Beyond Oneness and Difference: Li and Coherence in Chinese Buddhist Thought and Its Antecedents

Chapter Four: The Advent of Li as a Technical Philosophical Term

FOUR The Advent of Li as a Technical Philosophical Term We have seen the gradual thickening of associations around the term Li, first in non‑ironic usage, as in the Xunzi, and then a parallel development among writers within the ironic tradition, using this term as an increasingly impor‑ tant token by which to formulate a response to the non‑ironic tradition and by which to incorporate some its elements into the universe of ironic discourse. We have seen within the variety of texts collected in the Zhuangzi several ways in which this seems to have been attempted, each with its own distinctive usage of Li: (1) the extended non‑ironic usage with a beginning of ironic tendency in the emphasis on mental stillness and quietude, where both Dao and Li are used in a basically non‑ironic sense; (2) a fully ironic usage that takes both Dao and Li ironically, regarding both—the totality of coherence and each particular coherence—as intrinsically self‑undermin‑ ing, accomplished only by their subversion, each being a coherence as a value‑bearing grouping of opposed elements found only in unintelligibility; and (3) a compromise position that incorporates a non‑ironic notion of Li, intelligible specific coherences, as somehow operating under and even deriv‑ ing from the ironic unintelligible coherence of Dao. A further development from the last of these moves forward another step: (4) a view of both macro and micro coherence, Dao and Li, as each being at once in a sense intel‑ ligible and in a sense unintelligible. We may view these developments as reverse mirror images to the incorporations of ironic notions of coherence into a non‑ironic framework, as seen in some of the Liji texts such as the “Daxue” and “Zhongyong,” and in the “Great Commentary” to the Zhouyi, as discussed in Ironies of Oneness and Difference. Although Li seems to be an increasingly important focal point in framing these discussions, we still have not witnessed its advent into a consciously singled‑out philosophical term, considered abstractly and as such, and given an abstract and general 107 108 beyond NENESS AND DIFFERENCE definition. This seems to happen first in some texts of a syncretic charac‑ ter, mainly in the interface of Legalist and Daoist thinking as found in the Guanzi and the Hanfeizi, continued in later texts of mixed provenance such as the Huainanzi. It is to this development that we now turn. Toward the Ironic: Li in the Pre‑Ironic Daoism of the Guanzi In Ironies of Oneness and Difference, I attempted a tentative dating of certain chapters of the Guanzi—“Neiye” 內業 (“Inner Training”), “Xinshu shang” 心術上 (“Techniques of the Heart/mind, Part 1”),“Xinshu xia” 心術下 (“Techniques of the Heartmind, Part Two”), and “Baixin” 百心 (“Purifying the Heart/mind”)—characterizing some parts of them—namely, the “Neiye” and the first part of “Xinshushang”—as belonging to what might be described as a kind of “pre‑ironic Daoism.”1 If this early dating is correct, placing these texts well prior to the Xunzi, it would make these texts among the earliest texts to make extensive use of the term Li in its non‑ironic sense. Since I am by no means certain about this early dating, however, the conclusions of this part of the discussion must be regarded as highly speculative. But even if these texts postdate the Xunzi, and thus are not to be taken as indicative of the early formation of the non‑ironic sense of Li, they are all the more notable for the microcosmic use of the crypto‑Xunzian sense of Li, modified by a proto‑ironic notion of how that coherence is created, which brings us insight right into the heart of the thinking that would later produce the full‑fledged ironic turn. For these reasons I leave the question of dating tentative, but treat these texts after treating the Xunzi and the Zhuangzi, in spite of the strong possibility of an earlier date for at least some of the material therein, to highlight and unravel the gradual move toward the ironic implications of Li, which can only be made intelligible on the basis of a firm understanding of the kind of straight non‑ironic usage of the term of the kind we have spelled out in the case of the Xunzi and “Yueji.” Based on the development of the ideas in these works, and in particular the developments of thinking on Li through a deepening complexity of ironic/ non‑ironic interaction, my best guess...