Shen, Vincent. "Whitehead and Chinese Philosophy: The Ontological Principle and Huayan Buddhism's Concept of shi." Handbook of Whiteheadian Process Thought Vol. I. Edited by Michel Weber and Will Desmond. Heusenstamm, Germany: Ontos Verlag 2008. 613-632.

Abstract

I was quite excited when, some thirty five years ago, I read Process and Reality, and saw that Whitehead wrote, even only in passing,  that his philosophy of organism seemed to "approximate more to some strains of Indian, or Chinese, thought, than to Western Asiatic or European thought" (PR 7). Later, I realized that, apart from a very general impression of Chinese philosophy, this comment indicates little more than Whitehead's intuition of general similarities between his philosophy and Chinese thought. Certainly, Whitehead probably had more knowledge of Indian philosophy, including Indian Buddhism: according to Vitor Lowe, Whitehead's familiarity with Indian philosophy might come from the influence of his elder brother  Henry Whitehead, who served almost thirty years as Bishop of Madra in India, and James Wood, his colleague at Harvard, an expert on Indian philosophy (Lowe 1990, 194-195). This might lie in the background to his writing about Buddhism in Religion in the Making. Thus, I contend that, historically speaking, Whitehead's discussion of Buddhism resembles Indian varieties more than Chinese ones (such as the Chinese Mahayana Buddhism as developed in the Sanlun, Weishi, Huayan, Tiantai, Chan, and Jingtu schools) and is even further removed from autochthonous Chinese philosophies like Confucianism and Daoism. Nevertheless, this does not prevent us from discussing the possible relation between Whitehead's thought and Chinese philosophy. Especially now, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, it is clear that there could be mutual enrichment between Whitehead's philosophy and Chinese philosophy, when we consider the following important trends in the twenty-first century. The first important change is the move from human-centrism to the view that human beings are part of nature. Philosophies in the twentieth century tended to be too human-centered: phenomenology, existentialism, structuralism, critical theory, neo-Marxism, hermeneutics, and even post-modernism, all focused on human affairs, with little attention paid to nature. Unfortunately, as long as human beings remain blinkered by human-centered discourses, the difficulties they face become unsolvable. Nevertheless, with the emergence of the ecological movement, new discoveries in atronomical physics and new interest in the universe, we nowadays concern ourselves more with nature and the cosmic dimension of human experience. This leads us to an urgent need of philosophy of nature and the necessity to reintegrate human beings in nature. Whitehead's efforts in the philosophy of nature and Chinese philosophy's emphasis on the optimal harmony with nature will surely continue to inspire solutions for the problem of humanity's place in nature. The second is the shift from an ontology of substance to an to an ontology of dynamic relation. The ontology of substance since Aristotle has been replaced in the twentieth century by the ontology of event, in the early writings of Whitehead such as the Principle of Relativity, Knowledge of the Natural World, and the Concept of Nature. Now, in my view, an ontology of events should yield to an ontology of dynamic relation, which has been the basic vision of existence supposed by Chinese philosophy. For example, the Daoist concept of dao, penetrating all things (dao  tong wei yi), the Confucian concept of ren that represents the inner connection of the human with all things, and the Buddhist concept of interdependent causation (yuanqi) all imply an ontology of dynamic relation. In Whitehead's Process and Reality, we see also a philosophically articulated ontology of dynamic relation. For Whitehead, each actual entity, by its prehension and objectification, is related to and directs itself towards other actual entities. Whitehead's three principles - the principle of relativity, the principle of process, and the ontological principle - offer us an image of cosmic process in which all actual entities are dynamically related in a process of becoming, in which one and many unify and differentiate in an ever-extending cosmos. The third fundamental change is that all countries in the world are now facing the challenge of globalization, understood basically as a process of deterritorialization. This involves all humankind on the globe as a whole, and is proceeding in every domain of human activities - health care, technology, environment, economics, politics, education, culture, religion, etc. I define globalization as follows: Globalization is a historical process of deterritorialization or cross-bordering, by which human desire, human universalizability and interconnectedness are to be realized on the planet as a whole, and to be concretized now as global free market, transnational political order and cultural globalism. Here "deterritorialization" should be understood in a broader sense, as a process of crossing borders, or going beyong oneself to the Multiple Other. Globalization is indeed the present historical stage of realizing the unceasing process of human "strangification" and a further invitation to generosity to the other. What impresses me greatly in Whitehead's philosophy is the persistent cosmological or ontological energy of each being's going beyond itself by the dynamism of prehension and objectification, as each actual entity is oriented towards multiple others and contributes thereby to the constitution of multiple others. This is very similar to the confucian concept of shu or tui (extension); to the Daoist concept of the dao's giving birth to countless things and the sage's always giving himself to many others; and to the Chinese Buddhist concept of huixiang (turning one's merit towards others). Indeed, this is a moment in history when people feel both close to each other and very vulnerable. Now should be the critical moment for opening oneself toward the Multiple Other rather than keeping within one's self-enclosure. In responding to today's conflicts created by the self-enclosure of different parts (e.g. different disciplines, economic interests, cultures, political and religious groups), we should be more concerned with each other and the possibility of mutual enrichment. In order to overcome antagonism by appealing to effective dialogue, I have proposed in recent years "strangification" and "language appropriation" as viable strategies. The neologism "strangification" may appear strange in English, yet is much more understandable in Chinese, where the etymology of waitui signifies the act of going outside of oneself to the Multiple Other, or going outside of one's familiarity to strangeness and to the foreigners. This act presupposes the appropriation of language by which we learn to express our ideas or values in languages understanable to others. In their turn, "strangification" and "language appropriation" presuppose an original generosity towards the other, without limiting oneself to the claim of reciprocity, and without which there is no reciprocity. In my view, the original generosity is the sine qua non of social relationships and ethical rules. Whitehead's philosophy offers us an onto-cosmological vision that is always inspiring in the search for a profound philosophical foundation for understanding creativity, generosity, and strangification, most urgent for the world today in the process of globalization. Chinese philosophy and Whitehead's philosophy will surely be mutually inspiring and mutually enriching for each other, especially because of their common concern with creativity, harmony and universal relatedness.