On Chinese Body Thinking: A Cultural Hermeneutics (review)

Reviews 583 Mao China, ed. Kenneth G. Lieberthal and David M. Lampton (Berkeley: University ofCalifornia Press, 1992). 2. This speech was later published in 1993, but the phrase "without fear ofbloodshed" was deleted. See Deng Xiaoping, DengXiaopingwenxuan, vol. 3 (Beijing: People's Press, 1993), pp. 194-197. SI Kuang-ming Wu. On Chinese Body Thinking: A Cultural Hermeneutics. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1997. xvi, 492 pp. Hardcover, isbn 90-04-10150-0. Once in a long while, there appears a publication that shakes our way of thinking and turns it around—rather than tiresomely adding to old and familiar information . Dr. Kuang-ming Wu's most recent publication, on "Chinese body thinking ," is just such a far-reaching, revolutionary book, however understated its message may first appear. But "revolution" is a strong and much abused word, and I must define what I mean by it here. When our emphasis and perspective shift, all things in the world and in die history of ideas remain the same while the light and the scenery change. Wu's argument is so subde and well presented that Dr. Robert C. Neville, in his Foreword to the book, praises it as a work that makes one realize that confining oneself to Western philosophy alone becomes "parochial." I fully agree; this is a Chinese philosophy that is seen as an alternative to the Western version ofworld philosophy. Neville points out diat this book has more to say about things Western than Chinese (p. xv)—but I wonder ifhe is sensitive to the fact that the book shows how the Chinese mode oftiiinking has so effectively shifted the Western scenery, allowing it to be freshly interpreted in a new Chinese light. Wu makes us rub our eyes to see anew the ideas of Plato, Descartes, Berkeley, Kant, Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, and many others. This new light, perspective, or scene Wu calls "body thinking," to irritate those ofus who are "cognitive" thinkers. For we are all, more than we are aware or care to admit, followers of Descartes. We take it for granted that thinking is exclusively a cognitive, and acting merely a bodily, activity—that these are two entirely different phenomena that are somehow related and combined in a "person"© 1998 by University in ways that we do not understand. Our beliefin the image ofthe Cartesian ofHawai'i Press"ghost" (mind) in the "machine" (body) dies hard. This dualism is so awkward, however, that the cognitive is now seen as entirely separate from the material aspect ofthe human being. No, it is worse: this mind-body dualism is so unstable 584 China Review International: Vol. 5, No. 2, Fall 1998 that behaviorists in all of the sciences now claim that we can entirely dispense witii the ghost that consists of"mind" and "self." We are now no more than complex robots or walking computers. Everything in existence is a machine, the consequence being a mechanical, utilitarian exploitation of nature, which results in ecological disaster. Wu claims that our "body" is where and how we think—that it is not an empirical corporeality that is a consequence of mind-body "dualism." We are instead the original ("primordial" is Wu's term) life and flesh of a tangible, fragile human existence, which we refer to as a "body" in our everyday experience. This is a view that Wu has found present in traditional Chinese expressions and methods of argumentation. These exhibit a sentiment similar to Merleau-Ponty's, but one that is more historical and ordinary than what Merleau-Ponty has found. When we think, we think in our body; when our body moves and behaves, we move thoughtfully, "thinkingly." There is no split between thinking mind and moving body. Both are "bodily," "embodied," "body." Body thinking is not even "bodily thinking," as if thinking were to be characterized as a bodily activity; rather, "body thinking" is body as thinking and thinking as body. Body and thinking are two aspects of the same "person" that we are. In Division One, Wu skillfully shows us how concrete such "body" thinking (different from "bodily" thinking) is and illustrates this by quoting from the history of Chinese thought. Then he...