Existential Rehabituations from a Latinx Perspective: On Leah Kalmanson's Cross-Cultural Existentialism

… philosophy must be a practice as much as it is a theory.

Leah Kalmanson, Cross-Cultural Existentialism, p. 1

In the face of the sheer quantity of life's uncertainties, Leah Kalmanson's Cross-Cultural Existentialism provides more than a novel take on existential theory (although it does that); following the mantra of European existentialists that "philosophies are meant to be lived," Cross-Cultural Existentialism introduces the reader to a series of practices central to the Ruist tradition (the intellectual lineage known in the West as Confucianism) required to make philosophy "a concrete attitude, a way of life" (pp. 1, 2). Kalmanson's turn to the East Asian tradition is largely motivated by her assessment that the European existential tradition lacks a robust engagement with practical strategies like meditation, ritual memorization and recitation of texts, and merit-awarding ceremonies. "If we are looking for a systematic account of daily practices … that relate to enacting the vision of trans-egoic meaning-making expressed in existential theory, we will not find it within existential writings themselves" (p. 14). Without concrete strategies for existential rehabituation, Kalmanson warns, the Western tradition remains trapped within an understanding of subjective interiority problematically entrenched in subject-object dualism.

The twentieth century witnessed the disavowal, on the part of both the analytic and continental Western traditions, of the metaphysical subject. This commitment, Kalmanson observes, had the unfortunate consequence of shutting down any earnest engagement with speculative views of mental life and the nature of reality, including positions endemic to the East Asian tradition that do not operate within the bounds of the idealist-realist debate and, as such, reduce to Western versions of subjective experience. The loss is at least twofold. As noted, Western-based scholars overlook resources to conceive anew notions like interiority, mental life, and reality beyond the inner versus outer divide. Furthermore, this lack also affects how scholars continue to understand "speculation" and, likely, their continued aversion to it. "[B]y enabling us to challenge assumptions about the parameters of subjective experience," Kalmanson notes, "East Asian discourses help us redefine 'speculation' itself not as the interior ruminations of a subject looking out on the world but rather as a dynamic activity that transforms both selves and their environments. … A 'speculative existentialism' is a trans-egoic activity, not only an intellectual theory" (p. 5).

To avert capitulating to the impasse endemic in Western conceptions of the subject vis-à-vis understanding practices central to human meaning making, Kalmanson turns to the East Asian philosophical tradition, introducing the reader to the works of twentieth-century Korean Buddhist nun and activist Kim Iryŏp (1896–1971), while also tracing her intellectual roots back to the ancient Ruist metaphysics of Zhang Zai (1020–1077) and Song dynasty scholar Zhu Xi (1130–1200). This tradition offers a robust theoretical articulation of the phenomenon of subjective interiority that does not uphold the binaries that have long plagued Western thought, while also offering practical techniques essential for mental cultivation, self-transformation, and existential realization—in sum, for concrete, existential rehabituation.

Eschewing the dichotomy between private and public, Iryŏp proposed that political and social change is possible through meditation. For her, "meditative concentration is not a private affair, but conducts energy throughout the whole karmic network, enabling a radical transformation of our shared existential condition" (pp. 7–8). One of the strengths of Kalmanson's book is that it refrains from taking shortcuts, that is, plucking from their context and tradition practices necessary for the existential rehabituation she seeks to accomplish. Rather, Kalmanson carefully situates these techniques within the intellectual tradition to which they belong, carefully introducing the reader to theories about the nature of mind and reality that, ultimately, give these practices meaning and power. To understand Iryŏp's account of the trans-egoic power of meditation, for instance, Kalmanson guides the reader through a clear and informative exploration of the basic tenets of East Asian speculative metaphysics, specifically focusing on the cosmology and ontology of qi 氣, or "vital stuff," and li 理, or the structural correspondences between microcosms and [End Page 269...