A good wanderer leaves no trace.1 Laozi, Daodejing
The original meanings of the German word ‘Wesen’ (Old High German wesan) [essence], interestingly, were ‘to linger in one place’, ‘stay’, ‘household matters’, ‘dwelling’ and ‘duration’. Vesta, the Roman goddess of the hearth, home and family, has the same etymological root. Essence refers to house and household, to ownership and property, to what endures and is solid. Essence is abode. The house shelters possessions and belongings. The inwardness of the house is inherent in essence. The Greek word ‘ousia’, which Aristotle uses for ‘essence’, also originally means property, estate [Anwesen] and land holdings. The concept of ‘essence’, which unites identity, duration and inwardness, dwelling, lingering and possessing, dominates occidental metaphysics. For Plato, the beautiful is the identical, the unchanging, the enduring. It is ‘itself by itself with itself, it is always one in form’.2 Plato’s Eros, who strives for divine beauty, is the son of Poros. The plural form of Poros also means intake and money. Poros, literally ‘the way’, is meant to lead to possession. This goal- directed way is fully absorbed by the intention to possess. When it does not lead to unambiguous possession, the situa-tion becomes a-poretic. Because of his father, Plato says, Eros is himself an ‘awesome hunter’.3 Power and possession animate him. Being, to him, means desire.
Essence is substance. It subsists. It is the unchanging that withstands change by persisting in itself as itself and thereby differs from everything else. The Latin verb substare, from which ‘substance’ is derived, means among other things ‘withstand’. And stare is also used in the sense of ‘to assert one-self’. On the strength of its substantiveness, on the strength of its essentiality, the one withstands the other, asserts itself. Substantiveness is steadfastness, a determination to be oneself.
Only the one who has a secure, solid foothold, who solidly stands by him- or herself, can also withstand the other. Essence is the self- same, which dwells in itself and thus delimits itself from the other. Essence or substance is characterized by a striving towards itself. The Greek notion of hypostasis means not only essence and foundation but also withstanding and steadfastness. And stasis, apart from standing, stand or stand-ing place, also means revolt, discord and strife. According to its origins, essence is therefore anything but friendly. Only what is fully determined to be itself, what solidly stands by itself, what permanently dwells in itself – that is, what has the inwardness of essence – can enter into a conf l ict, into strife with the other. Without the determination to be oneself, which is the fundamental trait of essence, no strife is possible.
Only the one who is able fully to stay within him- or herself even inside the other can have power. The figure of essence prefigures power. Because of this prefiguration, a culture, or thinking, that takes its cue from essence must necessarily develop a determination to be oneself that finds expression in the desire for power and possession.
In his Monadology, Leibniz rigorously draws out the ultimate consequences of the concept of substance.4 The ‘monad’ represents this rigorous coming to a head and completion of essence. The monad dwells wholly in itself. There is no exchange with the outside. Thus, monads ‘have no windows through which something can enter or leave’.5 This total closure corresponds to the absolute inwardness of the windowless house. The monad’s only impulse is its striving towards itself, self- affection, the affect towards itself, namely ‘appetition’. The inner life of the monad is guided simply by ‘appetite’, that is, ‘perception’.6 The monad is a ‘mirror of the universe’,7 but it does not mirror the universe by abandoning itself to the things. Rather, the monad represents or expresses the universe. The monad is not passive but active or expres-sive, that is, ex- pressing. Leibniz’s soul, as a ‘living mirror’, is a place of desiring.8 The universe is simply an object of its ‘appetition’. The monad perceives the universe because it has an appetite for it. It is this appetite alone that gives the world an independent being. Existence [Dasein] is desire. Without desire there is nothing. Thus, ‘nothing is simpler and easier than something’, than existence.9 In order to exist, a striving, an effort, is required: ‘Itaque dici potest Omne possibile Existiturire.’ [‘Thus every possible can be said to strive to exist.’]10 The verbum desiderativum ‘Existiturire’ (wanting to be) signif i es the ‘conatus ad Existentiam’ [striving towards existence]. What is present is characterized by exigency in its presencing; that is, it wants. It is the soul that animates existence to exigency. The ground of existence is exigency. The ground of being is wanting, which then, in particular in the modern age, takes the form of wanting oneself. Wanting, or even liking, itself, everything present must accomplish [erwirken] itself.
Heidegger, despite his efforts at leaving metaphysical thinking behind, and despite always seeking to get closer to Far Eastern thinking, remained a philosopher of essence, of the house and of dwelling. Although he retreated from quite a few of the intellectual patterns of metaphysics, the figure of ‘essence’ still dominated his thinking. Heidegger uses the term ‘essence’ almost excessively. The fundamental traits of essence, such as having a solid foothold, steadfast-ness, selfhood and duration, appear in various guises in his writings. Expressions like ‘steadfastness’, ‘resoluteness of self’ [Entschlossenheit zu sich], ‘constancy of self’ or ‘self- constancy’ dominate the vocabulary of his analysis of Dasein. He also connects strife and essence: ‘In essential strife . . . the opponents raise each other into the self- assertion [Selbstbehauptung] of their essences.’11
As pointed out above, the dimension of strife (stasis) inheres in particular in the Greek idea of essence as hypostasis. Both the figure of strife and that of dialogue, frequently used by Heidegger, presuppose a bearer of essence, someone who presences [einen Anwesenden], that is, a person or individual who has a stand or standpoint, who is identical with him- or herself and stays the same. Those involved must properly be presencing [eigens an- wesend sein]. According to Heidegger, love consists in helping the other achieve his or her ‘essence’: ‘Found the love! Probably the deepest interpretation of love is expressed in Augustine’s word that says “amo volo ut sis”, I love, that is, I want what I love to be what it is. Love is letting be in the deep sense in which it calls forth the essence.’12
Etymologically, the Chinese sign for being (you, 有) represents a hand that holds a piece of meat. You also means ‘having’ and ‘possessing’. However, being as exigency, as appetition, does not dominate Chinese thinking. Quite the opposite – it is enthusiastically devoted to fasting. Daoist thinking makes use of a number of negations in order to express that, fundamentally, existence is not an exigency, not an insistence, not a dwelling. The wise man ‘wanders where there is nothing at all’ (you yu wu you, 遊於無有).13 Zhuangzi also speaks of wandering ‘in simplicity’ (you yu dan, 遊於淡).14 Laozi also uses the ‘not’ (wu, 無) for negating ‘essence’ (wu, 物). The ‘not a thing’, the non-essence (wu wu, 無物) – we can say the absencing [Abwesen] – evades all substantive determination.15 It is consistent with this fact that non-essence is associated with wandering, with not-dwelling. The wise man wanders where there is ‘no door and no house’ (wu men wu fang, 無門無房).16 He is compared to a quail that has no nest, that is, no home. He is ‘a bird in flight that leaves no trail behind’ (niao xing er wu ji, 鳥行而無跡).17
The Daoist wandering is certainly not fully identical with the Buddhist ‘non-dwelling’ (wu zhu, 無住), but the negativity of absencing connects the two.18 The Japanese Zen master Dōgen also teaches nowhere-dwelling: ‘A Zen monk should be without fixed abode, like the clouds, and without fixed support, like water.’19 The good wanderer leaves no trace (shan xing wu zhe ji, 善行無轍跡). A trace points in a particular direction, and it points to an actor and his intention. Laozi’s wanderer, by contrast, does not pursue any intention, and he does not go to any place. He walks in the ‘directionless’ (wu fang, 無方).20 He completely fuses with the way, which does not lead to anywhere. Traces are created only in being. The fundamental topos of Far Eastern thinking is not being but the way (dao, 道). The way lacks the solidity of being and essence, which is what leads to the emergence of traces. There is no teleol-ogy to force it to follow a linear path. The dao is not a poros.
Thus, it is freed of the possibility of possession and of the impossibility of the aporetic. This difference between being and path, between dwelling and wandering, between essence [Wesen] and absencing [Abwesen], is critical, and all of its consequences must be spelled out. As opposed to being, the way does not permit any substantive closure. As it is endlessly processual, it does not allow anything to subsist, insist or persist. It therefore does not allow any fixed essences to come about. A soul insists. It consists of traces, so to speak. Absencing effaces it. In this effacing consists emptiness. Zhuangzi describes the wandering in absencing as follows:
‘Already my will is vacant and blank. I go nowhere and don’t know how far I’ve gotten. I go and come and don’t know where to stop. I’ve already been there and back, and I don’t know when the journey is done.’21
The wanderer dwells nowhere. The figure who recommends to Tian Gen – ‘Heaven’s Ground’ – who is seeking his advice, to wander in non-being, is called ‘Wu Ming’ (無 名, literally the ‘nameless’).22 A name turns you into a someone in the strong sense. The wise man, by contrast, is nameless (sheng ren wu ming, 聖人無名).23 He has ‘no self’ (wu ji, 無 己, or wu wo 無我).24 This topos of absence is to be found not only in Daoism but also in Confucius. In Lunyu it says: ‘The master was without self.’ The way the negation of the self is expressed in this case is unusual: the particle for negation, wu (毋), which always precedes a verb, here precedes the self and thereby negates it. Confucius did not self. He made nothing the content of his self.
From a certain perspective, in Chinese, being, that is, you, the hand that holds a piece of meat, is something quite prosaic. In order to exist, it seems to say, all that is needed is a piece of meat. Nurturing oneself is a prosaic act. As such, it has no exigency. It lacks the insistence of desiring. Zhuangzi even counts clothing oneself and eating among the natural virtues that human beings need to practice.25 The belly (fu, 腹) does not desire. Desiring is based on the drawing of distinctions.26 What desires is not the belly but the discriminating taste that strives for something specific (wei, 味). Laozi demands: ‘Empty the heart (xu qi xin, 虛其心), and fill the belly (shi qi fu, 實其腹). Weaken the will (ruo qi zhi, 弱其志), and strengthen the bones (qiang qi gu, 強其骨).’27
Merely to be sated and strong is certainly not a Daoist ideal. 'Belly’ and ‘bones’ are here being used in figurative senses. They are organs of indifference. Daoism does not pursue an ascetic ideal; having an empty heart does not categorically exclude having a full belly. With its determination and doggedness, asceticism is based to a large extent on desire. For this reason, Zhuangzi distances himself from ascetics and hermits. Bones are given another figurative sense in section 55 of the Daodejing, where the wise man is compared to a newborn child whose bones are ‘supple’ (ruo, 弱) and whose sinews are ‘soft’ (rou, 柔).28 The weakness of the bones and softness of the sinews are opposed to the steadfastness of the essence that withstands and resists the other. Laozi might even have said: the wise man is without bones, like water.
In section 12 of the Daodejing the belly also figures as a non-desiring, non-distinguishing organ:
The five colours turn a man’s eyes blind;
The five notes turn a man’s ears deaf;
The five tastes turn a man’s palate dull;
. . .
For this reason, The ruling of the Sage is by the belly not by the eyes.29
This statement by Laozi is reminiscent of a provocative saying of the Zen master Linji: ‘When you get hungry, eat your rice; / when you get sleepy, close your eyes. / Fools may laugh at me, / but wise men will know what I mean.’30 And in Dōgen’s Shobogenzo it says: ‘In general, in the house of the Buddhist patriarchs, [drinking] tea and [eating] meals are everyday life itself.’31
Being – and on this point, at least, Laozi would agree with Leibniz – is more exhausting than non- being. Someone who exhausts himself, who struggles, remains in the realm of being. Non-being, the subtle and wondrous (miao, 妙), reveals itself only in ‘non-struggling’ (bu qin, 不勤). Emptiness, xu (虛), absencing, turns a someone into a no one. No one is conspicuous by their absence. Zhuangzi uses not only xu but also kong (空) to signify the emptying absencing:
Bright Dazzlement [Guang Yau, literally ‘glowing light’] asked Nonexistence, ‘Sir, do you exist, or do you not exist?’ Unable to obtain any answer, Bright Dazzlement stared intently at the other’s face and form – all was vacuity and blankness [kong]. He stared all day but could see nothing, listened but could hear no sound, stretched out his hand but grasped nothing. ‘Perfect!’ exclaimed Bright Dazzlement. 'Who can reach such perfection?’32
Desire, appetition, is what makes you a someone. A someone in the strong sense has no access to wandering. A someone dwells. Only someone who empties himself and becomes a no one is able to wander. A wanderer is without an I, without a self, without a name. He forgets himself (wang ji, 忘己). He does not desire anything (wu yu, 無欲) and does not hold on to anything (wu zhi, 無執). He therefore does not leave a trace. Traces, the imprints left by holding on and desiring, form only in being. The wise man, however, does not touch being.
The Daoist teaching of xu, absencing, cannot be given a purely functional interpretation. It also elevates thinking above functional calculation. In section 15, Zhuangzi remarks: ‘Emptiness, stillness, limpidity, silence, inaction – these are the level of Heaven and earth’ (tian dan ji mo, xu wu wu wei, ci tian di zhi ping, 恬淡寂漠 虛無無為 此天地之平).33 The term ‘emptiness’, xu, in the expression xu wu (虛無) bears no functional meaning. When illustrating emptiness, the nothing and inaction, Laozi and Zhuangzi may use examples that permit a functional interpretation of emptiness or the nothing.34 But the idea of effectiveness does not represent the essence of emptiness. François Jullien nevertheless interprets it almost exclusively from a functional perspective:
This return to emptiness is stripped of all mysticism (given that nothing metaphysical is at stake). The Laozi recommends it in order to dissolve the blockages that threaten all reality as soon as no gaps remain in it and it becomes saturated. For if everything is filled, there is no room in which to operate. If emptiness is eliminated, the interplay that made it possible for the effect to be freely exercised is destroyed.35
At first sight, the story about the ghastly-looking cripple whose disability saves him from going to war, and who is instead amply supported by the state, seems to confirm the idea of efficacy. And there is certainly also a functional aspect to the anecdote about the cook who cuts up his meat so effortlessly because he follows the spaces in the joints of the cut rather than using blunt force, the meat falling apart with minimal effort. According to the functional interpretation, inaction increases the efficiency of an action. The story of the gnarled tree that grows to a ripe old age because of its uselessness also admits of a utilitarian interpretation: the absence of usefulness can be useful. However, the fact that so many cripples and so many useless things populate Zhuangzi’s stories leads functionality itself into emptiness. The role of Zhuangzi’s one-legged, hump-backed, misshaped, toeless and footless characters is to demonstrate that all worries about usefulness and efficiency are superfluous. Laozi and Zhuangzi vehemently oppose all desire to bring about effects. At first sight, sections 68 and 69 of Laozi also seem to talk about the efficacy of inaction. In section 68, for instance, he says: ‘Those good at overcoming enemies do not fight them.’36 François Jullien interprets this remark purely in terms of strategy. Instead of deploying a large amount of energy in order to bring about an effect, the wise simply let it happen. They can ‘effortlessly use the energy of others’.37 Jullien also gives section 69 a purely functional interpretation:
The Laozi then applies this principle to military strategy. A good leader in war is not ‘bellicose,’ that is – as the commentator Wang Bi understands it – he does not try to take the initiative and be aggressive. In other words, ‘he who is capable of defeating the enemy does not engage in battle with him.’38
A good military leader simply ensures that the enemy is unable to find a line of attack. Pressure is exerted on the opponent, but this pressure ‘does not manifest itself at all in a localized fashion’.39 A wise strategist sees to it that the opponent is not offered anything tangible:
The Laozi explains the situation using a set of paradoxical expressions . . . ‘marching on an expedition without there being any expedition’ or ‘rolling up one’s sleeves without there being any arms there’ or ‘pressing forward to battle without there being any enemy’ or ‘holding absent weapons fi rmly in hand’ (section 69).40
Interestingly, Jullien’s interpretation does not mention the last, decisive passage of section 69: ‘the one that grieves will win’ (ai zhe sheng, 哀者勝). Laozi’s conclusion here is very surprising. It almost compels us to interpret this paragraph in a completely different way. For ‘grief’ (ai, 哀) is not a part of any military strategy, including that of Sun Tzu, who believes in the efficacy of detours, of indirect means. The victory the passage talks about is not a real victory that would be owed to a particular military strategy. Rather, it is a victory that stands above the distinction between ‘victory’ and ‘defeat’. Laozi uses the sign for ‘grief’, ‘ai’, exactly two times. The other occurrence is in section 31.
Interestingly, this paragraph also treats of war. Jullien, however, does not mention this paragraph.
The reason he doesn’t is simple: in it, Laozi condemns all use of weapons, and not because the wise military leader must be able to defeat his enemies without weapons, but simply out of benevolence. On ‘festive occasions’, the place of honour is on the left, but at ‘funerals’ it is the right. Those who have been victorious in battle must stand on the right side. The victor has to take his place according to the customary grieving ritual (ai li, 哀禮). He has to ‘lament’ (bei, 悲), ‘grieve’ (ai, 哀) and ‘cry’ (qi, 泣).41 Both Daoist and Buddhist thought distrust any substantive closedness that subsists, closes itself off and perseveres.
With regard to absencing, understood in an active sense, the Buddhist teaching of kong (空) is certainly related to Daoist emptiness, xu (虛). Both bring about an absencing heart, empty the self into a non-self, into a no one, into someone ‘nameless’. This xu of the heart resists functional interpretation. With xu, Zhuangzi expresses primarily non- exigent being, absencing. Zhuangzi’s empty mirror differs radically from Leibniz’s mirror with a soul, because it does not possess any exigential inwardness, any ‘appetition’. It does not desire anything, does not hold on to anything. It is empty and absencing. In this way, it lets the things it mirrors come and go. It goes along, not ahead. Thus, it does not lose its way, does not violate anything:
The Perfect Man uses his mind like a mirror – going after nothing, welcoming nothing, responding but not storing . . . He is not a master (zhu, 主) of insights. He takes note of the minutest things, and yet is inexhaustible and dwells beyond the I. Down to the last thing, he receives what Heaven provides, and yet he holds it as if he held nothing.42
In section 13, Zhuangzi also uses the metaphor of the mirror:
The ten thousand things are insufficient to distract his mind – that is the reason he is still. Water that is still gives back a clear image of beard and eyebrows . . . And if water in stillness possesses such clarity, how much more must pure spirit. The sage’s mind in stillness is the mirror of Heaven and earth.43
Zen Buddhism also likes to draw on the rhetorical figure of the mirror in order to illustrate the not-holding-on of the ‘empty heart’ (wu xin, 無心):
The mirror . . . remains as it is: empty in itself . . . This is Hui-neng’s mirror; this is also Hsua-feng’s mirror . . . But what a mirroring! And what is it that is mirrored in it? There is the earth and sky; there are mountains rising and waters streaming; there is grass greening and trees growing. And in springtime, hundreds of flowers blossom . . . Is there an intention behind all this, a meaning that one could conceive? Isn’t all this simply there? . . . But only a clear mirror that is empty in itself, only someone who has realized the nullity of the world and of himself, also sees the eternal beauty in it.44
The empty mirror is based on the absence of the desiring self, on a heart that is fasting. By contrast, Fichte, the philosopher of the I and of action, scorns the empty heart:
The system of freedom satisfies my heart; the opposite system destroys and annihilates it. To stand, cold and unmoved, amid the current of events, a passive mirror of fugitive and passing phenomena, this existence is insupportable to me; I scorn and detest it. I will love: I will lose myself in sympathy; I will know the joy and the grief of life. I myself am the highest object of this sympathy.45
Originally, the German word ‘Sinn’ (sense; Middle High German: sin) also meant ‘walk’, ‘journey’ and ‘path’. But it is associated with a particular direction, a particular destination. The expression ‘Uhrzeigersinn’ (clockwise), for instance, points towards the direction in which the clock’s hand moves. The French ‘sens’ still carries the meaning of ‘direction’ or ‘side’. Wandering in non-being, by contrast, is ‘without direction’, hence ‘sense-less’ [sinn- los] or ‘empty of sense’ [sinn-entleert]. It is just this freedom from meaning, from a direction, a destination, this specific kind of emptiness of sense that makes a higher freedom, even being, possible in the first place. Being in harmony with the directionless and unlimited totality before any distinction is posited brings ‘heavenly joy’ (tian le, 天樂), ‘supreme happiness’ (zhi le, 至樂).46 Fortune (fu, 福), by contrast, rests on a distinction or preference, on a partial perception. Someone who wants to be lucky thereby exposes himself to misfortune. The aim is not to be the ‘bearer of good fortune or the initiator of bad fortune’ (bu wei fu xian, bu wei huo shi, 不為福先 不為禍始).47 The absence of sense leads not to nihilism but to a heavenly joy about being, a being without direction or trace.
Zhuangzi’s teaching of supreme happiness is the exact opposite of Kant’s theory of happiness. In his Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, Kant remarks that ‘filling our time by means of methodical, progressive occupations that lead to an important and intended end . . . is the only sure means of becoming happy with one’s life and, at the same time satiated with life’.48 He compares life to a journey on which ‘the abundance of objects seen . . . produces in our memory the . . . conclusion that a vast amount of space has been covered and, consequently, that a longer period of time necessary for this purpose has also passed’, while ‘emptiness’, that is, the absence of objects to be perceived, in hindsight produces the feeling that a shorter period of time has passed.49 Thus, subjectively, emptiness shortens life. In order to become satiated with life, in order to enjoy it, no period of one’s life should be ‘empty’. Only a life that is fi lled with goal-directed actions is a happy and satisfying life. Sense is goal. Being is doing. Laozi and Zhuangzi, on the contrary, are convinced that a completely different project of Dasein, a completely different world, is possible. They juxtapose a directionless, a-teleological wandering with that linear, teleological, even vectorial design for life. Their project for Dasein does without sense and goal, without teleology and narration, without transcendence and God. In it, the absence of sense and goal is not a deprivation; rather, it means greater freedom, a more coming from less. Only through dropping the walking-towards does walking actually become possible. The world whose natural course [Gang] human beings need to follow has no narrative structure. It is therefore also resistant to the crisis of meaning [Sinnkrise], which is always a narrative crisis. The world tells neither ‘grand’ nor ‘small’ narratives. It is not a myth but nature in a particular sense. For that very reason, it is grand. All narrations are small in comparison, because every narration is based on a distinction that excludes one thing in favour of another. Narration that founds meaning is the result of a massive operation of selection and exclusion, even of a shrinking of the world. The world is pushed on to a narrow narrative path and reduced. Zhuangzi therefore teaches that one should associate oneself with the whole world, even to be as large as the world, to elevate oneself to a wide world, instead of clinging on to a small narrative, a small distinction. For that reason, his wondrous stories are often populated by gigantic figures. In fact, the very first anecdote he presents tells of a giant fish named Kun and a giant bird by the name of Peng:
In the bald and barren north, there is a dark sea, the Lake of Heaven. In it is a fish that is several thousand li across, and no one knows how long . . . There is also a bird there . . . with a back like Mount Tai and wings like clouds fi lling the sky. He beats the whirlwind, leaps into the air, and rises up ninety thousand li, cutting through the clouds and mist, shouldering the blue sky, and then he turns his eyes south and prepares to journey to the southern darkness.50
Kun and Peng are too gigantic to fit small things; they elevate themselves above all, excluding selection and distinction. They do not care about small things; they are simply too big for that. Zhuangzi purposefully uses excessive dimensions and exaggeration in order to suspend distinctions, to achieve a de-differentiation and unbounding.
Someone who is not tied to a particular thing or place, who wanders and dwells nowhere, is beyond the possibility of loss. Someone who does not possess anything specific cannot lose anything:
You hide your boat in the ravine and your fish net in the swamp and tell yourself that they will be safe. But in the middle of the night, a strong man shoulders them and carries them off, and in your stupidity, you don’t know why it happened. You think you do right to hide little things in big ones, and yet they get away from you. But if you were to hide the world in the world, so that nothing could get away, this would be the final reality of the constancy of things.51
In this passage, Zhuangzi talks about a special relationship to the world. The demand is to un-bound and de-differentiate the being-in-the-world into a being-world. As long as it is smaller than the world, as long as it draws distinctions within the world, the human being, or, to speak with Heidegger, Dasein, will be affected by care. To free itself of care, it must be the entire world, must de-differentiate itself into the world, instead of clinging on to a particular element of the world or distinction. Being-in-the-world is being afflicted by care. Being-world, by contrast, is free of care.
Of course, postmodern thinkers also oppose ideas of substance and identity. Derrida’s ‘différance’ and Deleuze’s ‘rhizome’ radically question substantive closure and closedness, exposing them as imagined constructions. The negativity of these thinkers brings them close to absencing and emptiness, but the idea, typical of Far Eastern thinking, of a world-like totality, of the weight of the world, is alien to them, as it is to all postmodern thought. In Far Eastern thinking, emptiness or absencing ultimately has a collecting or gathering effect, whereas ‘différance’ or ‘rhizome’ cause an intense form of dispersal. They disperse identity, push diversity. Their care is not a care for the totality, for its harmony and accord. The Far Eastern thinking of emptiness leaves deconstruction behind in order to achieve a special kind of reconstruction.
Far Eastern thinking turns completely towards immanence. The dao, for instance, does not represent some monumental, supernatural or super- sensual entity that can only be talked about in negative terms, as in negative theol-ogy; it does not flee from immanence in favour of something transcendent. The dao merges fully with worldly immanence, with the ‘this- is- how- it- is’ of things, with the here and now. In the Far Eastern imagination, there is nothing outside the immanence of the world. It is not because it is too high that the dao escapes definition or direct naming; it is because it flows, because it meanders, so to speak. It signifies the permanent transformation of things, the procedural nature of the world. The wanderer leaves no trace behind because he remains in step with the wandering of things. The dao is also not a ‘lord’ over things, not a subject (zhu, 主).52 It does not retreat into secrecy. It is characterized by immanence and the natural evidence of the ‘this- is- how- it- is’. Laozi therefore emphasizes that his words are ‘most easy to understand’ (shen yi zhi, 甚易 知) and ‘most easy to practice’ (shen yi xing, 甚易行).53
The fact that the wanderer leaves no trace behind also has a temporal significance. He does not insist or persist. Rather, he exists in the actual. As he ‘moves in the directionless’, he does not walk along a linear, historical time that stretches into past and future.54 The care that Heidegger gives the status of being the fundamental trait of human existence is tied to this stretched-out, historical time. The wanderer does not exist historically. Thus, he is ‘without care’ (bu si lu, 不 思盧) and ‘does not ponder or scheme, does not plot for the future’ (bu yu mou, 不豫謀).55 The sage exists neither looking backwards nor forwards. Rather, he lives in the present. He dwells in every present, but the present does not have the sharpness or determinacy of the momentous. The moment is tied to the vigour and determination of doing. The sage exists situationally. This situationality, however, differs from Heidegger’s ‘situation’, which is based on the determination inherent in actions and on the moment. In Heidegger’s situation, Dasein resolutely takes hold of itself. This situation is the supreme moment of presence. The wanderer dwells in every instant, but he does not linger, because in lingering the focus is too much on objects. The wanderer leaves no trace because he dwells without lingering.
Zhuangzi’s famous story of the ‘butterfly dream’ is therefore suffused with an atmosphere of absence. He imagines a form of Dasein that lacks all solidity, definiteness, all exigential determinacy and finality. The story illustrates a Dasein without ‘care’:
Once Zhuang Zhou dreamed he was a butterfly, a butterfly flitting and fluttering around, happy with himself and doing as he pleased. He didn’t know he was Zhuang Zhou. Suddenly he woke up, and there he was, solid and unmistakable Zhuang Zhou. But he didn’t know if he were Zhuang Zhou who had dreamed he was a butterfly or a butterfly dreaming he was Zhuang Zhou.56
Oblivious to his self, Zhuangzi hovers between himself and all else. He abandons himself to a specific kind of indifference. This hovering is opposed to that steadfastness that represents the fundamental trait of essencing. Steadfastness makes it possible for someone to dwell within himself, cling on to himself, and thus to withstand the other and distinguish himself from the other. Absencing, by contrast, spreads across Dasein something dream-like and hovering, because it makes it impossible to give an unambiguous, final, that is, substantial, contour to things. Zhuangzi would respond to the concept of the individual, that is, the indivisible, by saying that he is infinitely dividable, infinitely transformable. Zhuangzi’s dream is a dream without soul, a dream that is not made up of traces. No one dreams. His dream is an absolute dream, because the world is itself a dream. The dream is therefore beyond the reach of theories of the soul, psychology or psychoanalysis. The dreaming subject is neither ‘ego’ nor ‘id’. The world itself dreams. The world is a dream. Absencing maintains everything in a dream-like hovering.
It is only with the influence of Buddhism that Chinese culture begins to develop a deep sensitivity for the transience and fleetingness of being. Buddhism is ultimately a religion of absence, of fading out and blowing away, a religion of ‘dwelling nowhere’.57 The Chinese culture and art of blandness would be inconceivable without Buddhism.58 The Chinese aesthetics of blandness is animated in particular by a sensitivity for the painful charm of transience. The poets of blandness mainly sing of the tender shine of the transient. The Japanese wandering monk Bashō begins the diary of his travels with words from the Chinese poet Li Bo:59
Heaven and earth – the whole cosmos – is just a guest house;
it hosts all beings together.
Sun and moon are also just guests in it, passing guests in eternal times.
Life in this fl eeting world is like a dream.
Who knows how many more times we are going to laugh?
Our ancestors therefore lit candles in praise of the night.60
Absencing does not allow for the taking of sides. Any preference for one side would disadvantage the other. Any inclination implies disinclination. Instead, the aim is to ‘embrace the ten thousand things universally’ (jian huai wan wu, 兼懷萬物).61 Love and friendship presuppose making distinctions and taking sides. They rest on appetition. For these reasons, the sage ‘has no love for men’ (bu wei ai ren, 不為愛人) and has ‘no more likes’ (qin, 親), that is, does not cultivate friendships.62 Love is something insisting, and friendship creates ties. The sage is not, however, completely detached. Disinterestedness presupposes a coherent subject who could have interests but for whom the world has become unimportant. Absencing does not empty love and friendship and make them irrelevant. It turns them into bound-less friendliness. This friendliness consists in embracing everything with complete impartiality.
Kafka’s story ‘The Cares of a Family Man’ reads like one of Zhuangzi’s wondrous tales. The ‘creature called Odradek’.is really an absencing.63 This strange creature, whose shape is that of a ‘flat star-shaped spool for thread’, is so multi-form that it evades any unambiguous definition of an essence. The name already deflies unambiguity: ‘Some say the word Odradek is of Slavonian origin, and try to account for it on that basis. Others again believe it to be of German origin, only influenced by Slavonic. The uncertainty of both inter-pretations allows one to assume with justice that neither is accurate, especially as neither of them provides an intelligent meaning of the word.’ In addition, Odradek is a motley combination of parts that appear to differ in their essence. Leibniz’s monads, as ‘simple substances’ (substance simple), by contrast, have ‘no parts’ (sans parties).64 Like Plato’s beauty, a monad is ‘always one in form’ (monoeides).65 Odradek is an absencing, even a non-essence [Ab-, ja ein Un- Wesen], in the sense that he is composed of the most heterogeneous parts. His appearance is hybrid, as if he wanted to mock the unambiguity of essences:
At first glance it looks like a flat star-shaped spool for thread, and indeed it does seem to have thread wound upon it; to be sure, they are only old, broken-off bits of thread, knotted and tangled together, of the most varied sorts and colors. But it is not only a spool, for a small wooden crossbar sticks out of the middle of the star, and another small rod is joined to that at a right angle. By means of this latter rod on one side and one of the points of the star on the other, the whole thing can stand upright as if on two legs.
His ‘diminutive’ figure also evokes the impression of an absencing. Because of his diminutiveness, it is impossible to get hold of him. He is ‘extraordinarily nimble and can never be laid hold of’. He lacks any of the solidity of an essence. His extreme nimbleness is opposed to the tenacity of essences. He also seems to be absent because he often retreats into muteness. Occasionally, he laughs, but his laughter sounds oddly bodyless and empty. This strengthens the impression of absencing: ‘it is only the kind of laughter that has no lungs behind it. It sounds rather like the rustling of fallen leaves.’
Odradek could easily join the circle of hump-backed, one-legged, footless or toeless figures and other strange, useless creatures that populate Zhuangzi’s anecdotes. Zhuangzi’s gnarled tree reaches a ripe old age because it is useless. Similarly, Odradek appears to transcend usefulness: ‘Can he possibly die? Anything that dies has had some kind of aim in life, some kind of activity, which has worn out; but that does not apply to Odradek.’ Odradek is also absencing because he never lingers in one place. He lives nowhere. He is a counter-figure to the inwardness of the home. Asked ‘And where do you live?’ his habitual answer is ‘No fixed abode’. Even when he is inside a house, he can usually be found only in places that are devoid of inwardness, such as ‘the garret, the stairway, the lobbies, the entrance hall’. He is thus not fully at home, not fully with himself. He seems to avoid closed rooms. Often he is simply absent: ‘Often for months on end he is not to be seen.’ This absence, this non-dwelling, unsettles the ‘family man’ who takes care of the house. The ‘care of the family man’ is about the absence of Odradek. We may even say that the family man is care itself. Odradek, who is free of any cares, is his opposite. It is clear, however, that Odradek is ultimately not one of Zhuangzi’s creations, because despite his long absences, which trouble the family man so much, Odradek, as Kafka writes, ‘always comes faithfully back to our house again’.
1 Transl. note: There are several translations of this sentence. I follow the suggestion by Stefan Stenudd on https://www.taois tic.com/fake- laotzu-quotes/fake-laotzu- quote- A_good_travel er.htm. Alternative translations include: ‘The good traveller leaves no cart rut’, in Laozi, Daodejing (chapter 27), Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008, p. 57.
2 Plato, Symposium (211b), in Complete Works, Indianapolis:
Hackett, 1997, pp. 457–505; here: p. 493.
3 Ibid., p. 486 (203d).
4 Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, The Principles of Philosophy, or, Monadology, in Philosophical Essays, Indianapolis: Hackett, 1989, pp. 213–25.
5 Ibid., § 7, p. 214.
6 Ibid., § 15, p. 215.
7 Ibid., § 63, p. 221.
8 Ibid., § 56, p. 220.
9 Ibid., § 7, p. 210.
10 Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Die philosophischen Schriften, Vol. 7, Berlin: Weidmann, 1890, p. 289. [The English translation follows Martin Heidegger, The End of Philosophy, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003, p. 50.] 11 Martin Heidegger, ‘The Origin of the Work of Art’, in Off the Beaten Track, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002, p. 26.
12 Martin Heidegger, ‘Ansprache zum 80. Geburtstag Ludwig von Fickers’, in Gesamtausgabe, Vol. 16, Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 2000, pp. 563–4; here: p. 563.
13 Zhuangzi, The Complete Works of Zhuangzi, New York: Columbia University Press, 2013, p. 57.
14 As well as meaning ‘simple’, the Chinese sign ‘dan’ can mean ‘non- desiring’ or ‘indifferent’. It could thus also be translated as ‘absent’. Then the translation of ‘you xin yu dan [遊心於淡]’ would be ‘let the heart wander in absence’. Zhuangzi, Complete Works, p. 56.
15 Laozi, Daodejing, p. 31: ‘She is called “the shape without a shape”, “the image of what is not a thing”.’ 16 Zhuangzi, Complete Works, p. 182: ‘I go nowhere and don’t know how far I’ve gotten.’ 17 Ibid., p. 87.
18 François Jullien mostly excludes Buddhism from his view of China. According to him, Indian thinking, out of which Buddhism developed, is ‘metaphysical’, and thus follows his controversial claim that it is fundamentally different from Chinese thinking. Buddhist emptiness, ‘kong’, he holds, is the ‘non- existence’ that is part of the ‘metaphysics’ of ‘being and non- being’, whereas Daoist emptiness, ‘xu’, is that functional openness that allows the full development of an effect. Jullien’s views on Buddhism are surprisingly sweeping and one-sided. His talk about an ‘Indo- European’ metaphysics in connection with Buddhist emptiness is dubious. The ‘philosophy of emptiness’ of the Indian philosopher Nagarjuna, who was influenced by Mahayana Buddhism, certainly is anti-metaphysical. It turns any metaphysical assumption into emptiness. As is well known, Buddha himself refused to engage with genuinely metaphysical questions such as those about the creation of the world or the immortality of the soul. In this regard, he resembles Confucius, who is said to have refused to undertake any investigation into what is hidden. Interestingly, Jullien, while keeping Buddhist thinking out of his China, draws on European thinkers such as Plotinus, Augustine and Kant – all of whom were inf l uenced by Christianity – and uses them as the antagonists of his Chinese thinkers. But the origins of Christianity, after all, are not ‘Greek’ or ‘Indo- European’. How, then, are we to understand Europe without Christianity?
19 Dōgen, Shōbōgenzō zuimonki: Unterweisungen zum wahren Buddha-Weg, Heidelberg: Werner Kristkeitz, 1997, p. 168. [The English edition does not contain this exact wording. But see e.g. Dōgen, Shōbōgenzō zuimonki, Vol. 1, Moraga, CA: BDK, 2007: ‘We have already left our families and left our hometowns; we rely on clouds and rely on waters’ (pp. 59f.) The annotation to this sentence says: ‘In China and Japan monks are commonly referred to as unsui, which means “clouds and water”’ (p. 63).] 20 Zhuangzi, Complete Works, p. 82.
21 Ibid., pp. 182f.
22 Ibid., pp. 56f. [The English translation uses the term ‘Nameless Man’.] 23 Ibid., p. 3. [The English edition translates this as ‘no self’.] 24 Ibid.
25 See ibid., pp. 65f.: ‘The people have their constant inborn nature. To weave for their clothing, to till for their food – that is the Virtue they share.’
26 In section 55 of the Daodejing, Laozi uses a rather explicit image to illustrate pure vitality without desire. He talks about the penis (zu) being aroused without any knowledge of the difference between the sexes. A direct translation of this image has often been avoided. Richard Wilhelm, a Christian missionary, translates the passage thus: ‘It [i.e. the child] does not yet know anything about man and woman, and yet its blood moves.’ (Laozi, Tao te king: Das Buch vom Sinn und Leben, Munich: Anaconda, p. 67.) [The edition used here has a straightforward translation: ‘He does not yet know the har-mony of female and male yet his penis is aroused’ (p. 115). It adds the following explanatory note: ‘most versions have yang and some interpretations read this as the male infant’s penis. In the Mawangdui version the character used clearly refers to the male sexual organ. It should be noted that the Chinese term specif i cally refers to the sexual organ of an infant’ (p. 180).]
27 Laozi, Daodejing, p. 9: ‘The government of the Sage is thus: He empties his mind, fills his belly; / Weakens his will, strengthens his bones.’
28 Ibid., p. 115.
29 Ibid., p. 27.
30 Lin-Chi, The Teachings of Zen Master Lin-Chi, Boston:
Shambala, 1993, p. 77.
31 Dōgen, Shōbōgenzō zuimonki, Vol. 3, Moraga, CA: BDK, 2008, p. 293.
32 Zhuangzi, Complete Works, p. 185.
33 Ibid., p. 98. [The German version begins ‘Ruhe, Gelassenheit, Abwesenheit, Leere und Nicht- Tun’, literally: ‘Calmness, serenity, absence, emptiness and inaction’.] 34 Famous examples are the wheel and vessels:
Thirty spokes held in one hub;
– In beingless [Nichts] (wu, not xu) lies the cartwheel’s usefulness;
Moulding clay into pots;
– In beingless lies the pot’s usefulness;
Chiselling doors and windows to make a room;
– In beingless lies the room’s usefulness;
Therefore, Possess something to make it prof i t you;
Take it as nothing to make it useful for you. (Laozi, Daodejing, p. 25)
35 François Jullien, Treatise on Eff i cacy: Between Western and Chinese Thinking, Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2004, p. 112.
36 Laozi, Daodejing, p. 141.
37 Jullien, Treatise on Eff i cacy, p. 116.
38 Ibid., p. 174.
39 Ibid.
40 Ibid.
41 See Laozi, Daodejing, p. 65. Jullien’s strong focus on effects and eff i cacy may itself be of ‘European’ origin.
42 Zhuangzi, Complete Works, p. 59. [The passage following the ellipsis is not part of the English edition.] 43 Ibid., p. 98.
44 Bi-yan-lu, Meister Yuän-wu’s Niederschrift von der Smaragdenen Felswand, Munich: Hanser, 1964, p. 145. [The passage is not contained in the English edition: The Blue Cliff Record [Bi-yan-lu], compiled by Ch’ung- hsien and commented upon by K’o- ch’in, trans. Thomas Cleary, Berkeley: Numata Center for Buddhist Translation and Research, 1998.] In this context, too, François Jullien tries to keep Buddhism away from Chinese thought. In Zhuangzi, he says, the mirror escapes ‘mystical employment and is understood in an entirely different way’: ‘The virtue of the mirror is that it accepts but does not hold; it ref l ects everything it encounters but allows things to pass by without clinging to them. It does not reject or retain. It allows things to appear and disappear without clinging to them.’ (François Jullien, Vital Nourishment: Departing from Happiness, New York: Zone Books, 2007, pp. 117f.) This description of the Daoist mirror is a good characterization of the mirror used in Zen Buddhism to illustrate the ‘empty heart’ (wu xin). Jullien does not explain the sense in which Zen Buddhism is ‘mystical’, the sense in which it is closer to Western mysticism than to Daoism. Let us remind ourselves of the famous words of the Zen Master Linji, quoted above (see note 30): ‘When you get hungry, eat your rice; / when you get sleepy, close your eyes. / Fools may laugh at me, / but wise men will know what I mean.’ In other words, the Zen Buddhist sage also takes care of the ‘belly’, and the ‘belly’ is probably not an organ of ‘mysticism’.
45 Johann Gottlieb Fichte, The Vocation of Man, Chicago: The Open Court Publishing Company, 1931, p. 32.
46 Zhuangzi, Complete Works, p. 99 and p. 139.
47 Ibid., p. 120.
48 Immanuel Kant, Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006, p. 130 (transl. mod.).
49 Ibid.
50 Zhuangzi, Complete Works, p. 2.
51 Ibid., p. 45.
52 Laozi, Daodejing, p. 71.
53 Ibid., p. 145.
54 Zhuangzi, Complete Works, p. 82.
55 Ibid., p. 120.
56 Ibid., p. 18.
57 See Byung- Chul Han, The Philosophy of Zen Buddhism, Cambridge: Polity, 2022, Chapter 4: ‘Dwelling Nowhere’, pp. 58–68.
58 François Jullien may want to keep Buddhism away from his China, but his description of Chinese blandness is deeply Buddhist: ‘Its [i.e. blandness’s] season is late autumn, when chrysanthemum petals are falling, touched by frost: the last colors of the year are fading, an erasing that happens on its own, in simpler withdrawal.’ (François Jullien, In Praise of Blandness: Proceeding from Chinese Thought and Aesthetics, New York: Zone Books, 2004, p. 94.) The painful charm of the falling chrysanthemum petals, the grace of disappearance, is not really typical of Daoism. Jullien even uses terms such as ‘l’absence’ and ‘l’abondon’, which, according to his image of China, are not ‘indigenous’ to its culture: ‘As usual, it is autumn. The atmosphere, introduced with this evocation of purity . . . swells with the feeling of absence. All tangible signs gesture toward their own relinquishing.’ Ibid., p. 114.
59 Like many poets of blandness, Li Bo lived in the time of the Tang Dynasty, during which Buddhism fl ourished.
60 Transl. note: Translated from the German version in Matsuo Bashō, Auf schmalen Pfaden durchs Hinterland, Mainz: Dieterich’sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 2011, p. 42.
61 Zhuangzi, Complete Works, p. 132.
62 Ibid., p. 53.
63 All quotations from Kafka’s story: Franz Kafka, ‘The Cares of a Family Man’, in Collected Stories, London: Everyman, 1993, pp. 183–5.
64 Leibniz, The Principles of Philosophy, or, Monadology, in Philosophical Essays, pp. 213–25; here: p. 213.
65 Plato, Symposium, in Complete Works, pp. 457–505; here: p. 493 (211b).
Byung-Chul Han Absence On the Culture and Philosophy of the Far East Translated by Daniel Steuer
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