Interview With Philosopher François Jullien: ''Distance As An Opportunity To Think''

François Jullien is a French philosopher, sinologist and helenist. His works combine the thinking of East and West, deconstructing the European system of views and ideas from the outside, rethinking ethical and aesthetic issues. Jullien is an advocate of intercultural exchanges, not a humbug for universalism; The supporter of fruitful tensions between cultures, and not the draftsman of the defining differences, is perfectly visible in this philosophical thinking, which he shares with Speaking Algirdas Acaus. A conversation about European identity, the distance between East and West, the cohesive identity of the cultures, and the fruitful way of knitting dialogues.

photo author: melenama

Algirdas Acus: It is very interesting, what questions did not give you peace of mind that you originally turned to philosophy, and then went to China. What did you find unexpected when looking for answers to these questions?

François Jullien: I did not go to China to find Chinese thinking or escape from the European one. On the contrary, it was a way for me to look at the European philosophy differently. It was a way to deconstruct European thinking from the outside. We know what it means to deconstruct ourselves from within. The modern European tradition is characterized by a great movement between Athens and Jerusalem, the Grecians and Jews, Socrates and Abraham. For me, it was a different philosophical strategy to access other terms of the origin of the matter, so that I could go beyond the bounds of Greek thinking and look outside from it.

So the road through China helped find another place, another language, get out of what is European or Indo-European, go beyond the writing, and at the same time go out of history. What does it mean to leave your mind outside? What does it mean to leave for the great field of our philosophers? Being, God, truth, freedom ... How are you thinking in the absence of all this? If you go out for a big national definition? And how is it thought of leaving the European language, which articulates these concepts? How is it thought when it comes out of the field of philosophy history?

Moving to another place at the same time meant a return to the European thinking that I would ask him from the Chinese outside. I say "at the same time" and not "later". If, in order to get back to work, we will wait until we learn Chinese well enough, read the texts, the enormous power of Chinese texts, we will never return, because we will become Chinese.
Here's the severity, perhaps even the contradiction: living there at the same time to come back, so that I would again ask from outside what is not appealing from within. In other words, we will obviously discover new angles in obvious cases. What I see is what we have as if in nature - what classical educators called natural light, that is, thinking. I took the position from which we could escape from our ignorance. I call "ignorance" what I'm thinking and do not mention. This is what our thinking throws in.
In one of your interviews I was asked about disputes about the constitution of the European Union and the competition between a secular and a Christian vision, you questioned why Europeans need to be defined. I would like to ask whether the search for identity is so important to us.

First of all I would like to thank you for being here and to pay attention to the gravity of the language. I believe that this difficulty is a European opportunity. European thinking has evolved through languages, and therefore I speak for many languages ​​in Europe. I am not a protector of the French language - I speak German, Lithuanian, Italian or any other language. It would be a shame if a single global language, English or any other language enters into this language diversity, would be a shame. Language thinks through its diversity. Or at distances - I really love the concept of distance. There is a gap between languages ​​and the severity of the translation. When you think of this gravity, this distance, you have the opportunity to think.

In this context, I understand the European project and the cultural pseudo-identity of Europe. I do not think there is a cultural identity, because culture is characterized by change, transformation. To impose on culture the thinking of an identity means closing it in the museum and thus killing her. What culturally does not stop changing and thus grow. In addition, the identity works through the difference. I think that there is no need to think about culture through cultural differences. For example, there is no need to talk about the differences between French and Lithuanian cultures. I think that the difference relates to the one who defines what is specific to him. The distinction is characteristic of the definition. The difference is used to define. As Aristotle says, moving from difference to difference we can achieve the essence of the subject. I would not be inclined to talk about cultural differences, rather speaking about the distances between cultures.

Cultural can not be sorted according to individual defining features. It's been done more than once. However, we are well aware that what is not included in the sorting is the most interesting. What an exception. We can not sort the cultures in the usual way. For example, what is the distinctive feature of French culture? La Fontaine? Does rimbaud Both The tension between both of them. Both one and another. Culture gets the definition through the tension between La Fontaine and Rimbaud. Just as French culture is Descartes and Cartazianism. Or maybe André Breton and Surrealism? Both The tension between the two who employs their ideas. Breton surrealism arose due to the tension with Cartzianism, and also, looking retrospectively from the perspective of surrealism, one can understand the creative, stimulating research and adventures that cartish rationalism is at risk.

Let's adapt it all to Europe. After all, it unites us. It is enough to remember the project of a dozen years ago, which sought to draw up a European Constitution. In the preamble to the Constitution, it was intended to define what Europe is. This has obviously not been achieved. Some said that Europe is Christian, its roots are in Christianity, others are that Europe is secular, educative. The definition of European culture has not been successful because the European culture can not be defined. Europe creates a distance between the thinking of Christian religion and educators. It's dynamic. This is a feature of Europe. This is not an identity within the definition. It's rather a surplus.
To sum up, I would say that European culture can not be defined without any identity. It is perceived through its resources, its fertility. I understand the resource not as identity and values. Much is about values. But values ​​are always related to power - we know from Nietzsche. Values ​​are confessed and preached about them. Meanwhile, resources are not confessed, they are not being discussed. Resources are used or not. They do not belong to anyone. Anyone who has learned French, read French, visiting museums and looking at French paintings, uses French cultural resources. And often it does much better than the French themselves. No cultural property. There is no point in saying "my culture".

Using European cultural resources means keeping them alive. That's what Europe I want. The language of Europe, where it speaks its language, because we speak the language, and where the other languages ​​are listened. Translation is a complicated procedure that can not reduce distance, but it can trigger tension between languages, and thus stimulate reflection.

photo author: Fusion of Horizons

Do you see in Europe today any influential religious, philosophical or cultural movements that are related to the Eastern tradition? Does the East affect the Europeans in expanding the boundaries of thinking?

In Europe, the influence of so-called Eastern thinking, a certain wisdom, is felt. Unlike European thinking, who is interested in access to cognition, Eastern wisdom is interested in life. It is not true, but life, if we apply a rough split.

Europe is witnessing a zen fashion. In the stands we can see notes like "be zen". This is absurd. Zen is not imperative. It is replaced by morality, morality of some kind of spontaneity and flexibility, opposite to morality, which indicates how to behave. "Be Zen" spontaneity is absurd since zen is not imperative. It is such a thing, which arises gradually, and who is being prepared, who needs sense and can not be brought to the formula of wisdom, good life, or personal development. However, this is what is happening today in Europe, and I think this is happening in the same way as in France. A thriving lightness and laziness of personal development.

Indeed, there is a large cortical turn, which has no equivalent in the Far East: in Europe, philosophy has evolved as the only form of wisdom for wanting to know. It is a European logo. Scientific logos. What does this mean? I think that in the tradition of philosophy, as access to cognition, what remains is a matter of relief. Who teaches how to live. The Gospel reads: "I am truth, a way and a life." Religiosity took over the question of how to live, which philosophy abandoned. I think that today, when you go back to a dogmatic religion, you have a space to live and think. It is necessary for philosophy to deal with the issue of life and to do it on the basis of literature. After all, in Europe, the question of life is raised not only by religion, but also by literature and novels. There is a new phase in philosophy: the collaboration between philosophy and literature, literary descriptions and philosophical conceptualization. Philosophy is a tool, a concept, a question. It is imperative that literary descriptions and philosophical constructs work together to encourage reflection on life without inclining religiosity and without moving into a kind of leap in personal development.

I am talking quite abruptly because we do not have much time and I see that we have to find positions today. I recognize this situation not only in France but also in Germany, Italy and other countries where I would go. Bookshelves for philosophy are reduced to their place by building texts about wisdom, personal development, and so on. All this pushes philosophy to the country. This is not a book. They do not think about it. It's just a recipe, market, marketing. It is for pleasure, not thinking. The philosophy of thinking about life needs to be encouraged. It provides thinking about how to have a "existence" concept. There is gravity here, because existence does not rely on concepts as well as the essence of it. Existence can only be construed in terms of what is beyond the bounds of knowledge. I think it is necessary to promote philosophy, which not only excite the existence, but also ponder it. A withdrawing religion should not be replaced by anyone else - personal development or supposed Eastern wisdom.

I would like to turn to China. China, as it says, has carried out a socialist revolution, and it is not known whether it is a capitalist or a Marxist state, but in some way imitates the West. How Strong West Colonialism Has Crawled China? How should we deal with China today: how about yourself or how else?

These issues need to be considered historically. China's relationship with Europe is interesting because China has evolved independently of Europe, regardless of it. When we, Europeans, landed in the New World, in America, we met a blank world or a world that we made empty, which did not resist being overturned or eroded. Finding humanity there - America - the question arose as to whether the ones we met are like we are before culture, or just as we have ruined our culture. But the same ship, on the opposite side, on the south coast of China, is discovering a complete world. Chinese missionaries quickly realize that they will have to learn Chinese, that there are emperors and classics here. Need to adapt to China. In the sixteenth century, the canton was already larger than Paris. We need to understand what shocked it was to European thinking.
The first European intellectual, paying attention to this, was Montaigne. In his last essay, Montaigne says that the discovered world was much more varied than imagined that being there, he was just as culturally as we were in Europe. These are not good wild ones - they are as advanced as we are. I like to quote Pascal's phrase from Reflection: "Which of the two is likely to be greater: Moses or China?" The alternative between Moses and China seems to be distorted: Moses is acting as a monotheistic figure, bearing the commandments related to God's question, and not Confucius, Lao Dze or any Chinese thinker, and China.

It's not by yourself. This opposes the contradiction between European and Chinese thinking. At the end of the first book, Montesquieu's "Spirit of Law", he divided political regimes, as did Plato and Aristotle: monarchy, aristocracy, democracy, good and bad regimes. O china Where to help her? He realizes that he can not assign it anywhere. Finally, find her a place. Immediately afterwards, Montesquieu writes that China is not being translated into something else. Already at the beginning of the 19th century it is understood that it is impossible to convert China for cultural reasons. Despite the fact that Buddhism entered China a millennium earlier, it was perceived that Christianity would not penetrate there for cultural reasons - precisely because Christian message does not care about Chinese.

By the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, China was the same, if not more, technically developed like Europe. Press, parak, compass, water supply ... So what happened in the 16th century in Europe, not in China, is discovering a new science - classical physics. Mathematical Physics, Galileo, Decatur, Newtonian Physics. Physics of universal natural laws. In China, we find equivalents to so-called engineering thinking like, for example, Leondard de Vincio in Europe. But we can not find the equivalent of Galileo, a new science, mechanistic, causative physics, a reasonably crazy but fruitful idea, citing Galileo's phrase that God created the world with equations and geometric figures. Europe has surmounted incredibly. For example, science history. Science existed in ancient China, ancient India, Arabian lands. What has happened since the 16th century Did science exist only in Europe? There was, therefore, an increase in erosion and stunning power in Europe, which was the result of the new knowledge born of the modeling of fertility, from its resources. In other words, for mathematics.

It happened that Europe, having first arrived in China in the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, first began to trade with it. Missions have failed. At the end of the 18th century, a European mission will be eradicated due to the Chinese resistance. In the 19th century, the force returned to China in order to take it forcefully, to receive opium, to begin economic activity. Concessions meant occupied territory and inequality. China is pushing for pressure on Europe. China, which considered its culture to be the oldest, the most important one that was proud of itself, suddenly felt naked, poor, lagging. So she starts borrowing. What Scientific and political models. She discovers that she has not noticed the idea of ​​progress. The great Chinese idea is a process, by no means progress. These ideas need to be addressed. Progress means moving toward something. In fact, this is a religious idea. Not Greek, but from Hebrew and Christian traditions. Europe tried to bring it around, but it did not succeed to its fullest. It is the pursuit of happiness in the eighteenth century or Marxism in the nineteenth century. When Europe returns to China at the end of the nineteenth century, Europe is delighted with the idea of ​​progress.

photo author: Claude Truong-Ngoc

Thus, China discovers that there are ideas for underdeveloped progress, as well as science. Classical European Studies, Classical Physics, to be taught. It also reveals political thinking. In China, it was thought like this: there is a good prince or a bad prince; Order or mess. Meanwhile, Greek political thinking consists in the idea that there are political ideas of political forms, regimes, as Plato says: anarchy, oligarchy, democracy, etc. T Good, bad forms and so on. Meanwhile, China has never thought of regimes other than monarchy: just about a good or a bad prince. So she needs to learn, borrow. Japan did it, but it was easier for her. Japan had an emperor who decided that the country was so small that it needed to modernize, to take much from the West. Japan is paying off because it has borrowed from China for thousands of years. They are able to do this, they can borrow from another culture.

China has not been able to borrow, its territory is much larger, the country is more politically divided, and so on. Nevertheless, she learned western forms of politics. First of all, Huxley-type revolutionism, and later Marxism. The creation of the Chinese Communist Party is a simulation of Western policy. It is necessary to consolidate the phenomena in history, and then to see that China is currently completing the process of catching up and overcoming the great formulations of the 20th century, the great slogans of the beginning of the century. China has learned from Europe, its economic and political power has grown. Desired power, revenge, new hegemony, new imperialism.

I would say that China, by adopting communism, first emulated it. She borrowed the model, but he did not like it. It is important that the borrowed model was born from the Soviet revolution, when Russia became the seventeenth Russia in the USSR. However, the Soviet revolution was a workers' revolution, and China is a land of peasants. Shanghai is the only area where workers were - Shanghai. Applied to China, the Soviet model did not work. This lesson was taught by Mao. After gaining power in a batch, Mao said that the model needs to be adapted to the Chinese state of the country.

The authoritarian-totalitarian tradition of the old Chinese, born in the 13th-14th centuries BC., Was also taken over. It's called legism, but not in legal sense. This is a political theory of totalitarianism. One of her ideas is, for example, that in order to consolidate sovereign power, it is necessary to eliminate folk knowledge. Or fight in order to spoil the people in order to maintain a stable state of peasants and soldiers in a state that does not allow them to engage in trade or science - activities that cause problems for the authorities. I would answer your question that not only was the borrowed model adapted, but also the revived totalitarianism tradition. What distinguishes this situation today is the fact that the Chinese Communist Party is ruling in a highly capitalist country. This is unique because other Communist parties either collapsed or were preserved as North Korea. Meanwhile, in China, the communist party transformed, while remaining communist, t. Y With all its consequences - the desire for power and so on.

You mentioned that it was very difficult for Christianity to penetrate the East. Maybe you can comment more about why? Now in South Korea, Japan, there are some Christian communities - what is their prospect?

What, my head, makes it difficult for Christianity to penetrate China is the great Christian narrative. This is a story that requires some madness. Faith madness Moria in front of the sofia. Christian madness in front of Greek sofia. This is also the thought of God, who dies on the cross as a man, even worse, as a slave. What is the overturning of the hierarchy! The Chinese world, to which the hierarchy is given as it is, it seems even more than crazy. Moreover, Christianity is an event religion. Something happens. In the gospel, the beginning of mankind is genesis. Something happens: it's created, born, happens. After this day, I do not know how to translate the word "event" into Chinese. In Chinese it means "things", "things". Events mean things to do. An event is not thought of as a break or occurrence.

Chinese thinking is thinking of a regulated process that takes place through in and jang change. Chinese culture tends to regulate its actions according to how the world is organized. It is located between winter and summer, day and night. China does not care about the beginning or the end of the world. Little is the story about her creation, there are only a few chunks. Great start questions, Big Bang - all these are not Chinese issues. There are several small elements of cosmogony, but this is nothing compared to the Greek or some other cosmogony. So, I think that the thinking of Christianity as an event and narrative, the great life story did not turn into the whole body of Chinese thinking. This is the same cultural resistance that Montesquieu noticed.

And what's happening today, why does the Bible or Christianity move more actively after China? It is precisely because Christianity is a certain resistance to communism. In China, which is both imperial and responsible for enrichment, Christianity represents or embodies a different endeavor which is not just power or money. Christian news is not this world. Let's recall Christ's answer to Pontius Pilate: My kingdom is not this world. All this today is like a way to open the gap between Chinese and power.

Credits: Algirdas Acus