Before I articulate the problem of religiosity as it was interpreted in Classical Confucian literature, I will first define the problem of Confucian religiosity as simply
that which deals with the existential and religious relationship between Heaven and man. Though the root metaphors contained in this formula still require a further “
thick description”for the following analysis,3 we will, for the sake of convenience, start with some meditations on the writings of Mencius. For early Confucians, the ultimate concern, known as “religiosity”today, was identified as the spiritual effort involved in finding the means to “know Heaven”(zhitian 知天) and “ serve Heaven”(shitian 事
天):He who has fully realized all his mind-heart knows his nature. Knowing his nature, he knows Heaven. To preserve one’s mind-heart, and nourish one’s nature, is the way to serve Heaven. When neither a premature death nor long life makes any difference, with cultivated character he waits for whatever may happen—this is the way in which his destiny is established (Mencius 7a1).4
In this passage, the onto-theo-logical trinity of Mind-Nature-Heaven 心性天 appears as the most fundamental Confucian dictum for the first time. First, the rich ambiguity
3 When explaining the job of an ethnographer, Clifford Geertz proposes a “thick description”as a method of interpretation to deal with “a multiplicity of complex conceptual structure, many of them superimposed upon or knotted into one another, which are at once strange, irregular, and inexplicit, and which he must contrive somehow first to grasp and then to render”(Geertz 1973: 10). For “root metaphors,”see Allan 1997: 10-17.
4 I adopt James Legge’s translation with slight modification. 盡其心者，知其性也。知其性，則知天 矣。存其心，養其性，所以事天也。殀壽不貳，修身以俟之，所以立命也。
of the “Heaven”metaphor among others calls for careful treatment. It was conceived in the Pre-Qin era alternately as the Creator, Nature, or the transcendental ground of being. This theological conception of Heaven as the Supreme Creator was derived from a primitive, yet truly authentic religious sentiment. Secondly, conceiving Heaven as physis5 (i.e., nature beyond good and evil), is well documented in both Daoist and Confucian classics, such as Laozi, Zhaungzi and Xunzi. In this line of thought we see the cosmological usage of the metaphor “Heaven.”Finally, there is the ontological impulse to conceive Heaven as the transcendental ground of existence. In this respect, it is one of some plausible interpretations to construe the relationship between Heaven and man in light of the ontological difference between Being and Dasein in the Heideggerian sense6.
Sustaining this ontological and theological distinction between Heaven and man is essential to Mencius’thinking. Heaven is Heaven, and man is man. This ontological difference can not be simply reduced to the immanent relationship between Heaven and man only. As seen in the Mencius, Heaven is seen by human beings as the Transcendental Other, which can be known and served only, but not as that which can be self-cognized and re-unified with as the later Neo-Confucians have maintained.
This transcendental distinction is clearly found in a conversation between Mencius and his disciple, Wan Zhang, about the Heavenly Mandate of Shun: “Heaven does not speak, but reveals itself by its acts and deeds”(Mencius 5a5).7 In contrast to the finitude of man, Heaven is conceived in this context as a Supreme Being watching over creatures from above.
In the Mencius, Heaven is also taken as the transcendental ground of humanity.
According to Mencius’distinction between the “small person”and the “great person,”
those who follow the lead of senses become small person, while those who follow the lead of mind-heart become great person. As for the latter, Mencius further states that the faculty of thinking in mind-heart is endowed from Heaven.8 This signifies that moral sensibility and moral knowledge are to be characterized as being
5 The reason why I adopt the Greek concept of physis to render the Chinese “Heaven”is based on Heidegger’s hermeneutic exegesis: “What does the word physis denote? It denotes self-blossoming emergence (e.g., the blossoming of a rose), opening up, unfolding, that which manifests itself in such unfolding and preserves and endures in it, in short, the realm of things that emerge and linger on.”See Heidegger 1959: 14.
6 See Heidegger 1969: 62: “Thus we think of Being rigorously only when we think of it in its difference with beings, and of beings in their difference with Being.”As one of anonymous reviews points out, this claim needs a lot of explanation to be made plausible. As explained later in this article, bringing Heidegger into consideration will help to loosen the metaphysical reading in Mou’s and Tu’s works.
7 D.C. Lau’s translation. 天不言，以行與事示之而已矣！
8 公都子問曰：鈞是人也，或為大人，或為小人，何也﹖孟子曰：從其大體為大人，從其小體為
小人。曰：「鈞是人也，或從其大體，或從其小體，何也﹖曰：耳目之官不思，而蔽於物。物交
物，則引之而已矣。心之官則思；思則得之，不思則不得也。此天之所與我者。先立乎其大者，
則其小者不能奪也。此為大人而已矣。(Mencius 6.15)
transcendentally grounded in Heaven and cannot be naturalized. We find in the relation between mind-heart and Heaven an ontological clue to help explain how it is possible to know Heaven through the cultivation of mind-heart, for only mind-heart is
capable of knowing.
Historically, the clue can first be traced to The Doctrine of the Mean, a text that is believed to have been handed down to Mencius from Zisi, the grandson of Confucius.9 Right in the opening of The Doctrine of the Mean we find the fundamental metaphysical statement that [human] nature is conferred from Heaven10, meaning that human nature should be conceived as the transcendental ground without which human beings qua human beings become inexplicable. With the aid of this doctrinal connection, we now are able to fully understand the ontological trinity of Min-Nature-Heaven in Mencius 7a1. According to this Confucian ontology, “mind”
refers to the subjective aspect of human existence and “nature”refers to the objective aspect, whereas both mind and nature are transcendentally grounded in Heaven. To put it in another way, Heaven is viewed as the telos and ground of humanity. Precisely in light of this ontology, knowing Heaven and serving Heaven become possible.
Intellectual Intuition in Metaphysics of Subjectivity
In Song Neo-Confucianism, learning to know Heaven and to serve Heaven are seen as equivalent to the task as learning to be a sage. For Neo-Confucians, being a sage means being able to fully participate in the sacredness of Heaven, which is also identified as “Transcendental Creativity”or “True Integrity,”in both the cosmological and moral senses. How to become a sage through self-cultivation thus becomes a central concern for all Neo-Confucians.
Following the major themes of Lu-Wang’s Learning of Mind-Heart, which calls for listening to the spiritual echoes of mind-heart where the objectivity of principle/rationality prevails, Mou Zongsan takes a strategic detour through Kant’s critical philosophy in responding to the call of Heaven. The result was Mou’s
Intellectual Intuition and Chinese Philosophy, published in 1971. As Mou himself
stated, his project would never have been realized if he did not read Martin Heidegger’s Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics and An Introduction toMetaphysics. Instead of following Heidegger’
s path, however, Mou found that Heidegger commits a metaphysical mistake which leads him in the direction of Kant’simmanent metaphysics to establish a fundamental ontology. Mou contends that, on the
9 The doctrinal continuity between The Doctrine of the Mean and Mencius is reflected in one essential statement, “Sincerity is the way of Heaven. The attainment of sincerity is the way of man.”See James Legge, The Doctrine of the Mean 20.18; Mencius 4a12.
10 天命之謂性。
contrary, what is truly worthy of appreciation is Kant’s transcendent metaphysics in which the existence of the thing-in-itself, God, Free Will and Soul can be justified through intellectual intuition.
Is it possible to fully justify the existence of thing-in-itself in Kant’s philosophy?
For Mou Zongsan, Kant’s answer is totally unsatisfactory in that he does not recognize intellectual intuition as part of human nature. Mou emphatically states that if human beings do not possess intellectual intuition, then knowledge of the noumenal world becomes unattainable. As a consequence, the foundation of Chinese philosophy also collapses (Mou 1971: “Preface,”2-4).
Concerning the problem of knowing Heaven, which is the same as knowing the noumena, one crucial step taken by Mou was to establish the metaphysics of self as the theoretical ground of intellectual intuition. For without intellectual intuition,
knowing Heaven is impossible. According to Mou, the “
self”as the subject of knowing is divided into two aspects. The first is self as the subject of empirical knowledge (wenjianzhizhi 聞見之知), or the self of reasoning and cognition. Mou variously refers to it as the “formal self,”“logical self,”or “framing self,”for it appears as a self of cognition simply due to the constitutive function of concepts and categories. Second, there is self as the subject of transcendent/moral knowledge (dexingzhizhi 德性之知), which is the true self endowed with the potential for intellectual intuition.Mou continues to elaborate the distinction of two selves. (1) Because cognitive self (i.e., the subject of cognition) is neither the object of sensory intuition nor the object of intellectual intuition, it cannot be viewed either as appearance or thing-in-itself. It can be viewed only as a transcendental self in the epistemological sense, but not in the metaphysical or ontological sense. It is therefore not a true self, because, according to Mou, only a metaphysical self is a true self, whereas an epistemological subject merely serves as the conditions of knowledge11. (2) It is the true self that can be viewed either as appearance or as thing-in-itself. As appearance, the true self is the object of sensory intuition. However, what can be intuited by the inner sense is not the true self itself, but merely the changing process of mental states.
The latter is transcendentally determined as self only through the determination of the category of substance. On the contrary, true self as thing-in-itself can be known by intellectual intuition only. But since for Kant human beings do not possess intellectual intuition, there is no way to affirm the existence of the true self. Kant contends that the true self, also referred to as “immortal soul”in the Christian tradition, is
11 Following Kant, Mou uses the notion of “transcendental”to mean the a priori condition of
knowledge in the epistemological sense. For the distinction between the usages of “transcendental”and
“transcendent”in Kant’s system, see Mou 1975: 359-365. However, it should be noted that in many other places Mou also uses “chaoyuedi 超越的”in the metaphysical sense.
absolutely unknowable because it lies beyond our capacity for knowledge. Kant concludes that if someone claims to possess knowledge of the true self or immortal soul, then such a person has already fallen into transcendental fiction (Mou 1971:
180-181).
Now how does Mou argue for intellectual intuition within the tradition of Chinese philosophy? In the Chapter “How is Intellectual Intuition Possible? On the Completion of Moral Metaphysics in Confucianism,”Mou answers the question in two steps. In the first step he demonstrates exegetically the affirmation of intellectual intuition in the Chinese tradition by citing several Neo-Confucian texts, Zhang Zai’s in particular. Following the first step of hermeneutical exegesis, Mou in the second step proceeds to offer his theoretical arguments for the possibility of intellectual intuition.
Unlike the prevailing characterization of Zhang Zai’s philosophy as the metaphysics of vital force (qi 氣), Mou insists that Zhang never deviated from the true spirit of Confucian moral metaphysics, which can be seen in Zhang’s distinction between transcendental knowledge (dexingzhizhi) and empirical knowledge (wenjianzhizhi) (Mou 1968: 437). According to this distinction, transcendental knowledge about the Way of Heaven, which is Creativity itself, is grounded in the true self that is capable of realizing intellectual intuition through self-cultivation. For Kant, on the contrary, there is no possibility at all for human beings to know the thing-in-itself through intellectual intuition. For Zhang Zai, however, the transcendental knowledge about the Way of Heaven is absolutely attainable through full realization of the true self, which is also called “original mind”(benxin 本心) in Zhang’s writings.
According to Mou’s interpretation, as far as the defiled obstruction of the senses has been eliminated, the original mind is capable of universally nourishing and comprehensively illuminating the myriad things-in-themselves. Those things do not appear as ob-jects of the original mind. They are e-jects in the sense that there is no duality of mind and thing. As Mou puts it,
In comprehensive illumination and universal nourishment, myriad things do not appear as the object of cognition. They appear as things-in-themselves…
Therefore, in comprehensive illumination one knows everything, yet knows nothing. All things appear as things in themselves, which are given in the
original mind, within the transparency of comprehensive illumination. They are
not thought through categories, nor known through sensory intuition. What are thought through categories and known through sensory intuition are objects as“appearance.” On the contrary, what are transparently intuited are
things-in-themselves. When they are transparently intuited by the original mind, they are created by the original mind, too (Mou 1971: 187).
It is worth noting that the e-jects of intellectual intuition are also the e-jects of creation. What is intellectually intuited is also what is created by the original mind.
The original mind is the transcendental subjectivity through and in which the Way of Heaven functions and manifests. Analytically speaking, the Way of Heaven is known by the original mind. As a matter of fact, however, the knowing of the original mind itself is nothing but the creative function of Heaven. Knowing Heaven thus is the self-knowledge of Heaven through the function of mind. This is Mou’s absolute idealism.
In addition to the above exegetic interpretation, Mou also proceeds to answer the theoretical question: How is intellectual intuition possible for human beings as the existence of finitude, since according to Kant, only God as the infinite being is qualified to possess this capability? Mou argues that the existence of intellectual intuition can be affirmed on the basis of morality. Following Kant, Mou defines the moral as that which accords with categorical imperatives issued by Free Will, which is also referred to in Confucian teachings as “original mind,”“original awareness,”
“moral sensibility/creativity”(renti 仁體), and “transcendental nature”(xingti 性體).
Mind is named for the subjective ground of morality, while transcendental nature is named for the objective ground. Both mind and nature are essentially the same as Heaven, the transcendental ground of being, which is in turn not different from God who knows and creates things-in-themselves with intellectual intuition. By the same token, and as witnessed in the Confucian tradition, “original mind”knows and creates things-in-themselves with intellectual intuition.
It is also important to note that the onto-theo-logical trinity of Mind-Nature-Heaven is taken to be the transcendental ground of morality and beings.
As Mou says,
Although transcendental nature [xingti] is particularly shown in human moral behavior, it cannot be confined only in the moral realm without referring to the realm of being. Covering the whole universe, it is the source of all beings. It not only gives rise to human moral action, it also serves as the [ontological] ground of all beings, including grass and trees. Hence it not only creates and sustains our morals, but also creates all beings and serves as the origin of all beings. It is therefore the principle of creation, the representation of creativity itself (Mou 1971: 191).
Mou continues to point out that the transcendental nature as universal creativity itself is not different from God, the highest sovereignty of being. In the Confucian doctrine of ontological trinity, human nature is transcendentally endowed from Heaven and functions through mind-heart. In view of essence (ti 體), there is no difference in the trinity of Heaven, nature and mind. For religious people, they may prefer to name Heaven as a personal God to whom they direct their prayers. Precisely for this reason, serving Heaven and worshiping Heaven has been taken as the highest form of ritual in the Chinese religious tradition. In this respect, Confucian religiousness is best demonstrated in man’s relationship to Heaven as the transcendental ground of being.
By the same token, the concept of immortal soul in Christianity is also affirmed in the Confucian notion of the true self. Both immortal soul and true self are central to Mou’s moral metaphysics. In short, Mou puts great efforts to legitimize the metaphysics of God, Soul, and Free Will, by appealing to the Confucian trinity of Heaven, nature, and mind, in a way quite opposite to the spirit of Kant’s critical philosophy (Mou 1971: 201).