yih-hsien yu
TWO CHINESE PHILOSOPHERS AND
WHITEHEAD ENCOUNTERED
A. N. Whitehead (1861–1947) was one of the great metaphysicians in
the twentieth century of the West who had assumed his position by
inveighing against the torrents of anti-metaphysics, and by defending
the importance and the necessity of metaphysics in the philosophical
pursuit. As he once wrote in his Process and Reality, the general position of his philosophy of organism “seems to approximate more to
some strains of Indian, or Chinese, thought, than to western Asiatic,
or European, thought. One side makes process ultimate; the other
side makes fact ultimate.”1 Some contemporary Chinese philosophers
were touched by these statements and tried to explore Whitehead’s
reasoning behind them. However, even before the publication of
Process and Reality, as early as 1927, Thome H. Fang (1899–1977),
when teaching philosophy at Central University, Nanking (Nanjing),
Mainland China, noticed the ingenuity and significance of Whitehead’s thought and its relevance to Chinese thinking. His student
Shih-chuan Chen (1909–), following him, has been devoted to the
comparative studies between Chinese philosophy and Whitehead’s
philosophy ever since he was an undergraduate of Central University.
In their philosophical enterprise, Fang and Chen were convinced
that Whitehead’s philosophy of organism is communicable to Chinese
in virtue of its organic mode of thinking and its core concept of
creativity.
The present article is an attempt to deal with this earliest
“encounter” between Chinese philosophers and Whitehead from
three perspectives, namely, Whitehead’s understanding of Chinese
thought, and Thome Fang’s and Shih-chuan Chen’s understanding of
Whitehead’s philosophy. The term “encounter” used here should not
be taken literally; the two parties had never been given any chance
to meet each other, since Whitehead never visited China, and Fang
and Chen did not arrive in the United States during Whitehead’s
sojourn at Cambridge, Massachusetts. Nonetheless, we may find
YIH-HSIEN YU, professor, Department of Philosophy, Tunghai University, Taichung,
Taiwan, Republic of China. Specialties: comparative philosophy, Greek philosophy, and
process philosophy. E-mail:[email protected]
Journal of Chinese Philosophy 32:2 (June 2005) 239–255
© 2005 Journal of Chinese Philosophy
240
yih-hsien yu
enough evidence in their works to show that Whitehead appreciated
Chinese thought in the broadest sense, and that Fang and Chen shared
their philosophical outlooks with him.
Whitehead’s Understanding of Chinese Thought
Although Whitehead seemingly relates his philosophy of organism to
Chinese thought in the very beginning of Process and Reality, the
clues we can find there to their relationship are spare. In fact, Whitehead never dealt with Chinese thought seriously in the rest of the
book. It should be noted that when he referred to “some strains of
Chinese thought,” it was referred to along with that of India, which
indicates that he was convinced there must be some commonness
in both Indian and Chinese thought. As Whitehead suggests in the
above-quoted sentence, Indian and Chinese thought “makes process
ultimate,” in contrast to western Asiatic and European thought, which
“makes fact ultimate.” It may imply that in his view metaphysics, or
“theology” in a broader sense, in the Eastern Asiatic thought is more
dynamic and based on the idea of process, whereas Western thought
is more restricted to the brute matters of fact and based on the
concept of substance. But he did not explain the reasons why he came
to this conclusion.
In an earlier work, Religion in the Making, Whitehead seems to
leave some clues for the reasoning of his arguments. He explicitly suggests Indian and Chinese thought share the same trait and he puts it
squarely in a religious context,
In India and China the growth of a world-consciousness was different in its details, but in its essence depended on the same factors.
Individuals were disengaged from their immediate social setting in
ways which promoted thought.2
According to Whitehead, there is a world-consciousness behind any
rational religion that transcends tribal ritualism, folk worship, herdpsychology, and social consciousness. Rational religion and worldconsciousness exhibit themselves in introducing ethical order to our
lives, and also in introducing general ideas and metaphysical principles to our beliefs. They are tokens of the self-awareness of men
searching for a higher and broader relationship to the universe.
In Whitehead’s view, in the history of human civilization there were
two rational religions, Buddhism and Christianity, which exercised
great influence on many peoples’ religious life, though their influence
may now be in decay.3 These two world religions have their separate
sets of dogmas and give different answers to the questions of human
two chinese philosophers
241
suffering and evil. Buddhism finds evil arising from the very nature
of physical and emotional experience, and the wisdom which it inculcates is meant to release us from such experience. This is to lay the
foundation of its doctrines on a general speculation of human experience. Accordingly, Whitehead keenly observes that Buddhism is a
religion developed from metaphysical doctrines, that is, Buddha’s
teachings, whereas Christianity is a religion based on religious facts
from which its metaphysical doctrine is derived. In the Sermon on the
Mount, in the Parables, and above all in the New Testament’s accounts
of Jesus Christ, the Christian Gospels exhibit a tremendous fact about
Jesus’ life. While Buddha left a tremendous doctrine, the historical
facts about him are subsidiary to the doctrine. Similarly when dealing
with the problem of evil, Christianity is less clear in its metaphysical
ideas, but is more inclusive about fact. Though Christianity admits
that evil is inherent throughout the world, since the omnipotent
Creator is limited by the finite materials available to him to create
the world, it still holds that evil is a contingent fact of individual
misdeed, instead of a necessary consequence of human nature.4 As
Whitehead remarks,
Thus in respect to this crucial question of evil, Buddhism and
Christianity are in entirely different attitudes in respect to doctrine.
Buddhism starts with the elucidatory dogmas; Christianity starts with
the elucidatory facts.5
Here Whitehead seems to ignore the doctrine of original sin, which is
one of the most important doctrines of Christianity that shows human
evil to be inherent. However, since the doctrine is derived from the
story of Adam and Eve, it may still be regarded as to be based on
“fact,” instead of arising from philosophical speculation.
Still Whitehead found that there is another commonality in Indian
and Chinese religious thought: there is no personal God. As he says,
Throughout India and China religious thought, so far as it has been
interpreted in precise form, disclaims the intuition of any ultimate
personality substantial to the universe. This is true for Confucian philosophy, Buddhist philosophy, and Hindoo philosophy. There may be
personal embodiments, but the substratum is impersonal.6
Whitehead’s observation is more than correct. He has not only an
insight into the very essence of the Eastern Asiatic thought, but also
the essence of rational religion. For the Confucians or the Buddhists,
there had never been a supernatural, personal God in their religious
experience. Their spiritual pursuit was directed to seek a harmonious
relationship to men and nature, to universal principles of humanity,
as well as to the aesthetic order of the universe. There is no room for
any form of “trade” between demanding individuals and a supernat-
242
yih-hsien yu
ural power which can satisfy their worldly needs in exchange for their
worship and sacrifice.7 Whitehead considers Christian theology also
adopting the position that there is no direct intuition of an ultimate
personal substratum; however, it maintains the doctrine of the existence of a personal God as truth, as a truth based on inference. The
same with Greek thought. The ancient Greeks had the notion of a
direct intuition of righteousness in the nature of things, functioning
as a condition, a critic, and an ideal. And for the Pythagoreans, divine
personality was in the nature of an inference from the directly apprehended law of nature.8
However, the intuition of a personal God is still an affirmation of
the existence of a supernatural, personal God, which is the major difference between Christianity and Chinese thought. Whitehead suggests there are three main renderings of the concept of God. First is
the Eastern Asiatic concept of an impersonal order to which the
world conforms, which offers a doctrine of immanence with regard to
the reality of a supreme being. Second is the Semitic concept of a definite personal individual who creates and transcends the actual world.
This is a doctrine of transcendence. And finally is the Pantheistic
concept of a supreme being related to the actual world as transcendent as well as immanent. This is the doctrine of monism. Whitehead
holds that Christianity did not adopt either of the last two alternatives, but it inherited the simple Semitic concept. It then added the
threefold personality to the concept of God, namely, the concept of
God as clear, terrifying, and unprovable. Among these attributes, the
terrifying God turned the Gospel of love into a Gospel of fear, and
the unprovable God is beyond the comprehension of human reason.9
Though Whitehead has observed difficulties consisting in the
concept of a supernatural, personal God, he did not make his own
position explicit on this issue, although he did confess there is no
direct evidence for a personal God in any sense transcendent, and
that the universe is through and through interdependent.10 It is understandable that Christianity dominated Western civilization for more
than two thousand years, and therefore the concept of a personal
God became an integral part of the Western soul. For Confucians and
Buddhists, a supernatural, personal God is inconceivable and unnecessary for their religious life. For Confucians religion exists for the
sake of humanity; it is a vehicle of education that promotes the spiritual life and personal quality of the people. For Buddhists, religion
is a course of self-enlightenment and self-salvation, and Buddha is
only a teacher, not a savior.
It may be argued that though Whitehead was not a sinologist and
his understanding of Chinese thought was spare and inseparable from
that of Buddhism and Indian thought, he still has a great insight into
two chinese philosophers
243
the essence of Chinese thinking. And it was his casual reference to
Chinese thought in the beginning pages of Process and Reality that
makes his philosophy attractive to Chinese philosophers and opens a
channel for East and West dialogues.
Fang’s Understanding of Whitehead
Thome Fang was the first Chinese philosopher who noticed the significance of Whitehead’s thought and introduced it to the Chinese
audience. He was a philosophical poet with Daoist temperament and
a Confucian scholar with philosophical discipline. As a traditional
Chinese intellectual, he received a classical education from his family
upbringing (his ancestor was the founder of the renowned Tongcheng
School of Anhui Province), which made him an erudite scholar in
Chinese literature. In view of the decline of Chinese culture, Fang, as
many young patriots of his time, ventured abroad for foreign education and received his Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of
Wisconsin, Madison, in 1924. After returning to China, he taught
philosophy at Central University beginning in 1926 and published a
series of papers on science, philosophy, and life. In these papers, Fang
gave high appraisal to Whitehead’s opposition to scientific materialism and agreed to Whitehead’s criticism of the fallacies of “simplelocation” and “misplaced concreteness.”11
In one of Fang’s papers, entitled “The Scientific Universe and the
Problem of Life,” published in 1927, Fang pinpointed one of the
dilemmas of modern scientific thinking as “what Mr. Whitehead
called ‘the bifurcation of nature.’ ”12 He then criticized the materialistic/mechanistic worldview perpetrated by modern science as a great
setback in the modern spirit which has set freedom as its highest
cause. But what is freedom? Fang explains,
The so-called freedom is to create incessantly. Both in man and in
nature there is always something new and progressive which indicates the realities of both man and nature. The whole universe
exhibits novelty and wonder all the time and everywhere, and there
seems to be a high order to which it abides. So let’s borrow the words
from Whitehead, nature in essence is a “creative advance.”13
The materialistic/mechanistic worldview ignores or even denies the
freedom of man and the creativity of nature, and it leads moderns
into a dire situation. Fang then describes scientific materialism as a
kind of reductionism by which the most abundant and multifarious
real world is reduced into a configuration of minute physical particles
that may be construed as abstract mathematical entities. And this is,
as Fang points out, what Whitehead calls the “fallacy of misplaced
244
yih-hsien yu
concreteness.” Later in his articles, entitled “The Duet of the LifeTragedy” and “The Tune of Life and Aesthetic Feeling,” Fang further
explains that according to Whitehead, the “fallacy of misplaced concreteness” arises from the assumption of “simple-location” presupposed by scientific materialism, which maintains that the ultimate
material particles exist independently in space and time. They are isolated and simply located “here and now.”14
It should be noted that Fang’s interest in Whitehead was not triggered by the often-quoted paragraph in Process and Reality, since the
book was unpublished yet in 1927. What attracted his attention were
The Concept of Nature (1922) and Science and the Modern World
(1925) to which he constantly referred in his works. In these works,
Fang finds arguments against scientific materialism and the doctrine of
“creative advance,” which made Whitehead’s philosophy most agreeable to the Chinese mind. As Fang observed, the materialistic assumptions of “simple-location” and the “fallacy of misplaced concreteness”
result in a body-mind dualism in Western philosophy and distort our
understanding of nature and man. In the Chinese view, the cosmos is
a field full of life that rejects the mechanistic explanation of the fundamental principles governing the activities of its constituents. Nature
is a process of creative advance that is finite with respect to its corporeal substance but infinite with respect to its function. Above all, the
cosmos is of an aesthetic nature; it provokes all our aesthetic feelings
and values of all kinds prevail in it. It is not an aggregation of
fragmentary material particles that rush in and out without purpose.
While man lives in nature, his vision of nature shapes his vision of life.15
In 1961, after more than three decades, Fang explained his ideas in a
speech “A Philosophical Glimpse of Man and Nature in Chinese
Culture” when he accepted an invitation from University of Missouri.
As he remarks and I quote with minor revisions,
Nature, for us, is that infinite realm wherein the universal flux of life
is revealing itself and fulfilling everything with its intrinsic worth.
Nature is infinite in the sense that it is not limited by anything that
is beyond and above it, which might be called “supernatural.” The
fullness of its reality does not prejudice itself against the potency of
deity, for the miraculous creation may be continually accomplished
within it. Nor is there any gulf between nature and human nature
inasmuch as life is integrated into cosmic life as a whole.16
Thus from a Chinese outlook, namely, to see man and nature as an
organic whole, Fang finds that human nature is in fact a derivation of
Mother Nature, in that there is no essential difference between the
two as they both are inherently creative. Fang sought his support from
the Yi Jing or the Book of Changes and Lao Zi. And I quote with
minor revisions of the text,
two chinese philosophers
245
(It is) best vindicated in the Book of Changes: “The fulfillment of
Nature, which is life in perpetual creativity, is the gate of wisdom that
reveals the value of dao (logos) and the order of justice.” (Also) in
Lao Zi, “The world has a first cause which may be regarded as the
Mother of all. When one gets the mother, one can know her child.”
There is always a blessed intimacy between nature and man like a
mother with her child in her caring embrace. (Again), as Nature
nourishes life of all forms in concatenation and its creative creativity exhibits in Heaven, Earth and Human, the so-called “the
Principle of Three Ultimates” (san ji zhi dao in the Yi Jing), one may
find there is a fundamental chord of harmony knitting all forms of
existence together as if they are uttering a “Hymn of Joy” on the
cosmic scale.17
Later on, Fang explicitly claims in his “The World and the Individual
in Chinese Metaphysics,” published in 1964, that “Chinese philosophical ideas are centered around the integrative wholes explicable
in terms of organicism.”18 Here the term “organicism” is used by Fang
to characterize the general mode of thought in those most prominent
schools of Chinese philosophy, such as Confucianism, Taoism, and
Mahayana Buddhism (especially Hua Yan Buddhism). For all these
schools, the universe is an organic whole and all things in it are related
to one another in different degrees of relevancy.19 As Fang constantly
refers to Whitehead, he might well have borrowed the term “organicism” from Whitehead, even though he already had the notion of
“organicism” in mind.
Accordingly, we may argue that Fang’s philosophy is closely allied
with Bergson’s vitalism and Whitehead’s philosophy of organism and
is against materialistic mechanism. It can be regarded as a kind of
functionalism, in opposition to substantialism. It is a humanistic naturalism with no taint of supernaturalism (or theism), and it is a philosophy of creativity, in opposition to mechanistic determinism. In
addition, it can also be called organicism, since it takes on the view
that man and nature constitute an integral whole, and everything in
nature exists harmoniously in accord with a cosmic order. In Fang’s
own words, his philosophy is a philosophy of comprehensive harmony
that eulogizes a cosmic comedy composed of all human and natural,
factual and possible, elements in an interdependent and organic way.
Chen’s Understanding of Whitehead
In the course of his comparative studies of East and West philosophies, Fang found that the Chinese philosophy in the Yi Jing and Hua
Yan Buddhism may offer the most promising agendas for the discussion of Chinese thought and Whitehead’s philosophy. His student
246
yih-hsien yu
Shih-chuan Chen accepted his view and undertook a series of philosophical investigations in these areas. Chen, an Emeritus Professor of
Humanity and Oriental Civilization at Pennsylvania State University,
Capitol Campus, had studied philosophy under Fang at Central University, Nanking, in the early 1920s, and then went to Great Britain
for Greek Studies at Corpus Christi College of Oxford University and
met with prominent scholars such as Gilbert Murray and Richard Livingstone. Though he enjoyed Greek Studies, he had to abandon them
on the eve of the European War and went back to China in 1939 to
face another War of Japanese invasion of China. After World War II,
he emigrated with his family from China to the United States to
escape from the Civil War waged by the Chinese Communists against
the Nationalists. From 1958 to 1960, Chen worked with Richard
Wilhelm for his doctorate degree at the University of Washington,
Seattle, and his knowledge of the Yi Jing was highly appreciated by
Dr. Wilhelm. Later on, in 1972, Chen first wrote about the Yi Jing in
English, a paper entitled “How to Form a Hexagram and Consult the
Yi Jing,” which won Dr. Wilhelm’s attention immediately.20
After all these years of odyssey, Chen returned to Taiwan and
became the professor of philosophy at National Taiwan University,
National Taiwan Normal University, and at Tunghai University of
Taichung, respectively, from 1981 to 1991. He then advanced his
studies of the Yi Jing to three books in Chinese: A New Investigation
of the Studies of the Yi Jing (1979), A New Interpretation of the Text
of the Yi Jing (1995), and New Essays on the Studies of the Yi Jing
(1996).21 In January 1988 he called a conference on “Chinese Philosophy and Whitehead” at Tunghai University, Taichung, which was the
first Whitehead-related conference held by the Chinese. Many papers
were contributed by Taiwan scholars and eventually a book was compiled. At that conference, Chen delivered a speech, entitled “The
Philosophy in the Yi Jing and Whitehead’s Philosophy of Organism,”
in Chinese which gives an outline for the comparative study of the
organic thinking in the philosophy of the Yi Jing and Whitehead’s
philosophy. And in 2002, he also attended the First International
Conference on “Whitehead and China” held in Beijing, Mainland
China, under the co-sponsor of Beijing Normal University and the
Center for Process Studies, U. S. A., and delivered a speech on
“Whitehead and the Book of Changes.”
In his works, Chen argues that the philosophical elements in the Yi
Jing are consonant with that of Whitehead’s philosophy of organism.
First, they both lay great emphasis on the concept of creativity. For
the ancient Chinese philosophers, the sixty-four hexagrams of the Yi
Jing, resulting from the combinations of two yaos (monogramatic
signs), yin (the negative, receptive principle) and yang (the positive,
two chinese philosophers
247
productive principle), construct a symbolic system that simulates the
cosmic process of creative advance. For Whitehead the concept of creativity is one of the three notions of the Category of the Ultimate (the
other two are “one” and “many”), and it is the universal of universals
or the most general feature of the universe.22
Second, Whitehead and the authors of the Yi Jing are alike in
making the concept of “feelings” or “gan” (sensing) one of the kernel
ideas of their philosophies.23 In the Yi Jing, the universe is described
as full of entities of sensing that attract one another and incorporate
into one another according to their emotions, desires, aspirations,
intentions, and needs, etc. Indeed, there is no isolated being in the universe. Among them, the positive (yang) and the negative (yin) are the
most extreme elements that are in highest contrast and lure each
other with the highest intensity. Their interactions can be represented
as the interactions of sun and moon, day and night, light and dark,
tenderness and hardness, male and female, motion and rest, heaven
and earth, etc. As is stated in the Yi Jing,
“Changes” (creativity) are without thought and non-active. While in
this total tranquility, “feelings” are initiated, and everything becomes
alive, active, and prevailing in the whole universe. If not for the most
miraculous performance of nature, how can all this happen? (Xi Ci
Zhuan)24
This is to say, according to the authors of the Yi Jing, “changes” themselves are unconscious and without purpose, for they are natural
phenomena governed by impersonal natural laws. They are latent (as
Whitehead also says that creativity is without character) until all
beings begin to sense and feel, then the functions of change become
manifest. Here “feelings” can be regarded as the impetus of the
organic process of the universe that manifest themselves in various
natural phenomena: the origination, generation, transformation, and
reproduction of life, and the alternation, interaction, and movement
of natural objects in general. They can be found when rain and sunshine (heaven) nourish the plants on earth, male and female animals
attract each other and give birth to their offspring, and when thunder
follows lightning and wind, etc. All these natural phenomena indicate
the work of “feelings.”25
As for Whitehead, “actual entities” (the ultimate real things) are
prehending subjects with vector character. They are parts of an
organic whole and always interrelated to one another in the process
of prehensive unification.26 In Process and Reality, Whitehead
describes the “actual entities” in greater detail. They not only have
“physical feelings,” “conceptual feelings,” and “propositional feelings,” but also “physical purposes,” “physical imaginations,” “physical
248
yih-hsien yu
memory,” and “physical anticipations.”27 In his view, there is no clearcut distinction of body and mind. Every actual entity possesses both
mental and physical poles; it is an organism with dipolar nature.
Charles Hartshorne calls this doctrine “panpsychism,” which asserts
the experiential or psychical aspect as the essence of all beings.28
Third, Whitehead and the authors of the Yi Jing have made an
audacious attempt to build up an encompassing metaphysical system
that might interpret every element of human experience with logical
coherence and empirical adequacy. They all endeavor to devise a
comprehensive scheme of thought that may include philosophical
speculations of nature and history, man and society, and the universe
and life. As Chen sees it, their “audacious endeavor” belongs to what
Plato has described in the Phaedrus as the fourth kind of divine
madness. Plato believes that there are four kinds of madness in
the soul inspired by different divinities, namely, the madness of the
prophet, of the religious, of the poet, and of the philosopher. The
philosophers are inspired by Eros that drives their soul toward
wisdom, which is the fourth kind of divine madness.29 Thus, in Chen’s
view both the authors of the Yi Jing and Whitehead are philosophers
in love with wisdom that makes them acquire a spiritual height and
intellectual breadth.30
Finally, according to Chen, the authors of the Yi Jing and Whitehead share the same view that all real existence is natural and selfcreative; it acts in accordance with natural order and leaves no room
for supernatural intervention. In the Yi Jing, the universe has long
existed as “the given,” that is, an ultimate, non-derivative fact. The
universe is a self-caused and self-creative system that does not require
any external, supernatural creator. The sixty-four hexagrams of the
Yi Jing are devised as a symbolic system that functions as a metaphor
of creativity by showing the genesis of all beings from the interactions
of space and time, sun and moon, heaven and earth, male and female,
etc. Thus the genesis of the universe and all beings is a result of the
mutual attractions and feelings for those opposite parties; it is a
natural course conforming to the natural law. While in Whitehead’s
philosophical system, God is one of the actual entities that are all
alike self-caused and self-created, God is no longer the traditional
Christian God, the transcendent, absolute, supreme being, or the
creator of the world. He is the great sufferer and companion of
the world.31 In Whitehead’s metaphysical scheme, “God” is not the
ultimate ground—which is “creativity,” but the primordial, nontemporal accident of “creativity.” However, God is by no means
exactly the same as other actual entities; God has greater responsibility than the others. In God’s primordial nature, there is an inclusive, unfettered valuation of all the pure potentials of eternal objects
two chinese philosophers
249
which thereby secures their relevance to the world. In God’s consequent nature, God incorporates the world and thus shares the
feelings of all other actual entities. In a word, Whitehead’s God is a
natural, philosophical God, instead of a supernatural, religious God.32
As Fang had once pointed out, Mahayana Buddhism, especially
Hua Yan Buddhism, also acquires the organic mode of thought, and
it would be most rewarding to do comparative study in this area. Chen
was engaged in realizing the promise of such studies. In his paper entitled “Buddhism and the Philosophies of East and West,” Chen enumerates four instances of consonance between Hua Yan Buddhism
and Whitehead’s philosophy. First of all, the Hua Yan Buddhists and
Whitehead both regard real existence as “event,” not as “matter” or
“fact,” which arises from the multiplicity and complexity of the universe in accordance with the principle of dependent-origination, not
in accordance with mechanical law.
Second, Whitehead’s doctrine of the ingression of eternal objects
into actual entities is very close to Hua Yan’s teaching of the “nonimpediment between eternal principles (li) and transient events
(shi).” In an attempt to synthesize the fluent and the permanent elements of the universe, Whitehead maintains that every actual entity
is always in becoming, and in this becoming process it takes other
actual entities as the data of its physical prehensions and eternal
objects as the data of its conceptual prehensions. Here the “eternal
objects” can be regarded as the Platonic forms without independent
existence, which are the permanent qualities of nature in our recognition. Whitehead construes that in the process of becoming everything real can always be related to these permanent factors according
to its own selections and they can thereby “ingress” into it and
become its constituents. By the same token, the Hua Yan Buddhists
once proposed the doctrine of “li shi wu ai” (the non-impediment
between eternal principles and transient events), which suggests that
in Dharmadhatu (the ultimate realm of reality) the eternal and the
transient aspects of the universe hold together with each other organically; there is no impediment between them.33
Third, the Whiteheadian God is very close to Hua Yan’s Buddha,
since their characteristics indicate a panentheistic nature. In Whitehead’s view, God is immanent in the world by his consequent nature
and at the same time transcends the world by his primordial nature.
God is both one and many, both eternal and transient, both creative
and created, whereas the Buddha in Hua Yan Buddhism is said to
have “Trikaya” (Three Bodies), i.e., Dharmakaya, Sambhogakaya, and
Nirmanakaya, which represent the eternal, transient, and the blissful
aspects of Buddha, respectively. This Buddha is an ideal Buddha as
well as an uncaused Buddha. All this indicates that the Hua Yan
250
yih-hsien yu
Buddha is also of a panentheistic nature. Finally, Hua Yan’s teaching
of “organic non-impediment” is very close to Whitehead’s doctrine of
prehensions. They both argue for interrelatedness among things and
against all kinds of mutual exclusive dualism.34
Summary and Conclusion
The encounter between Whitehead and Chinese philosophers seems
to follow an accidental as well as a necessary course in the crosscultural engagements between East and West. We may argue that in
the very beginning Whitehead did not take serious consideration of
Chinese thought in spite of his casual mentioning of it. The formidable difficulty of Whitehead’s philosophy also made it impervious to
most of the Chinese philosophers. However, they did have their
insight into other’s thought just because the reality in their views
assumes so much likeness. For Whitehead, the Oriental thought of
India and China gives an alternative to the metaphysical exposition
of reality, which makes “creativity” the ultimate instead of substantial God or brutal facts. Though he never came to understand the Yi
Jing and its philosophical implications, he has precisely characterized
this essence of Chinese thinking and set up a most promising agenda
for the dialogues of East and West. It must be clear to him that
the religions in Asia are of a quite different nature from that of
Christian Europe as well as that of Jewish and Islamic Western Asia.
As Whitehead sees it, the emergence of world-consciousness is not
only a token of rational religions, but also a token of the civilized
mode of thinking. The religious or metaphysical thought in both India
and China confirms his observation.
However, it is worth noting that Confucianism is quite different
from Buddhism to be treated as a religion. Confucianism does not
possess those elements that a formal religion requires. It doesn’t
revere any definite superhuman power, nor does it hold any regular set
of ceremonies or rigid organization of votaries. It has been generally
recognized that Chinese culture was precocious, so that the ancient
Chinese abandoned supernatural beliefs, fetishism, or Shamanism in
the early stage of their cultural development. They only reserved the
practice of ancestor worship that served the social purpose of uniting
all the members of a family or of a clan, a common practice of any agricultural society. To be sure, Confucius did endorse the practice of
ancestor worship, but his attitude toward religion was quite liberal and
humanistic. As he once said,“Show your reverence to gods and ghosts,
but keep away from them.”35 “Observe the regular movements of the
heavens and the four seasons following one another without mistake!
two chinese philosophers
251
The sage sets up religious practices for the sake of education, then the
world will be submissive to him and in peace.”36 All this may well fit to
Whitehead’s understanding of Confucianism as having disclaimed the
intuition of any personal God and having offered an impersonal order
of the universe and human society.
As Whitehead has shown his interest in Chinese thought at a time
when Chinese culture was at its low ebb and discarded by most of the
Chinese intellects, for those who sought to restore traditional Chinese
culture and national confidence Whitehead’s philosophy lent them a
friendly hand. As Fang and Chen see it, the ancient Chinese are in
line with Whitehead in their view of the universe and in their understanding of the reality. In their minds, nature is a process of creative
advance, and temporality is the essence of being. Order and novelty
are the basic features of this universe as an organic whole, which
defies the construal of scientific materialism and mechanistic determinism. In Whitehead’s lifetime, he suffered two World Wars and lost
his beloved son in the First World War. He was quite aware of the disastrous consequences of believing in any kind of materialism, in valueless brutal facts, and in the supremacy of science and technology.
All this appeals to the Chinese philosophers who consider humanity
as the highest cause for philosophical endeavors and human values
such as truth, goodness, and beauty as the highest causes for human
endeavors. Nevertheless, it should be added that from the standpoint
of Chinese philosophy there are two unavoidable difficulties in Whitehead’s metaphysical system: one is the atomistic doctrine of actual
entities and the other is the theistic doctrine of God. If the Whiteheadians of the West may learn more about Chinese philosophy that
arose from a humanistic tradition instead of the traditions of materialistic atomism and Christian theology, they might find some clues to
the solutions of the difficulties in Whitehead’s philosophy.
TUNGHAI UNIVERSITY
Taichung, Taiwan
Endnotes
The original draft of this article was first presented at Claremont School of Theology
during my visit to the Center for Process Studies, Claremont, July 22, 2004. I am indebted
to Dr. John Cobb, Jr., and Dr. John Quiring for their valuable suggestions. And I am also
indebted to Professor Chung-ying Cheng and Dr. Linyu Gu for their editorial work, which
was very helpful to its present form.
1. A. N. Whitehead, Process and Reality (1929). Corrected edition edited by David Ray
Griffin and Donald W. Sherburne (New York: Free Press, 1978), p. 7.
2. A. N. Whitehead, Religion in the Making (New York: Macmillan Company, 1962),
p. 39.
252
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
yih-hsien yu
Ibid., pp. 42–43.
Ibid., pp. 50–51.
Ibid., pp. 51–52.
Ibid., p. 61.
It is well known that the Christian God is of a supernatural and personal nature,
which was inherited from the monotheistic belief of Judaism, one of the major
western Asiatic religions. In contrast to this theism, Buddhism is primarily a kind of
atheism that advocates every human being can become a Buddha through selfenlightenment and Buddhist practices, and Confucianism is in fact not a formal religion in a rigorous sense, as it only offers abundant moral teachings on virtue and
metaphysical doctrines of dao without any religious organization behind it. In both
cases, the secular demands on theistic religions from their worshippers should have
little to do with them, for theoretically there is no supernatural God to answer those
demands.
A. N. Whitehead, Religion in the Making, p. 62.
Ibid., pp. 66–76. It is worth noting that regardless of Whitehead’s discontent with
Christian God in Religion in the Making, his follower Charles Hartshorne has made
every effort to turn Whitehead’s doctrine of God in Process and Reality into the foundation of a Christian natural theology, which was later completed by John Cobb, Jr.
Through their joint efforts, a new theological movement based on process philosophy was unleashed in the past decades and is still in progress. Chiefly, see Charles
Hartshorne, The Divine Relativity: A Social Conception of God (New Haven and
London: Yale University Press, 1948); John Cobb, Jr., A Christian Natural Theology
(Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1965); David R. Griffin, God, Power and Evil: A
Process Theodicy (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1976); John Cobb, Jr., and David
R. Griffin, Process Theology: An Introductory Exposition (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1976); and Lewis S. Ford, Transforming Process Theism (Albany: State
University of New York, 2000).
Ibid., pp. 84–85.
According to Whitehead, modern scientific materialism unconsciously presupposes
that material can be said to be here in space and here in time, or here in space-time,
in a perfectly definite sense, which does not require for its explanation any reference
to other regions of space-time. This isolated character of matter in definite space-time
is called “simple location.” As Whitehead sees it, the presupposition of simple location indicates a simplified edition of immediate matter of fact, which is resulted from
elaborate logical constructions of a high degree of abstractions. If one mistakes the
abstract constructions for concrete facts, he then commits the “fallacy of misplaced
concreteness.” See A. N. Whitehead, Science and the Modern World (New York:
Macmillan Company, 1925), pp. 48–55.
Thome Fang, “The Scientific Universe and the Problems of Life,” in KeXue ZheXue
Yu Rensheng (Science, Philosophy and Life) (Taipei: Rainbow, 1955), p. 117. The term
“bifurcation of nature” appearing in Whitehead’s Concept of Nature is used to indicate the consequence of the theory of psychic additions to the object known in perception. According to Whitehead, the scientific causal theory of perception suggests
that there are two kinds of nature: an apparent nature arising from our psychic additions furnished by a perceiving mind (what Locke called “secondary qualities”) and
a causal nature composed of things in themselves (what Locke called “primary qualities” and “things in themselves”). This theory results in a bifurcation of nature into
two systems of reality; one is real but never known and the other is known but only
the byplay of the mind. See A. N. Whitehead, Concept of Nature (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1971), pp. 26–48.
Thome Fang, KeXue ZheXue Yu Rensheng (Science, Philosophy, and Life), p. 209.
The term “creative advance” first appearing in Whitehead’s An Enquiry concerning
the Principles of Natural Knowledge is used to indicate the developmental side of the
duality of nature; the other side is the permanence of things. See A. N. Whitehead,
Whitehead’s An Enquiry concerning the Principles of Natural Knowledge (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1982), p. 98.
Thome Fang, KeXue ZheXue Yu Rensheng (Science, Philosophy, and Life), p. 125 and
p. 344.
two chinese philosophers
253
15. Ibid., p. 125.
16. Thome Fang, “A Philosophical Glimpse of Man and Nature in Chinese Culture,”
Creativity in Man and Nature (Taipei: Linking, 1980), pp. 25–26.
17. Ibid., pp. 26–27. “The Principle of Three Ultimates” in the Yi Ying indicates the fact
that a human is only one of the members of nature, but a most distinguished member.
Human beings assume a central place between heaven and earth, for they are the
only creatures that can create. See Z. D. Sung (tr.), The Text of Yi King and Its Appendixes: Chinese Original with English Translation (Taipei: Wen-Hua Publication, 1983),
p. 274.
18. Thome Fang, “The World and the Individual in Chinese Metaphysics,” Creativity in
Man and Nature (Taipei: Linking, 1980), p. 30. The term “organicism” used here simply
refers to the organic mode of thinking that conceives the organic relation (internal
relation) among things and the intrinsic value in them, which unites man and the universe as a whole. Organicism is primarily against mechanism, materialism, and any
kind of dualism. Archie J. Bahm once argued for a difference between “the philosophy of Organism” and “the philosophy of Organicism” and ascribed Whitehead to
the former in opposition to the latter. It will be beyond the scope of the present article
to deal with this issue, and we had better use the term “organicism” to refer to the
commons of the two. For details, see Archie J. Bahm, “Deficiencies in Whitehead’s
Philosophy,” Process Studies 2, no. 4 (Winter 1972): 301–305.
19. Thome Fang, Creativity in Man and Nature, pp. 30–31. In fact, this notion of organicism is termed “yuan rong” in Chinese, which literally means “round and infusion”
and connotes the meanings of “all-encompassing” and “interfusion.” According to
Fang, all the major schools of Chinese philosophy share this notion of organicism,
which can be found in the Yi Jing, the representative work of Confucianism, in Dao
De Jing (as Lao Zi said being [you] and not-being [wu] begetting each other) and in
the doctrines of “si fa jie” (four real realms or Dharmadhatus) of Hua Yan Buddhism.
See also note 33.
20. See Journal of the American Oriental Society 92, no. 2 (April-June 1972): 237–249;
also Wellmut Wilhelm and Richard Wilhelm, Understanding the Yi Jing: The Wilhelm
Lectures on the Book of Changes (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1979),
p. 317.
21. All these books were published both in Taiwan by Wen Ching Bookstore of Taipei
and in Mainland China by Shanghai Ancient Bookstore.
22. Shih-chuan Chen, “The Philosophy in the Yi Jing and Whitehead’s Philosophy of
Organism,” in Zhongguo ZheXue Yu Huaidehai (Chinese Philosophy and Alfred
North Whitehead) (Taipei: Tung-Tai, 1989), pp. 6–9. It should be noted that Chen also
observes that there are significant differences between the Yi Jing and Whitehead’s
thought. In his paper “Whitehead and the Book of Changes” Chen has argued all the
differences and among them that the concept of creativity in the Yi Jing is not so
much like that in Whitehead philosophy with respect to its function. For the authors
of the Yi Jing did not note a difference between creativity as the concrete function
of the universe and creativity as an abstract characteristic applying to all existences;
whereas Whitehead did.
23. The term “gan” literally refers to “sensing.” Generally speaking, the ancient Chinese
assumed almost a hylozoistic outlook of nature that sees everything in nature as alive,
animating, and subject to mutual influences. This concept of “gan” can be regarded
as a pre-scientific expression of Whitehead’s “feelings” or “prehensions” with a strong
ecological connotation. “Senses” or “feelings” in the view of the authors of the Yi
Jing are evident facts in nature: they directly appeal to our intuitions and do not
require any theoretical explanation.
24. See Z. D. Sung (tr.), “Xi Ci Zhuan,” The Text of Yi King and Its Appendixes: Chinese
Original with English Translation, p. 295. In this text, the phrase “the most miraculous performance of nature” is translated from “zhi shen” in Chinese, which literally
means “the highest God” or “the highest Deity.” However, to examine the context of
the text one cannot find any religious implication in it; the term can only be construed
as an exclamation at the unpredictable and marvelous work of nature.
25. Shih-chuan Chen, “The Philosophy in the Yi Jing and Whitehead’s Philosophy of
Organism,” pp. 15–16.
254
yih-hsien yu
26. A. N. Whitehead, Science and the Modern World (New York: Macmillan, 1925), pp.
68–69. The term “prehension” first appearing in Science and the Modern World refers
to “uncognitive apprehension.” It then extends to designate the concept of a process
of prehensive unification, which characterizes the feature of our concrete experience
as a gathering of things into the unity of prehension not isolated in space or time but
referring to other places and other times for its existence.
27. In Process and Reality the term “feeling” is almost equivalent to the term “prehension.” According to Whitehead’s definitions, prehensions are concrete facts of relatedness, whereas positive prehensions are termed “feelings” and negative prehensions
“eliminate from feeling.” In a sense, Whitehead takes “feeling” as the immediate
response of a subject to its environment, that is, to relate itself with whatever other
than itself. The so-called “physical feelings” or “conceptual prehensions” refers to the
prehending subject’s relation to physical things and to ideal forms, respectively.
“Propositional feelings” are feelings with the content of propositions, that is, the true
or false statements of particular actualities, and they arise from a special type of integration synthesizing physical feelings with conceptual feelings. The integration of
physical feelings with conceptual feelings can also be termed “physical purposes” if
it is not involved with consciousness or judgments. They are rather a primitive type
of feelings that can be seen in the desire for and the aversion from something of a
prehending subject. The rest of the terms also suggest the absence of consciousness
and judgment in some primitive types of mental activities. See Process and Reality,
pp. 22–23, pp. 256–257, and p. 266.
28. See Charles Hartshorne, “Panpsychism,” in Vergilius Ferm (ed.), A History of Philosophical Systems (New York: The Philosophical Library, 1950), pp. 442–452. According to Charles Hartshorne, panpsychism is the doctrine that everything is psychic or
has a psychic aspect and all things consist exclusively of “souls,” that is, of units of
experiencing with their qualifications, relations, and communities. The doctrine is the
basic motif of Whitehead’s metaphysics of experience in which the ultimate reals are
units of experience, as minute as electrons and as great as God. This doctrine may
appeal to the Chinese mind but may also be a plethora, for the ancient Chinese never
make any distinction between body and mind, physical and psychical.
29. See Phaedrus, 244a–245a, translated by R. Hackforth, in The Collected Dialogues
of Plato Including the Letters, edited by Edith Hamilton and Huntington Carins
(Bollingen Foundation, 1961), pp. 491–492.
30. Shih-chuan Chen, “The Philosophy in the Yi Jing and Whitehead’s Philosophy of
Organism,” p. 17.
31. In Process and Reality, Whitehead tries to address the issue of the relation between
God and the world. He suggests that God is the great sufferer and companion of the
world since God is immanent in the temporal world. However, on the other hand,
God has its transcendent and permanent aspect. He is also the poet of the world with
tender patience leading it by his vision of truth, beauty, and goodness. Here we have
emphasized the contrast between supernatural God and natural God, religious
God and philosophical God. However, we may also follow Charles Hartshorne’s
interpretation to understand the Whiteheadian God as a panentheistic God that
has eternal-temporal consciousness, and knows and includes the world in his own
actuality. See Shih-chuan Chen, “The Philosophy in the Yi Jing and Whitehead’s
Philosophy of Organism,” pp. 18–20; Process and Reality, p. 32, pp. 346–347; Charles
Hartshorne and William L. Reese (eds.), Philosophers Speak of God (Chicago: The
University of Chicago Press, 1976), pp. 1–16.
32. The so-called panentheism may be regarded as a combination of Spinozistic pantheism and classical theism that holds God to be both immanent in and transcendent from
this world. Thus the panentheistic God is of a dipolar nature; it comprises both the features of a theistic God and a pantheistic God. Accordingly, Whitehead’s God is also of
a dipolar nature; the primordial nature of God exemplifies the permanent, potential,
and transcendent aspect of God and is the abode of eternal objects, whereas the consequent nature of God shows the transient, actual, and immanent aspect of God and
is resulted from the interaction between God and the world. Shih-chuan Chen, “The
Philosophy in the Yi Jing and Whitehead’s Philosophy of Organism,” p. 20.
two chinese philosophers
255
33. According to Hua Yan Buddhism, there are four Dharmadhatus, namely, the realm
of universal principles, the realm of transient events, the realm of non-impediment
between universal principles and the transient events, and the realm of nonimpediment among transient events. See Cheng Guan, Hua Yan Jing Shuchao (A
Commentary Manuscript of Hua Yan Sutra), first volume (Taipei: Hsinwenfeng),
p. 31.
34. Shih-chuan Chen, “Buddhism and the Philosophies of East and West,” Sixiang Tiandi
(Drops of Thought) (Taipei: Chang Chun Teng, 1976), pp. 75–76 and pp. 128–152.
Chen’s understanding of Hua Yan Buddhism is largely based on the works of Hua
Yan Masters Tu Shun, Zhi Yan, Fa Zang, and Cheng Guan of Tang Dynasty.
35. Confucius, “The Six Chapter Yong Ye,” in Analects.
36. See Z. D. Sung (tr.), “T’uan Ch’uan of Kuan Hexagram,” in The Text of Yi King,
p. 91.
Chinese Glossary
Anhui
Thome Fang
Cheng Guan
Tongcheng
Dao
Tu Shun
Dao De Jing
Tuan Zhuan of Guan
Fa Zang
Xi Ci Zhuan
gan
yao
Hua Yan
Yi Jing
Lao Zi
yin yang
li shi wu ai
Yong Ye
san ji zhi dao
you wu
Shang Shu
yuan rong
Shih-chuan Chen
zhi shen
si fa jie
Zhi Yan