Notes
Notes Introduction 1. Throughout this book whenever I leave “Li” capitalized and unitalicized, I mean this term: 理. 2. Think not only of all the obvious Daoist examples—無為 wu wei and the like—and the ceaseless iterations of things such as True Emptiness as Wondrous Being (真空妙有 zhenkong miaoyou), Non‑Attribute (無相 wuxiang), Non‑Dwelling (無住 wuzhu), No‑Mind (無心 wuxin), No‑Thought (無念 wunian) and such in Chi‑ nese Buddhism, but also the inevitability with which each line even of Confucian thought always seems to end up with something like Zhou Dunyi’s 無極而太極 wuji er taiji (“the limitless/standardless and yet the ultimate limit/standard!”) or Wang Yangming’s 無善無惡是心之體 wushanwu e shixinzhiti (“the absence of both good and evil—that is the substance of mind”) considered as a synonym for the “ultimate good” 至善 zhishan. 3. Qian Mu, Hushang xiansi lu (Taipei: Dongda tushu gongsi, 1988), 42–44. 4. Qian’s own way of thinking here clearly reflects the influence of Cheng‑Zhu Neo‑Confucianism, along with its interpretation of the version of coherence that takes shape in the Yin‑Yang theory rooted in the Zhouyi. As such, it is most closely fitted to what we will be calling the non‑ironic sense of coherence, along with the systems we are calling “non‑ironic incorporations of the ironic.” 5. The other argument used by Aristotle and his followers is even less sat‑ isfying. The Law of Non‑Contradiction is admitted to be undemonstrable, because circular: any attempt to demonstrate it assumes it in advance. But then, lo and behold, this circularity, which in all other cases is used as an argument against the validity of a claim, is used as an argument for its absolute certainty. First there is some name calling and threats against those who deny it: they are uneducated, they are fools, they are not worth our time. Then there is the suggestion that it is an axiom that must be accepted on faith, like the axioms of mathematics—you can’t prove everything, gosh! For it is claimed that the law of non‑contradiction is assumed in argument, and that no discussion can proceed without assuming it. This may be true. But it amounts to no more than saying that when certain North American contractors buy and sell lumber by the foot, they are also assuming twelve inches to the foot, and otherwise no business could be done. Other people talk differently at other times—poets, madmen, non‑logicians—and their talk proceeds and has effects 345 346 notes to chapter ONE in the world just as much as do the discussions of those who, temporarily and in some contexts, decide to adhere to the law of non‑contradiction. Sometimes it is argued that for someone to argue for a position at all, and therefore to be involved in the conversation, presupposes that he believes there is a difference between his opponent accepting his view and not accepting it. Sometimes it is claimed that the behavior of people proves that they do accept the law of non‑contradiction. The care I take when I cross the street seems to mean that I accept that there is a real difference between being hit by a car and not being hit by a car. But this is not denied by the denier of the law of non‑contradiction. All that is denied is that this cannot coexist with a simultaneous belief that there is no relevant difference between the two. If I want X and also don’t want X, my behavior may sometimes, under some conditions (random or non‑random) display my desire for X. The claim is simply that this is not the whole story about what I desire. It is far from implausible to say, for example, that I both desire to die and desire to avoid death. This is where the metaphysical version of the LNC comes in: its defender will say “I desire to die in one respect—or at some times—and I desire not to die in other respects, or at other times.” So again, the psychological version of the LNC depends on the ontological version, and its feasibility depends entirely on what is defined as a “respect” and as a “time.” I claim that these are defined with reference to contradiction itself, and so the entire principle collapses into meaningless gerrymandering. This of course rests on the claim that any other attempt to specify what constitutes a “time” and a “respect” in isolation of an explicit...
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