Convergences and divergences in Eastern philosophy
09
May
In criticizing idealism, especially Kant, Byung-Chul Han himself reveals
in his book Absence that “Eastern thought turns entirely to immanence” (Han, 2024, p. 41) and although there is a true asceticism in Eastern philosophy, it is dislocated and at the same time close to an ontological sense of Being-for-the-other and is stuck in the as-is.
Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, a revisionist critique of rationalist metaphysics, creates a dualism between that which we can know because it is present in time and space, and is therefore immanent, and that which is outside time and space, and is therefore transcendent; all current quantum physics would be transcendent, and yet for physicists it is immanent, because everything that is not demonstrated still belongs to theoretical physics, such as string theory, for example, this has other dimensions.
He uses the oriental concept of dao, with ideas of mental and bodily balance, but Han places it in the “as-is” of things and the here-and-now, and so it would escape naming, because it is too-high, something that flows because it meanders (p. 41), but we remember that at the center of the Milky Way is a black hole, and theoretical physics now speculates that we may be inside the black hole, and so idealistic and daoist transcendence escapes it, there is a “third included”.
Like the Greek oracle and the Hebrew prophet, Han argues that “the sage exists neither retrospectively nor prospectively… he lives in the present” (Han, 2024, p. 42), but by stating that it “does not have the sharpness and resolution of the instant” (p. 43), he admits that “the instant is linked to the emphasis and resolution of action”, so absence is neither in space nor in time, physics calls this state “intertwining” and it is exactly the third included.
The problem of escaping transcendence and immanence lies in the “trinitarian” aspect in which something theo-transcendent happens, but starting from anthropotechnics, which admits a vision of techné that originally belonged to practical knowledge, without being idealistic empirical, and which anthropotechnics deals with, but the onto aspect of the beyond of the technical and of action escapes it.
There is a convergence of the trinitarian principle with Han’s critique, in the situational there is an “escape” from the “Heideggerian situation” where “Dasein resolutely appropriates itself. It is the supreme of presence. The wayfarer dwells in each present, but does not remain, because permanence has a reference to objects that is too strong” (Han, 2024, p. 43).
He presents a dream of Zhuang Zhou in which he was a “butterfly”: “Forgetting himself, Zhuang Zhou floats between himself and the other” (p. 44), but then goes on to contrast it with the essence, a “dwelling nowhere” of Zen Buddhism, because another Trinitarian transcendence does not exist for Zen Buddhism, it is a rising to heaven infinitely.
I’m reminded of Duns Scotus, who said that we can’t separate the “being” of a thing from what it is.
There is only true asceticism at a Trinitarian stage, it is a divinized immanence or a non-objective transcendence, Being through absence rises to God, so what fills this void is not unknown, it is itself.
Han, B.C. (2024) Ausência: sobre a cultura e a filosofia do extremo oriente. Trad. Rafael Zambonelli. Brazil, Petrópolis, RJ, Vozes.
