phi-losophy and science, I would like to discuss a third fundamental re-lation; namely the relation between the finite and the infinite world.
I quote Professor Guo Yi: “Dao is a core concept in Chinese philosophy, and was held in high esteem by all Confucianism, Daoism and Bud-dhism. But every school interpreted it differently. Generally speaking, as a philosophical concept, Dao is used in two fundamental senses. One is law, principle and norm, which extended from its original meaning (namely, road and way); another is the source of the universe and the nature of the world. The concept Dao we discussed above belongs to the latter”. (p. 44)
I would like to ask Professor Guo Yi some questions about these two fundamental senses of Dao: Dao as law, principle and norm, and Dao as source of the universe and the nature of the world. I would like to trans-late this distinction into, on the one hand, the philosophical concept of the absolute world, and, on the other hand, the philosophical concept of the finite world. I hope that Professor Guo Yi can enlighten me as to whether this translation makes sense.
Until now, I have argued that there is a fundamental affinity be-tween the project that Professor Guo Yi proposes and the Hegelian one.
However, with regard to the two senses of Dao, we may have reached the limitations of this affinity. My own teacher, the late professor Jan Hol-lak, educated me in a critical reception of Hegel. I think that his critique of Hegel can be connected to the two senses of Dao that professor Guo Yi distinguishes. The core of Hollak’s critique of Hegel comes down to
PAUL COBBEN: RECOGNITION AS UNITY 167
the following thesis: Although Hegel pretends that his philosophical system develops the philosophical concept of the absolute, he instead only developed the philosophical concept of the finite (in other words, the human) world. His philosophical concept of “substance”, the abso-lute spirit, cannot be identified, as he pretends, with the philosophical concept of god, but rather concerns the absolute, philosophical concept of the human world. This critique of Hegel refers to the concept of god that is developed in the tradition of Thomas Aquinus. In his view, god cannot be dependent on a world that is created. The almightiness of god implies that it is meaningless to speak of the self-realization of god.
God has always already realized himself. In god, being is fully actual. As a consequence, divine freedom is fundamentally distinct from human freedom. In contrast to humans, who have to realize their freedom, god and divine freedom cannot be situated in time.
To a certain extent, the distinction between the divine and the hu-man world seems to correspond to Professor Guo Yi’s distinction be-tween general values (concerning the true, the good and the beautiful) and the final value, called an, that has the meaning of “quiet, peaceful, calm, stable, safe, easeful, happy, harmonious etc.” (p. 43). Ultimately, the values that are linked to an seem to express a state rather than an activity. They seem to correspond to the divine being that does not have to realize itself. Moreover, Professor Guo Yi himself, as I understand him, also relates an to the divine dimension: “Up to now, the various transcendental concepts such as Tian or Heaven in Confucianism, Dao in Daoism, the Unconditioned in Buddhism, God in Christianity and Allah in Islam, are all the realization of the sphere of Dao from different standpoints and angles by different civilizations, and at last all of them developed into the Way that people should behave so as to direct the be-havior of human beings. Therefore, approaches to final value by human beings can be called ren dao (or the Human Way)”.
Nevertheless, it remains unclear to me precisely how Professor Guo Yi understands the relation between the divine and the human world.
On the one hand, an seems to be a value that transcends human reality, but on the other hand, an seems to be the final value that “decides the fundamental purpose of human beings” (p. 43). Does this imply the same ambiguity in the relation between the human and the divine world as is found in Hegel? Or is the separation between these worlds maintained because An is always interpreted by human beings? (Professor Guo Yi refers to “approaches to the final value by human beings”). I hope that Professor Guo Yi can elaborate upon his view as to the relation between
philosophy and religion. How precisely are religious and humanist be-liefs related? Has religion its own domain that cannot be translated into philosophical conceptions? Or is the religious dimension, too, ultimately accessible to reason?
My last question concerns Professor Guo Yi’s thesis that: “The basic values of contemporary society are science and democracy” (p. 46) He adds that “science is a tool of life, not life itself”. And: democracy is a
“general value and not a final value”. Although I can agree with this analysis, I am surprised that professor Guo Yi does not mention human rights as belonging to the basic values of contemporary society. Profes-sor Guo Yi stresses that the contemporary notions of freedom “including freedom of faith, political freedom, freedom of speech, economic freedom and so on”, “belong to outside freedom and cannot in the same breath be compared to life freedom which belongs to internal freedom”. (p. 46) But what about Kantian freedom — the freedom of will — that can be con-sidered to ground the concept of human rights? According to Kant, free will makes human beings an “end-in-themselves”. Does this conception of freedom not belong rather to internal freedom, and, therefore, to final value? So, I would like to invite Professor Guo Yi to present his concep-tion of contemporary human rights. Is this a concepconcep-tion that is only connected to the Western, Christian tradition, as some argue? Or are human rights related to final value?
One of the formulations of the Kantian categorical imperative is:
never make the human person only a means. Basically, this moral cri-terion was Marx’s standard to criticize capitalism. After all, capitalism made the individual, as the commodified labor force, only a means to capital. If Marxism can be related in this manner to the Kantian cat-egorical imperative, and, if the catcat-egorical imperative can be related to final value, does this imply that not only traditional Chinese philosophy, but also the Marxist tradition in China, offer an entrance for thematizing the concept of final value? Or is the Marxist tradition in China restricted to the political dogmas of the communist party?
GÜNTER ZÖLLER (MUNICH)