‘[Receptivity] will already be understood that this won’t constitute a category ‘of renunciation’, a kind of invitation to passivity, but rather of what is contrary to solipsism (on the part of the subject) and its activism. Nor is it a matter of relying on another power (or another Subject) – in other words, of transferring mastery to God, as Quietists effectively do. No, this letting go that is the characteristic of receptivity is a taking hold, even one that is more dexterous because it is fluid, unrestricted and uncurtailed: the notion is strategic at the same time as it is ethical’ (François Jullien – From Being to Living p14)
In From Being to Living, sinologist and hellenist François Jullien summarises his lifelong research “through a series of oppositions in order to conceptualise what he calls the écarts (divergences) between European and Chinese ways of thinking.” In Chapter 3, presented on this page, he focuses on the contrast between the cultivation of receptivity in East Asia versus the fixation on freedom in Europe.
Receptivity is an under-developed notion in European thought
Jullien writes: “Receptivity is an under-developed notion in European thought … it has barely taken shape in proximity to a subject-self. At most it draws on a sentence in André Gide: ‘I held that every new thing should always find the whole of us wholly available’ (The Fruits of the Earth). Hence this notion doesn’t belong to the order of morality any more than it does to psychology; it isn’t prescriptive … or descriptive and cannot therefore be thought of either as a virtue or as a faculty. Yet these are really the two great pillars or referents on which we in Europe have erected our conception of the Subject. The notion of it therefore barely exists … it hasn’t entered an effective construction of our interiority’ (FBTL 13).
For the subject, receptivity is in fact a question of nothing less than the letting go of its initiative as a ‘subject’
Jullien then asks: ‘Why has it been so under-developed? Wouldn’t it be precisely because, in order to promote receptivity as both an ethical and cognitive category, we would need … profoundly to modify the very conception of our ethos? … Isn’t it, precisely, because of this exclusive focus on a self that does not need to look outward and therefore has no use of receptivity? Jullien goes even further when he states: ’it is in fact a question of nothing less than the letting go of its initiative as a ‘subject’ – one which from the outset presumes and projects, chooses, decides, places a focus on ends and gives itself means’ (FBTL 13). Dropping the self is equated in the West with jettisoning one’s agency. Instead, Westerners have sought to protect the freedom of the subject.
The letting go that is the characteristic of receptivity is in fact taking hold, not renunciation, nor invitation to passivity, nor reliance on another power, but the opposite of solipsism: the point is that the self no longer ‘projects’
Jullien, however, distances himself from the religious connotations associated with a letting go of the self: ‘In this, it will already be understood that this won’t constitute a category ‘of renunciation’, a kind of invitation to passivity, but rather of what is contrary to solipsism (on the part of the subject) and its activism. Nor is it a matter of relying on another power (or another Subject) – in other words, of transferring mastery to God, as Quietists effectively do. No, this letting go that is the characteristic of receptivity is a taking hold, even one that is more dexterous because it is fluid, unrestricted and uncurtailed: the notion is strategic at the same time as it is ethical’ (FBTL 14). The word ‘strategic’ is not generally associated with the practice of ‘letting go’ because if consciously and deliberately performed for instance ‘in order to’ gain enlightenment, it would be bound to fail. But Jullien does make it clear that a genuine letting go implies the dropping of a goal. He insists that it is a ‘taking hold’ that is all the more effective because it isn’t located, isn’t specified and isn’t essential. It is all the more continually adapted insofar as, no longer having a goal, it is never disappointed or even deprived; it is neither re-routed nor fragmented. It is a far more complete ‘taking hold of’ – or rather it doesn’t recognise limits or extremities – precisely because it no longer has a track to follow, goal to satisfy, quest to fulfil, or object to seize. For this taking hold by letting go is no longer oriented; it no longer projects. It is without a looming shadow, is no longer driven by intentionality, and consequently holds everything in equality. Its harnessing is wide open because it doesn’t expect to harness anything’ (FBTL 14).
Receptivity is availability (French dis-ponibilité) and openness: in China receptivity is actually revealed to be the very ground of thought
Jullien explains: ‘In French, the dis of disponibilité (availability or receptivity) not only means erasure of any opposition but also the diffraction in every in every direction of the ‘position’, and consequently its very dissolution’. Just as any ‘idea’ or view, restricts the horizon by enclosing it into a ‘fold,’ ‘any position’, Jullien points out, ‘is an im-position’. In European thought, ‘virtues’ and ‘faculties’ can in fact no longer appear after this except as dispersion and loss: specifying one in relation to the other, they each affirm themselves to the detriment of the others. By claiming autonomy from the outset, their self-affirmation still have an element of force [in contrast to the Chinese letting go that allows a spontaneous response] … receptivity mixes (includes) this plurality of their diversity into the same, and equal, potentiality’. Therefore, ‘knowledge, no longer being oriented, becomes in receptivity a vigilance that cannot be reduced by any form of hoarding – or the good, no longer being codified or assigned, becomes a capacity to embrace, and exploit indefinitely which, because it is without exclusion or hardening, is also without loss’. European thought, on the other hand, ’by promoting the autonomous figure of the subject and its internal structuring of thought as emerging from its faculties as properties (and therefore apart from the flow of the world) … has hindered such a capacity of ‘opening up’ … in China receptivity is actually revealed to be the very ground of thought’ (FBTL 15). This is also why China never (or at least, rarely) mentions ‘values’ while values are central in European discourse.
Receptivity is, before all virtues, the very principle of the Sage’s conduct, but it is non-principle ‘principle’
This is not, as the West would be quick to claim, just a Daoist principle, since Daoism is usually conceived there as a contemplative practice. It is found in the Analects of Confucius, and must be understood as a feature of Chinese thought as such. Jullien writes: ‘What’s striking, as soon as we enter Chinese thought, is the realisation that what I understand here by receptivity – far from going against authorised cognitive approaches, which are founded on our faculties – constitutes its very condition … receptivity is, before all virtues, the very principle of the Sage’s conduct. But it is a non-principle ‘principle’, because to erect receptivity as a principle would be to contradict it for the same reason that receptivity is a disposition without a definite disposition. This is something all Chinese schools of antiquity agree upon … even if they may approach it from different directions. Indeed, I’d be quite prepared to sum up the teaching of Chinese thought in this way: someone is wise when he gains access to receptivity – nothing more is needed. This is why Chinese thought amazes us by its anti-dogmatism (for which ritualism provides a social compensation)’ (FBTL 15).
Jullien then quotes the Analects: ‘No ideas, no necessity, no position and no self. These are the four things the master didn’t have (Confucius, Analects IX, 4).
Likewise, to ‘advance an idea means already to leave others in the shade, and from the blockage into a ‘position, from which a ‘self’ finally appears
As hinted at above, what is not questioned in China is that ‘to have an idea’ – or, better, to advance an idea – means already to leave others in the shade; it means to privilege one aspect of things to the detriment of others, and at the same time to sink into partiality. Every idea advanced is at the same time a bias about things, and this prevents us from considering them in their entirety, on the same level and on equal terms. We have entered preference and prevention … If we advance an ‘idea’, we then impose a ‘necessity’ (a certain ‘one should’ projected onto behaviour); consequently, the fact that we maintain this ‘one should’ results in an arrested position in which the mind becomes bogged down and no longer evolves. From out of this blockage into a ‘position’, a ‘self’ finally appears: a self fixed in its ‘position’, a ‘self’ fixed in its rut and presenting a character. This ‘self’, being fixed in its ‘position’, has lost its receptivity. Yet the motto is also circular: from the fact that behaviour is fixed in the ‘self’, this self advances an ‘idea’, one which becomes established as ‘necessity’, and so on’ (FBTL 15-16)
The ‘happy medium’ is neither boring, or timid, half way between oppositions and with a fear of excess: it is to be able to do one as well as the other, in other words, to be capable of going to either extreme
In fact, Jullien argues, ‘the happy medium, for anyone able to think with rigour about it (Wang Fuzhi) is to be able to do one as well as the other, in other words to be capable of going to either extreme … We’re told that to spend three years mourning for the death of one’s father isn’t too much, nor is drinking too much during a banquet – in neither case am I going too far (but going to the limit of each possibility, satisfying each demand completely). The risk is rather that, by becoming bogged down on one side, we close off the other possibility and thereby fail to see its circumstance’ (FBTL 16-17).
Chinese thought has notably known how to perceive the difference between ‘maintaining the middle ground’ and ‘holding on to the middle ground’ (staying attached to it)
‘Holding on to the middle ground’ is staying safely away from extremes. Jullien refers to Mencius’ ‘third man’ (Zimo – VII, A, 26) who is described as being ‘satisfied with this middle’, ‘without taking the variety of cases into account’, he is able ‘to hold only one possibility’ and ‘miss a hundred others’ … a ‘self’ hardens … one is no longer in phase: plenitude loses its amplitude and one no longer reacts to the diversity on offer’ (FBTL 17).
Receptivity, on the other hand, ‘as an internal disposition without disposition, opening itself to this diversity, goes together with opportunity which comes to us from the world as ‘to its harbour’: as Montaigne also says – but how far is it pushed in the disposition of knowledge? – ‘someone who is receptive knows how to live appropriately’. This is what China describes as ‘maintaining the middle ground.’ ‘Receptivity keeps the fan completely open – without stiffening or avoidance – in a way that responds fully to each opportunity as it occurs, which means leaving nothing out nor changing one’s own direction. As a consequence, no character or internal sedimentation stands in the way of this malleability’ (FBTL 17).
Again, this does not merely reflects the popular laid-back attitude toward life described in the rambling of the Daoist Sage in which Zhuangzi takes things as they come and flows along with the Dao unconcernedly (Victor Mair – Wandering on the Way). Jullien says that ‘Mottos along these lines abound in the Analects of Confucius: the good man is ‘complete’ (II,14) – that’s to say that he doesn’t lose sight of comprehensiveness, doesn’t allow the field of possibilities to narrow in any way. He ‘aims to be neither for nor against’, but ‘inclines’ to what the situation calls for (IV, 10). Or, as Confucius says about himself, ‘there’s nothing I can or cannot do’ (XVIII, 8). The Sage, in other words, keeps every possibility open, not excluding from it any a priori and and remaining in the compossible. This is why he is without character and cannot be described: his disciples don’t know what to say about him (Analects, VII, 18). Similar statements are found in the Mencius (V, B, 1): ‘wisdom’ is without content that would orient and predispose it – or else it has no other wisdom, as it renews itself inexhaustibly, than to make itself receptive to the circumstances of the moment (FBTL 16).
To know’ in Chinese is not so much to ‘have an idea about’ as ‘to make oneself receptive to’
Here, for the first time in this chapter, Jullien brings up the notion of self-emptying, which is widely associated with both Buddhism and Christianity (the latter as kenosis), and explains how it is understood and concretely practiced in Daoism: ‘An internal emptying occurs, not due to doubt eliminating prejudices, but by an abandonment or generalised disengagement taking place more at the level of behaviour than at that of the intellect. This results in the letting go that gives access back its amplitude. It is necessary to take care not to let one’s mind become a ‘purposeful’ mind (cheng xin), as Zhuangzi also says’. A purposeful mind will unwittlingly become a standpoint. ‘For the first demand is, without further projecting any preference or reticence, to consider all things “equally” (according to the Qiwulun). It is even, as Zhuangzi pertinently shows, because he knows how to make everything stand on equal terms and is in a position to go back to the undifferentiated, ‘Taoist’, grounds from which all differences arise that the Sage is able to welcome the slightest difference in his opportunity, without reducing or failing to notice it. Since the ‘self’ is no longer in the way …. (wang wo), he can then listen to all the musics of the world, as diverse as they are, in their spontaneous ‘thus’, as they come, to the will, while accompanying their singular unfolding (xian qi zi qu, Guo) (FBTL 17).
Could it be that the European difficulty in thinking about receptivity be due to the rival notion of freedom, which has prevailed in Europe, having hindered its development?
In the last section of the chapter, Jullien takes a quick look at a few examples of European practices that can be regarded as germane to receptivity. For instance, ‘Freud’s rule of the ‘evenly suspended attention’, gleichschwebende Aufmerksamkeit, required of the psychoanalyst in the course of the cure’ which Freud himself was disatisfied with, and Heidegger’s call for ‘openness’ which he extols as giving access to the truth (Offenständigkeit)’ but eventually retreats from ‘under the sign of Freedom’.
In fact, Jullien notes, a number of contemporary Chinese intellectuals also ‘lay claim to an idea of freedom (zi you, a term translated from the West) in relation to Chinese thought before Westernisation (notably when it is a matter of Zhuangzi), arranging what I call ‘receptivity’ (zi zai, as I would translated it into Chinese) under this term, it isn’t a terminological dispute and is a matter of a logic of concepts’. This leads Jullien to state: ‘I’ll extend this opposition to the point of reciprocal exclusion: because it has developed a thought of freedom, Europe has neglected this resource of receptivity, and the opposite is true for China. Aren’t the two notions actually antagonistic to the point of contradiction, instead of being flatly synonymous, as is usually assumed? This is because freedom demands making an intrusion in relation to the situation in which the self is implicated and it is this emancipation which precisely elevates it into a ‘Subject’ with a claim to initiative … In other words, freedom promotes this ideal through a rupture – not through an ‘opening’ – with the order of the world’ (FBTL 18).
Freedom is the product of an invention with socio-political roots which has been so assimilated in Europe that we forget its bias
Jullien then turns to the Greek roots of the rather ubiquitous concept of freedom in the West. He writes: ‘On the one hand is the possibility of doing what we please, as we like and without being prevented from doing so (what they called exousia). I have no difficulty in recognising that this must commonly appear in various cultures, including therefore in China, and even that Chinese thought has particularly deployed and enriched this meaning (xiao yao you, the first phrase of the Zhuangzi: ‘to evolve’ comfortably and without shackles). On the other hand is what they called eleutheria which (already in Homer) was the condition of the free man in opposition to that of the slave (who loses, when he has been defeated, this ‘day of freedom’) from the outset. Yet what the ‘Greeks’ forged (or which forged them) was really this second experience,’ – eleutheria – ‘and above all at the political level, that of small cities resistant to the vast empire – at the fracture between two continents – and refusing to submit to the power of the Great King (the Greco-Persian wars); then by the deliberate founding of properly political institutions detached from the natural ties of kinship (democracy confronted with inherited family authority); then when the City came apart, as the internal freeing of the individual by domination over his passions and above all over his ‘representations’, phantasiai (which assumed it fullest surge with Stoicism). Here, then, Freedom is the product of an invention (more than a ‘discovery,’ as had been said so often) which is on the whole very singular, but which has been so assimilated in Europe that we forget its bias. This is so to such a point that classical thought was able to be set up as ‘universal in being based on the laws of freedom, which have been understood in terms of autonomy and as being part of a different order from those of natural laws. They are metaphysical rather than physical, and are erected as absolute’. The concept of freedom in the West has primarily socio-political roots, linked to the birth of, at least the aspiration to, if not the actual institution of, ‘democracy’ in Athens.
As a concept with socio-political roots, Jullien explains, ’the opposite of freedom is servitude but,’ in the cosmological and contemplative world of the Chinese Sage, ‘it is receptivity that stands as contradictory to it: it unfolds a harmonious relation that is not of emancipation but of integration with the order of things … [it] is so much better at uniting us with the natural course of things (ziran), in that it isn’t constituted as an ideal that has been erected through a cutting off and separation from the world … A self even has a better idea of how to conduct itself when it is uncoupled as a ‘self’ and becomes implicated in it as it responds to its prompting – which is immediate-immanent – and is freed from artificial agitations.’
Politics as continuation of family structures in China, struggle for civic independence in Greece
Jullien concludes with an overview of the historical circumstances that led to the divergence between China and Greece with regard to their understanding of ‘freedom’: ‘Unlike the Greeks, China, with such a vast empire, wasn’t brought into existence through a struggle for civic independence. Rather, it conceived politics as a simple continuation of family structures – their spontaneity has a regulatory vocation (under the figure of the father-king) that this political order reproduced – and did not detach itself from this. On the moral level, too, it has called for a ‘triumph over oneself’, but has done so in order to return to the behavioural and social (strictly integral) norms that ‘rites’ are (according to Confucius’ precepts: ke ji fu li). This is why it has conceived of this capacity which, in opening the position from all sides and not being enclosed in any one of them but holding all of these possibilities in equality, maintains the subject in an implicit (non-dogmatic) way which also puts it in phase with what comes to it from the world – from what it initially trusts in the world’ (FBTL 19-20).
Source:
François Jullien – From Being to Living, a Euro-Chinese lexicon of thought (2020-Original text De l’Être au Vivre 2015)