The Zhongyong Dialectic: A Bridge into the Relational World

Abstract

Three tensions are said to exist in my relational theory, i.e. between ontology and behavior, between structure and process, and between substance and procedure. Underlying these tensions is a crucial question: How to identify the subject and object and understand the domination–subordination power relationship therein? These seeming inconsistencies appear if observed through a dualistic lens but may well disappear when viewed from the zhongyong dialectic, which, as an epistemological and methodological device, assumes no binary dichotomy in the first place. It believes in immanent relationality and dynamic transformability, holding that interaction based on difference rather than homogeneity generates healthy life and arguing that subject and object, structure and process, substance and procedure—all these categories constructed as dichotomous opposites are in fact mutually transformable as related parts of a whole. The evolution of global society, from international society of nation-states, to global society of humans, and to planetary society of all on earth (or beyond), clearly indicates the relational transformability across the ostensible subject–object divide. Power relations exist, but any unilateral exercise of power is ephemeral, for power over will not last, while power to will.