said that ... Well. So I learned Chinese in China.
Directly?
In China at the wrong time because they were the final moments of the Cultural Revolution. I switched abruptly from the comfort of intellectual Scuola Normale Superiore in Beijing at the end of the Cultural Revolution and, worse, the revolution in teaching, the movement of that period. So, if you like, it was a very difficult because it was the end of Maoism, the official newspaper of propaganda and thought forms extremely sterile, lifeless. Well, well ... not philosophy, eh! It 'clear. I myself have spent nearly two years in China, in Beijing, then Shanghai, with the idea that these difficulties had to cross because there was a challenge. What challenge? But the language! Because when you learn Chinese, even the most basic, for example when you say: "What is this thing?" Shenna dongxi shi, saying: "What is this east-west." And that I find fantastic, one philosophical point of view. Because for us, "what" is a term that identifies. "What," "cause," is a term insulation. When to say the same thing, if I may say, in Chinese and in China today, not in the classical Chinese philosophers, say, "What is this east-west?" Expresses a relationship. Chinese thought is a thought essentially relational. To say the landscape, they say "mountain and water", or shansui shanchuan.
So this idea, after all, that the Chinese thought they were articulate in a way different from greek thought. It is a 'intuition that the Chinese language gives us very soon and then gradually confirmed that the you learn. And I had this idea of \u200b\u200bstarting a detour through China to re-examine the philosophy, namely, to find some sort of initiative in theoretical philosophy. For in philosophy, as everywhere, there are frameworks: a political philosophy, moral philosophy, then philosophy of this or of that 'other time, etc. .. And I called for free use of philosophy, and not limited to: I'm interested in aesthetics, such as political philosophy. Now moving in this way, taking this away, I realize that I find a kind of philosophical scope. In philosophy, starting from China I'm interested in everything because everything is involved. So I spent
an early period in China, riding the death of Mao, from the end of spring 75 to 77. Mao died in September 76. I witnessed something that was very interesting, that was the end of the Maoist discourse and then the overthrow of the Maoist discourse, interesting time because the detector. After that I returned to France for a third cycle. Then I lived in Hong Kong where I worked as director of French sinology, a job at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, to create a link with the Far East. Three years later, I returned to France. And then I was a year in Japan, the Franco-Japanese House, Japan came as a kind of complement to study Sinology. So I would say that are both philosopher and sinologist. Sinologist to trade because it serves a sinologist know, some of which has never fully master, and then a philosopher by vocation, by aspiration, for the type of questions that I pose. What he says about metaphors
Chinese is very interesting. He cited, for example, dongxi, the "thing". He believes that people, their way of thinking is really determined by those words?
No. I say that is revealing, I do not say that it is determined. The question is excellent. Too often reduces the difference in thinking between China and Europe to a particular language or history. It says "the language is" why the Chinese would have ignored the abstraction. It is not true. When you look at the ancient Chinese texts, there are markers of abstraction. Not ours: it is not with the suffix or procedures as our, but also the Chinese language has developed markers of abstraction. The same, politically speaking, China has the world known cities such as Greece, but in ancient times there were rival principalities and men thought they could travel from one principality to another. So there was a certain freedom of movement and speech. Certainly there are reasons of history and language, but [the way they think] it is not certain, it is not determinism. Might consider, as I said about the term dongxi that is revealing.
revelation that, indeed, the Chinese thought has developed insights, ways of thinking about who enroll in the language. One key aspect of classical Chinese thought, is thought to polarity. It 's very interesting because our thinking with respect to this fact seems very monopolizzante or insulation. It was thought to be, it was thought the atom, we thought God, then isolated instances, while the Chinese thought, he thought to reports, that is to say polarities: hot and cold, high and low, heaven and earth, yin and yang, etc.. And then again for couples. So what is polarity? E 'when is simultaneously the terms opposite and complementary, and interaction. 'S why the Chinese thought that thinks in terms of process. Process for interaction between two poles, you know? So I think that it finds in the language and it can be observed even in the modern language, to the everyday expressions. But once again it would reduce non-determinism in the language, even if the language plays an important role because the Greek and European languages \u200b\u200bin general are very syntactical, very built, while the Chinese language is very paratactic, juxtaposes much more and the link syntax is much less strong than in our languages. When there are variations, there are no conjugations, there are no endings, the structure of speech is different. But anyway, this would reduce not only to linguistic reasons.
said before, that Chinese thought is a thought that does not ignore the abstraction. But it would seem, however, that ignores the metaphysical?
course. Chinese thought is a thought and it is not prepared to do what has been done in Europe too, considering that it was in the infancy of philosophy. It 's a bit easy viewing when Hegel says, the philosophy began in the Far East, in China, but she was born only in Greece, because Greece has blossomed into the concept, the relationship has blossomed between subject and object, etc.. So Hegel starts from China, but to empty it. It 's a thing that has come out very little, the philosophy continues to do so. While I know that the Chinese thought it was certainly capable of abstraction, systematization. Too often attributed to the Chinese a kind of slight disorder, is not it? No! There are systematised extremely subtle, rigorous, complex. But it is true that it is past the side of metaphysics. What does it mean? It means the splitting of the world. Metaphysics, in the end, splits the world into two floors, two orders of reality: the el'intelligibile sensitive, or sensitive and spiritual, as between two incommensurable orders. E 'Plato, but also the entire philosophical tradition that inspired him, and from which he never fully emerged.
What I find interesting in China, by contrast, is that there is only one order of reality, at different levels. This order of the municipality is actually what is called Qi: breath, energy. When the energy of, say, congeals, hardens, it condenses, it does things, when blood remains fluid, communicating the spirit form. There's this sort of splitting the original, radical, between a world of things, real, and the spirit world, spiritual, or intelligible. There is certainly the idea that reality is at different levels, and that one is more valuable the other, but there is a transition from the concrete to the spiritual. Just look at the Chinese painting. Chinese painting is a way of expressing the spiritual through the concrete. Not in a symbolic way, not with the concrete that is on another level the idea, as in the tradition of European symbolism - is a bit 'what I'm talking about in Détour et l'accès - where the concrete has no value in itself but the value of image, something different from what is, to which it refers, which is the abstract, the spiritual, the intelligible. So it is not a symbolic level. But something that passes through the concrete is a concrete praised, not more bogged down, no longer reified - see, these are the Chinese opposition - but praised, animated, and spiritual. So I think actually there is this essential idea of \u200b\u200ba thought that is developed and a thought that does not pass by the big break that metaphysics was one of the strongest strains of philosophy.
you have just used an interesting expression, said that Chinese thought has gone "on the side" of splitting, "side" of the break metaphysics. But the use of this term does not denote an ethnocentric? In this way does not result in the end by a Hegelian perspective, a perspective of the Enlightenment and Progress in writing in the story? It is not that could, on the contrary, consider the Western thought as a kind of historical accident, an "illusion" in the sense used by Freud in "The Future of an Illusion" for Jewish monotheism? It's not that you have lived in this illusion for five centuries now, since the Renaissance?
or twenty centuries, say twenty-five.
or twenty centuries ... but above five centuries, because as long as the thought greek remained closed in Greece or in its area of \u200b\u200binfluence, was a thought among others, in the end. E 'with the expansion of the West over the entire surface of the globe that a claim of universality has emerged as a framework reference to the thought. So ... she would be up to completely reverse this perspective?
Yes I did it right in my last book. Then the "opposite of" Yes ... I use it to force, no? Because when I say "went to the side of" is that you can move on to the side, and that is what has happened, that he thought China. But he thought "on side", without going through our routes, without going through our steps.
But if it says "on the side of the past", it means that there is, however, virtually?
Yes Is there a thought of God or of being virtual. I mean ... It's not that I'm doing the process to the philosophy European I find fascinating. And the more fascinating when I look at it from China ...
still remains the problem of truth behind it.
I go back. I told her that I put in brackets the question of truth. There is this first point is that China has not been thought of in childhood. He developed a thought that has gone through the same routes of our own. Then two things on the universal. One could be present, and in relation to Chinese thought. When I say universal, I take it that would put in a specific direction as opposed to uniform. What is universal? "Facing one." That is an aspiration, rather constitutive requirement of reason, which is the aspiration to universality as, say, a common identity at all. She knows that a law, from the standpoint of reason, must be a universal law. So I think it is a requirement of reason. And I am aware that this is just too confusing notion of universality, today, with that of uniformity. What uniform? E '"on one format." That means the only type, the stereotype, the standard. And the uniform is not a concept of reason is a concept of production. And 'the production chain, the production standard. Today we live in the world of the common market, worldwide as they say. We live in a world of communication. We live in a world of reproduction of the identical, for convenience. Look, the proof: this hotel (Hotel Tokyo Daiichi where the conversation takes place), resembles a Paris hotel, or no matter where, the Hilton is almost the same everywhere ... or sometimes he adds a touch local color, but in the end nothing changes. So I think that today runs a real risk that is to confuse the uniform and the universal. The uniform is a concept of production, whose raison d'être is a reason of convenience, and then that is a universal concept of reason, and that refers to a necessity.
And, in fact, if I am in charge of China, and Japan, in relation to Europe, is, as I said yesterday to our Japanese friends, to induce a resistance to what would be a sort of uniformity of thought, a thought to the standard I think what you're going, because without a thought dish more tensions with the concepts that are a kind of common denominators, with a language that would be a standard English, not English but the English of Shakespeare Americanized, with the major categories : objective and subjective, and so on., which appear to facilitate communication and that seems to me likely to sterilize the thought. And I would not like the thought of the twenty-first century is definitely a thought course because even. How did you think? It is thought to waste. It is thought to tensions. The thought, believe it is evidence of resistance. That 's what makes you think, evidence of resistance. Otherwise you do not think the spirit is lazy. And I fear that this resistance that causes the waste, such as when switching from French to Japanese - there is a resistance in the language, in thought - gradually fades and the world goes to sleep thinking about the clichés. This is the first step.
voltage, resistance, the difference ... so its definitions are from the side of Western thought ...
Why?
For the splitting. There something outside the world that you can use, whether of God, the progress of the Spirit or the belief in universal reason. There is an instance that allows you to put the world at a distance and to evaluate it in relation to another possible world. But when you live in a pragmatic value, be it Chinese or Japanese, what is annoying is that there is no remedy. Personally, indeed, the uniformity of thought I began to live it, by way of experience, here in Japan. I do not know how it is in China but in Japan it is very difficult to escape a sort of leveling machine. Absolutely
's why the Japanese, for example, only defense that they are obliged to meet you look here in Europe or the United States, for the chance to make a criticism of themselves. They need to move outside of this mirror their society. So when he talks about uniformity of thought, I'm afraid that it is from that side. Starting from the moment will be gone the last belief in remedies outside who founded the Western metaphysics and who founded all that flows from it, including democracy, because this is a belief, what will? It will remain this immanence. And from that moment the world is likely to become increasingly ... China. And this will create problems ...
Good. So let's talk. First, I may not have been clear enough. For me, my work in all my books, is to try to put up scaffolding every time calling into power thinking. This calls into tension. Like a spring that tends. Looking for, rightly, to build a scaffold with a meeting between Chinese thought, Eastern European and then thought, so that, again, detect waste, displayed the fracture lines and the thought once again become tasty, interesting, because it comes out a sort of thought which they can strive towards common European categories you spill all over the world. Now I think you made a comment that I think is absolutely correct. One of the great originality European thought is that it has preserved, in various forms that has not stopped trying to secularize, but failed completely, a transcendence from the outside. If I sum up what for me is the European world, the ancient name of God is transcendence from the outside after we were all transformations, as she called them, with the idea of \u200b\u200bprogress, which is primarily a 'religious ideas, "proceed to" go to heaven, a land of promise, and that has not stopped trying to secularize the eighteenth century, in the nineteenth century, without ever do at all. This idea, therefore, a transcendence from the outside which leads to an image of ideal. And 'because there was this idea of \u200b\u200btranscendence that comes from outside, for example, that freedom was expected. Freedom is a move away from the world. Because the Chinese thought did not think freedom in its tradition? And 'because it is a thought process, worldly: as she puts it: of immanence. What is the mode of transcendence in China? There is a certain transcendence in China, is what is called heaven. But it is a transcendence that is not from the outside like the God of the Bible, or as that of Platonic ideas, is a transcendence that is, as I often say, by aggregation of immanence. Because I, as an individual, I have only a small part in the process of the world, my field is limited. While the Sky is the totality of processes. And there is another world: heaven and is both the aggregation and also claim to total immanence. It 's the process throughout the whole. It 'so often, China is reflected in the Sky with "nature." But I think it's very different, because basically everything is in a worldly world. The equivalent, so if I can express, of European freedom, China is the spontaneity, zinran: "what you do" in the sense of his own free will, that is to say what you do alone, by himself. Then, as is the equivalent at the same time is very different, radically different, because freedom is not the liberation that this implies, but the fact is that the process, or conduct on the human wisdom, is held by only, without difficulty, spontaneously, without resistance. Likewise, the truth ...
It 's the problem that I pose in my new book: trying to rebuild a kind of bifurcation theory between China and Europe, not historical but theoretical. And as you pointed out, after all it could, instead of saying that the Chinese thought would remain within Child of European thought, watch the evolution of philosophy as a kind of deviation from the wisdom of aberration, as if something had deviated, fixed on the truth, who later found himself catapulted into a story, the history of philosophy. Why is there a history of philosophy, there is a story of wisdom. A history of the essays, taken individually, with routes ...
That 's what Mencius enable it to communicate with the Enlightenment, in "Fonder morality," although there is an interval of a thousand years?
course. So ... There is not only a history of philosophy, but philosophy is history. Why? I show a little ' in my last book at the bottom - and this is why I chose this title, a formula that I found in Confucius - The test is not without ideas for an idea is a bias. Formulate an idea is a priority issue at the expense of others. E 'then drop the aspects of reality. E 'therefore a priority. E 'therefore a bias. What is wisdom in China? And 'do not lean to one side. By either party. Do not wallow in the bias. The essay is the one who remains in a global thinking, willing, as they say, because the thought is totally open, all reality, the real in all its breadth, from pole to pole. So as to avoid bias, I would say, the philosopher sought to avoid the error. I would say the bias is a bit of wisdom 'as the error in philosophy and then go "on the side" of the concept of truth, it means that philosophy is that way of thinking that started with formulating an idea, has little importance as an idea in the sense that says "keep to their ideas," putting an idea to begin with and the rest of it follows: beginning, arche. So, basically, start from an idea that is linked to everything else, no? But just as there would be some sort of initial loss, says wisdom, it would be something that we started focusing, dropping, leaving the shadows, the rest of reality. I think that we could represent the philosophy in a different way, as if it were a kind of detour that precipitated the thought in a story where, since the idea first formulated, would never have given up trying to recover what had began to drop. The dialectic is this a story you do not stop trying to retrieve, on the other hand, in another way, what had begun to consider not the beginning. So a history of philosophy. This is different than the availability of the test, thought it would be no history with an open approach to all reality, with a kind of openness that does not stick to any idea.
This says that there is a problem that has its impact in the political world. I mean ... China shows us how to think without taking sides, maintaining an open mind to all possibilities, without bias, without favoring the idea. But how this translates in political terms? Faced with the power, do not support the ideas, stick to the truth? I believe that a weakness of Chinese thought and that has not stopped the power to conceive but who has never been able to conceive of the resistance power. Individually there are some strengths, but the idea of \u200b\u200bthe intellectual, the figure intellectual, did not develop in China, rather than the letter because the writer has always remained with the Prince. Could not build a separate location, which rightly refers to a transcendence, as you said earlier, in another order. E 'in the name of a different order than in the West has formed the intellectual. An ideal order. An ideal city, in whose name he could judge the relative strength of the real world. But when there's another world or outside, there is no ideal, there is a position of separation from which to denounce the existing order of power. You can do so ... but there is no position from which do so. I think it's an essential difference, and that he could see well the consequences on the political level: the intellectual in China has been unable to fill this role has been essential in Western history.
Then, there was one thing that struck me as very characteristic, to return to the language. How perfect is translated into Chinese? Lixia. Literally "thought of them" What is there? Great concept in China, which would translate as "a guiding principle of things." It is far from ideal. The term ideal is to translate into Chinese, but in fact is not ideal because it is the thought of what is the inner principle of reality, precisely the principle of consistency of the process. There is not a dimension of external and transcendence. Transcendence that, for us, has been the ideal than the reality? Is not it?
So, to return to the universal problem ...
Let's take a minute break?
Yes, if you like.
(pause) Yeah
start again?!
We are in Japan .. The breaks are short.
Maybe ... But I, I'm greek! I like the breaks. I like the siesta ... Okay, we need to do ... go ahead!
One more question, if you like, on universalism. For her there is a point that is outside of Western thought is the thought China, and from this point you could try to find a universal? Moreover, such a position could be achieved since presuporrebbe practically take the distances from both languages, or you may find, as she suggests, in a come and go?
I do not think - and this is, if you will, the characteristic of my work - the fact that we can have from the beginning of a position of such a height from which it can resolve the difference. They are not like the missionaries of the seventeenth century they had, themselves, the truth in his pocket, revelation, and theological truth that China faced no problems because they knew what you had to think; believed or not believed. And do not even believe that we can at first glance to have universal categories.
I give an example in the literature. There is an American book, written by a Chinese, James Hsiao, Theories on Chinese Literature - I think you're in Chicago - which is a book that aims to present the Chinese way of thinking about literature. How to present it? Says: you start with what is a universal scheme for thinking about literature. It takes in the tradition of British critics (Abrahams) reflecting on the tradition of romance, the romance being a bit 'all the result of a critical European tradition. It sets four terms, which make the system, which are all thought necessary to dwell on the literature about the author, the work, the public and the world. Four terms, therefore, universal. It throws them, or rather they are applied, the Chinese way of thinking about literature to present. Well, I say that does not work! Because what I set there is uninteresting. Why? Because those concepts are not universal. The notion of public, for instance, came to us from a particular experience of literature, the first epic, and theater. There is a notion of the public because there are these kinds, the theater el'epopea that did not exist in China. So the identification of this center that would be the result, such as in ARS Poetica of Horace where you think the artwork depending on the result, this idea of \u200b\u200ban audience is a concept that refers to a particular history of literature. The same applies to the notion of authority comes from the idea of \u200b\u200bcreation which we refers to many things, such as the creation of the world, and so on. There is a parallel that links created, and creation of the world. While in Chinese thought is the advent of the literary form of process, like everything else. Process for interaction, that is, for the poetry, landscape and emotion, and Jing Qing, outside and inside. Interaction process, processing, like all the Chinese thought that thinks in terms of processing and therefore can not explain the notion of author as in the European tradition.
The same concept of the world, also has some marked characteristics. There is a thought of the world in relation to the work with a ratio of mimesis, work of art it represents, which imitates the world. But, as Ricoeur rightly said, because there is representation you need at the outset that there is breakage. Now, of course, what is interesting in the relationship between literary work and world in China, which is much more in the order of the meeting or of communion with the world what we call the world, for convenience. So see, even at the level of literary experience that would seem the most common, is still a gap. This is not the same ... This does not fit other well. And what interested me, are the differences in frame, in fact, that there is some blur.
So do not believe a position from a position because I have no theological or doctrinal, in principle. I'm not a missionary who goes to China and do not take that as evidence that there are universals of thought arising from culture. There are traditions of thought and, ultimately, the categories of being, of truth, are the subject of particular concepts. I would say, to cut short, that Chinese thought is not a thought of the subject but in the process. Did not think the truth, but consistency. I mean I could develop like this ...
Consequently, my work not having a position from the top or the categories of universality, prefabricated, pre, is a work of back-and-forth. I am ... horizontally, without a vertical illumination. Horizontally, I begin by doing what? By reading Chinese texts. Text. In its relationship with the Chinese commentary. Am I not reading the text. E 'between the text and the commentary that goes to work. Then I try to explain the coherence of this text in order to do so to meet with another thought, European thought, to extrovert. I am therefore in a procedure derived the back-and-forth, but that is something crooked. Rest in an ambiguous situation. But that's what interests me, is this resistance, this kind of discomfort that forces you to revise the theoretical categories without regard them as completely closed.
Now, that's not all. In this little book on morality (morality Fonder), what cha meant that the subtitled dialogue is that I was not aware that it was just a difference of experience. I do not poses the problem to see whether the Chinese experience is different from ours. And when Mencius began by saying that when anyone sees a child about to fall into a pit will tend to save their arms without thinking about whether or not he has interest to do so, he will derive a benefit, glory or anything else, I tell myself that there is something universal and that, for us, we meet with notions such as compassion. But then, piety is already a term connoted, European. The pity is already a term Rousseau, is a term criticized by Nietzsche: "The pain of compassion" ... But this idea of \u200b\u200ba reaction to all'insopportabile, of which I speak in my book, I think I recognize something that is an experience described by the Chinese, described by people like Rousseau or others and find that I know well, I know well identified.
Just a hint. When he says Universal ... The pity is universal but would not be natural. There are companies that are cruel, cruel or that does not give the other where they see it.
All companies are cruel. Am I right: universal, "face to the one." It is not equivalent to a uniform. E 'yearning for something that should be the same for all ... "Should be" is having to be universal.
But it is innate?
So they say, them. We should look at things more closely. We say that there is a universal aspiration in responding all'insopportabile that happens to others, we would willingly believe. And what I'm interested in this story is how, in particular morality, I recognize, identify shared experiences. Because the experience to childbirth, the ox was dragged to sacrifice, I, the French twentieth century, I understand very well. No need for us to speculate on, talk to me ...
Yes, this is where, actually, would be universal.
The inconsistency of the prince when China proposed to replace the ox with a sheep because he saw the terrified eyes of the ox and not the ram, I understand very well.
E 'also what allows interested in the history of others.
course. That 's what makes me down to communicate, there is a meeting, no? And when Mencius says, has in mind a need for universality. As he says: "For all men." Part from an experience that begins with the individual being, a king, one day, and then says: "For all men, not ...". So there is in Mencius, as in European philosophy, need for universality. But what interests me is that later on, to develop his moral thinking, not through some folds of European thought. For example, do not express the category of the will. This, this I found very interesting. For as much as we are concerned we have linked the call to the moral will, therefore, a philosophy of the subject. It will, is already pre-designed, so if I can express, in greek thought, already in Aristotle. The main categories in Aristotle, between what I do willingly, Ekon, or in spite of myself, akon. It is not voluntary or involuntary, or free or not free, and willingly or against my will. And then the Aristotelian notion of preferential areas, desire, discussion, decision, they themselves are simply following the address of a Greek tragedy. The Greek tragedy, is a reflection on the staging of how man is committed in its action. Ajax who chooses suicide. So this corresponds to a particular tradition. And what strikes me is that Mencius does not say "I want that" but "I can do that." And often the translator translates as "I can or want." Fixed. But the only choice is very clear: it is "I do".
Therefore, China has not made explicit in the category of the will, as you can clearly see how it happened in Europe: the Greek tradition, and Christian experience, "the evil will, Augustine, etc.. And that, among the authors I take as a reference, Kant and Rousseau, they will appear as something innate, common to all and that goes without saying. And as they say, so what Rousseau Kant: "It 's enigmatic! Will, I have the intuition is obvious, but what is not. " Sometimes they take it as a self-evident and at the same time not having to show accountability. It 's very interesting because there is a sort of difficulty thinking that I can reflect the experience of China where that category is not explicit. And then, even that of liberty. We have designed and is considered the moral, as Kant says, in the idea of \u200b\u200bfreedom. This strikes me even now: look at our courts, how they judge? In a Kantian. First, a criminal appeal is made to the psychiatrist, the sociologist, and so on. So it takes account of determinism. It appeals to science, science of nature or human nature, psychology, psychiatry, sociology ... everything you want. And science is more precise, more subtle in determining determinism is, in fact. Then later, you do anything. It says: "But it's free." While at first it was shown were not free, then a decision is transcendent - when they take the transcendence and the outside - and it is said: "It was free, the judge". No more "I explain," but "judges."
's all the discomfort of justice in Europe, currently ...
Oh yes! Any discomfort ... No more "explain" but "judges." And here I'm wearing different clothes that are no longer technical, but the shirts of the dress but the dress of the robed judge who says, "Here. He made evil. " Then the man splits between a natural man, explainable through science, and then the man transcendent noumenal Kant would say, another I with a large I, which is free subject, the subject of freedom, and on which the Science has no longer taken. So we were Kantians, totally. But with that discomfort you mention and which today is enormous. So what interests me is to see how the Chinese side has been able to draw a moral thought, with a need for transcendence of morality, with the formulas that are like those of Kant: there are things I like, I care more than life, and higher values \u200b\u200bto my existence - the transcendence of morality - and at the same time without going totally the idea of \u200b\u200bfreedom, which for us is was the base of this need for universality of morality. I find this allows you to see even the hardships, or inconsistencies, or difficulties of our thinking.
Therefore, with regard to my approach, because that is what we speak, are within the coming and going. Basically I do a reflection, in the strict sense. Reflection is thinking one thing over another. As a target is reflected in a mirror. Reflect a tradition and the other, and this reflected mortgage of one another, I try to create a kind of thinking space problematizzante, reflective, to return to our unthought. Basically what I'm looking for is not China, is in this gap between Chinese philosophy and European thought, back to our unthought.
So she's always in the Western philosophy?
Yes, I am greek! It 'clear, are greek and philosopher. I told it to him from the beginning. But I try - is a bit 'what he said Merleau-Ponty, is not it? - To open the concept. And I try to practice a kind of philosophy of openness by the reflection in one of her other fishing in the frame China for the reasons I said, comfort, so to re-examine the philosophy since its foundation. The philosophy but also our ways of thinking, as I said, the Western Justice, for example, to me is a rather aberrant.
Yes, because you do not know whether or not should be punished. And 'this discomfort.
Oh no! Why waste time begin to explain. And if you mean, not punish. The film the damn M, is this. If you mean, do not judge. If you mean, do not judge. Because the more you develop the science comes down more in detail, is more subtle in capturing the determinism. Science, is it? E 'causality. So is increasingly able to determine causality. Then again, he has committed this crime because at a sociological, psychological level, a level ... At the same time saying, but at some point do a cut at all this, and I tick another subject which I know one thing, and that is that I do not know anything. E 'noumenal, is the other self. A self that is the ego of freedom. So, in principle, I can not know anything. Because if I knew something, they bring in terms of the knowable, then the scientific, then the causal. So I'd do an empirical subject, not a transcendental subject. Justice has now remade check, without even any account ideologically a transcendental subject, noumenal, which I know one thing, he knows nothing, and it is because I do not know anything that exists.
While the Chinese justice ...
But there is none!
E 'justice rate, I think. Yes
's right. He said.
We know exactly what you risk for each transaction that takes place.
There are carrots and sticks. There are codes of punishments and rewards. So there are two levers. I, the sovereign, I am holding two levers in the machinery of power, I have the carrot, I stick, move the spontaneous feelings of fear or interest, and I have a tariff.
She explained at the beginning of our meeting, to have chosen China because he was just thinking, thinking outside the Indo-European, to be both ancient, systematic, written ...
not necessarily systematic, but it is explicit. I did not want to become an Anthropology.
This was the question that I wanted to ask.
When looking for the alien, there are two possibilities. Or does the anthropologist ol'etnologo, do you like Levi-Strauss and then turn to America, or ancient Japan, or Africa ...
where it stops on the way? Just study the Chinese thought to re-examine their thinking?
am a philosopher. So I learned to do one thing, in my studies, that is to read the texts. It 's my training. I did not want to be an anthropologist, I wanted to be a philosopher. And this is what causes me to Chinese thought is really convenient because it is both outside our frame of thought, that is our language, the Indo-European, that is our historical relationship, until a time later and is thought explicit. And it is said. Work between the text and his comments. So actually I have this bias - but that is mine is my job, my job is - to put on a plane which is primarily a textual level. Another thing is the location of the anthropologist. But for, say, create a face to face with the philosophy that I needed a mode of thinking that it was equally explicit philosophical discourse. On the other hand can observe a thing, and the reluctance of China in relation to anthropology. There are anthropology and ethnology in Japan, Africa, everywhere, but China seemed very interesting because of his reluctance to anthropology ...
The problem of Tibet is from here?
Yes, exactly. Anthropology in China is made up of what are called minorities. Then all anthropologists are in Hong Kong or Taiwan or Tibet ... China has formed very soon, under the influence of the classics of the literary figure, censure, cancellation of what was the background Anthropology, the shamanic background that exists in China and in Korea, but Chinese culture has covered very soon deleted. There is a reluctance, a resistance of classical China, one of the texts.
The truth should be in all points of view imaginable of all cultures, or in a common minimum that would be an intersection ... or does not exist at all?
Then I have to say one thing, and I decided along the way not to use the notion of truth. It is not mandatory. I do not. I speak of intelligibility. There are some consistencies. I think that thought ...
is not relativism, intelligibility?
No. Not at all. It is not relativist at all. But we can talk later. There is the idea that at bottom, reality is a blend of consistency. And then there are intelligible as possible, more or less relevant, more or less stringent. Are there any criteria. The concept of truth is a notion of his philosophy. It 's very interesting to see that in the Chinese tradition it comes to true or false, disjunction, but not about truth. The proof is that the expression was borrowed from the West introducing it: Zhenli, is a concept translated. It 's interesting. Why? Because it indicates that the philosophy has set the truth to make it the absolute notion, the key concept, and that has become essential for philosophy. My latest book is where it leads. And that's what interests me. Nietzsche himself, when he says: "Because we have preferred not true than true, an error or ignorance?" Call into question the certainty of truth does not emerge from the reference to the truth, it remains within philosophy. And my purpose is in fact, going from China to see such a notion as that, truth, fade, not like you need it. Not that you criticize: there is no need. Please read Confucius, read Chouangtzeu, there is the notion of truth. The Chinese sage is authentic, zhenren, but it's true, not true.
So the notion of truth is a notion that is itself particular. You see how far I do not let go of the easy universalism. I prefer to speak of intelligibility, consistency. Because when I read Chinese texts, I see you are consistent, I see that there is a sense, I see that support. Consistent, that is to say, hold water. And what I try to do first is to describe, grasp the coherence and describe them, making them explicit. And I know that deep down, every theoretical tool sheds light on a certain sector of reality. Do not assume that the experience is necessarily different between China and us talking about the pity I think it's common. But our theoretical tool is more or less suitable for making light. So, for what I call the reaction to all'insopportabile, what happens next, I think Mencius, the thought of Mencius, is more suited to realize that no European thought than, say, running in circles. I try to prove at the outset: what Shopenauer calls "the mystery of godliness." I think the European way of thinking, because it is a thought of the subject, had to suffer to explain what he calls pity because pity is just the immediate relationship with each other. It falls into the category of the report. Now the European idea is first all thinking insulation, of the subject individual. So how to motivate my immediate relationship with each other? Why is a reaction, pity it is not thought of, and responsive. How to motivate my immediate relationship with each other in terms of reaction, if they are part of a philosophy of the subject, the individual-subject, as is Rousseau? Rousseau runs aground. The moment in which morality is based on piety which is a spontaneous feeling, when the account says strands. Well, it seems to me that the direction taken by the Chinese thought with more clarity all'insopportabile this reaction, in the face of disaster that happens to another, than do the tools europei.o.fondo what I seek is not China, is in this gap between Chinese philosophy and European thought, back to our thoughtlessly
Then, starting from his thoughts found in Chinese thought that something that seems to better explain an aspect of reality.
As there are others that explain less well. I know that ...
Not because, to simplify, think that, basically, there's a fair point of view on things and on reality, or is there a multiplicity of views that simply take hold of a part? Well, I do not want to put it into trouble with that question ...
No, it's real. Moreover, they are cautious. I think there's some consistency of thought most enlightening other, more relevant than other, more fruitful than others. The splitting of the world, here / there, the sensible world / world intelligible, is not it? I would say that is fruitful. And 'consistency developed, which has significant effects on thought. But I would say that is the truth? It would again be caught in a notion, the truth, which I was not so essential ...
not told the truth in fact. I said "fair point of view," which is a bit 'different.
I understand it. His speech has changed. Yes
Why was not the same question. Yes
evolved. But I would say that the idea of \u200b\u200bjustice, in that case, it remains dependent on the idea of \u200b\u200badaptation. I would say that there are views that are, to use my terms, "false", at the very moment when every point of view has its justification. And there are views that are more fruitful than others. But I look good on a methodological level, by the forwarding too quickly in the direction toward which they tend, that is, a revival of truth because, say, would stop the size of exploration of my work.
I would like to insist a bit 'on this question because it will serve as a transition to the third issue on which I wanted to ask questions: what is the relevance of Chinese thought today? The thought that she studies still inform the Chinese society, its social organization, its policy? Affect decision-making, for example, and the manner in which the Chinese leaders, industrialists or see the world and the position of China in the world? It 's a problem that has its own importance because if each has its own logic and coherence if everyone thinks that his point of view is perhaps not "fairer" but at least "less" than that of the interlocutor, it is not clear why, given the weight that currently China, the Chinese should not try, after all, to impose their point of view of the world.
It 's a basic but complex question. I am aware, on the one hand, European thought, or categories of European thought, tend to cover the whole world, in the era of globalization. That 's what raised before: the standardized thought. The Chinese thought explicit today has very little interesting. E 'virtually non-existent. If you go to a department of philosophy in China: people do business. Why do you want to get rich ... E 'legitimate, I'm not blaming anyone, but say that ... Well. Then, when commenting on their classical texts, they often comment in a language that conforms to our: subjective, objective, truth, beauty, etc.., All of our instruments, and often make it unreadable or uninteresting their own thoughts. At this
respect, thinks that the influence of Western studies, as they are called in Japan, has been very important in China?
First of all I would say that for most of it came from Japan. At the bottom of Meiji had a feedback effect on China. Of course there are Chinese intellectuals who went to Europe, but what was the great enterprise of Japanese Westernization of thought, which has picked up the baton from the previous companies from neighboring China, has helped China, she returned to China. This is the first step. The second point is that escapes from an explicit formulation. She talked about business. I went with French companies came to China to do business. There are strategies Chinese classic, antique, which the Chinese do not give up. For example in my work contrast the efficacy manipulation to persuasion. When European businessmen would often go to China to persuade the Chinese. It says "But how can I convince them that ..?". There is the whole bottom greek: rhetoric and persuasion, Peito, no? He finds himself at a stroke the whole of Greece, the speaker ... Already in Homer the characters they want to convince each other. And this has blossomed into political institutions such as the agora or the court, the assembly. Democracy rests on one thing, persuasion. While China is not the problem: handling. Which means that you create conditions in which you want to spend where you walk.
's what I try to give form in my work effectiveness. I wrote a chapter on "persuasion against manipulation." Manipulate and create the conditions in the situation, handle the situation so that she, herself, thinking of doing what he wants to do, is forced to go where I, myself, I want to pass. There is something very developed in China, very refined. Please read the treaties of strategy, politics, diplomacy, this is what they say. There is no problem to convince, not if it does just mentioned. For example, a treaty of diplomacy, nor a study in this book: not is to convince the prince is to ensure that the prince is forced to listen to me, forced to follow. From this all there is upstream, in order to conquer it, to influence, to ensure that it is reduced to being passive, as in Chinese strategy, which face so that I may use it as I think. Everything is inside the handle because you have to take him to go where I want to pass, while believed to go where he wants him, which is good for him to pass. I think that, when looking at the business between China and Europe, affecting. So often I see French businessmen who want to persuade the Chinese, and I see businessmen, Chinese partners handling. When you have a resource, you use it, do not you think?
He said: "They have given up a. ..". It means that it is a choice of strategy or on the contrary that the Chinese can not think of this kind of relationship if not in this respect?
No! I think the strategy there is, because they know how to do it, us. They go to Europe. They study the way we do business, to make administration of playing politics. But I think they are more or less conscious ...
study. But assimilate?
Ah yes. Certainly. I think they understand, but be aware that this is another resource that has a different efficacy and effectiveness of that persuasion, as there effectiveness of the speech, and that there is effective opposite of manipulation, as there is an efficacy of silence. It 'better to have two resources that one. As Chairman Mao said: "Walking on two legs." So I think they have, those who have been in Europe, who have studied in our schools, often rigorous knowledge of the discourse of our strategies, our thinking strategies. But, say, do not give up effectiveness, to use strategies such as handling. Why give it up if it is effective?
Apart from this aspect of strategies to negotiate, there are also other points? In his speech
. You mentioned my Work: The Détour et l'acces. There effectiveness of direct speech, frontal, explicit, of the logos, in our tradition, but there is inverse effectiveness, and which do not give up, dell'allusivo of indirect criticism of the cross, of what I call the ' obliquity. The obliquity in China, today there is none.
works within the framework of China? Yes
also in relation to us. I think they treated much better than before our rhetorical models. Enough to have relations with the Chinese to see that the effects of silence, or not said - he knows the Chinese proverb: "Make some noise to the east and attack in the west" - worth in terms of strategy and is within a discourse. There is the main part of the development discourse, I say explicitly, insistently, and then there's the insidious charge, the insinuation decisive. And 'everything goes from there. They have not given up on these differences within the discourse.
1492-1997. Last year, the return of Hong Kong to China. Two milestones. They met five centuries of Western expansion and, say, two kinds of missionaries, a missionary who was leading theological and religious values, and a second missionary who had colonial interests but disguised behind an ideology of progress was that and universality, precisely. Now, in recent times, are beginning to hear echoes of the opposite ...
Relativity? There
relativism, but there's more. China, but also some other countries in Asia, seems to have the temptation to close this time but at the same time taking the lesson to the West.
more so if the economic power to go on their side.
And that's a start. If everything goes as they hope the Chinese, demographic, political and economic development of China will be so overwhelming that the problem will occur even if ...
Exactly So, first of all, a question of method. I want to avoid two pitfalls. What I would call "easy universalism" - Do not renounce universalism - that this sort of humanism is immediate, where unanimity is not to project their own notions, their categories on the rest of the world, thinking that they are intended to be valid everywhere. But there is another stumbling block, what I would call the "lazy relativism" is waiving the requirement of universality, there are folds on the particular cultures, "mentality", he says, "'Chinese'. No! I work where I pretend to understand the other. Why is it intelligible. I speak of intelligibility. And I think today it oscillates between these two rocks too. UNESCO, the human rights is between the two. Sometimes it is said, human rights, universality, the great principles, and so on. Other times it is said: "Yes .. talk about human rights in Africa today, while there are still these problems clan ...". Stride. Not working. And then, there are folds on the relativist position. And again: no! We must not yield too simplistic or the illusion of universality, which is a requirement, which is an ideal, but that is not necessarily the one they can start thinking, or because you are disappointed, which is falling in the opposite what I call the "lazy relativism." I believe that our work, work of thinking, is to work the particular and the general, the outward and return, a coming and going. I think, ideologically, is a problem today. Human rights can be heard two speeches, and you can not get married to each other, which makes it sometimes and sometimes make one another. For example, the French Government with respect to China, human rights in China, said sometimes one and sometimes another. There is an initial period, at the time of Tiananmen, which is made easy universalist discourse, then later, when we saw that the German and Italian businessmen were selling better than us because they had played minus the hype of universalism, we have returned to a universalist position which says: "Well, I'm Chinese, is another thing."
What is interesting in this example, what it turns out, I would say from a Chinese point of view, is that the position of human rights, one that defends human rights, is weak, because it depicts, when you do not need to withdraw. It is a bit 'scary?
Yes, but at the same time I defend human rights. So I'm not in a speech where I want to relativize human rights. I said just as universal, that is, as demands of reason. But, I am a man of reason, I am a philosopher. But, in fact, is a requirement, is in the order of the ideal, and the assertion, so e-mail, peremptory, a validity of human rights everywhere, urbi et orbi, as if that were so, now, they have to under all forms of society, I say caution. It 's like the elections, the democratic West. The mode of election, how the decision with the elections, with the franchise, with the accounts, ie a mathematical model, linked to the Greek city, linked to the reforms of Cleisthenes, tied very special meeting in history between a Greek theorist came from the Ionian mathematician and Athens dl at the end of the sixth century, it is a particular moment in history, and where he was born a model is essential that the voting decision of social policy, by one count, where it says: 49% versus 51%, 49% not true anything for a while and 51% have all the power. Believe that this is the only model of dealing with politics today, it is necessary to impose it so directly, I say caution. Why the reluctance will be strong ... So what he said now is very fair, in my opinion, namely that if you do it too simplistically, the backlash will be very violent. And 'that Asian countries, gaining economic power, political power and will also want to give us a shot very models introduced too hastily rejecting violence as were ours. They say today, but will put it into practice soon.
Would you say that there is a socio-political model that China would be a model of regulation, as opposed to the democracy, which involves primarily to maintain a certain balance in the order of things, whatever the price ... Yes
harmony. The great harmony, Tai?
... and could claim a generalization of that model?
Yes, but they say it already. One of the concepts that I try to explain the process of Chinese thought, I just mentioned: it is the adjustment. What is regulation? E 'harmony evolving. It is not pre-established harmony is the harmony that does not stop changing. The adjustment is that harmony is maintained through change. So the Chinese thought is a thought control because it is a process of thought and harmony. And, indeed, is what they always say. For them is the harmony between the high and low, the adjustment between the power and the people. Example: dazebao, the posters, is the adjustment to the Chinese. So, I do not want to make an apology, but I say we are conservative with our projections are that, because there is a projection of a field on the other with a period in which Europe also was strong, economically and politically. This situation changes, it is now clear.
All my work, if he wants, regardless of China, is trying to do, to write what should be a particular history of the need for universality. One particular story, that is, after all, what I hope is to recapture the history of European reason from that which is outside China. For example, the universality of Greek is not the universal Roman. The universality of Greek, is a universality of the logos, the definition of abstraction, the en ti eidos, an essence of the self of things. That 's what they tell us Plato, Aristotle, the Greek philosophers. So it's a universality of the logos. Logos, speech, definition. The universality of Latin America is quite different. E'un'universalità of the territory is the space Roman is the Mare Nostrum, the Mediterranean is, is basically that we can be citizens alike in Tunisia and in Gaul, the civitas, no? It 's another thing. Then another model of universality. Catholicism is also another model of universality, yet different: in the Roman Catholicism is the greek and ...
All of these models, because they are considered universal, they have tended to be imperialists. There Imperialism was a greek, a Roman imperialism, an imperialism Christian ...
Yes, yes, but very different. Greek imperialism is an imperialism of reason ... A
imperialism in the sense that it tries to extend its values \u200b\u200bto others. The Chinese may not have this kind of imperialism?
But the Romans, is another model of imperialism, Catholicism yet another model. What interests me is that after you write a history of philosophy where there would be a sort of gradual maturation, necessary, consistent, unified the need for universality. Now I find, on the contrary, a European history quite mixed, more chaotic: greek time, when the Roman Empire, Catholicism, of course summarize. So Europe is much more composite, and what appeared to be born if it were the reason, as Athena from the skull of philosophy in classical times, that she quotes, in fact it is not, is not the story of reason. There is a mature, yet again, much more chaotic, even random, than to describe in retrospect the following philosophy.
I believe that Europe is currently taken by the requirement of universality in a time when most did not - say so as soon as possible in every case, but I think we have, as yet because I still have confidence in his ability - the supremacy economic and political. We in this situation. And, as I said, the speech of UNESCO meets with the difficulty. And the work I do is precisely because I am aware that we must organize a meeting on the theoretical level that allows the imperialist relationship, which is always interwoven with the story - I can not do anything, is this: the balance of power -, avoid that one part may see some sort of coverage of the thought of the Far East with the theoretical tools in Europe, and then, to recoil, to the resistance likely to be fierce, where companies that have significant economic and political increasing, and which were covered with this sort of common tools, will be in a position to reject or intending to violate the requirement of universality of the European Union.
not think that democracy as we practice it ourselves, which is a model of conflict, if the opposite would appear in a fragile balance of power with a model which would be the model of regulation, much more stable and solid? You can start on a free trade agreement with a cultural model potentially destructive to our own property?
Personally, I believe in the value of the conflict. And I thought that harmony is rich, from the Chinese side in the relationship with nature for example, but it's very easy to alienating social and political. Why always in harmony slip away other things that are power relationships. So, since I do not think, until proven otherwise, that social relations can be completely free from power relations, I think the position is contested, the position of termination positions are socially useful. Are on the side of freedom. And I think that freedom can be endangered. So that should just do this need to come out. Personally, I'm from the city. That is a place to confront the speeches, the protest, because I just realized that the Chinese side, under the ideology of harmony, there is a form of alienation that is very dangerous. And I think that I could speak Japanese if we had time, in the same way. I am very afraid of consensual thoughts, attitudes common in the image of harmony, of what is working well, which is well oiled. I fear very much the well-oiled company.
So tell us a little 'in Japan. What has the stomach?
To start I had one thing to say is - I speak live, it is clear - the resistance that we find, in any case over to my work, between two rocks, and above all that of hyper-specialization for which there is close on its subject. To be competent Specialization is necessary, I agree on this. But we are closing on their field-free or waiver, or want to give up a curious thought. If I specialize in depth, I do not care. I do like everything else. While in my philosophical work are personally involved. And this rock of training goes hand in hand with what they call the nihonjinron, namely a kind of cultural discourse on shots generalizations or oppositions marked with an ax: Japanese, French. I do not know what the Japanese or French, I! I work on a text. But the Japanese that sums up all the Japanese people, I've never met. One thing goes with the other, that's what puzzles me here. And I, speaking here, encounter difficulties, either because they do not want to isolate myself, circumscribe within a simple specialization, then I need a philosopher of generalization. Nor can I please, even if I do I need to please and even if my speech goes beyond - when I say "Chinese" is a cheap way of speaking, did speak of a text: Mencius - of a sort of easy generalization, say fantasy. Walk together, ghost and generalization, using fantasy of generalization, and then cut with hyper-specialization, where my interest. This is dangerous, the subject's relationship with his work. Nell'iperspecializzazione no longer interests me as a person, how would I work ... I know: the cleaning? And in nihonjiron guess. Then there is simply my desire, desire for identity, a desire not to know. I believe that intellectual work should we desire, but that reflects a desire that motivates the thought. Then work between particularism and generalizations, with a back and forth between the two, between the two poles, and I think this is doing philosophy. And in Japan meeting, say, a resistance, a reluctance - I'm experiencing these days - because on the one hand I would like to take you into the trap of specialization, the other would catch me in the categories of speech generalizing. For example, the interviews that I had the radio: What did you think of the Japanese? Etc. But really, we need to analyze, we must develop. Well, this is the first thing I wanted to say in Japan. On the one hand
routine, and across a fantasy also very predictable. All of this is found in many aspects of Japanese society.
There is limited work on the one hand, and, indeed, which was actually taken away the desire, or pleasure, and then with a kind of appliance that is a minority habit. Then, on the other hand, there is ... Well! There is a ghost somewhere because we are human beings ...
He lived in China and has lived in Japan. It 'hard not to ask her to compare his experiences. What does it mean to you, as sinologist, Japan? What of China found in Japanese society, and who knows what the Japanese thought?
The first thing I say: I used to China to Japan in the sense that I used Japanese Studies on China. Since Japan has long had relations with China and there is an entire development work done by the Japanese sinology which I serve. So the first reason is a reason for comfort. When I came to Japan was for this very reason. The first year, the first month that I was in Japan, I saw Japan through China. Then it is true that I am interested in breeding and also the transformation made by the Japanese of Chinese culture. For example, as the issues become Japan literary Chinese, Chinese poetry. We recognize the issues at the same time, recognize the elements and played at the same time say there is a big change. Chinese poetry, classical poetry, is essentially based on parallelism. Japanese poetry, however, on a break of parallelism, symmetry. It 's interesting because it is indicative of what China is and what is Japan. For me there is a gap of understanding. I think there is a real Japanese poetry, very interesting, some of which effects are related to Chinese themes, others are due to prosodic forms forms that are invented in Japan, and often in opposition to Chinese forms. Once again, the work on classical Chinese poetry parallelism, the Japanese poetry has developed very much in contrast to this effect. Then there is all the Japanese sensibility - to cut short, is an expression easy - the poetry of the seasons and so on., Which has some of the matches in China, but that is both very Japanese. The way to deal with the theme of love, for example, is very different. Well, it would take too long to talk about it, and then when he speaks, it must be done on the text.
So as sinologist, there are things which recognizes, using material of Chinese origin, but have been transformed.
course. There are also situations where this has been maintained in Japan and not China, for example in the arts of poetry, the Tang era, an era in which Japan went to China to learn. In the field of medicine in the field of poetry, in many fields there are texts that have been stored in Japan and in China, and the texts are very interesting for us because the manuals. For the Chinese texts that were not interesting because it was practical test, to be able to do, and therefore were not preserved by the literary tradition, but in Japan were important precisely because the texts to be able to give practical. And as for
Japan and China today, finds the elements of comparison in the thought that is in place, which governs the conduct of social psychology ...?
avoid discussing this point because it is too general: On the other hand I can tell you one thing: I taught French literature in China and Japan. I have this experience, so I can talk. I had the opportunity to teach contemporary French literature for three months in Beijing for teachers of French university, where there was an opening in 1978. One year after a student was sent from France, and for three months, I did what I never thought to do: I have not taught the language, I taught literature Contemporary French, of which they had no idea for ideological reasons ... And I started with him to read Barthes, for example, or Eluard: "The Earth is blue like an orange" ... That confused them, but at the same time I could find a sense of the literary text highly developed among the Chinese. I think that between the Chinese and French, including the Chinese and I communicate a lot through literature, the meaning of the text, the pleasure of the text. I had the opportunity to teach French literature in Japan. It 'been a different experience, because the Japanese when they work on literature devote much time to literary history, biography, a kind of relationship intimate with the author. Sa: the author lives completely around, he spends his life with the author. Often it is not a great author. In Japan, they claim on the whole, but not on Flaubert on Maxime Du Camp. Although, I think, is the sentimental education that is dedicated to Maxime Du Camp and Maxime Du Camp, which entered nell'Académie Française, and Flaubert. But they are not sufficient reasons to deal with it.
has recently been reassessed.
Oh yeah? But still, the evening when I have time to read, I read Flaubert rather than Maxime Du Camp. But all this to tell you what I discovered in Japan is this way to specialize on an author and gradually absorbed, impregnation, which creates a way of understanding, but that is not the way of comment that I practice, a structural comment, a comment that exerts a kind of imperialism on the text, theory of imperialism, but that is a kind of impregnation, identification, which I think is very different from what I've encountered in China.
If Japan receives a logic and coherence that would be different from those of Chinese thought is not tempted widening his knowledge to expand its field of work?
Yes But, first, life is short. Do not make multiple investments. I made an investment in European philosophy, Greek, and I continue to read greek. I made an investment quite heavy on the Chinese side. I also did one on the Japanese side, but there is a time when we must begin to make the investment that has been done. And then, the daughters have said, the use of Japanese in relation to my work is more of a detector use, at the same time for what it reveals to proximity to Chinese thought and what they reveal about the reluctance for thought China. Of course, I'm interested in Japan itself. I am very interested for example in terms of aesthetics. There is something I like Japan, who is Japanese, which is the aesthetics of food that is not in China. The Chinese food is not good. Here, when I go to a restaurant, I go to watch, not to eat. Because when I lift the lid of the bowl of soup, it's nice. This relationship between the liquid and solid, what floats and what does not float. There is harmony in the dishes as they are cut in sashimi, an aesthetic that is felt immediately, that I need to study, of which I rejoice, and I say: it's Japanese, not Chinese. Watch a Chinese table, is not beautiful. E 'dirty quickly, while a Japanese dish is rigorous and amazing in its beauty. The balance of components, pottery, wood, chopsticks, everyone is comfortable with the way in which they are arranged ... There a reaction that identify very well. I do not go for this. There is an immediate pleasure for something that cultural identification. To say this is not sinking in nihonjiron. Because it is based on an experience that is immediate and at the same time I can very well explain why I say what is beautiful.
Outside of meals, there are other things that seduce Japanese aesthetics?
Yes, many. The clothes, onsen, small restaurants [?]... I do not like the big roads, the cities that rise, but below, the one that lurks beneath the arcades, is fascinating. The door opens, it immediately enters the atmosphere. I really like Japan popular. If I were in Japan, I would not be an intellectual, I'd be one of the people. I have a hachimaki in mind, I'd be behind the stoves, I would ... I would be in an onsen! I find that the onsen, this is really Japanese. This relationship with the body, this relationship with the water, this relationship with the nude, which is not Chinese. Being a guardian of an onsen, themselves in Japan. An onsen in the snow, a bit 'as the beginning of Yukiguni. Forms of bodily pleasure, ways to pleasure of the body are very different, and with whom I can communicate at first, no need to intellectualize. If I had not had commitments yesterday and today, I spent two days in an onsen.
Conversation collected by Richard Plorunski and Bill Gater Daiichi Hotel Tokyo, Shimbashi, January 25, 1998.
