/lit/ - Literature

>Mou proposes several further (‘translations’ that may seem odd to Western philosophers. Firstly, he identifies the noumenon with the ontological, and the phenomenon with the ontic, in the Heideggerian senses of these terms (Mou had read Heidegger’s Kant and the problem of Metaphysics [1929], and hence integrates Heidegger's vocabulary into his division of systems). Secondly, he equates theological transcendence in Kant’s philosophy with the Heaven of classical Confucianism. In so doing, Mou develops a very clean division of systems between the East and the West, but at the same time integrates the West into the possibilities of the East.

>Mou’s philosophical task in relation to the question of technology ends here. Unlike others, he brings it into a metaphysical register which is compatible with the Kantian system as well as the traditional Chinese philosophy. Yet he goes no further, since at bottom his thought is an idealist gesture. Mou insisted that Kant's philosophy is by no means a transcendental idealism, but rather an empirical realism; and, like the Neo-Confucians, he held that mind and things cannot be separated. Yet in Mou’s work, the mind becomes the ultimate possibility of knowingboth phenomenon and noumenon. What conditions the mind to be such a pure starting point? Like Fichte and Schelling, Mou Identifies Liangzhi as the unconditioned, with the fundamental difference that Liangzhi is not a cognitive Ich, but rather a cosmic Ich. If Liangzhi can negate itself into a knowing subject, then the knowing subject, thus derived from a conscious act of Liangzhi, dwells in a coherent relation to Liangzhi. Hence when science and technology are developed in this way, they will be a priori ethical. To put it in another way, in relation to the Qi-Dao discourse, we might say that Qi is a possibility of Dao. Hence the relation between Qi and Dao is not one of ‘use’, but is instead an inclusive relation. This is also the reason I call Mou’s approach an idealist one.

>So how useful is Mou’s strategy in reconsidering the modernisation project? Mou’s biographer Zheng Jiadong noted that for hundreds of years, maintaining the status quo of the nation and at the same time being able to absorb Western knowledge— having both fish and the bear’s paw— was what the Chinese dreamt of. The ’negation of Liangzhi' is the most sophisticated and philosophical expression of this dream. But whether this dream can be realised is another question.

>This, then, is what we may call the end of metaphysics as xing er shang xue: the metaphysical thinking that, in Chinese thought, maintains the coherence of the human-cosmological system is interrupted in such a way that a metastability can no longer be restored.

and this is a crucial point. *everybody* is dealing with the fallout or collapse of idealistic systems, the Chinese included. and Marx and Nietzsche - two of the three great Masters of Suspicion - still cast long shadows.

so is the next great continental philosopher/shitposter going to have be some kind of god-tier computer programmer, or what?

somebody who can write a kind of updated Phenomenology of Spirit for the age of simulated computer intelligence. or Critique of Cybernetic Reason. of Genealogy of Automation. you know what i'm saying. something in this vein, something that assimilates all of this stuff. it has to happen at some point, yes?

i mean i get it, of course, that if you want this kind of stuff just study engineering or computer programming, there's no need to get the philosophers to do it. maybe all of this stuff just has to pass over into the technical sciences.

humans from the computer's point of view. or maybe i just want to know which philosophers the computers find most interesting. whatever.

>and then i remembered reza negarestani in fact exists and his book comes out less than two months

never mind, ignore this.