Philosophy East and West

Abstract:

This essay is composed of three parts, corresponding to three theses: (1) dualism is at once universal and particular (cultural); (2) the opposition between God the Father and Dao the Mother is the most apt rendering of the differences between Western and Chinese dualisms; (3) History may be understood as an ongoing patriarchal rationalization whose contours are determined by the particular "bent" of a given culture. By contrast with the temporal preconceptions of Western thought (Plato's Ideas and the Hebrew God are both "eternal"), China's spatial bias—and both "bents" are at least partly determined by the respective writing systems—led it to conceive the body/soul duality as soul in the body, and so to give religious priority to "body technology" (as opposed to the salvation of souls), to ritual (as opposed to discourse), and to the feminine. Because of Platonic negativity with regard to the body and the feminine, in contrast with male/female complementarity in Judaism, our attempt to understand Chinese culture in terms that are familiar to us must begin with Biblical, and not Platonic, categories—whence comes the necessity of comparing God the Father and Dao the Mother.