Qing (情) Gan (感) and Tong (通): Decolonizing the Universal From a Chinese Perspective Part 2

Abstract

ABSTRACTABSTRACTCartesianism is deified as the mythical beginning of Modern Western Philosophy. This paper draws on evaluations of the epistemology and colonial context of Cartesianism from Latin American philosophers to show how the Cartesian project of universalism has been detrimental to non-Western cultures. In contrast to this exclusionist universalism, this paper provides an alternative model of universalism that is premised on the interaction between embodied particulars. It stresses how, in this Chinese conception of universalism as resulting from feeling (gan, 感) and response (ying, 应), the agent is expected to subdue her own ego and its desire to impose itself onto particulars. This imposition would be an obstruction that impedes the free flow of interactions between particulars and so acts as an impediment to participating in the “universal.” This reconstructed Chinese conception of universalism resonates with Enrique Dussel’s self-reflexive understanding of Modernity and Aimé Césaire’s conception of the universal.KEYWORDS: Qing (情)universalismEnrique DusselCartesianismEdward Saiddecolonial AcknowledgementsMy thanks to Jacob Bender for reading previous drafts of this paper and for his always invaluable input. My thanks also to the editors of this journal David Jones and Jennifer Liu for their help throughout the publication process. My thanks also to the copyeditor for her very insightful edits.Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Additional informationNotes on contributorsShuchen XiangShuchen Xiang is Mount Hua Professor of Philosophy in the department of philosophy at Xidian University, China. She is author of A Philosophical Defense of Culture: Perspectives from Confucianism and Cassirer (SUNY Press, 2021), Chinese Cosmopolitanism: The History and Philosophy of an Idea (Princeton University Press, 2023).