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Appendix C: The Complexity of Difference: Comments on Zhang Longxi
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213 Appendix C The Complexity of Difference Comments on Zhang Longxi I have been asked to comment on an essay by the distinguished Chinese cultural historian and theorist Zhang Longxi titled “The Complexity of Difference.”1 Professor Longxi is the director of the Centre for Cross-Cultural Studies at the City University of Hong Kong and also chief editor of a beautiful journal called Ex/Change. A few years ago, he accepted for publication in this journal an essay of mine on Leibniz and the “natural theology of the Chinese.”2 The present assignment is difficult for several reasons. First of all, there is the difficulty and complexity of the issues raised in Longxi’s essay. Basically, these issues revolve around a problem or conundrum that is central to philosophy in both West and East: the conundrum of the relation between universalism and particularism, between sameness and difference , between the “one” and the “many.” Of late, especially under the impact of the process of globalization, the problem has gained new intellectual as well as social-political significance. Given the fact that the problem has been treated with great profundity by such eminent Western thinkers as Aristotle and Hegel—and in the East by Shankaracharya and Wang Yangming—my role as a commentator is bound to be daunting. As it happens, this difficulty is compounded by another, nearly opposite complication: the fact that, over long stretches of his text, I find myself in complete agreement with Longxi’s argument. In my view, his paper admirably captures and elucidates what he calls “the complexity of difference” and succeeds in making this complexity more accessible and transparent. In light of this situation, my observations are going to have the 214 Appendix C. The Complexity of Difference character more of amplifications or addenda than of corrections and contestations. Initially, however, it may be opportune to stress important points of convergence. As Zhang Longxi rightly remarks, the proper path to follow in personal and cultural relations is the middle path between the extremes of absolute sameness and radical “otherness ” or alterity. Unfortunately, under the influence of Thomas Kuhn and some “post-modern” writers, undue emphasis has been placed on such notions as “incompatibility” and “incommensurability ”—terms that tend to undermine mutuality and relationality. From here, there is a sliding slope leading into relativism and (what Lindsay Waters has called) “resurgent tribalism.” This sliding slope has been recognized and criticized by well-known analytical philosophers like Hilary Putnam and Donald Davidson,3 but before them by leading representatives of hermeneutical philosophy like Gadamer and Paul Ricoeur—and as I see it, Longxi himself stands firmly in this hermeneutical tradition. Even before these thinkers, however, the basic incoherence of the “incommensurability” thesis had been pinpointed by Hegel when he asserted that any statement of “difference” already presupposes a standpoint transcending and linking the different elements . The point is well recaptured by Zhang Longxi in this admirable passage: “If things are really incommensurate, then, no one can even make a claim that they are incommensurate, because to make such a claim presupposes that one knows both sides of the dichotomy and knows them to be truly incommensurate. . . . By pointing out this logical difficulty, we can effectively dislodge the incommensurability argument.”4 Longxi’s point is supported by numerous writers on cross-cultural studies, including the renowned China expert Benjamin Schwartz, who wrote that “China is not a mass of self-enclosed atomic facts but vast regions and networks of human experiences,” adding: “Despite the indeterminacy of translation and the real problems of ‘cultureboundedness ,’ it is possible to grasp the concerns which lie behind the discourse of other cultures. Difference is ever present but it is not ultimately inaccessible.”5 Schwartz’s primary focus on Chinese culture prompts me at this point to put an addendum to Longxi’s paper that, I believe, would not be uncongenial to him: the observation that the conundrum of sameness and otherness, of universalism and particularism, has surfaced also as a major issue in recent Chinese [3.81.221.121] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 21:39 GMT) Comments on Zhang Longxi 215 philosophy. I am referring to the debate between such thinkers as Guo Qiyong and Liu Qingping, a debate gathered together in a volume titled (in translation) Debates on Confucian Ethics, published in Wuhan in 2004. A major issue in this debate is the ethical status or legitimacy of “filial piety.” Coming from a universalist perspective (partly influenced by Kant), Liu...