This time I’ll mainly talk about “presence and absence.” Presence corresponds to “fulfilling intention,” and absence corresponds to “empty intention.” What is meant by presence, or by fulfillment, is the situation in which a thing is vividly and concretely presented before you, directly pointed out by you. More precisely, though, presence is determined by absence: “When we apprehend the presence of something, we apprehend it precisely as not absent: if we are to become aware of what is present, then there must exist the horizon of its possible absence. Presence is given as the removal of a certain absence.” When can we say that a thing is present? It is when we no longer expect it to appear, no longer search for it. Something that has never been absent for us cannot be present. Take the air around us: although air is always around us, and although we are always sensing the pressure of the air, it still does not vividly and concretely present itself before us. When a vague human figure appears in the distance, that person is not yet present either, because I still have to anticipate who will appear there; I am still searching for that object. Only when that person comes close enough for me to “recognize” him do I obtain a fulfilling intention, or rather, do I intuit him. Even if at this point I may still further expect what exactly he will say, the absent thing then is what he may say, while that person himself is already present.
What, after all, is the point of distinguishing presence from absence (as well as the earlier distinctions between whole and part, multiplicity and identity)? First of all, these distinctions provide us with some dimensions along which to reflect on experience. The “experience” described in traditional philosophy is often monotonous and flat; what is experienced are all presences: I saw a horse, I read a datum, and so on. Traditional philosophy may even well think that human experience is something like this: I saw brown, black, white, and various shapes and outlines, and then through some intellectual process of “synthesis” I assemble these fragmented sense experiences into an impression of a “horse.” But in fact it is not like this. We may first see a vague animal, then gradually enrich our impression by moving closer or by gazing intently, and finally directly grasp the object “horse”; or, if the distance is right, we simply directly see a horse. On the other hand, when traditional philosophy describes experience, it only reports what we see; yet within what we see, there are also things we do not see. Our experience always contains absences, and it is precisely the absent that constitutes the main link in our experience.
Of course, different things have their different “modes of appearing”; it is not the case that only when you “directly” see something is that thing present. Or rather, for different things, the meaning of “direct” contact is different. Perception is always achieved through some medium; in general, our body is the most basic medium, and for different things, and corresponding to different contextual backgrounds, when we intuitively grasp them we do so through different kinds of bodily involvement. For example, when identifying a glass of water, we generally just look at it from a certain distance with our eyes; but if the background is that I also have an expectation—namely, that this cup of liquid might be water or might be white vinegar—then I need to move closer and smell it with my nose in order to grasp it. Sometimes we may need to use glasses, telescopes, and other media to obtain intuition. And other objects, such as mathematical objects, we may in turn intuitively present through deductive means. Another aside: contemporary electronic media have brought about some profound effects on the way things are present. Compared with the audience watching a “live broadcast” in front of the television, who is actually more “live”?
Speaking of fulfillment, it is easy to think of the issue of truth. But in fact these are problems on two different dimensions. A fulfilled intention does not necessarily mean that it is always the truest; at most it means that this experience is true, but it does not mean that something intuitively fulfilled is necessarily a true existence, nor does it mean that a real thing must be capable of being intended in a fulfilling way. Whether we are speaking of the fulfillment or non-fulfillment of an intention, or of the truth or falsity of a thing, each has its own corresponding context. Some things can be continually fulfilled, yet never reach ultimate fulfillment. For example: “Socrates,” “Sherlock Holmes,” “the Milky Way,” “the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl,” “quark,” “phlogiston,” and so on. I keep reading materials about Socrates, and thus keep fulfilling my intention of Socrates; I can also keep reading materials about Sherlock Holmes, and that too is continually fulfilling my intention of Sherlock Holmes. Yet neither Socrates nor Sherlock Holmes can ever vividly and concretely present themselves before us. On the other hand, we judge that Socrates is real, Sherlock Holmes is fictional, the Milky Way is real, the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl are fictional, quarks are real, and phlogiston is fictional. Such judgments of reality and fiction are not based on the fulfillment of experience, but are made on the basis of other background knowledge and relevant theories. So these are problems on two different levels. When we investigate the reality of a thing, in addition to tracing back our own immediate experience, we also have to invoke, consciously or unconsciously, certain background knowledge or theories. Of course, when we further investigate the source and reliability of those background knowledge or theories, we must again enter into reflection on immediate experience—but that is another level of problem.
March 26, 2010
Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.
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