bs_bs_banner PEIMIN NI CAN BAD GUYS HAVE GOOD GONGFU?— A PRELIMINARY EXPLORATION OF GONGFU ETHICS Abstract This paper tries to explore a gongfu ethics on the basis of traditional Chinese ethical theories. Used in the sense that the Song-Ming Neo-Confucians did, “gongfu” means the art of life in general and not merely the martial arts, although martial arts can be taken as a paradigm example of gongfu. The paper begins with the question “can bad guys have good gongfu,” which leads to three answers, each representing one stage of the dynamic relationship between morality and gongfu: The first is yes, since gongfu and morality belong to two different categories, i.e., the art of life and moral responsibilities. The second is no, because each moral goodness or badness corresponds to a respective gongfu virtuosity or the lack of it. The third answer is that moral persons, as long as they still have to invoke morality, are not true gongfu masters. Those who have real good gongfu transcend moral duties and become amoral. The analysis suggests a gongfu ethics that can include, but goes beyond moral goodness. The rest of the essay articulates the rich implications of this gongfu ethics by comparing it with virtue ethics, consequentialist ethics, and relativismsubjectivism. The Song-Ming Neo-Confucians quite accurately captured the overall orientation of classic Chinese philosophy with the term gongfu (a.k.a., kung fu). Used to mean the art of life in general, which includes efforts, methods, and cultivated and embodied abilities to live well, this notion of gongfu is much broader than what most people tend to associate the term with today, namely the martial arts, although martial arts can be used as a paradigm example of gongfu. Unlike the cognitive approach obsessed with the pursuit of intellectual knowledge that pre-occupied the Western philosophical tradition, the gongfu approach of classic Chinese philosophy looks at things from the point of view of how they contribute to the art of living. The term gongfu PEIMIN NI, Professor of Philosophy, Department of Philosophy, Grand Valley State University. Specialties: Classic Confucianism, early modern Western philosophy, comparative philosophy. E-mail: nip@gvsu.edu Journal of Chinese Philosophy 43:1–2 (March–June 2016) 9–31 C 2018 Journal of Chinese Philosophy V 10 PEIMIN NI distinctively links mind to the body, action to the agent, and aesthetics to the entire realm of life. Applying to the fields of philosophy familiar to the West, its implications can be so profound that they warrant special terms such as “gongfu epistemology,” “gongfu metaphysics,” “gongfu ethics,” and “gongfu social and political philosophy,” yet these fields, as far as their engagement with Western philosophical frameworks goes, are still underdeveloped and inadequately appreciated. In this article, I shall make some preliminary exploration of gongfu ethics, hoping that it can trigger further discussions. I. Gongfu vs. Morality We may begin our inquiry about the relationship between gongfu and ethics with a specific question: Can (morally) bad guys have good gongfu? Suppose that Jet Li’s gongfu of martial arts is better than Jackie Chan’s. This does not entail that Jet Li is more moral than Jackie Chan. My gongfu of reading and speaking Chinese may be better than average Americans, but this does not mean that I am a better person than they are. Most ethicists would readily agree that morality is about moral duty or moral obligation, whereas gongfu is about the art of living. They belong to two different categories. Some moral virtues may overlap with gongfu abilities, which we shall discuss in some detail later, but the difference between morality and gongfu is clearly displayed in the areas where they do not overlap. For instance we may talk about the gongfu of cooking, of painting, of dancing, and of making effective speech. None of these has clear bearing on morality. We neither say that a person lacks moral virtue because he cannot cook, nor do we say that he is virtuous because he is good at it. In fact gongfu covers almost every territory of human life, but morality covers only a small portion of life. As Joel Kupperman says, “Most of a man’s life normally is entirely neutral with respect to traditional moral codes; that is, moments of moral choice or action normally will comprise very little of the duration of his life.”1 According to Immanuel Kant, morality deals with unconditional duties, whereas non-moral good and bad are contingent on what people want. For instance, “do not lie” is a moral imperative. It is unconditional, period. If we add a condition, say, “if you want people to trust you, then do not lie,” it becomes a hypothetical imperative, as it is conditioned on your wish to gain trust. When we evaluate a moral imperative, we use “right” or “wrong,” but when we evaluate a hypothetical imperative, we ask if it is “effective” or “ineffective.” “Be honest” may well be taken as a gongfu instruction to gain people’s trust, but as GONGFU ETHICS 11 a means to achieve a desired end, it has nothing to do with morality. One who uses honesty in this way can be said to be smart, but not morally good, though neither is it morally bad—it is simply amoral, or
ski sepamorally neutral. This is also the reason that Tadeusz Kotarbin rates felicitology (a study of whether an action is conducive to happy life) from ethics in the strict sense,2 a view that is fully consistent with Kant’s view, which would exclude utilitarianism from ethics. Indeed, according to the general utilitarian principle of maximizing happiness for everyone affected, my inability to speak perfect English could be an ethical defect, since it falls short of allowing me to make people as happy as they otherwise could. Under the narrow, moralized concept of ethics, however, it would be odd. To address this problem, J. S. Mill proposed his way of differentiating morality (or ethics in the narrow sense) and what he calls “simple expediency.” Mill suggests that the difference is whether we consider the person who failed to maximize happiness ought to be punished or not. “We do not call anything [morally] wrong unless we mean to imply that a person ought to be punished in some way or other for doing it—if not by law, by the opinion of his fellow creatures; if not by opinion, by the reproaches of his own conscience.” “Duty is a thing which may be exacted form a person, as one exacts a debt. Unless we think that it may be exacted from him, we do not call it his duty.”3 Since we do not generally consider that you should be punished for not speaking fluent Chinese, so even though you fail to maximize our happiness in this way, we do not say you are immoral. We condemn morally wrong actions, but we feel sorry, pity, or disappointment for those who fail to follow a gongfu instruction or do not have the gongfu to bring more happiness. In short gongfu and morality seem to belong to different categories. The goodness in gongfu is amoral, meaning that it is neutral with regard to morality. It makes perfect sense to say that a (morally) bad person can have better gongfu than a morally good person. Hitler could be said to have gongfu—the gongfu of mass murder. Actually this is not as absurd as it sounds, because it would be no different from saying that Hitler could have more physical skills than Gandhi. The badness of mass murder is not in his ability to mobilize his followers, but in what he used the ability for. In the eyes of ox and vegetarians, Zhuangzi’s Cook Ding should be condemned, but regardless, his skills of cutting ox, as gongfu, may still be considered “good” in an amoral sense. In contrast to Kantian and Mill’s utilitarianism, Aristotle’s virtue ethics does not offer a clear distinction between the moral and the amoral. Aristotle takes the abilities to act and feel right at the mean to be ethike ar^ete, which is commonly translated as “moral virtue” today. It seems that, according to Aristotle, we have moral duties to eat 12 PEIMIN NI moderately, to dress neither too warm nor too cold, and are even morally obligated to take sufficient pleasure in food, drink, and sex. Fail to do so would be considered morally deficient, if not evil. This obviously sounds odd, to say the least. But the oddity is more the result of the changing ideas than Aristotle’s lack of good sense.4 In Aristotle’s terminology, “ethike” is a compound word from the root terms “ethos” (attitude or disposition) and “techne” (art or skill). This etymological origin tells us that the word literally means artistic skill in the form of one’s attitude, comportment, or disposition. As for “ar^ete,” it means excellence in function, which is not confined to what is morally obligatory.5 Since the term “virtue” has nowadays been loaded with moralistic meaning, it is actually more appropriate to translate “ar^ete” as “virtuosity.” In fact, as J. O. Urmson puts it, “the doctrine of the mean is not introduced by Aristotle as a stipulation of moral obligation, but as part of the definition of excellence of character.”6 So ethike ar^ete should be taken as “virtuosity in the art of living well,” or simply “gongfu”—the mastery of skills or proficiency, of know-how, of expertise. The connection between ar^ete and moral obligation is, in the case of Aristotelian ethics, supplied by Aristotle’s teleological metaphysics: We have moral obligation to cultivate our virtues because they help us to live the life that, given our metaphysical nature, we are supposed to live. The degree to which we are obligated to develop and implement each particular virtue is dependent on how importantly it contributes to the fulfillment of our pre-determined telos (aim or purpose). Like the Greek word “ar^ete,” the Chinese word de 德 also means both moral virtue and non-moral virtuosity, or, as it is variously translated, power or potency.7 It was originally associated with a person’s charismatic power endowed by heaven or spirits, and hence the legitimacy to rule, but later conceived as something that can be cultivated by oneself. In Confucian classics, de further acquired a moral sense, but it is never confined to what is morally obligatory. While some liberal-minded people may blame Aristotle and Confucius for stretching the scope of our moral responsibility too broadly and want to leave the choice of life style to each individual’s personal preference, some others may blame Kant and other like-minded modern ethicists for moralizing ethics to the narrow scope of moral responsibility and consequently leaving vast territories of human life out of the scope of ethics. We may agree with Kant that we should not enforce living an artistic life as a moral obligation, yet we should not confine ethics to the study of moral obligations and leaving the vast territory beyond it as a large “hole in the emperor’s new cloth,” as Kupperman would call it. This hole has been ignored by many ethicists, regardless of the impact of Nietzsche and the revival of Aristotelian virtue ethics. To ignore this hole creates a sense of GONGFU ETHICS 13 comfort, because it keeps a large free-play zone that they don’t need to worry about. All they have to worry about is when they face what Kupperman calls the “big moments,” like whether to rob a bank, commit murder, report a friend’s crime, or torture innocent people. Since one seldom faces these kinds of situations, people often feel that the ethical dilemmas discussed in our ethics classes have little relevance to their lives, regardless of how interesting they are. Exactly because of this, introducing gongfu ethics can help people to realize that although gongfu is different from moral goodness, it nevertheless matters a great deal to the quality of their life. II. Where Morality and Gongfu Overlap Morality Gongfu If gongfu is different from morality, then why do gongfu masters often stress morality and set strict moral codes for their followers?8 Many martial art schools are so strict on moral disciplines that they would expel disciples who violate these codes. This is normally taken as a way of providing necessary conditions under which one can practice gongfu, and more importantly, as a way of assuring proper (moral) application of gongfu. Exactly because bad guys can also have gongfu power, morality is stressed for making sure that the power will not be misused. While morality can provide extrinsic conditions for the practice and application of gongfu, it can also be related to gongfu in more intrinsic ways. A moral imperative can also serve as a gongfu instruction, and a moral virtue may serve as a gongfu power for achieving desired outcome. For instance, “be honest” is normally taken as a moral imperative, but it can also be an advice for gongfu cultivation. A person who 14 PEIMIN NI has the virtue of being honest is also a person who possesses the gongfu of gaining trust from others; similarly, a dishonest person is also a person who lacks the gongfu of gaining trust.9 Normally we consider filial piety to be a moral duty to one’s parents, and nothing else. But it contributes to the development of our compassion more broadly, and thereby increases our ability to achieve harmonious human relationships.10 Not only is it hard to think of any moral virtue that does not constitute gongfu virtuosity, it is reasonable to say that all moral virtues are gongfu virtuosities that enable a person to live a better life. Likewise, all moral vices can be considered defects in gongfu. Good guys, as far as they are good, have the respective gongfu, and bad guys, as far as they are bad, do not have the respective gongfu. Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, and Martin Luther King have the gongfu of making their dreams come true, whereas Hitler cannot but eventually fail. Here I am not arguing for the unity of all virtues. A person may have the virtue of being honest, but not the virtue of being generous. This person will then have the virtuosity of gaining trust, but not the virtuosity of getting others’ help. A person may be bad in being cruel to others and yet is a loving father. This person would then have no virtuosity of gaining other people’s support, but would still have the virtuosity of being loved by his children. If this is the case then moral goodness becomes an intrinsic part of gongfu. By “intrinsic,” I mean that it does not merely regulate gongfu use (as the principle “thou shall not lie” prohibits a doctor from lying to a patient), nor does it merely provide favorable conditions for gongfu practice (as a donation provides its beneficiaries the support needed for gongfu practice). Just as the right amount of cholesterol is a constituent of a healthy state of the body, a moral virtue would be at the same time a virtuosity, and hence a constituent of gongfu itself. This does not contradict our previous observation that morality and gongfu belong to two different categories. The Statue of Liberty can either be taken as an artwork or as a landmark depending on how you look at it. Similarly, a same character trait can either be taken as moral virtue or as gongfu virtuosity along with the shift of our perspectives. Using Frege’s terminology, we can say that in terms of reference, they are just two attributes of the same entity, but in terms of their “senses,” gongfu is still different from morality, because morality is about one’s duty and gongfu is not. Questions about what is moral will be extensionally equivalent to the amoral question about how to gain respective gongfu abilities, but they are still intentionally different. When we separate moral virtues and gongfu virtuosities into different categories, gongfu virtuosities are, in this sense, no different from vicious character traits that would allow a person to do evil effectively. Under such categorization, gongfu virtuosities merely coincide, or in GONGFU ETHICS 15 Kant’s words, happen to be “in accord with” their respective moral virtues. But we have reason to believe that their relationship is not mere coincidence. Moral virtues may have acquired the status of being considered moral exactly because they are vital for the very basic quality of a good life, and hence made obligatory for people to have. After all, young children need to be given unambiguous instructions about how to live safely before they can develop the gongfu of living safely themselves. On this matter the gongfu ethicist will agree with J. S. Mill’s view about the origin of what he calls the “secondary principles”—they are considered principles because general observance of them promotes utility—though in this case we shall replace “utility” with “gongfu.” Of course people do not always make the same judgments, much less the right ones. This may account for the reason why people come up with different moral principles. While some of our gongfu judgments can quite appropriately be judged as right or wrong, others are more like aesthetical tastes where there is no right and wrong, but just different. Between the two extremes there is no sharp line, and the answer may well be relative to subjectivity and to circumstances (which we shall discuss in the last section of this paper). With the gongfu perspective all these can be well understood without leading to inconsistencies. III. Transcending Morality The above analysis suggests that we can also view morality and gongfu in terms of human development. Let’s show the point by borrowing an example from the Zhuangzi, with slight modifications:11 If you step on someone’s foot in the market, you make a formal apology for your carelessness; but would you need a formal apology to yourself when you accidently bite your tongue? Why the difference? Why do we seldom have to invoke moral duties to ourselves and usually just think of morality a matter of interpersonal relations? These simple facts show that the better terms you are on with someone, the less you need to invoke morality! Morality starts only where gongfu ends. There is a Chinese saying, “a lesser sage hides in mountains and forests, and a great sage hides in noisy cities.” A lesser sage needs to hide in forests and mountains because it is easier to be on good terms with nature than with people. A great sage can comfortably live in a crowded city because the master has greater gongfu to be on good terms with everyone.12 Today most people would favor pluralism in contrast to the dominance of one universal value system. But as Joel J. Kupperman 16 PEIMIN NI points out, when people argue for pluralism they usually cite cases like the rights of animals, respect for religious customs, and gay marriage. But those who argue in favor of universal values tend to cite cases like mass murder, rape, etc. in relation to which “many people’s willingness to have a pluralistic social climate stops short.”13 It seems that there is a “core of morality” that cannot be reduced to amoral art of living. But actually it is quite the opposite when we look at this from a gongfu point of view. It is exactly the issues at the “core of morality” that are most easily resolved by gongfu cultivation, on the one hand, and by laws, on the other. Even a minimal level of education and cultivation will sharply reduce the rate of horrendous crimes, and it is relatively easy to reach universal agreement on global ban of these crimes also. Enforcement of moral rules usually applies to harmful behaviors that are neither destructive enough to be prohibited by laws nor easily reducible to common sense gongfu knowledge. We do not normally find it necessary to stipulate moral codes to prohibit us from mistreating ourselves because we rarely, if ever, find people lacking such basic gongfu knowledge about living. We do, however, find it necessary to have moral codes prohibiting people from mistreating each other, because a lot of people do not have the gongfu knowledge that hurting others is hurting oneself. Yet exactly because of this, we may promote gongfu ethics so that people can see that being moral is not only fully consistent with having better gongfu, but even required by it. Through such realization, they will avoid the wrong and do the right not because of externally imposed moral constraints but rather as natural as they “hate a bed smell and love a beautiful color.”14 If we agree with Zhuangzi and the author of the Great Learning from whom we just quoted, it seems that an ideal of gongfu cultivation is to decrease the need for morality and expand the realm in which our gongfu cultivation can generate harmonious human relationships. As a guidance of life, gongfu ethics would recommend that, ideally, not only should rights and wrongs not be incessantly occupying our thought, but all values should be “forgotten.” Here “forgotten” means that, instead of keeping it in the mind as an imperative or principle, it should become fully embodied as our dispositions, our second nature, and become part of our gongfu so that we do not even think about it. The person who is truly good is not one who has to control his desire to kick children for fun; it is the person who would never have such an idea in the first place. Again, quoting Zhuangzi: In an age when virtuosity [de] is at its utmost, they don’t need to promote the good, don’t need to employ the talented. Those who are above are simply like a treetop and the people below are like wild GONGFU ETHICS 17 deer. They are upright but do not know how to think of it as right [yi 義], love each other but do not know how to think of it as humanheartedness [ren 仁], are genuine but do not think of it as wholehearted devotion [zhong 忠], keep their word but do not know how to think of it as trustworthiness [xin 信].15 Confucianism falls nothing short of such a lofty ideal. Although many people have the misconception that it is centered on morality and want “to fatter human beings with rules or principles,”16 the highest aim of Confucianism is “to follow one’s heart’s wishes without overstepping the boundaries”17 and “wandering in the arts.”18 Mencius says, “follow the path of morality, but not put morality into practice.”19 The difference is that when you put morality into practice, you are doing it for the sake of morality. It is from your reason, and not from your heart or the person. When you follow the path of morality, you do it not for the sake of being moral, but simply because this is who you are. This is what chapter 38 of Dao De Jing says: A truly virtuous person is not aware of his virtues, and is therefore virtuous. A not so virtuous person tries to get hold onto virtues, and is therefore not virtuous.20 Even Kantian ethics can be read (more sympathetically) from this gongfu perspective. After all, Kant is not saying that we must always act out of moral duty but not inclinations. There is nothing wrong, within the Kantian system, to act amorally out of love. Kant is only trying to make it clear under what kind of conditions can we properly apply moral judgments. If mother Teresa does everything out of love and not out of moral obligation, it is all the better (although “better” in an amoral sense, i.e., gongfu). If she had to do good deeds for the sake of moral duty but not out of her love of humanity, we would say that there is still some imperfection in her person.21 Of course this is speaking about virtue/virtuosity “at its utmost.” For most of us, we have yet to fully embody all possible human virtuosities, and so we still need to invoke the thought of moral obligations from time to time. In real life, we often have to appeal to morality, such as in the case of a war when there is neither enough love nor legal institution to stop cruelty, or in the case of facing a very tempting but undeserving profit. But this is necessary exactly because people are not cultivated well enough to make morality obsolete. So can bad guys have good gongfu? Our first answer is yes, since gongfu and morality belong to two different categories, one is about the art of life and the other about moral duty. But this is only speaking theoretically, meaning that gongfu and morality belong to two different categories. Our second answer is no, because in reality each moral 18 PEIMIN NI goodness or vice corresponds to a respective gongfu ability or the lack of it. It seems reasonable to think that moral goodness and vice get their moral status exactly because of their important function in bettering or hurting human life. In this sense then, moral goodness of a person is the gongfu of the person. Now our third and final answer is that: Not only can bad guys not have good gongfu; good guys, as long as they still have to invoke morality, are not true gongfu masters. Those who have real good gongfu are amoral. IV. Gongfu Ethics and Virtue-or-Character Ethics Gongfu ethics clearly puts more emphasis on the cultivation of the person. In this regard it is indeed very similar to virtue ethics. Through comparison with Confucius’ and other Asian philosophers’ emphasis on ritual and cultivation of one’s demeanor or style of conduct, Kupperman points out that Western ethicists in the last two hundred years have focused mainly on the “big moments” in which people make critical ethical decisions, and left “the moment-to-moment texture of the large part of our lives” as a “free-play zone.”22 Although a good deal of personal interaction does not quite involve moral issues, it nevertheless could be deplorable or praiseworthy, and could affect the value and beauty of a life. Kantian and utilitarian ethical theories have largely ignored the ways in which decisions are integrated and shaped over time in a person’s life, making them as if they are just a matter of rational control and decision making, a bitter business about joyless obligations rather than constituents of an excellent life. Human psychology and common experience tell us that much of a person’s response to an ethical situation is pretty much shaped by who the person is before the person makes deliberations. Kupperman points out that, contrary to our intuition that being ethical is a matter of making right choices when facing alternative options, it actually has more to do with cultivating one’s character so that one’s live options are narrowed down when immoral things become unthinkable. “At the extreme, a Confucian sage, say, would have no choice to make, in that a wide variety of unworthy actions would have ceased to be live options.”23 All these seem to point to the direction of virtue ethics. However, Kupperman prefers “character-based ethics” instead. He takes notice of Confucius’ observation that a person’s virtues often go along with certain faults. For instance if not accompanied by learning, humanheartedness is liable to the flaw of foolishness, uprightness is liable to the flaw of bluntness, and courage is liable to the flaw of being disruptive.24 If this is true, developing virtues has its natural limitations. GONGFU ETHICS 19 Character-based ethics is not just about individual virtues; it is about building character as a whole, and is therefore less likely to lend itself to compartmentalization of virtues. This insight is quite consistent with the gongfu perspective. Any gongfu master would readily agree that holistic cultivation of character is important in developing one’s gongfu. Actually virtue ethicists like Aristotle is aware of the need to have practical wisdom (phronesis) for proper use of virtues, which makes “gongfu” perhaps a better term to capture the spirit of his theory than “virtue.” A very nice adolescent who has all the virtues, such as generosity, honesty, compassion, and courage can act wrongly all the time if he has not developed some level of maturity—the capacity to recognize appropriate applications of these virtues in particular situations. What is more important though, is that the gongfu perspective offers a plausible account for the justification of virtues. What makes a character trait good (or virtuous) is a difficult problem for virtue ethicists. There is no way to determine, either empirically or a priori, whether the virtues of an acorn should be the traits that allow it to become an oak tree or become squirrel. Haunted by the Humean “isought” dichotomy, all efforts that try to justify value (ought) purely on the basis of facts (is) seem to be doomed to fail. No account about what humans should be like can be built indisputably on facts alone. Their ultimate justification have to depend at least in part on people’s visions of excellence, which is not only historically and culturally contingent, and hence irreducibly plural, but also personal, with infinite variation of styles. By taking excellent life as an art, gongfu ethics leaves our vision of excellence open to plurality and creativity. It does not necessarily rely on any metaphysical theory of human nature for justification, although it acknowledges that metaphysical beliefs can perform the function of guiding and orienting human life.25 A person who follows the Aristotelian metaphysics will clearly put more effort in cultivating her intelligence, whereas a person who follows the Confucian relational metaphysics will pay more attention to learning rituals that would harmonize interpersonal relations. While conflicting truth-claims cannot all be true, competing visions of excellence may co-exist like different styles of art. Although gongfu ethics resembles more with virtue/character oriented ethics, it does not thereby eclipse the importance of rules in leading a good life. Confucius reached the stage of being able to follow his heart’s wishes without overstepping the boundaries at the age of seventy,26 which suggests that before seventy he also needed the “boundaries” to guide his life. Confucianism is known for advocating the observance of traditional rituals, li 禮, which is not without good reason often taken as “rules of propriety.”27 Traditional rituals 20 PEIMIN NI provide the necessary guidance to people before they can become sages who are able to use “quan 權” or discretion. Together with laws of a society, they make people’s behavior more predictable and accountable. As Munro says, “I have more confidence in a law that requires a house seller to provide a prospective buyer with an inspector’s report of the house condition, than I do in the seller’s having the character trait of honesty.”28 Yet at the same time, gongfu ethics is able to overcome notorious difficulties associated with rule-oriented ethics, such as rigidity. For example, the famous “Golden Rule” is known for its limitations. Following its positive version “do to others as you would others do to you,” a person who likes to be bribed would be obligated to bribe others, and a man who wants his neighbor’s wife to climb into his bed would be obligated to climb into her bed. Following its negative version “do not impose on others what you do not like others do to you,” we teachers would not be able to give students low grades, and likewise “the criminal would on this ground be able to dispute with the judges who punish him.”29 Whether there are ways to find a problemfree formulation of the Golden Rule or not, the gongfu perspective will give us a very different interpretation of the Golden Rule. It will take the rule essentially as a gongfu instruction, a guideline to help a person to grow, like instructions of driving a car, which are not meant to be followed rigidly regardless of the road condition, but as effective way of enabling a person to drive well. Once the instruction becomes embodied abilities, the person will reach a stage where she can use her discretion about whether or not to follow the standard protocols. While a rule is imposed upon the agent (whether by others or by the agent’s own will) as a standard of right and wrong in itself, the gongfu approach takes it as a method of cultivation, which becomes the very condition for the agent to master the art of living. Although driving instructions may be taught or even enforced upon the agent in the form of rigid rules initially, the rationale behind is not to limit the agent’s freedom to drive, but quite the contrary, to allow the agent to acquire the freedom to drive, and eventually be able to use her own “quan—discretion.”30 V. Is Gongfu Ethics a Version of Consequentialism? Indeed, if we define consequence in a way so inclusive that includes all the efficacious goodness, then “Yes,” gongfu ethics may be understood as consequentialism (although I shall explain why it is better not to). We do not call someone a master chef simply because the person has the good will of offering us great food. The Kantian “good will” GONGFU ETHICS 21 may be good in itself, but the goodness of gongfu is not simply “goodin-itself” but efficacious good at, good in, good to, good for, and good with. Yet we need to carefully separate it from some cruel versions of consequentialism. One such version is instrumentalism, in which gongfu is taken merely as “techniques” or “instruments” for achieving whatever one wants. It is more appropriate to consider gongfu to be what the Greeks called techne (art or skill) than to be technique.31 A technique is “employed” for a pragmatic purpose as if it has nothing to do with the person. I may use a technique without affecting who I am (although this is certainly questionable). Gongfu, however, clearly implies transformation of the person.32 A blog article that responded to an article I published in the New York Times33 puts it better than I could, [T]o become a master of kungfu [i.e., gongfu] (whether as a master of martial arts or as a great chef) is to become more than just a skillful practitioner of a certain set of fighting or cooking techniques. After all, there is a reason why we speak of martial arts rather than martial technique, and why we speak of martial artists rather than martial technicians. One cannot properly practice kungfu without exposing oneself to a particular way of seeing the world, and being changed as a person. To attain mastery of kungfu is as much about attaining an entirely new worldview and allowing this worldview to change one as a person, as it is about mastering particular martial arts techniques.34 This is precisely what the Neo-Confucians during the Song and the Ming dynasties were talking about when they said “gongfu is substance” 功夫即本軆. In other words, learning gongfu is learning to be a better person. Again, bad guys, as far as their badness goes, cannot have the respective gongfu! Another cruel version of consequentialism defines consequence as whatever ultimately prevails—survival of the fittest. But in the history we have seen times in which more advanced civilizations overpowered by less civilized cultures, such as the militant Sparta conquered the democratic Athens, and the nomadic Mongo swept the culturally sophisticated Song China. To the non-musical ears Bach’s intricate Brandenburg Concertos are no more than strange noises, and for most untrained eyes, Picasso’s paintings look no better than crayon drawings of a three year old. If we judge their goodness by appealing to popular vote, they would have difficulty getting on the best seller’s list. In judging gongfu, however, we should certainly not merely look at their popularity or their market value. In fact many of the world’s non-material cultural heritages are facing the danger of extinction and need to be protected exactly because few people can appreciate them. 22 PEIMIN NI The author of the above quoted blog page mentions in the same article that there is a scene near the beginning of Enter the Dragon where Bruce Lee’s character describes martial combat as involving a dance between the martial artist and his opponent. In other words the goodness in the combat is not just displayed in winning the fight, but more in the way it is achieved—its elegance, or beauty. I myself have played “weiqi” (a.k.a., “go”), a very sophisticated ancient Chinese game, with a master, and I was defeated every time with amazement about how marvelous his moves were. It was obvious to me that what the master valued most highly was not just winning the game, but the beauty in the style that must not be spoiled by taking advantage of the less experienced opponent. Here the gongfu manifestation becomes its own end, or art as an end in itself.35 Of course we can define “consequence” in such a way that it includes all the efficacious goodness, such as the artistic style of actions, the transformation of the person, and even the ability to make good choices upon which the possibility of the Kantian morality is based. After all, gongfu ethics is a practical approach. But even this would not be practically consistent with the gongfu approach, because adherence to consequentialism in practice does not usually generate the best consequence! Experience tells us that it is counterproductive for a person to incessantly ask whether this or that will make him better off or make the world a better place. This seems to be the case with regard to gongfu in general, including cases in which morality applies. Morality as a techne might be of this special kind, such that when one uses it to obtain a consequence, one must not do it out of the intention of attaining the consequence—it works (or works best) only when one keeps no consequence in mind. The world will be a better place and each of us better off as well “if much of what we do is determined by considerations—such as traditional moral obligations, love, loyalty to friends, dedication to central personal projects, and so on—that do not themselves require reckoning of consequences.”36 Mencius says to King Hui of Liang, who is forthright about his interest in getting profit, “What is the point of mentioning the word ‘profit’? All that matters is that there should be human-heartedness and rightness.”37 Seeking for profit but acting cruelly to the people is “like looking for fish by climbing a tree.”38 This insight is actually contained in many religious teachings on morality. In Christianity, for example, good deeds may help one to assure one’s place in Heaven, yet one must not do these deeds out of the motivation of going to Heaven. In Buddhism, doing good deeds is a path to nirvana, yet in order to reach nirvana, one must not think of it when one does good deeds. The Dao De Jing says, “through selfless action, the sage attains self-fulfillment,”39 and the Zhuangzi teaches us “the GONGFU ETHICS 23 use of uselessness.” We can also add that in order to have the best consequence, we should not even focus so much on what is the right thing to do, but how to be a better person. One of the most compelling arguments in favor of virtue ethics is that good actions usually come from good agents, and one problem with Utilitarianism is precisely that it fails to pay enough attention to the cultivation of the agent, and consequently fails to generate best consequences. This argument shows that even if we redefine consequentialism in such a way that it includes all the efficacious goodness in its definition of “consequence,” consequentialism is still not always advisable in practice. The reason behind is exactly that consequentialist theories are not thoroughly “consequentialist” because they tend to exclude their principles from consequentialist consideration. Gongfu ethics, on the other hand, is more inclusive. Under the gongfu perspective, all theories of ethics, whether deontology or consequentialist or virtue ethics, transform into mutually distinct, though not mutually exclusive guidelines, each with its own effectiveness as well as limitations. VI. Does the Gongfu Perspective Entail Moral Relativism or Subjectivism? This gongfu approach to ethics does not entail any assertion about moral truth, or any denial of it. Because of this feature, it is consistent with both moral realism and moral skepticism, or other “isms” for that matter. Instead of pursuing moral truths, the gongfu perspective evaluates things according to whether a practice is conducive to the excellence of life. Even though people’s visions of excellence can vary and are probably subjective, the effectiveness of each gongfu can be determined objectively. It may be subjective to endorse, say, the value of independence, yet it is objective whether people are psychologically oriented toward being social or the opposite, whether living in a harmonious community is generally more conducive to health than living in solitude, and what gongfu would be effective in generating solidarity or independence. Different ideas of good and bad or right and wrong would be considered as different recommendations, and they can be judged according to whether they are effective in bringing a life consistent with one’s visions of excellence and experience. Those who believe in moral truths can take Martin Luther King’s dream as an expression of moral truth, whereas those who do not believe in moral truths can say that it is a dream, although a beautiful dream which we should strive for. Both sides can use gongfu approach to explore what gongfu we need in order to bring this dream into reality. This is why the gongfu approach to ethics is not endorsing moral relativism and 24 PEIMIN NI subjectivism; it actually transcends the question about the truth of moral statements. Will this view reduce the force of King’s dream? If King says “this is merely my dream and you can have yours,” wouldn’t this make it ineffective? What if Hitler wants to impose his view of excellence on everyone else? Wouldn’t the gongfu ethics disarm us and make us unable to fight against Hitler? If we don’t believe that he is morally wrong, but only represents a different vision of excellence, how can we fight against evils like this? Aren’t we justified to have moral outrages toward them? Indeed, these are all legitimate and very important concerns. But pay attention: These are precisely concerns raised from the gongfu perspective! They are not saying that King’s dream is stating moral truth, but instead that taking it as a moral truth will make it more effective; and they are not saying that Hitler is morally evil, but believing otherwise would disarm us, making us loose the gongfu to fight him! Indeed quite often we see that people who make truth claims about morality appeal to this line of arguments, which do not prove that their claims are true, but that they are needed for solving pressing problems in the world, and these arguments usually sound more convincing than truth-justifications. The gongfu perspective does not take beliefs about moral truths as irrelevant, nor does it prevent a person from having firm commitment to her dream, because believing or not believing in moral truths can certainly have practical implications. We can take a quick look at some of the implications of the relevant positions from the gongfu perspective. On the one hand, from the gongfu point of view it is beneficial and even necessary to have firm commitment to one’s beliefs. In education, we have to tell young children rights and wrongs pretty firmly and not to prematurely lead them to question all the values, otherwise they will get confused and will be more vulnerable to bad influences (I think no parent would think it a good idea to teach their children Nietzsche before they reach certain maturity). In choosing a master, we have to have certain trust of the master in order to learn from the master. If one keeps doubting the master, and insists on being convinced with absolute certainty that the master’s gongfu is good, we would not be able to enter into the state that would allow the gongfu to display its effectiveness. This is the case in many other things. In using a language, we have to assume that other speakers of the language are using the words in the same way we use them, otherwise communication would be impossible. In epistemology, we have to assume the uniformity of nature, such as fire will always burn us, even though all we have learned is that this has been the case so far up to GONGFU ETHICS 25 now, but not the future. In science we have to stick to a paradigm or we will not be able to conduct any scientific research. In sports, we have to assume that the rules are fair, otherwise we cannot start a game. In legal system, we have to assume that the laws are just, otherwise no judge is able to make any verdict. There is what Thomas Reid calls “credulity,” or what Hans-Georg Moeller calls “the blindness for the contingency” that makes all these systems work.40 Having acknowledged the positive value of having commitment to our beliefs, the gongfu approach will also caution us to keep an open mind. It is beneficial and necessary to have an awareness of the nonabsoluteness of one’s own values. Just like in epistemology we are compelled to be suspicious about absolute Truth, we are also more than reasonable to retain some suspicion about absolute moral rights and wrongs. No one can have a moral perspective devoid of their particular upbringing background and particular context in which one makes moral judgments. This means that, even if we agree that there are moral truths, we may still depend on what Bernard Williams and Thomas Nagel call “moral luck” to be on the right side. One might even argue that if we hold our own moral standpoints as absolute truth, we could justify anything, including horrible deeds. It is plausible to argue that most, if not all, of the horrendous cruelty in the human history are done for the sake of implementing “moral truths.” The gongfu approach will have us see the relationship between being open-minded and being definite in our beliefs as dialectic rather than contradictory. This dialectic relation, or “open-definiteness,” as my colleague Stephen Rowe puts it, requires us to be firm in our beliefs as long as there are no good reasons to doubt them, and at the same time be aware of their limitations, willing to listen and consider alternative arguments, and willing to alter our beliefs if the counter arguments are strong enough to warrant the change. Of course this open-definiteness is an art, and hence gongfu, itself. Since gongfu ethics looks at practical implications rather than theoretical consistencies, it will change the scene of the field. Theories that are otherwise contradicting each other may go well together under the gongfu perspective. For example, Lawrence Kohlberg’s measurement of moral progress assumes that those who can articulate reasons for their moral choices through universal principles are the most advanced in their moral development. This theory clearly puts the ability of abstract reasoning and communication as the highest bar for moral excellence. The Daoists, on the other hand, would recommend us to take an infant to be the model, because the infant is simple, natural, and is able to respond to situations spontaneously and creatively— an ability that most adults no longer possess. These two conflicting views can quite easily be reconciled through the gongfu perspective. 26 PEIMIN NI Obviously both the ability to articulate reasons for moral choices and the ability to have creativity are desirable for leading a good life. While the ability to reason increases along with age growth, studies have shown that human creativity decreases as one ages. In light of these facts, we can let children learn reasoning from adults (preferably philosophy professors), and encourage adults to spend more time playing with little children. There will certainly be differences that cannot be settled by laying out all the practical implications, no matter how you are open-minded. After all the facts and reasons are laid out, people may still hold different ultimate values. For instance, some may prefer to see justice done even at the cost of more lives, and others would prefer to see no further harm done, even if it means that someone could get away from horrible deeds they committed. Some may prefer the life style of adhering to reason, others may choose to live with passion. Some may prefer individuality and uniqueness so much that they would rather look odd to others than conforming to them, whereas others feel more comfortable to follow the fashion and be accepted by their peers. Yet here the differences are no longer perceived as conflicting truthclaims, but as different life styles. Under the gongfu perspective, all ethical theories, be it utilitarian, Kantian, or Buddhist, will become life orientations. Utilitarianism would lead to the pursuit of happiness, Kantian ethics will lead to the adherence of “universal” rationality, and Buddhism will lead to the cultivation of tranquility. Upon such an examination we may not necessarily reach a unified conclusion about which one is definitely better. Indeed the chance is that we will end up with what I have been calling “competing visions of excellence.” But this will not always be an unfortunate fact that we have to live with; like colorful art styles, diversity can be something that we should celebrate for. VII. Concluding Remarks What we have outlined above is just the very basics of the gongfu approach to ethics. It is, in short, an ethics that we can read off from traditional Chinese philosophy, which looks at everything from the perspective of the art of living. At the core of such a perspective is an insight it shares with all versions of virtue-character based ethics, that is: Instead of taking the human subject for granted as rational choice makers, it takes ethics as mainly a matter of cultivating the subject so that people can become artists of living. This cultivation has to include the training of one’s body and emotions, and not merely the ability to think well. At the highest perfection of the cultivation, one will be GONGFU ETHICS 27 able to act artistically (which certainly entails “appropriately”) without the need to think or make choices. Being ethical will no longer be a matter of bitter fulfillment of moral obligations; instead, it will be the pursuit of a state of being in which a person is fully immersed with what he or she is doing, very close to what Mih
aly Csikszentmih
alyi calls “flow,” with enjoyment and optimal performance. Such a perspective restores the scope of ethics to one’s entire life beyond the “big moments” in which one makes critical choices concerning one’s moral responsibilities. It also restores the aim of ethics to be a never ending pursuit of excellence, with a continuous ascending scale rather than an impoverished, minimalist picture of merely being not wrong, or not doing what is impermissible. Although like virtue ethics the approach gives no clear-cut procedure for determining right and wrong (isn’t “clear cookie-cut answers” part of the problem itself?), much less definite answers to every possible ethical question (which theory is able to do it anyway?), it points to the direction of a mature understanding of the issue here: Life in the actual world is infinitely complicated and dynamic that it cannot be codified in one fixed format. Ethics is ultimately a matter of cultivating expert abilities, like a connoisseur of an art, to perceive and respond to ever-changing circumstances. For this reason, it takes mimicking a master or exemplar as a very basic way of learning. Unlike virtue ethics, however, gongfu ethics does not thereby understate the importance of rule following, because it is indispensable before one reaches perfection in the art of living. However, by taking rules ultimately as instructions to enable people to do and be good and as imperfect measures for preventing evil, gongfu ethics avoids the common problems associated with rule-oriented ethics, such as rigidity. Along with this, it also puts the relationship between morality (areas where moral obligations apply) and gongfu in perspective. Although conceptually speaking morality is distinct from gongfu, gongfu provides an ultimate justification for morality. With this perspective, there is no more insurmountable gap between is and ought, between self-interest and others’ interest, or between amoral motivation and moral obligation. Caring for others can be nothing other than caring for one’s own life—an insight that was stated long time ago by Confucius as “learning for the sake of self.”41 By taking ethics as art, gongfu ethics avoids the common assumption that only truth-claims (whether metaphysical or religious or biological or psychological) can be the ground for justifying virtues (although it does not reject the relevance of truth claims). It opens the space for culturally specific, historically contingent, and personally unique imaginations and creations. It is thereby able to embrace 28 PEIMIN NI pluralism without at the same time falling into the trap of ethical relativism and subjectivism, as with the approach we see how we can consistently hold firm commitments on fundamental values and traditions or exemplars, and yet at the same time, be open and celebrate differences and creativity. Indeed, through conceiving ethics as a matter of developing the art of life, the approach embodies the postmodern insights about the need to emphasize particularity, context, somaticity, process, and creativity, and yet at the same time it does not end up with being merely deconstructive, like most postmodern theories tend to. It provides a positive ground upon which we can re-evaluate, re-interpret, and reconstruct all existing theories of ethics as different gongfu recommendations and gongfu styles. Like a gestalt switch, things that look familiar can appear afresh and different once we apply the gongfu perspective. With such a perspective, we see that although human civilizations have produced great individual gongfu masters of the art of living, human race as a whole can hardly be considered as a community of mature adults yet, much less a community of well cultivated artists. Armed with the gongfu perspective, we will no longer expect reaching a universal agreement on a Global Ethic to be the only possible form of positive outcome of global dialogues on ethics.42 Such dialogues would be more like well-conducted martial arts conferences in which different schools of martial arts exchange their unique art styles, and compete with each other as well as learn from each other. Instead of hoping to convert all to one and the same school of art in the end, they develop mutual understandings and, more importantly, mutual respect, friendship, and transformation. We will not simply conceive people as abstract equal bearers of political rights, but instead as practically unequal individuals who are at different stages of development, in different relationships, and therefore need different treatment and subject to different expectations. We would also be open to the idea that the structure and policies of a government should be different depending on the level of general gongfu development of its people, whose entitlement to various kinds of freedom and power has to correspond to their level of maturity. We will evaluate social and political policies more on the ground of their practical implications to a particular social reality than simply on the ground of whether they conform to some abstract universal principles. Such a constructive post-modern ethics is well worth our serious exploration. GRAND VALLEY STATE UNIVERSITY Allendale, Michigan GONGFU ETHICS 29 Endnotes Acknowledgment of Copyrights and Credentials: Ideas presented in this article have benefited from discussions with many colleagues, particularly Stephen Rowe, and with Amod Lele, whose unrelenting critical comments provided me with valuable opportunities to develop and sharpen my relevant ideas. 1. “Confucius and the Nature of Religious Ethics,” in Philosophy East and West 21, no. 2 (1971): 192. 2. Tadeusz Kotarbi
nski, “The ABC of Praxiology,” in Praxiology and Pragmatism, ed. Leo V. Ryan, CSV, F. Byron Nahser, and Wojciech W. Gasparski (New Brunswick: Transaction, 2002), 25. 3. John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism, ed. George Sher (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1979), 47. 4. See J. O. Urmson, “Aristotle’s Doctrine of the Mean,” in American Philosophical Quarterly 10, no. 3 (1973): 223. 5. Aristotle says, “ar^ete is, according to the usual view, a faculty of providing and preserving good things; or a faculty of conferring many great benefits, and benefits of all kinds on all occasions” (Rhetoric, 1366a36-b1, in The Revised Oxford Translations of the Completed Works of Aristotle, ed. J. Barnes [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984]). 6. See Urmson, “Aristotle’s Doctrine of the Mean,” 223. 7. A. C. Graham, for instance, translates it as potency (see his Disputers of the Dao [La Salle: Open Court, 1989], 13), and Arthur Waley translates it as power (see his The Way and Its Power [New York: Grove, 1958]). 8. For example, the Shaolin school of martial arts established ten commandments for its followers; the Wudang school has “five notes” in recruiting followers and teaching their martial arts (see Wu Bin, Li Xingdong, and Yu Gongbao, Essentials of Chinese Wushu [Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1992], 149). Some even take morality as the most fundamental principle of all traditional Chinese gongfu (see Yan Xin Qigong Phenomena, ed. Li Lun [Beijing: Beijing Industry Press, 1989], 88–92). 9. Strictly speaking the virtue of being honest is an INUS condition of gaining trust—an Insufficient but Necessary part of a set of conditions that is itself Unnecessary but Sufficient for the effect (see J. L. Mackie’s “The Direction of Causation,” in Philosophical Review 75, no. 4 (1966): 441–66 for articulation of INUS condition). A dishonest person well equipped with the perfect skills to disguise himself may gain more trust from others than an honest person who is not good at expressing himself and lacks the moral luck of staying away from suspicious situations. Honesty is no more and no less effective as a gongfu of gaining trust than an art skill is a gongfu of creating an artwork. Logically speaking it is not impossible for a monkey to create a painting better than Monet could do when he is ill. 10. See Analects, 1: 2. All references to Confucius’ Analects follow the numbering in D. C. Lau, Confucius the Analects (New York: Penguin, 1979). Translations are mine. 11. Zhuangzi’s original example is “If you step on someone’s foot in the market you make a formal apology for your carelessness; [if] an elder brother [steps on your foot, he] says he hopes it didn’t hurt; father and mother are too close kin to say anything at all” (see A. C. Graham, Chuang-Tz u: The Inner Chapters [Indianapolis: Hackett, 2001], 81, translation modified). 12. In his work The Moral Fool (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009), 44–47, Hans-Georg Moeller uses the quote from the Zhuangzi and offered more examples to articulate the point that morality is redundant in most areas of life. 13. Kupperman, Ethics and Qualities of Life (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 120. 14. The Great Learning, quoted from Wing-Tsit Chan, A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963), 89. 15. See A. C. Graham, trans., Chuang-Tzu, The Inner Chapters (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1981), 174. Zhuangzi Jijie, in Zhuzhi Jicheng (Shanghai: Shanghai Shudian, 1986), Vol. 3, 77. Translation modified. 30 PEIMIN NI 16. John Gray, Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals (London: Granta, 2002), 112. 17. Analects, 2: 4. 18. Analects, 7: 6. 19. Mencius, 4B: 19; D. C. Lau, trans., Mencius (New York: Penguin, 1970), 131. 20. All references to Dao De Jing follow the numbering in Arthur Waley’s The Way and Its Power (New York: Grove, 1958). Translations are mine. 21. This may open the can of worms about the free will and the possibility of evil controversy, as some will argue that a world in which people have the free will to choose evil is better than a world in which no one is able to choose evil. However, one who does not have the desire to do bad is not necessarily one who has no capability of doing bad. 22. See Joel J. Kupperman, Learning From Asian Philosophy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 167–69. 23. Ibid., 136. 24. Analects, 4.7, 17.8. 25. Readers may refer to Peimin Ni, “How Far Is Confucius an Aristotelian?— Comments on May Sim’s Remastering Morals with Aristotle and Confucius,” Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy 8, no. 3 (2009): 311–19, and “A Comparative Examination of Rorty’s and Mencius’ Theories of Human Nature,” in Rorty, Pragmatism, and Confucianism, ed. Yong Huang (New York: State University of New York Press, 2009), 101–16, with Rorty’s response, 285–86 for more detailed discussion about the role of metaphysics in gongfu. 26. Analects, 2: 4. 27. Although the rules of rituals are very different from the universal rules formulated by abstract concepts. 28. Donald J. Munro, “Unequal Human Worth,” in Brian Bruya, ed., The Philosophical Challenges from China (Boston: MIT Press, 2015). 29. Kant, Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals, trans. James W. Ellington (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1981), 37n23. 30. Analects, 9: 30. This also explains some apparent inconsistencies in the Analects. For instance, on the one hand it teaches the “golden rule” (Analects, 12: 2) and yet on the other hand it says that “the exemplary person is never for or against anything invariably” (Analects, 4: 10); on the one hand it tells people to “hold firm on wholehearted devotion and trustworthiness” (Analects, 1: 8; repeated in 9: 25), saying that a man not trustworthy in words is like a cart without a pin in the yoke-bar (Analects, 2: 22), and yet on the other hand it says that a man who insists on keeping his word and seeing his actions through to the end has a stubborn petty-mind (Analects, 13: 20). Putting under the gongfu lens, we see that the observance of the golden rule and trustworthiness should ultimately be based on the ability to make discretion, and yet before one is able to do so, following the rule-like instructions would be the very condition that would allow a person to develop the ability to use discretion properly. See Peimin Ni, On Confucius (Belmont: Wadsworth, 2002), 29–33 and Confucius, Making the Way Great (Shanghai: Shanghai Translation Publishing House, 2010), 136–40 and 175–82 for more discussion. Notice that here I only use regulative rules as examples. Most rituals, however, are constitutive rules, rules which do not merely regulate proper behavior but constitute the very condition of the relevant activity (rules of chess, for instance, constitute what chess play is). In constitutive rules the importance of learning the rules in order to gain the freedom to play the games is even more obvious. 31. Except that historically, techne was considered by the Greeks to be chiefly operative in the domestic sphere, in farming and slavery, and not in the free realm of the Greek polis, and was therefore only fitted for the lower class while the upper class, the “free men,” practiced the Liberal Arts. Another historical limitation is that it was used in contrast with episteme, “Techne resembles episteme in implying knowledge of principles, but differs in that its aim is making or doing, not disinterested understanding” (Dictionary of Philosophy, http://www.ditext.com/runes/t.html). Gongfu, on the other hand, is a term that can be used to cover all arts of life, whether domestic or public, disinterested or with particular practical interest. GONGFU ETHICS 31 32. This is also a major reason that I do not want to reduce gongfu philosophy to pragmatism. The name “pragmatism” is derived from the Greek word pqa~cla (pragma), which means “deed, act,” more apt to direct attention to actions and their consequences than to the agents. It is worth our attention that, for instance, despite of his emphasis on education (hence the importance of cultivation), John Dewey was not able to go so far as to reconstruct his philosophical vocabulary for the turn toward the transformation of the agent. The fact that Dewey still calls his philosophy “instrumentalism” indicates that Western philosophy needs a new vocabulary (such as gongfu) that is not shaped by the agent-action dichotomy. 33. “Kung Fu for Philosophers,” in the New York Times forum “The Stone,” December 8, 2010 (http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/12/08/kung-fu-for-philosophers/). 34. Blog page Yoga in the Dan of Dragon December 9, 2010 article by Nobel, “The Yoga of Kungfu and the Kungfu of Yoga,” retrieved June 30, 2014 (http://yogadragonden. blogspot.com/2010/12/yoga-of-kungfu-and-kungfu-of-yoga.html). 35. This is another subtle difference between the gongfu approach and the pragmatic approach. Gongfu is straightforwardly art or artistic abilities, whereas in the conceptual framework in which art and pragmatic usefulness are separated, “pragmatic aesthetics” (a term associated with the excellent works of Richard Shusterman) will always sound like a pragmatic theory about aesthetics, and not the artistic approach to life itself. 36. Joel J. Kupperman, Ethics and Qualities of Life (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 170–71. The art of wuwei, or action by non-action is also a gongfu method that entails the insight of the limitation of consequentialism. 37. Mencius, 1A: 1. Lau, trans., 49. 38. Mencius, 1A: 7. Lau, trans., 57. 39. Dao De Jing, Ch. 7. 40. Moeller, The Moral Fool, 117. 41. Analects, 14: 24. 42. Drafted initially by Dr. Hans Kung, a document titled Declaration toward a Global Ethic was passed and signed at the Parliament of the World’s Religions in 1993 by more than 200 leaders from more than forty different faith traditions and spiritual communities. This is certainly a great achievement. The point I try to make here is not that this kind of effort is not worthwhile; it is rather that our effort should not be limited to this.