All Things Are Like a Horse, or Radical Posthumanism: A Daoist Ethics for the Anthropocene and Beyond

Abstract

This article explores how Chinese Daoist thought can address the need of an ethics that can cope with “the Anthropocene.” It explores the similarities between Daoist thought and posthumanist theories which arose partially as a response to the challenges of the Anthropocene. And it examines how Daoist thought can radicalize posthumanist thinking by means of an ethics based on a genuinely flat ontology that treats all things, human and nonhuman, as equal.

Why Ethics Now?

Why ethics and why global ethics? First, the kind of ethics that we currently resort to is no longer sufficient in the contemporary world. Secondly, we are in dire need of a global thinking that integrates all compartmentalized knowledge to tackle a global (in both the literal and metaphorical sense) problem. Concerning the first point, let us look at a quote from Levinas (1986: 23–24):

The approach to the face is the most basic mode of responsibility. As such, the face of the other is verticality and uprightness; it spells a relation of rectitude. The face is not in front of me (en face de moi) but above me; it is the other before death, looking through and exposing death. Secondly, the face is the other who asks me not to let him die alone, as if to do so were to become an accomplice in his death.

The problem with this statement is that the emphasis is only on the “human face”; it therefore only concerns human ethics. Yet, “the other” should not be confined only to the human being, especially in view of what has been happening in the Anthropocene.

As regards the second issue, we need an integrated ethics precisely because the world is facing a plethora of crises that are in fact resultant from the same culprit—Anthropocentrism—and are usually described as a whole as “the Anthropocene.” Thus, to tackle the root of this problem, there needs to be a line of thinking that re-aligns the relationship between the human and the non-human, one that lies at the bottom of each and every problem that we are being confronted with.

It is precisely in response to the all-encompassing gloom cast by anthropocentrism that posthumanism has been developed. But what matters for our purpose is that, despite the fact there was little cross-pollination between Daoism and posthumanism, Daoism has since long ago pronounced the major tenets of posthumanist thinking. It may even help radicalize posthumanism.

The In-corporeal Turn

To quite an extent, posthumanism, as distinguished from transhumanism, is a radical way to cope with “anthropocentrism,” an unfortunate development of humanism that led to the Anthropocene. The overall goal of posthumanism is to develop an ethics that can re-align the relationship between the human and the non-human. To do so, it needs to construct a “flat ontology,” one that treats all things, human or nonhuman, organic or inorganic, as equal (De Landa, 2002; Bryant, 2011: 1–25). To construct such an ontology, it needs to debunk the hylomorphism underlying mainstream Western thinking (humanist or not), a form of mind-body dualism that valorizes the mind over the body, and replace it with hylozoism, which posits that matter, rather than being passive and inert, is teeming with energy and vibrancy and is therefore autopoietic and agential (Bennett, 2010).¹ While hylomorphism assigns the power to make sense only to the non-material essence called soul, hylozoism sees the ability to make sense in all matter, albeit to different degrees.

This posthumanist turn has to first and foremost prove that not only is the boundary between things not absolute, but they all share the same roots; hence, there should be no hierarchy among the myriad things, organic or not. Posthumanism generally adopts what Elizabeth Grosz characterizes as an “in-corporeal” view of matter, in which matter is construed as material and ideal at once, as in the Stoics’ understanding of the word (Grosz, 2018: 9). This turn benefits greatly from the insights proffered by Deleuze and Guattari, who go beyond the poststructuralist deconstruction of Western logocentric tradition by undauntedly venturing into ontological inquiries in a way that brings together ideas from Spinoza, Nietzsche, and Bergson, among others.

Crucial to this ontology, which Deleuze himself calls “materialist vitalism” (Deleuze, 1995: 143; Bell, 2009: 17), is the affirmation of hylozoism (Adkins, 2015: 3). Rejecting any implications of a “transcendent” center, this approach revolves around a particular kind of “transcendental empiricism,” where the transcendental dimension is actually “immanent” in the world (Bryant, 2008; Rölli, 2016). Along with this immanentist ontology comes a form of univocity (Smith, 2012: 27–42) in which a univocal and immanent being is common to all things, unlike bivocal conceptions of Being, such as the monotheistic God, which is traditionally thought of as standing beyond the myriad things. Posthumanism is firmly rooted in this ontology.

Being immanent, this ontology posits “becoming” rather than “Being,” and difference rather than identity, as its ontological (non)substance. Hence, everything is composed of force. As what Deleuze calls “organization,” albeit necessary for daily operations, tends to severely hinder the free flowing of force, escape from organization, what Deleuze alternatively terms “counter-actualization”, returns us to the plane of immanence (Deleuze 1990: 161; Deleuze and Guattari 1994: 159-161), and allows all things to freely and generously interact with each other by affecting and being affected. Thus, like Whitehead's, Deleuze's philosophy is a form of “process philosophy” that valorizes in-between-ness and is able to de-essentialize identity.

“Event” is that which triggers off counter-actualization (Deleuze and Guattari, 1994: 159–161). Once an “event” occurs, one becomes a “body without organs,” which, being synonymous with the virtual (Bogue, 2007: 37), is an “a-personal, trans-individual” field of force (Bogue, 2007: 51). As opposed to the organized body, which captures and constrains force (or “life,” see Deleuze, 2004: 142; Hallward, 2006: 14–15) by means of all kinds of social stratifications, and most fundamentally through language, which organize the world into sense – the body without organs, as the “intense and intensive body” (Deleuze, 2003: 44), releases life, or reconnects with the “level of immanence,” by escaping from the organized body.

While becoming a body without organs is a way to reconnect with the level of immanence, the haecceity provides an appropriate model of subjectivity to achieve this process. Being “a mode of individuation very different from that of a person, subject, thing, or substance” (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987: 261), the haecceity is both a “perfectly individuated multiplicit[y]” (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987: 254) and a “becoming in action” (Sauvagnarques, 2013: 43), rather than a fixed identity. It “has neither beginning nor end, origin nor destination; it is always in the middle. It is not made of points, only of lines. It is a rhizome” (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987: 263). Far from being confined in a fixed identity, the haecceity is consistently engaged in rhizomatic flights that slip through the cracks in things to reach immanence. But becoming a haecceity is not a human prerogative, nor does it pertain only to the organic. Deleuze's re-invention of the concept of haecceity is makes possible a “flat ontology” where all things are treated as equal.

Being “in-corporeal,” the plane of immanence is pre-conceptual and embraces the myriad things indiscriminately and generously. It therefore “applies equally to the inanimate and the animate, the artificial and the natural” (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987: 254). Insofar as on this plane everything exists on equal footing, anything can become a “haecceity” and has “life”:

A season, a winter, a summer, an hour, a date have a perfect individuality lacking nothing, even though this individuality is different from that of a thing or a subject. They are haecceities in the sense that they consist entirely of relations of movement and rest between molecules or particles, capacities to affect and be affected (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987: 261)

The haecceity is always engaged in a process that is constantly moving between actuality and virtuality, between the state of affairs and “the part that eludes its own actualization” (Deleuze and Guattari, 1994: 156).

Deleuzian posthumanism is indeed a powerful ethical endeavor to de-throne the human being from its central place in the secular “Great chain of Being.” Taking the cue from the most advanced scientific research (quantum physics and biology among other things), the posthumanist endeavor stresses that anything made of matter, be it animate or inanimate, to the extent that it has energy, has not only life but also agency, which reminds us of Whitehead's notion of “prehension,” or the ability to “feel.” All things should be therefore treated as equal (Shaviro, 2014: 89). Deleuze calls “transversal ethics” this ethics based on the re-alignment of human and nonhuman relationship. By consistently forming assemblages or multiplicities among all things (Bogue, 2007: 5), it would help revive our “belief in the world” that allows us to see the world as rooted in “our level of immanence” (Deleuze and Guattari, 1994: 74–75) rather than as organized. This ethics enables us to work towards a future where all things are equal (Bogue, 2007: 97). For only when all things are understood as sharing the same virtual level of immanence can we recognize the “interrelatedness at the core of any ‘individual essence’; the fact that all Being is, at one level … a composite body: a single, infinite animal” (Uhlmann, 2011: 165).

Equaling All Things

This brief outline of Deleuzian posthumanism may help us realize how profound is Daoism's relevance for a progressive ethics. The question to ask is now the following: how does Daoism tackle the relationship between the human and the non-human? How does it debunk anthropocentrism?

It is almost commonsense that Daoism is a philosophy of immanence which prioritizes difference and becoming. It puts a focus on how, by restoring the truth of the world as difference and becoming, the subject can be released from a human culture dominated by a fictional and mundane sense of subjectivity. Daoism is devoted to re-conceptualizing the subject by grounding it in an “in-corporeal” (material and ideal) process and by construing it as on equal footing with the myriad things in the world so that the dualism rampant in human thinking can be dissolved and the Dao can be attained to. These inquiries make Daoism one of the earliest endeavors (if not the earliest) in human history to construct a flat ontology.

The purpose of grounding the subject in an “in-corporeal” process called qi 氣, or vital force, which manifests the Dao in both its actual and virtual aspects (Zhong, 2013: 117–130), is to reveal the common foundation underlying the human subject and all other things. There is then no reason for the human subject to put itself at the top of the hierarchy of things. As put by Zhuangzi in the chapter “Autumn Waters” (Qiushui 秋水): “From the perspective of the Dao, there is no hierarchy among things” (yi dao guan zhi, wu wu guijian, 以道觀之，物無貴賤). In fact, the human being's status is not even above urine and faeces, since the Dao also exists therein: “‘What you call the Dao, where can it be found?’ … ‘also in piss and shit’” (suo wei dao, wu hu zai, 所謂道，惡乎在？…zai shini, 在屎溺; quotation from the chapter “Zhi Roaming North,” Zhi beiyou, 知北遊) .

Grounding the subject in the in-corporeal qi 氣gives life a different understanding. In Daoism as in Deleuze, life is neither identity nor subjecthood. It is rather a powerful fluid force, which is constantly becoming (hua, 化). Language constricts and eclipses this life force, turning everything into static “things.” And, unfortunately enough, the human subject is more often than not made to “attach himself to things” (wu you jie zhi, 物有結之). At the very beginning of the Daodejing 道德經, the unreliability of language is highlighted: “The Dao that can be verbalized is not the constant Dao” (dao ke dao fei changdao, 道可道非常道). In the Zhuangzi, this theme is dwelt on again and again, especially by making language a-signifying, i.e., by using paradoxical language to reveal the limitations of language and release life. For example, “to use a horse to judge other horses as non-horse is not as good as to use a non-horse to judge other horses as non-horse” (yi ma yu ma dfei ma, bu ruo yi fei ma yu ma zhifei ma ye, 以馬喻馬之非馬，不若以非馬喻馬之非馬也; quotation from the chapter “On Equaling All Things” Qiwu lun 齊物論) (Liao, 2014: 15). By falsifying language, life, or in Zhuangzi's parlance, the Dao, is revealed from its hidden-ness as the foundation of everything. Thus, “the myriad things are like a horse” (wanwu yi ma ye 萬物一馬也, quotation from the chapter “On Equaling All Things”)

Falsifying language is only the first step toward re-joining the Dao. A more profound move is to emulate “non-action” (wuwei, 無為) of the Dao. But while “non-action” is a characteristic of the Dao, for humans to acquire this virtue, they need to embark on a process reminiscent of what Deleuze calls “counter-actualization.” Zhuangzi formulates this process of counter-actualization in terms of a practice called “sitting into oblivion”:

Chop off your limbs, abolish your ears and eyes, abandon your body and intellect, then you will attain to the great communion. This is what's called sitting into oblivion” (duo zhiti, chu congming, li xing qu zhi, tong yu datong, ci wei zuo wang, 墮肢體，黜聰明，離形去知，同於大通，此謂坐忘; quotation from the chapter “The Grand Master” [Da zongshi 大宗師].)

Like Deleuze's endeavor toward “body without organs,” this operation to “de-organize” undoubtedly requires strenuous efforts as it goes against the grain, against the powerful commonsense organization of the body based on dualist thinking. “Non-action” actually means that actions to be taken do not have mundane purposes, those pertaining to the “ordered world” or to human organization. To illustrate the meaning of “non-action,” Zhuangzi provides several parables about concentrating on and excelling in one's work. The most well-known is the one about an ox-butcher named Paoding who, after being in the trade for 19 years, never in the least blunts his knife. When the king praises his technique, he replies:

What I like is the Dao instead of techniquet…. Now when I dissect oxen, I encounter them with my spirit (shen 神) rather than with my eyes; my organs (guan官) (emphasis added) stop functioning whereas my spirit moves on (chen zhi wuo hao zhe dao ye, jin hu zhi yi…fang jin zhi shi, chen yi shen yu, er bu yi mu shi, guanzhi zhi er shen yu xing 臣之所好者道也，進乎技矣…。方今之時，臣以神遇，而不以目視，官知止而神欲行; quotation from the chapter “Master of Nourishing Life” [Yangshengzhu 養生主]).

What this parable suggests is precisely to reconnect with the level of immanence, or the Dao, by producing a body without organs. An intensive investment in work and life like Paoding's would eventually enable us to shake off our egocentric attachments and take us beyond any human organization and practical purposes: “My organs stop functioning whereas my spirit moves on.”

Equally important is that the kind of action that “non-action” produces is an escape through the gaps in organization. Continuing to explain the way he uses his knife, Paoding stresses that he dissects oxen by cutting the “thin knife through the crevices between bones” (yi wu hou you jian 以無厚入有閒; quotation from the chapter “Master of Nourishing Life,” Yangsheng zhu 養生主). His taking advantage of the in-between-ness fully bears out the nature of his work as an “escape,” much like Deleuze's rhizomatic flight, through gaps or intervals.

The ultimate importance of the rhizomatic flight in Daoism is attested by Zhuangzi's emphasis on “roaming joyfully” (you, 游). In the first chapter of the Zhuangzi, “Untrammeled Joyful-Roaming” (xiaoyao 游, 逍遙游), we find the first description of you:² “If one is able to ride on the nature (正) of things between heaven and earth, and follow the becomings (bian 辯) of the six vital forces to roam joyfully the Infinite (wu qiong, 無窮), what else does he have to rely on?” This short passage reveals two things. First, to be able to roam joyfully in the Infinite (the Dao), one needs to grasp the truth of the Dao by collating its two sides: Nature and its becomings. Second, roaming joyfully in the Infinite (the Dao) makes one a self-sufficient person (“What else does he have to rely on?”). Thus, from the very beginning, you is in full resonance with the ontological immanence of the Dao. Roaming joyfully is by definition roaming joyfully in the Dao. This argument is reiterated throughout the book.³

Thus, the ideal human subject in Daoism, or zhen-ren 真人 (true man) can be understood as haecceity. Like the ideal Deleuzian subject (or rather non-subject), zhen-ren, characterized by the ability to roam joyfully, constantly takes advantage of the in-between-ness, to escape into the rhizosphere or the level of immanence. Zhen-ren is de-tethered from everything, no longer constricted by time and therefore unperturbed by the rotation of life and death: “Detached from heaven and earth… from things…from life…knows no past and present… enters into the in-between-zone of life and death” (wai tiandi…wai wu -…wai sheng …wu gujin …ru yu bushengbusi, 外天地…外物…外生…無古今…入於不生不死…”; quotation from the chapter “The Grand Master” [Da zongshi, 大宗師]). If one can roam joyfully in the Dao, one will be connected with all things and become (with) them since he knows how to approach things as haecceities. In the final analysis, to use Zhuangzi's metaphor, all things are just like a horse or a finger.

We can safely conclude that, like Deleuze's posthumanist ethics, Daoist ethics is also transversal. Empowered by the abiliity to roam joyfully, the Daoist zhen-ren may affect and be affected not only by other people, but also by things, ghosts, and gods, by means of its upright qi: “Make your organs focus inwardly and uncouple them from the intellect, gods and ghosts would come and ally with you, not to mention human beings” (fu xun ermu nei tong er wai yu xinzhi 夫徇耳目內通而外於心知，鬼神將來舍，而況人乎？; quotation from the chapter “In the Human World” [Renjian shi 人間世]). More daring in terms of connecting to the non-human world, Daoist “transversal ethics” may help further radicalize posthumanist approaches to redressing the ills of the Anthropocene.