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Spinoza and Wang Yang-Ming

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

Paul Wienpahl
Paul Wienpahl
Affiliation:
Professor of Philosophy, University of California, Santa Barbara
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Extract

This paper is a design which will bring into relief certain striking and crucial similarities between things said in Spinoza's Ethics and Wang Yang-ming's Instructions for Practical Living. I am not concerned with points of close scholarship. My purpose is to deepen our understanding of The Ethics and perhaps, thereby, to make it more useful than it has been. I want also to bring this out: if we read these men as though they presented a philosophy or had worked out a system of ideas, their usefulness as teachers is lost. Finally, I am trying by these means to make mysticism clearer.

Type
Research Article
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 5 , Issue 1 , October 1969 , pp. 19 - 27
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1969

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References

page 19 note 1 References to the texts are made to Elwes', R. H. M. translation of The Ethics, Dover Publications, Inc., New York;Google Scholarand to Chan's, Wing-tsit translation of The Instructions, Columbia University Press, New York, 1963. Spinoza died in 1677 and Wang in 1529. The name ‘Wang Yang-ming’ is an honorific. The philosopher's private name was ‘Shou-jen’ his courtesy name, ‘Po-an’ The Chinese title of The Instructions is Ch'uan-hsi lu.Google Scholar

My comparisons are made only in four large areas. Space does not permit citation of the host of detailed comparisons which leap to the eye of anyone who familiarises himself with both texts. Were the present sketch developed into a finished picture, one would see that the teachings of Wang and Spinoza are almost identical.

I have so far found only one respect in which the two men differed in a matter which might affect their teaching. Wang practised sitting in (Zen) mediation and many of his instructions relate to this practice. With a possible exception, to be noted, there is no evidence that Spinoza practiced this or a comparable discipline. However, he tells us in the Preface to Part V that it is not part of his ‘design to point out the method and means whereby the understanding may be perfected nor show the skill whereby the body may be so tended, as to be capable of the due performance of its functions.’ Nor does Wang describe meditation. However, Spinoza says that these methods and skills are in the provinces of logic and medicine. This would indicate that he has not considered the technique of meditation. (A form of the latter could have been, but apparently was not, known to him through the writings of St John of the Cross, d. 1591).

On the other hand, there is one portion of a scholium in The Ethics which suggests a form or aspect of meditation. In the scholium to Prop. X, P. V, Spinoza writes of a technique of committing certain moral precepts to memory and ‘often think(ing) over and reflect(ing) upon’ their application to the wrongs of men.

I might add here that ‘teaching’ properly occurs in verbal interchanges and discourse. Readers of Wang are aware that his ‘book’ is a record of such interchanges. The Ethics is not. The form of Spinoza's work has tended to obscure the possibility of regarding him as a teacher.

page 19 note 2 Westerners tend to treat all ‘philosophers’ this way. However, Chinese thinkers now writing about both Eastern and Western thought face the same danger, Carsun Chang, for example, in his Development of Neo-Confucian Thought and Wang Yang-Ming. In the latter he writes: ‘In the discussions that took place during Wang Yang-Ming's days of exile in Lung-ch'ang we have the foundations of his philosophic system.’ And: ‘He continued to gather friends around him to discuss philosophy.’ As though it were a subject like arithmetic. The quotations are from Yang-Ming, Wang, St John's University Press, Jamaica, New York, 1962, p. 7.Google Scholar

page 20 note 1 The analogy is an old and frequently used one in the recorded sayings of Zen Buddhists. There is an obvious resemblance between it and Wittgenstein's: ‘There is not a philosophical method, though there are indeed methods, like different therapies.’ Philosophical investigations, #133. Cf. also #128: ‘If one tried to advance theses in philosophy, it would never be possible to question them, because everyone would agree with them.’

page 20 note 2 The quotation is from pp. 11–12.

Evidences of Wang's pragmatism can be multiplied indefinitely. For those who are interested here are page references: p. 93, #133; p. 11, first paragraph; p. 213, #252; p. 223, #279; p. 201, #266; p. 246, #317, p. 314, lines 6 and 7.

page 20 note 3 Quoted in the biography by Johannes Colerus. See Elwes' Introduction to his translations, p. IX.

page 21 note 1 Scholium to Corollary to Prop. XLIX, Part II. The ‘doctrine’ to which reference is made is set forth in the Corollary: ‘Will and understanding are one and the same.’ It is discussed below in Parts II and III of this paper.

Two observations should be made at this point, the second partly because it will be useful later on. The first is this: that Spinoza's work does not clearly appear as a teaching but rather as a philosophical treatise is due in large measure to the fact that he was not concerned in The Ethics with the method of improving the understanding (see above, footnote 1). He was concerned with conveying his insight into the unity of mind and body, and God and Nature. Thus, his work does not have the practical ring which Wang's does. This has given color to the common view of Spinoza as a theorist or metaphysician. I should prefer to say that The Ethics conveys an insight. Spinoza was explicitly concerned with what the insight could accomplish, as the quotation shows. Having seen that in which human freedom, and therefore happiness, consists, he left us the problem of devising techniques for its accomplishment. I venture to guess that, had he known of (Zen) meditation, he would have approved of it.

Second, we shall see later (Part IV) that the man who behaves on what Spinoza calls the intuitive level of understanding acts spontaneously, naturally; he not only ‘knows’ what he ‘ought’ to do, but does it. He does not have to reflect. He has no doubts.

With one exception such a man is very like an animal. Spinoza explicitly discusses this exception. Wang implies that he is aware of it, as quotations to be used later will show. There is one ‘idea’ to use Spinoza's term, which plays a predominant role in intutitive behaviour. ‘… it is the knowledge of the union existing between the mind and the whole of nature.’ (P. 7, Vol. II of the Elwes' translations). As this idea becomes more and more adequate, as we come to live it more and more, it constitutes ‘the intellectual love of God.’ This, again in Spinoza's language, is the most powerful of the active emotions. It is the basis for control over the passions. As its adequacy increases in a man, he is increasingly identified with God (Nature). All of his behaviour becomes tinged with respect for each individual thing. Thus, the intuitive man (Wang's Sage) is not simply a spontaneous creature. He is what is otherwise called a mystic.

page 21 note 2 The proper meaning of ‘philosophy’ in the West is the love (and pursuit) of wisdom. In China its closest equivalent is ‘the practice of wisdom.’

page 22 note 1 The quotations are, in order, from p. 201, p. 93 and p. 14. See also p. 100; p. 250, #322; P. 253, #325.

page 22 note 2 Definitions III and IV, Part II; Prop. VII and its scholium, Part II. I say, ‘given his monism’. The relevant propositions here are V and VIII, Part I: Since ‘substance is necessarily infinite’ there can be nothing other than it. Therefore, ‘There cannot be granted several substances, but one substance only.’

The phrases ‘thinking being’ and ‘mind is passive’ must be qualified if their spirit is to remain true to Spinoza. For Spinoza does not believe that there are ‘thinking beings’ or ‘minds’. The ideas are what we call the mind. ‘Note.—in the same way it is proved, that there is in the mind no absolute faculty of understanding, desiring, loving, etc. Whence it follows, that these and similar faculties are either entirely fictitious, or are merely abstract or general terms.… Thus the intellect and the will stand in the same relation to this or that idea, or this or that volition, as “lapidity” to this or that stone, or as “man” to Peter and Paul.’ (Prop. XLVIII, Part II, Scholium) Prop. XXVI, Part IV is relevant here: ‘Whatsoever we endeavor in obedience to reason is nothing further than to understand …’ (Italics mine.) Two statements from Wang are also significant in this connection: ‘To say that one would rather leave the work undone but that the mind must be cultivated and nourished is to regard (things and the mind) as two different things.’ (p. 128). ‘The idea that one should rather leave the work undone than neglect cultivating and nourishing the mind is not without merit when told to the beginner. But if (things and the mind) are regarded as two things, it is a defect.’ (p. 153).

The comparison between ‘knowledge’ and ‘knowing-how’ is important. In the West we have disparaged knowing-how and praised (theoretical) knowledge. This has led us to separate knowledge and action. Our understanding of Spinoza's ‘intuitive’ knowledge (or, better, behaviour) is deepened when we see that it is knowing-how. A great deal of mystery is thereby removed from it.

Much confusion between intuitive knowledge, as Spinoza uses that phrase, and theoretical knowledge may be dispelled by the following example. A person can know about swimming by reading a book. From this he may also learn how it is possible. On the other hand, the knowledge of swimming by the person who can swim and does is quite different from the other. It is the kind of knowledge one has when he knows how to swim which Spinoza refers to as intuitive. It may be preceded and helped by theoretical knowledge, as Spinoza urges, but it is basically different. It is not, furthermore, comparable to what one critic of the present essay called ‘know why.’ The latter is some part of theoretical knowledge.

page 23 note 1 Prop. XIV, Part IV. Spinoza's definition of ‘emotion’ should be born in mind here. Part III, Def. III: ‘By emotion I mean the modifications of the body, whereby the active power of the said body is increased or diminished, aided or constrained, and also the ideas of such modifications.’

For the rest of this paragraph see Part IV, Scholia to Props. XVII and XVIII. These scholia are essential to an understanding of Spinoza.

page 23 note 2 Such knowledge might be called embodied. Compare knowing that one should honour his parents and honouring them (by his actions).

page 23 note 3 Scholium to Definitions III, Part III. The word ‘modifications’ in Spinoza's usage refers to cases of behaviour in ours. See footnote 11, the definition of ‘emotion’.

We are the adequate cause of our behaviour when our knowledge and action are one; when we know how to do what we do as opposed to simply knowing about it.

page 23 note 4 This quotation is from p. 11.

‘I have gone deeply into the reasons for this, and believe that for the most part the whole situation has been confused by the fact that famous but mediocre scholars talk too much.’ ‘Then I realised, alas, that the path of the Sage is as level as a broad way. But scholars of today have erroneously opened a hole here and a crack there, have trod over obstacles and have fallen into ditches.’

These quotations are from p. 265 which is remarkable for the fact that on it Wang tells us how he attained what he prefers to call knowledge. At first he tried books and the writing of ‘flowery compositions’. ‘Later when I was banished … I lived among the barbarians and in the midst of great difficulties. As a consequence of stimulating my mind and hardening my nature, I seemed to have rapidly awakened. I searched and made an effort at personal realisation for another year, and looked for confirmation in the Five Classics …’ Italics mine. The books can provide a test for what one has learned on one's own. They do not help us to learn. ‘Only after one has experienced pain can one know pain. How can knowledge and action be separated?, p. 10. Spinoza tells us in The Improvement of the Understanding that the path to the highest knowledge is by reflection. ‘Moreover, this is the order of thinking adopted by men in their inward meditations.’

page 24 note 1 Or again if you will, they do not believe that there are realities or a reality behind the appearances (hence, no need for a science of reality).

‘The propositions we have advanced hitherto have been entirely general, applying not more to men than to other individual things, all of which, though in different degrees, are animated (animata).’ Scholium to Prop. XIII, Part 1.

Spinoza's way of saying that men do not have souls comes as the culmination to Part I. Prop. XLVIII: ‘In the mind there is no absolute or free will; but the mind is determined to wish this or that by a cause, which has also been determined by another cause, and this last by another cause, and so on to infinity.’ Scholium: ‘In the same way it is proved, that there is in the mind no absolute faculty of understanding, desiring, loving, etc. Whence it follows, that these and similar faculties are either entirely fictitious, or are merely abstract or general terms, such as we are accustomed to put together from particular things …’ Corollary: ‘Will and understanding are one and the same.’

page 24 note 2 ‘This wi11 be plain enough to all, … especially if it be remembered, that matter is everywhere the same, that its parts are not distinguishable, except in so far as we conceive matter as diversely modified, when its parts are distinguished, not really, but modally.’ Scholium, Prop. XV, Part I. (The notion of real distinctions is defined in Principle LX of Part I of Descartes’ The Principles of Philosophy.) The entire scholium may be read to see that the absence of real distinctions applies for Spinoza to substance as well as what he calls ‘matter’ here. In any case it must, since matter and mind are just aspects of the same thing, looked at now this way, now that.

page 25 note l Pp. 128, 153–4 and 280. As was pointed out to me by my friend and colleague, Herbert Fingarett, the term ‘innate’ is not altogether a happy translation. It suggests to Westerners the epistemologies of Plato and Descartes and the reminiscence theory of knowledge. It has no such connotation in the Chinese language. Legge and Carsun Chang translate the Chinese characters by ‘intuitive.’

page 25 note 2 This example suggests the source of Wang's translator's use of ‘innate’.

page 26 note 1 Def. VIII, Part IV. In The Ethics the propositions of the various parts unfold the definitions and axioms of those parts.

page 26 note 2 Prop. XIV, Part IV, quoted above p. 7.

page 26 note 3 Props. XXIV and XXVI, Part IV, italics mine.

page 26 note 4 Scholium 1, Prop. XXXVII, Part IV.

page 26 note 5 Prop. XXXVIII, Part IV and Prop. XXXIX, Part V. It should be remembered that eternity, for Spinoza, is not duration in time (Def. VIII, Part I). A mind is eternal when it understands intuitively. A man with such a ‘mind’ sees things under the aspect of eternity. See Prop. XXXI, Part V and its scholium.

page 27 note 1 p. 56, #96. Other references occur in the index under ‘love’.

page 27 note 2 His definition of ‘emotions’ must be remembered here. They are ‘modifications of the body”. When they are active they correspond to the actions which Wang identifies with knowing. It should also be remembered that God and the world, Substance, are one. Prop. XIV, Part I.

page 27 note 3 Corollary, Prop. XXXII, Part V; Prop. XXXIII and scholium. See also Prop. XLVI, Part IV: ‘He, who lives under the guidance of reason, endeavors as far as possible, to render back love, or kindness, for other men's hatred, anger, contempt, etc., towards him.’