The Solitude of Thought

After the hustle and bustle of the weekend, it's time again to sit down and resume reading again. I did. I resumed reading Chiang Hsun's book. I read a chapter in which I am more interested than the others. I read chapter 5 on The Solitude of Thought.

Chiang Hsun's own thoughts is much influenced by the Taoist and Buddhist thought on emptiness. So it is not at all surprising that , he talks about them all the time in this chapter and as is his habit, he used many different examples to illustrate his point of view.

He says that when he was studying at the university, he used to sit in at some philosophy courses out of personal interest and got to know someone who was given to much reflection, a guy who would not take baths for days and whose body exuded an unbearable stench until he practically drove all the other students crazy and who suddenly announced one day that philosophy was impossible in Taiwan because in the tropics, people pay more attention to sensations and feelings than rational thought and even in India, the place of origin of various religions, including Buddhism and which has a strong logical tradition, the starting point of its philosophy is still intuitive, quite unlike in the Western Greek tradition, where a great deal more emphasis is placed not merely on the relevant conclusions, but on how or on the process whereby one arrives at such conclusions: the logical processs of thought itself. To Chiang, philosophy is the reproduction in thought of everything within a civilization connected with reflection. 

Chiang asked a question: whether something logically inconsistent can still be considered a kind of thought. He was surprised how often the word "inconceivable" appears in Buddhist literature e.g in the Diamond Sutra. The problem has stayed with him since it was first raised by a philosophy student. That student was interested in the thoughts of Soren Kierkegaard, who wrote "Fear and Trembling", which explores the question of how intimidating and fearful is the authority of divine command e.g God's command to Abraham to sacrifice his only son Isaac. To Chiang, it is this kind of unquestioned authority which makes God a God., not a man. Although according to Confucian thought, this kind of divine command is totally incomprehensible because to the Confucian, there is a kind of relativity and mutuality in the relationship between man and god, the latter being worshipped only so long as the gods are good to us, quite unlike the Christian tradition, where the authority of God over man is absolute. But the Abrahamic sacrifice is not the only example of God's incomprehensibility. It also appears incomprehensible why  God should create a paradise for man but forbid him to eat of the tree of knowledge and when man disobeys him, he drives him out of paradise and why he should start a great flood but left Noah alive.

To Chiang, Confucian thought gives us a conclusion e.g not to do unto others what we do not wish others to do unto us and requests that we follow the relevant conclusion as a motto and not to reflect too much on why that should be so. But in Plato's Dialogues, there was a discussion about the concept of Eros between a physician, a dramatist, a poet, each presenting his own point of view and Plato appears not to be concerned whether there should be a conclusion. To Chiang, perhaps it is true that Taiwan can never develop a proper philosophy because Chinese are not very good at dialectical thinking nor do they have much opportunity to do so e.g in political debates on whether to build a storage facility for nuclear waste at Lanyu, whether Taiwan should become independent from mainland China etc.. All we got are conclusions, but very few discussions on the reasons why and how we arrive at those conclusions. Once parties disagree, they become enemies and then they would cease to talk to each other.To Chiang, when the conclusions come too rapidly, the conclusions will become an enemy of thought and reflections. And even students are puzzled if no conclusions on a problem are given by a teacher. 

Chiang was surprised how in a case where a patient was given a choice of an organ for a transplant, the patient refused unless the heart came from a good person but not that of a bad person! To him, the feeling of the absurdity of life may mark the beginning of reflection. To him, we must have an awareness not only of what it is that we do but also why we do what we do. He was therefore a bit disappointed that even now, Chinese people have not progressed much in the direction of thinking for themselves. 

He agrees that temperature may have something to do with the way we think or feel. Thus in art history, he discovers that impressionists look for the sensation of sunlight, but in northern Europe, the paintings are more rational and more emphasis is placed on the precision of the visual analysis of the objects drawn. He relates how a French girl told him that Northern Europeans are not very passionate nor romantic when they are in love but their relationship is more long lasting whereas whenever an Italian boy sees a girl, he would immediately start serenading her by singing arias to her but then you will never find him the next day because he might already have forgotten you. He found further confirmation of this theory in the way Northern and Southern Taiwanese behave, the south being more emotional, more direct, the northerners being more rational, more reserved. He is surprised also that the more rational northern Europe has the highest suicide rate in the world. When he asked a Danish friend, he was told that when life is too good and people no longer has any problems to solve, people might no longer wish to continue living! 

Chiang also wants to ponder on the question of what is permssible or legitimate or justified violence and what is not and whether it is good that young people have tattoos and body rings and why it is that some primitive society regards scars to be beautiful. To him all the puzzles that life present us are causes for the start of philosophical reflection. He therefore regrets the way the teachers in Taiwan are expected to give answers to various questions too quickly without going through the process of how he arrives at his conclusion because he thinks that the starting point of all philosophy is doubt.

I also have a personal experience relevant to Chiang's observation. I have been a member of a study group for more than three years. Its members are all university graduates and post graduates. We meet twice a month to hear talks given by members on topics of their own choice. We meet every other Thursday but this year, because of timetable clashes with my Spanish lessons, I have stopped attending the group. Last year, I presented a talk on "The Meaning of Life". Of course, I have my own opinion as to what that question can mean in different contexts and what some of the possible answers may be. However, I did not state my conclusions in my discussion paper. I wanted to stimulate those present to think for themselves. What I did was that I presented to them a number of quotations from various philosophers, poets, writers, artists, religious leaders etc on the subject and I wrote out some dozens of questions which relate to some or all of the quotations. I wanted in short to use the Socratic method of dialogue to help elucidate the questions and to indicate the possible answers. But I was constantly asked what my conclusions were almost immediately after I posed the questions to those present. They simply did not want to think for themselves. They wanted everything ready-made. And I am talking here of university graduates and post graduates and one of them was even a lecturer at the HKU! This seems to confirm Chiang's experience of the Chinese mentality!

To Chiang, it is necessary that students learn the Hegelian dialectic of theses, anti-thesis and synthesis. He is against having students to give definite positive and negative answers to questions which ought to be open because that appears to leave no room for real thought and reflection.  He prefers the thinking of ChuangTsu whose thoughts are playful and lively and who always think outside of the conventional framework.

To Chiang, amongst the 6 types of solitudes that he discusses, the greatest solitude he finds is the solitude of thought and reflection. He finds his heart experiences the greatest solitude in finding himself in a society which does not think because when he talks, the others may find what he says incomprehensible, unacceptable and he may even be subjected to reprobation. He finds it that is a great test of his endurance to have to withstand such pressures towards conformity. He is most disappointed that Taiwan has not yet developed into a society with more than one voice and that up to the moment of his writing, all political parties still intend to reduce Taiwan into a completely uni-vocal society. He thinks that that is a dangerous tendency. To him, thought should never be confined to the academy but should extend to every corner of the island and it is necessary for all sectors of society to engage in critical philosophical thinking about various issues. . 

To him, every age will have its cultural hero and popular idol and a society may be defined by the the kind cultural hero or pop idol that it worships. Therefore whenever there is a change in the type of popular idol the society worships, that may be a good place to start asking why. But to think critically, we need to discard our existing prejudices which otherwise will hinder instead of help our thinking. Our existing thinking may become a thought stopper!

Chiang thinks that to be able to think, we need solitude, like ChuangTsu. We need to engage in contrarian thinking and emphasise the use of emptiness, the use of the void, the use of inutility or uselessness. We should never be absorbed or overwhelmed by the conventional opinion and the pressures of conformity coming from the masses or from the dominant classes of society We should always start from zero, from nothingness, from the void, from emptiness and never cease to learn because while life may be limited, the territory of the unknown is infinite. Unfortunately, most of us stop half way. To him only the lonely will move furthest and only solitude will complete us as  human being. But to think, we must seek silence because only in silence will the noises of our thoughts settle down and only when our thoughts and emotions settle down can we think clearly. For this reason, meditation will help.

He concludes by saying that the moment we start walking instead of taking the mass transit system, the moment when we do not mind raining, the moment of solitude will have started.

To me, in this essay, Chiang is really making just one point: the need of critical thinking. He structures the essay as if it were the corolla of  a flower, his different paragraphs being petals of such a corolla at the heart of which is the carpel or the inner whorl of  independent thinking. To him, we should never just accept the conclusions of received wisdom too readily and we should not engage in that type of thinking which jumps to conclusions very quickly without exposing to its listeners or readers the reasons why one comes to the kind of conclusion that one in fact holds. That to him that is the principal difference between Confucian thinking and western thinking! Philosophy is not a body of "knowledge" to be learned. Philosophy is an attitude of mind, a habit of thought and a particular way of living our doubts and of approaching the problems and puzzles of life. It is a method for the exploration of what the truth may be, and not a body of established conclusions!