UPDATED: see below….

The new semester is upon us!  Posting has fallen off a bit because I am working on my syllabuses (syllabi?) for my classes (one on Chinese politics and a tutorial on ancient Chinese philosophy).  But I will adjust to the new work environment (I’m trying to work on the book, also…) and find a way to get daily posts up.

    In the meantime, here is something to consider, an article out of a Canadian newspaper that discusses how popular the process philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead has become in China these days.  I will get back to this and update because I know Hall and Ames mention Whitehead in Thinking Through Confucius – but my copy of that book did not make it with me as I moved offices this month!  I know where it is, I just have to lay hands on it.

     It is not at all clear to me that Whitehead will do all that Chinese intellectuals want him to do, but there are certain resonances with both Confucianism and Taoism (which I will try to elaborate later….)

UPDATE: OK, I’ve got my copy of Hall and Ames back and, yes, there are various references to Whitehead.  The one that struck me as most significant comes early on, when they are making some comparisons between Western and Chinese philosophy, and they mention Whitehead’s process philosophy as a promising link between the two traditions.  They illustrate the possibilities further down the page (15):

Confucian philosophy, on the other hand, entails an ontology of events, not one of substances.  Understanding human events does not require recourse to "qualities," "attributes," or "characteristics."  Thus in place of a consideration of the essential nature of abstract moral virtues, the Confucian is more concerned with an explication of the activities of specific persons in particular contexts.  This does not involve a mere shift of perspective from the agent to his acts, for such would still require the use of the substance language we have deemed inappropriate.  Characterizing a person in terms of events precludes the consideration of either agency or act in isolation from the other.  The agent is as much a consequence of his act as its cause.

      There are many deep and serious comparisons of Whitehead and various strands of Chinese philosophy – my limited experience in the field has not yet brought me to that work.  But here is a bibliography that might be helpful for those interested in pursuing such a study.

      From my amateur’s perch, however, I will simply point out that the ontology that Hall and Ames are putting forth is as much Taoist as it is Confucian; it is something the often-divergent perspectives share.  The sense of agent-in-process brings Chuang Tzu to mind – especially that passage (don’t have the book here at home with me now) where he has Confucius talking to Yan Hui and Yan Hui is describing his meditation practice: how he has gotten to the point of not yet becoming himself… In other words, Chuang Tzu pushes the idea further. Not only is the agent both a consequence and a cause of his own actions, but the agent can transform his actions in such a way that he has not yet become the agent of the act….wow.   Process does not simply move forward temporally but can be thrown into reverse as well….  Love that Chuang Tzu.