Heaven knows why, amid the pressure of several entirely muddled papers, I still have the mind to write so many essays. But there’s nothing to be done: when you need to let it out, holding it in is miserable. Once I finish this one, this round of catharsis can come to an end. That is to say, from “From Fisherman to Pirate” on to this piece, one could say that a series has taken shape, and that it can be understood as the final complaints before setting sail. From here on out…… whew—anyway, I’m no longer sitting and waiting in the palace.
This piece has been given a rather eye-catching title, but what it is trying to discuss is actually quite important and profound. A more accurate title might perhaps be “Philosophy and Art.” In any case, I am only getting started here, saying a few casual things. A more in-depth discussion will probably require more accumulation in the philosophy of art and phenomenology.
Lately I’ve often been thinking: what is my philosophical method? What will it be? Undoubtedly, it will be closer to phenomenology, and so I will spend several years coming to grips with phenomenological method; if in the end I can “forget” phenomenology, then I will count that as having learned it.
I have not read Julien’s Essence or Nakedness; I do often see it in used bookstores, and have always assumed I must have bought it long ago. But it seems I did not. Thinking about it, this topic of exposure and concealment is surely not merely a matter for the philosophy of art or aesthetics, but a major question bound up with the basic aspirations of Western and Eastern thought. Of course, even without having read that book, I have my own thoughts.
When one thinks of Western philosophy, one inevitably thinks of ancient Greece; and when one thinks of ancient Greece, one often thinks of those naked sculptures, or those Olympic competitors fighting in the buff. Even the Greeks who wore clothes often just threw on a single piece of cloth and were done with it; there was very little elaborate decoration or embellishment.
This is the distinctive feature of ancient Greek art, and also the distinctive feature of ancient Greek philosophy.
From ancient Greece to the Middle Ages to the Renaissance to the modern era, nudity has always been the protagonist of Western art. By contrast, nude painting has never occupied a place in Chinese art.
Art is always a reflection of the character of a culture or an age, and it often grasps cultural transformations more sensitively than philosophy does, whereas philosophy truly resembles “the owl of Minerva,” taking flight only after dusk—first comes ancient Greek art, and only then ancient Greek philosophy; first comes Renaissance art, and only then the rise of humanism; first comes postmodern art, and only then the emergence of postmodern philosophy……
And the philosophical method of a given culture is often quite appropriately some application of that culture’s artistic method—for instance, “calligraphy,” “scattered-point perspective,” and “impliciteness” as they relate to Chinese philosophy; “classical music,” “fixed-point perspective,” and “nudity” as they relate to Western philosophy. The method of philosophy is almost precisely a borrowing of the creative techniques of the corresponding art. In this sense, “philosophy of art”—and by no means philosophy of logic—can be called a kind of “meta-philosophy,” or the methodology of philosophy. Ah—my ambition has finally come to encompass the whole of philosophy. But this is no longer that kind of loose, wavering interest. My interest has always been only philosophy, and philosophy is only one thing. I am certain I can connect all of this into a coherent whole.
Back to the point. Let me say a few simple things about nudity.
Nudity represents “nature,” frankness, directness, and lack of embellishment. In this kind of philosophy, truth is naked.
The mainstream of Western philosophy has always been “emphasizing reason while slighting literature” — what is “wen” [literature]? It is ornament, patterning. Naked truth carries no acquired ornament. Ornament and clothing are obviously products of culture and custom. Truth is transcultural; it is originally natural and fixed, unchanging. Therefore truth cannot wear clothes.
A philosophy of nudity is of course also valuable, for it signifies frankness and fairness. Whether you are a farmer or an emperor, once you take your clothes off everyone looks the same. And if differences in rank still remain, then they lie in each person’s own excellence, and have nothing to do with outward status or position.
Thus reason is equal, and rational debate is like debate in a bathhouse: everyone is frank and equal, with nothing concealed, and no matter of rank or status. Of course, we also notice that this Western rational tradition, this bathhouse, has long excluded women. In a sense, the rise of feminism is bound to disrupt the entire Western rational tradition, throwing the men in the bathhouse into panic—they do not know how to face participants who, even when stripped naked, still somehow seem entirely different.
Up through the early Heidegger, the whole of Western philosophy was basically still that philosophy of “stripping clothes off.” In Heidegger’s more elegant wording, that is “unconcealment.” The idea is to tear away concealment, to let truth stand directly before you, without disguise, without ornament, nakedly exposed, so that you can see right through it; in polite terms, this is “disclosedness.” Heidegger is merely saying that the entire philosophical tradition wanted to go naked, but unfortunately took the wrong road and ran into a jungle of concepts, which instead made truth completely hidden. In short, philosophy has always aimed to strip truth bare.
But late Heidegger is different. Perhaps under the influence of Daoism, he says, “Knowing the white, keep to the black” (知其白，守其黑); some concealed state may be better.
The key question is: is nudity really the most truthful state? In fact, absolute “unconcealment” does not exist. For a person not to wear clothes is itself a kind of embellishment, a kind of costume. If you strip naked in a crowd, that is more “unnatural” than any sort of dressing up or disguise. On the other hand, how far, exactly, should one strip before it counts as just right? Why not go one step further and strip off the flesh and skin too?—In a certain sense, modern science does exactly this: after tearing the flesh of truth to pieces, it keeps relentlessly stripping away layer after layer, until nothing remains, and it becomes sheer nothingness. Thus the result of modernism is nihilism; it discovers that truth is nowhere to be found.
The reason people can clearly know the boundary between skin and clothing is that human beings have “bodies”; the boundary between skin and clothes is determined with certainty through the human body and human sensation. But traditional philosophy forgot the “body,” and thus lost the capacity to distinguish boundaries and to regulate itself; in the end it led to endless stripping and decomposition, all the way to nothingness.
In addition, traditional philosophy forgot this: in a certain sense, human beings are animals who wear clothes. Human beings do not have fur or feathers, and unlike animals they do not naturally possess a definite form. Human “nature” lies precisely in its “unnaturalness.” Human beings must have culture in order to survive as human beings. Human nature lies precisely in having no fixed nature; human beings can and must make choices about what they “are.” And no choice is truly “natural.” “Not wearing clothes” is also a choice, and since it is a “choice,” it is artificial, and therefore “false.” Thus the true “starting point” is not that naked state, but the historical and cultural environment into which a person is thrown. He grows up in this ready-made environment, and before he understands how to choose, there are already clothes and ornamentation upon him, even indelible marks—that is his “true face.”
Nudity is not the most “true,” nor necessarily the most “good” or the most “beautiful.” In fact, the sense of good and evil is precisely born from “shame.” The Book of Genesis in the Bible also hints at this point—when Adam and Eve possessed “wisdom,” the first thing they learned was “to feel shame,” and at the same time they knew they had done wrong and hid themselves. The sense of shame is consistent with the impulse to pursue good and avoid evil. And before they knew shame, Adam and Eve were neither good nor evil; they were by no means in a state of supreme goodness. It is a pity that the later development of Christianity placed more emphasis on the word “sin” and did not give enough weight to the word “shame.”
The concept of “beauty” seems a bit more complicated. After all, is nudity more beautiful, or is concealment more beautiful? This seems to be a matter of preference. In any case, Chinese tradition prefers the beauty of subtlety; perhaps that half-hidden, half-revealed coyness is what is most beautiful. Zhang Xianglong and Zhu Qingsheng both emphasized the word “you tiao” (窈窕), and the mood of this word cannot be found in the West. Chinese aesthetic feeling is very different from Western aesthetic feeling, and this difference is precisely a reflection of the differing temperaments and aspirations of Chinese and Western philosophy.
Even in a Western context, is nakedness really the most beautiful thing? The “Venus de Milo” can be called a classic type of beauty in Western art, but the reason it is so canonical, beyond nudity and the golden ratio and other typical methods in the Western artistic tradition, doesn’t it also depend on a coincidence—its “missing arms”? What are “missing arms”? In fact, they are simply the arms being concealed, “covered” up, thereby leaving enormous room for imagination. Isn’t this exactly the beauty of “impliciteness,” the beauty of “covering”? The “Mona Lisa” is another classic; is her smile not also implicit?
Of course, Western modern art underwent dramatic transformations. First, modern art no longer insisted on conforming to certain things through an objectifying mode; the image itself acquired independence and was no longer subject to judgment by the object it depicted outside the image. Modern philosophy accordingly underwent a corresponding transformation, namely, the rejection of objectifying thought and the dogma of correspondence theory. Modern art also no longer insisted on expressing “perfection,” and instead paid more attention to exposing and reflecting on reality; modern philosophy accordingly underwent a corresponding turn. Still, although Western modern art is no longer so fixated on nudity, it seems it still has not very well learned how to express “impliciteness.” The obsession with “nudity” is rooted too deeply in Western culture, so deeply that even the most avant-garde performance artists still love to stage nude displays. In the realm of the art of “concealment,” Chinese traditional art is probably still superior.
Of course, this does not mean that the art of “concealment” is necessarily more sophisticated than the art of “nudity.” Chinese and Western cultures each have their own strengths, and art is rich and varied; there is no art form or style that absolutely stands above all others. The philosophy of subtlety is strong in its vividness, elegance, and room for imagination, but it is after all lacking in universality and clarity.
So, is there any art form that can at once take into account both nude and concealed, both blunt and subtle, both direct and ambiguous features? Of course, being able to accommodate both does not necessarily mean it is better than either one, but at the very least, if such an art really exists, it is bound to be interesting.
Such an art form sounds unimaginable, yet it already exists. Yes, what I am thinking of is—“humor.”
On the one hand, humor is undoubtedly subtle and ambiguous. Often it is precisely through the proper use of ambiguity and subtlety that “humor” emerges. But on the other hand, humor is also blunt and plain; it can be very popular and simple, so much so that both emperor and farmer can easily understand it, and thus it can possess considerable publicity and universality. Although language is full of ambiguity and double meaning, once a passage of humor is understood, and one bursts into a knowing smile, then the successful transmission of the meaning of that humor is an unmistakable fact.
Modern Anglo-American philosophy has distanced itself from art and instead uses the craft of “mechanics (calculation).” Its method, then, is to make every effort to pursue clarity and universality, but such a craft is cold, lacking vitality, and dead. What is captured by such a craft is bound to be dead as well. On the other hand, modern Continental philosophy seeks instead to pursue meanings full of vitality, so phenomenology employs the craft of “poetry”: not to “pin” meaning to the wall, but to use winding language to catch meaning in motion. Yet the problem is that poetic modes of communication lack that kind of publicity and clarity; they are difficult to debate and criticize, and they also seem too loose, making it hard to grow through continual self-criticism and self-interpretation. One poem and the next often have no relation at all. Although a person’s poetry can still, as a whole, reflect that person’s character, in any case, compared with a person’s identity, poetic speech is also not well suited to conveying the growth process of an organic living being.
Humorous or ambiguous language is of course different from mechanics and mathematics, but it is also clearly different from poetry and fiction. Its publicity is stronger: it does not merely make people accept something as a private experience; it remains something that can be debated and exchanged. Yet this mode of debate and exchange never cuts itself off from lively experience. Debate in analytic philosophy, by contrast, is very likely to become mechanized and formalized, turning into something really like chess—a game on the level of symbols. The result is that philosophical debate grows farther and farther away from the lifeworld, becoming more and more a mere operational technique. But humorous debate is different: while continually making clarifications, it never hardens meaning into something dead. Concepts remain fluid and open. When you explain a vague statement you made earlier, that very process of explanation accompanies the movement and growth of meaning. The process of your explanation is precisely the development of your thought; or rather, even in a public process of communication, the speaker’s thought remains alive and growing. The “alive” here does not mean the vacillation of a weather vane. Your thought remains a whole and has a stable unity, but this stability is not a dead, monolithic certainty; it is like you as a person, in the course of growth, such that today’s you and last year’s you are both so different and yet continuous and consistent. Through this ongoing unfolding of humorous expression and interpretation, your thought can be at once changing, lively, and growing, and also always open, clear, and comprehensible, able to be communicated.
The forms of humor are varied. It can include a long objective description as groundwork, laying a hidden foreshadowing, and then suddenly, at some point, a reflective “exposure” (a technique common in crosstalk), or else a “stepping out” from the previous world of meaning (a technique common in Japanese animation), or simply an ambiguous pun (the technique of a small joke)—in short, after talking up to that point, one suddenly flips out a punchline, and the listener may suddenly understand, enlightened all at once. Once the previous and following lines are thus linked together, the “meaning” emerges all at once. With a laugh, or a knowing smile, the transmission of that meaning has succeeded.
Humor is neither as arcane and obscure as some Continental philosophy, all clouds and mist, nor as monotonous and rigorous as much Anglo-American philosophy, resembling machinery. Meaning that is fluid, vivid, and full of room for imagination can only be caught with ambiguous language; mechanical language can only catch dead things, while arcane and cumbersome language tangles itself up. The language of humor, by contrast, can be both plain and ambiguous, both naked and veiled, both transparent and subtle, both sharp and tactful. Moreover, humor is perhaps precisely the most sophisticated attitude toward life. That is why I say: the highest realm of philosophy is humor.
January 6, 2009
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- Qingfeng2010-03-18 21:07:54 http://zhouciping@citiz.net
Browsing your articles is like stepping into a teahouse and listening to you tell a story. Of course, it is best to hold a teapot in hand and, with an extremely calm mind, gradually enter the realm through your story-telling again and again. In the process, in my subconscious, the naming of this teahouse gave rise to these four characters: “Playing with Philosophy.” Looking back on it later, I always feel that there is something reasonable about it, and that it could not be more fitting. The reasons are nothing more than a few points:
First, “play” means to create one’s own enjoyment, and it contains a sense and element of pleasure. In your story-telling, from your account of your path of self-growth, to your confident exposition after entering the hall of philosophy, to your proud description of your wide-ranging reading and learning, and so on, you fully reveal that what others consider to be a very tedious process of studying philosophical theory is, for you, a matter of roaming through an ocean of learning, of stretching yourself out in the open wilderness of nature. Hey! It is truly exhilarating beyond measure!
Second, “turn” is a transitional word for a change in angle or perspective, and it also contains an element of expanding thought and diverse methods. In your story-telling, your comments on events and habits that seem ordinary enough, your exploration of substantive issues in the field of philosophy, your analysis of events that make us, in our daily lives, feel lost and puzzled, and so on, fully reveal that “turn” is the axis of all your thinking. By changing angles, your thought comes alive; by changing perspectives, your steps quicken; by changing methods, your thinking grows rich. Hey! It is truly astonishing!
The teahouse “Playing with Philosophy” makes the storyteller speak with pain and joy, vivid in voice and feeling; while the listener, for his part, listens with relish and applauds in admiration.
Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.
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