Typology of Nothing: Heidegger, Daoism and Buddhism

Philosophy

Parmenides expelled nonbeing from the realm of knowledge and forbade us to think or talk about it. But still there has been a long tradition of nay-sayings throughout the history of Western and Eastern philosophy. Are those philosophers talking about the same nonbeing or nothing? If not, how do their concepts of nothing differ from each other? Could there be different types of nothing? Surveying the traditional classifications of nothing or nonbeing in the East and West have led me to develop a typology of nothing that consists of three main types: 1) privative nothing, commonly known as absence; 2) negative nothing, the altogether not or absolute nothing; and finally 3) original nothing, the nothing that is equivalent to being. I will test my threefold typology of nothing by comparing the similarities and differences between the conceptions of nothing in Heidegger, Daoism and Buddhism. With this study, I hope that I will clarify some confusion in the understanding of nothing in Heidegger, Daoism and Buddhism, and shed light on the central philosophical issue of âwhat there is notâ.

Comparative Philosophy 1.1 (2010) YAO Comparative Philosophy Volume 1, No. 1 (2010): 78-89 Open Access / ISSN 2151-6014 http://www.comparativephilosophy.org TYPOLOGY OF NOTHING: HEIDEGGER, DAOISM AND BUDDHISM ZHIHUA YAO ABSTRACT: Parmenides expelled nonbeing from the realm of knowledge and forbade us to think or talk about it. But still there has been a long tradition of nay-sayings throughout the history of Western and Eastern philosophy. Are those philosophers talking about the same nonbeing or nothing? If not, how do their concepts of nothing differ from each other? Could there be different types of nothing? Surveying the traditional classifications of nothing or nonbeing in the East and West have led me to develop a typology of nothing that consists of three main types: 1) privative nothing, commonly known as absence; 2) negative nothing, the altogether not or absolute nothing; and finally 3) original nothing, the nothing that is equivalent to being. I will test my threefold typology of nothing by comparing the similarities and differences between the conceptions of nothing in Heidegger, Daoism and Buddhism. These are three of the very few philosophical strains that have launched themselves into the wonderland of negativity by developing respectively the concepts of nothing (Nichts), nothing (wu 無) and emptiness (śūnyatā). With this analysis, I hope that I will clarify some confusion in the understanding of nothing in Heidegger, Daoism and Buddhism, and shed light on the central philosophical issue of "what there is not". Keywords: nothing, absence, Heidegger, Daoism, Buddhism 1. INTRODUCTION Parmenides expelled nonbeing from the realm of knowledge and forbade us to think or talk about it. But still there has been a long tradition of nay-sayings throughout the history of Western and Eastern philosophy. Are those philosophers talking about the same nonbeing or nothing? If not, how do their concepts of nothing differ from each other? Could there be different types of nothing? Leibniz once famously argued against the possibility of there being more than one void. He maintains that if there could be more than one void, then there could be two voids of exactly the same shape and size. These two voids would be perfect twins (Sorensen 2009, sec. 9). Leibniz's argument suggests that if we are dealing with empty space, then a type of nothing potentially has ―shape‖ or ―size‖. But the variety of traditional conceptions of nothing is much more complicated than this. ____________________ YAO, ZHIHUA: Associate Professor, Department of Philosophy, the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Email: email@example.com 79 Comparative Philosophy 1.1 (2010) YAO Surveying the traditional classifications of nothing or nonbeing in the East and West have led me to develop a typology of nothing that consists of three main types: 1) privative nothing, commonly known as absence; 2) negative nothing, the altogether not or absolute nothing; and finally 3) original nothing, the nothing that is equivalent to being. I do not claim that these exhaust the types of nothing in which many other philosophers had more finely grained classification schemes. For instance, the Neo-Platonist Ammonios Hermeiu and the Indian Yogācārins distinguished five different types of nothing, whereas Marius Victorinus (another Neo-Platonist), Immanuel Kant, and mainstream Indian philosophy had developed various fourfold schemes. However, I think my typology will suffice for the purpose of my paper which is to examine the similarities and differences between the conceptions of nothing in Heidegger, Daoism and Buddhism. The reason why I choose these three philosophical strains to test my typology of nothing is not only because I am familiar with them, but also because they each respectively represent the developing concepts of nothing in the West, China and India. The logical positivist Rudolf Carnap once criticized the Western tradition of metaphysics by taking Heidegger's theory of nothing as an extreme case of meaningless discourse (Carnap 1931, 233). Similarly, in the eyes of orthodox Confucian and Hindu scholars, both Daoism and Buddhism were seen as passive, negative, and even destructive to intellectual and social norms. In fact, these scholars condemned them as heresies and were determined to eliminate their influence on Chinese and Indian minds. It is no accident that their opponents developed a ―negative‖ impression of these traditions. These are three of the very few philosophical strains that have launched themselves into the wonderland of negativity by developing respectively the concepts of nothing (Nichts), nothing (wu 無) and emptiness (śūnyatā). 2. ORIGINAL NOTHING In his major work Being and Time, Heidegger apparently did not treat nothing as a central issue. Only in his analysis of Angst, one of the fundamental attunements (Befindlichkeit) of Dasein, does he touch upon this concept. The idea of Angst is deeply rooted in the Judeo-Christian tradition. In a long footnote in section 40 on ―The fundamental attunement of Angst as an eminent disclosedness of Da-sein‖, Heidegger refers to Augustine, Luther and Kierkegaard to support his distinction between Angst and fear (Furcht). With regard to Angst, Heidegger says: The fact that what is threatening is nowhere characterizes what Angst is about. Angst ―does not know‖ what it is about which it is anxious. But ―nowhere‖ does not mean nothing; rather, region in general lies therein, and disclosedness of the world in general for essentially spatial being-in. Therefore, what is threatening cannot approach from a definite direction within nearness, it is already ―there‖ and yet nowhere. It is so near that it is oppressive and stifles one's breath and yet it is nowhere. In what Angst is about, the ―it is nothing and nowhere‖ becomes manifest (Heidegger 1963, 186; Stambaugh 1996, 174-5). It is nothing (Nichts) and nowhere (nirgends), and yet the disclosedness of the world lies within it. This reminds us of God being depicted in negative terms within 80 Comparative Philosophy 1.1 (2010) YAO the mystical Christian tradition. In contrast to the philosophical discussions of nothing, as found in early western philosophers, such as Parmenides and Plato, the Christian mystics who developed the negative theology regard nothing as an experience. Their view has influenced many classical German philosophers including Schelling and Hegel. In this sense, nothing is not an abstract concept, but rather a reality that can be experienced. This is similar to the Eastern mystical tradition of Daoism that emphasizes the sagely practice of experiencing nothing (shengren ti wu 聖人體無). Of course, it is not so easy to experience nothing. In fact, Heidegger admits that such an experience is rare. In Heidegger's What is Metaphysics, he states: ―Does such an attunement, in which man is brought before the nothing itself, occur in human Dasein? It can and does occur, although rarely enough and only for a moment, in the fundamental mood of Angst.‖ (Heidegger 1978, 111; 1998, 88, with my modification) In this work of 1929, we find the most extensive discussion of nothing by Heidegger. Most of the work illustrates how nothing is revealed and experienced in Angst. Moreover, he develops another theme that is not seen in Being and Time which is the relationship between being and nothing. He says, ―nothing does not remain the indeterminate opposite of beings but unveils itself as belonging to the being of beings‖. (Heidegger 1978, 120; 1998, 94) Furthermore, he states that ―[i]n the being of beings the nihilation (Nichten) of nothing occurs‖. (Heidegger 1978, 115; 1998, 91) We can infer from these statements that Heidegger takes nothing to be equivalent to being. The idea that nothing and being is equivalent can be found in many of Heidegger's works. For instance, ―Being: Nothing: Same...Nothing is the characteristic (Kennzeichnung) of Being‖. 1 Reinhard May, who studied these expressions, tries to prove their connection with relevant statements that are found in Daoism and Chan Buddhism. These statements include: ―Being and nothing giving rise to each other'' (Dao-De-Jing Ch. 2); ―The things of the world arise from being. And being arises from nothing‖ (Dao-De-Jing Ch. 40); ―Being is none other than nothing, nothing is none other than being‖ (Xin-Xin-Ming 信心銘, T2023, 1056a). May maintains that all of these Daoist and Chan Buddhist writings were already translated into German in or before the 1920s, and so Heidegger may have read these sources and become influenced by them (May 1996, 26-8). Heidegger, however, only admits Hegel's contribution on this point. He cites a statement from Hegel's Science of Logic: ―Pure being and pure nothing are the same.‖ Pure being and pure nothing are two concepts in the beginning of Hegel's logical system. They are the same because they are indeterminate, immediate and pure. But Heidegger disagrees with Hegel on how and why they are the same. He says: ―Being and nothing do belong together, not because both – from the point of view of the Hegelian concept of thought – agree in their indeterminateness and immediacy, but rather because being itself is essentially finite and manifests itself only in the transcendence of a Dasein that is held out into nothing.‖ (Heidegger 1978, 120; 1998, 94-5) Here ―the transcendence of Dasein‖ is discussed earlier in the same work: ―Being held out into nothing – as Dasein is – on the ground of concealed Angst is its surpassing of beings as a whole. It is transcendence.‖ 1 For more examples, see May 1996, 21-6. 81 Comparative Philosophy 1.1 (2010) YAO (Heidegger 1978, 118; 1998, 93) Dasein transcends the totality of beings and therefore reaches the being itself. Meanwhile, Dasein is also ―held out‖ into nothing, therefore being and nothing become identical in the experiential dimension of Dasein. Another theme that Heidegger devoted himself to is the relationship between nothing and negativity, a concept again bearing a Hegelian mark. In Hegel's system, negativity is apparently more active and important than pure nothing. It is the engine of the Hegelian dialectics and makes becoming, movement and development possible through its force of Aufhebung. Although Heidegger insists that ―nothing is the origin of negation, not vice versa‖ (Heidegger 1978, 117; 1998, 86), he closely follows Hegel when he describes how nothing functions through negation and refusal. We can see this in two of Heidegger's works that were written in the 1930s but only recently published. Fullness is pregnant with the originary ―not‖; making full is not yet and no longer gifting, both in counter-resonance, refused in the very hesitating, and thus the charming-moving-unto in the removal-unto in the removal-unto. Here [is] above all the swaying not-character of be-ing as enowning (Heidegger 1999, 189). The questioning of the history of being not only experiences nothing not as void (Nichtiges), when this questioning requests the being itself in the fullness of its essential swaying, nothing is experienced as enownment (Er-eignung) (Heidegger 1997 , 313. My translation). Here enowning (Ereignis) or enownment (Ereignung) functions as the provider or giver of being and time, and it is the  it' in the phrase ―it gives/there is‖ (es gibt). Meanwhile, Heidegger stresses that the withdrawal or refusal that is not providing or giving also belongs essentially to the enowning itself. It is this withdrawal or refusal that makes providing or giving possible. Therefore, in the withdrawal or refusal that is located in the heart of enowning, we see an original nothing which is the ultimate ground for negation and negativity. The term ―original nothing‖ (nihil originarium) appears in Heidegger's writings only a few times. For instance, when discussing the world as nothing, he says: ―The world is the nothing that originally temporalizes itself and simply arises in and with the temporalizing (Zeitigung). We, therefore, call the world the original nothing (nihil originarium).‖ 2 Nevertheless, this term captures very well the basic meaning of nothing in Heidegger's usage, namely, as something experienced by Dasein's Angst, equivalent to being, and functioning through negation and withdrawal. By using ―original nothing‖ Heidegger also distances himself from other types of nothing that were discussed by previous philosophers. It is generally agreed that what Parmenides forbade us to talk about is ―the altogether not‖ (τὁ μηδαμῇ μηδαμῶς ὄν). Since Plato philosophers have tried to break this curse, but they were only approaching an ―absence‖. In Kant's fourfold classification of nothing, these two senses of nothing are respectively called negative nothing (nihil negativum) and privative nothing (nihil privativum). He characterizes the former as ―the empty 2 Heidegger 1990, 271. Cited from Wirtz 2006, 333. My translation. For more discussions on this concept, see Kwan 1982, 76, 83-84, and 142. 82 Comparative Philosophy 1.1 (2010) YAO object without concept‖ that is the impossible, e.g., a two-sided rectilinear figure, and the latter as ―the empty object of a concept‖, e.g., a shadow or cold. 3 For many philosophers, these are the two basic types of nothing. I therefore take them to be the first two types in my classification scheme. But Heidegger's sense of original nothing seems to have nothing to do with them. Instead, this nothing signifies alternatively to his key concept of being. Nothing as being is also one of the four types of nothing for the Neo-Platonist, Marius Victorinus. 4 Its traces can be found in many classical German thinkers such as F.H. Jacobi, J.G. Hamann, Schelling, Hegel, and F. von Baader. So, I include original nothing as the third type of nothing in my classification scheme. With these three types of nothing in mind, we can now discuss the Daoist concept of nothing. 3. NOTHING In early Daoism, nothing may not have been a central concept as ―Dao‖ but even at this stage it is an essential aspect of Dao. Its position was further elevated with the development of the Xuan School. The Neo-Confucian scholars, also known as ―Dao-scholars‖, were not necessarily upset by the idea of Dao, but often reacted strongly against nothing. Nothing may not be the central concept of Daoist philosophy, but it is surely the most characteristic Daoist concept. According to Pang (1999, 348-63), the concept of nothing as discussed in the rich canons of Chinese philosophy can be classified as having three different types. These include ―nothing as absence‖, ―absolute nothing‖, and ―nothing as being‖ which are signified respectively by the characters  wang' (亡),  wu' (无) and  wu' (無). Interestingly, these three types correspond to the three major types of nothing that I identified among Western philosophers, namely, privative nothing (nihil privativum), negative nothing (nihil negativum) and original nothing (nihil originarium). It is now pertinent to consider what type of nothing the Daoists were talking about. Many contemporary scholars distinguish two senses of nothing in Lao Zi's Dao-De-Jing. 5 One is the empirical or commonsense usage referring to empty space. This usage is found especially in Chapter 11 of the Dao-De-Jing, where nothing functions inside the hub, a pot, and the dwelling. The other is nothing in its metaphysical sense, referring to the source or origin of all existents, and found in key passages of the Dao-De-Jing, e.g., Chapters 2 and 40. 6 This distinction, however, becomes irrelevant if we attempt to match Daoist nothing to my typology of nothing. Both space and the origin of all existents are actual existence with real 3 See Kant 1956, 332-3. The other two types are rational entity (ens rationis) and imaginary entity (ens imaginarium). 4 See Kobusch 1984, 809. The other three types are negation, mutual relation, and the not-yet existent (Noch-nichtsein). Another Neo-Platonist Ammonios Hermeiu added the fifth ineffable unrepresentable nothing to the list. 5 For instance, Liu 1997, 159; Wang 2001, 155; Lin 2007, 151. 6 I exclude chapter 1, because I read the relevant sentence there as ―the nameless (wuming 無名) is the origin of heaven and earth‖ rather than ―nothing (wu 無) is called (ming 名) the origin of heaven and earth‖. 83 Comparative Philosophy 1.1 (2010) YAO function. They are called nothing only because they are formless and imageless. So nothing for Lao Zi, either in its empirical or metaphysical sense, is the ―nothing as being‖ or the original nothing. In the Dao-De-Jing, there are also a large number of compounds in the form of ―non-x‖ or ―no-x‖, e.g., non-action (wu-wei 無爲) and no-name (wu-ming 無名), where the word  wu' ( non-',  no-') functions as a prefix in the compound and cannot act independently as a noun or a philosophical concept. Its meaning is close to the privative nothing or nothing as absence. The Daoist classics never seem to mention the absolute or negative nothing, which usually indicates logical impossibility as in the case of late Moist classics. 7 In any case, the concept of nothing as discussed in the Daoist philosophical context falls under the category of original nothing or nothing as being. It is elaborated in two aspects. The first is the cosmogonical or vertical dimension, with the emphasis of nothing being the source or origin of existents: ―The things of the world arise from being. And being arises from nothing.‖ 8 It is this ability of giving rise to all existents that makes nothing the true original nothing. The same idea is elaborated in the Zhuang-Zi: ―The myriad things come forth from nonbeing. Being cannot bring being into being; it must come forth from nonbeing, and nonbeing is singularly nonbeing.‖ 9 The Xuan School, represented by Wang Bi, further develops this line of thinking and interprets nothing as the ―origin‖ (ben 本) of all things. In comparison to its Western counterparts, the Daoist nothing is more ―original‖ by emphasizing its cosmogonical dimension. The second is the ontological or horizontal dimension that emphasizes ―being and nothing giving rise to each other‖. 10 The mutual arising of being and nothing horizontally illuminates the identity and transformation between pure being and pure nothing. The formless imageless original nothing, through its identity with and transformation into being, establishes its ontological position in the sense of nothing as being. This runs parallel to the ontologies of Hegel and Heidegger. Certain tension exists between the two dimensions, however, and many commentators have attempted to explain the apparent contradiction. In my view, the failure of classical Chinese philosophers, such as Lao Zi, to distinguish ontology from cosmology or cosmogony contributes to this tension. The admixture of cosmogonical and ontological approaches that dominates classical Chinese philosophy probably owes its existence to the centrality of sheng (生) (begetting, generating, giving rise to) in Daoist and Confucian metaphysics. Exactly for the same reason, original nothing in Lao Zi and Daoist philosophy is realized in its more complete ―original‖ form than in the works of Western philosophers such as Heidegger, who only stress its ontological dimension. 7 See the Mojing and its commentary: 無不必待有,......無天陷,則無之而無 (Nonbeing does not necessarily presuppose being. ... In the case the nonbeing of the sky's falling down, it is nonbeing without ever having been). 8 Dao-De-Jing, Chapter 40: 天下萬物生於有,有生於無. 9 Zhuang-Zi, Chapter of ―Geng-Sang-Chu‖: 萬物出乎無有,有不能以有為有,必出乎無有,而 無有一無有. 10 Dao-De-Jing, Chapter 2: 有無相生. 84 Comparative Philosophy 1.1 (2010) YAO 4. EMPTINESS Let us turn to emptiness in Buddhist philosophy and its relationship to nothing. In early and sectarian Buddhism, the concept of emptiness was employed to interpret the foundational Buddhist doctrine of no-self. It became one of the key Buddhist concepts with the rise of Perfection of Wisdom literature and its interpretation by the Madhyamaka scholars. The orthodox Hindu scholars, who often classified Buddhist philosophy into four major schools, namely, Sarvāstivāda realism, Sautrāntika indirect realism, Yogācāra idealism, and Madhyamaka nihilism, were especially critical of the latter. In their view, emptiness may not have been the central concept of Buddhism, but it was no doubt the most characteristic of Buddhist philosophy. In the history of Indian philosophy, different schemes were developed for classifying nothing or nonbeing (abhāva). The mainstream Vaiśeṣikas, Naiyāyikas, and Mīmāṃsākas classified nonbeing into four types, namely, prior nonbeing (prāgabhāva), posterior nonbeing (dhvaṃsābhāva), mutual nonbeing (anyonyābhāva), and absolute nonbeing (atyantābhāva). These four types can be subsumed into two more basic types: absolute nonbeing and mutual nonbeing. The latter covers the first three of four types, which are its manifestations in temporal and spatial dimensions. Mutual nonbeing corresponds to privative nothing or absence in my typology, while absolute nonbeing is the negative nothing with respect to ―the altogether not‖. This popular scheme, however, does not include emptiness. Among the Indic sources that I have encountered, only a Yogācāra Buddhist text adds emptiness to the scheme as the fifth type of nonbeing. It is called the ―ultimate nonbeing‖ (paramārthāsat) and interpreted as ―devoid of intrinsic nature‖ (niḥsvabhāva), which is exactly the definition of emptiness. 11 In the history of Buddhism the Madhyamaka and Yogācāra traditions have developed an interpretation of emptiness. It is generally agreed that the Perfection of Wisdom literature and its Madhyamaka interpretation, while aiming at criticizing and denying intrinsic nature, made emptiness a central Buddhist concept. Intrinsic nature (svabhāva) was a key concept in Abhidharma scholasticism that characterized the unanalysable elements (dharma) of all existents. In this understanding, the intrinsic nature of each and every element should be distinctive and consistent, otherwise their distinction will collapse. Meanwhile, their consistent, even permanent, nature does not imply that existents made of elements do not go through change or transformation. All the elements and existents, as long as they are conditioned, must dependently arise and cease. In the Madhyamaka view, however, the concept of intrinsic nature is incompatible with the foundational Buddhist doctrine of dependent arising. Nāgārjuna argues, ―[t]he origination of intrinsic nature from causes and conditions is illogical, since intrinsic nature originated from causes and conditions would become contingent. How could there be contingent intrinsic nature? Intrinsic nature is not contingent, nor is it dependent on others.‖ 12 By upholding the doctrine of 11 It is found in the encyclopedic Yogācārabhūmi (T1579, 362c) and its commentaries (T1828, 416a and T1829, 97a). 12 Mūlamadhyamakakārikā 16.1-2: na saṃbhavaḥ svabhāvasya yuktaḥ pratyayahetubhiḥ / 85 Comparative Philosophy 1.1 (2010) YAO dependent origination, one must give up and deny intrinsic nature, as Nāgārjuna declares: ―Whatever is dependently originated, I claim it is emptiness.‖ 13 He holds that all those in the net of causal arising-either conventional existence or its elements-are devoid of intrinsic nature and empty. For the Ābhidharmikas, such conventional existence-for instance, a desk or person-is conceptually constructed, and hence lack intrinsic nature, but their building blocks are those elements embedded with intrinsic nature. Nāgārjuna insists that even those building blocks, as long as they arise and cease in the causal network, are also ―conceptually constructed‖. 14 There are at least two ways of understanding this claim of emptiness. If all existents are conceptually constructed, as with illusions and hallucinatory objects, then emptiness in this sense is absolute or negative nothing as in the case of the son of a barren woman or square-circle, both indicating logical impossibility. This will inevitably lead to a nihilist end that negates all existents, which, as a matter of fact, dominates classical and contemporary interpretations of the Madhyamaka tradition. 15 The other way, however, emphasizes that absolute reality such as dharma-realm (dharmadhātu) or thusness (tathatā) is revealed through the idea of emptiness that denies intrinsic nature. 16 In this view, emptiness comes close to original nothing or nothing as being. Nāgārjuna himself seems unwilling to fall into either extreme when he claims that emptiness is ―the middle way‖ 17 which is beyond nonbeing and being. From the viewpoint of my typology of nothing, if emptiness is beyond negative nothing (the extreme of nonbeing) and original nothing (the extreme of being), then it would fall under privative nothing. This observation is supported by the very definition of emptiness as ―devoid of intrinsic nature‖ which is a constant negation and antidote of any reification, even emptiness itself, and therefore ―emptiness is empty‖. 18 In the Yogācāra School, even though emptiness is not as central as it is in the Madhyamaka School, the Yogācārins understood it very differently. They refer to a passage from an early Buddhist text, Cūḷasuññata-sutta, which is never cited by the Mādhyamikas in their extensive discussion on emptiness. The text says: ―It is seen that when something does not exist somewhere, that place is empty with regard to the former. And yet it is to be understood that when something remains somewhere it does exist as reality.‖ 19 In this case, emptiness is understood in terms of privation or absence, or, in an Indian term, mutual nonbeing. But this type of nonbeing is always relative to something existent. It is in this sense that emptiness serves as an antidote to intrinsic nature in Madhyamaka. But when emptiness is expanded to negate all existents at the ultimate level, it will cease to be a mutual nonbeing in the hetupratyayasaṃbhūtaḥ svabhāvaḥ kṛtako bhavet // svabhāvaḥ kṛtako nāma bhaviṣyati punaḥ kathaṃ / akṛtrimaḥ svabhāvo hi nirapekṣaḥ paratra ca //. 13 Mūlamadhyamakakārikā 24.18ab: yaḥ pratītyasamutpādaḥ śūnyatāṃ tāṃ pracakṣmahe /. 14 Mūlamadhyamakakārikā 24. 18c: sā prajñaptir upādāya pratipat. 15 Contemporary scholars with this approach are represented by Eugene Burnouf, H. Jacobi, M. Walleser, I. Wach, A.B. Keith, and La Vallee Poussin. See Lin 1999, 183-6. 16 Contemporary representatives of this approach are St. Schayer, Stcherbatsky, and Murti. See Lin 1999, 186-91. 17 Mūlamadhyamakakārikā 24. 18d: saiva madhyamā //. 18 See Piṅgala's commentary on the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā, T1564, 33b17. 19 Cited from Nagao 1991, 210. 86 Comparative Philosophy 1.1 (2010) YAO sense of absence and become an absolute negative nonbeing. The Mādhyamikas themselves may not admit this, but their theory inevitably leads to this end. The Yogācārins understood emptiness in terms of its root meaning of absence and defined ―the characteristic of emptiness as nonbeing of subject and object and the being of that nonbeing‖. 20 The subject and object, in their epistemologically oriented project, is regarded as conceptual constructions on the basis of existent conscious processes. The concept of emptiness denies the existence of these conceptual constructions, yet asserts the existence of consciousness (vijñāna), thusness (tathatā), or dharma-realm (dharmadhātu). In this respect, emptiness is equivalent to the so-called ―wondrous being‖ (miao-you 妙有) and therefore comes close to the original nothing or nothing as being in my typology of nothing. Later Tibetan Buddhists characterized the Yogācāra way of understanding emptiness as ―other-emptiness‖ (gzhan stong), in contrast to the ―self-emptiness‖ (rang stong) held by the Mādhyamikas, and condemned the former way of understanding as heresy. This understanding of emptiness as wondrous being, however, became dominant in East Asian Buddhism, a development based on the influence of the Yogācāra as well as the Daoist sense of original nothing. As a result, Buddhist emptiness and Daoist nothing were easily confused. 21 Masao Abe (1985, 128-30), for instance, while discussing the superiority of negativity in Eastern philosophy, treated Daoist nothing and Buddhist emptiness as equivalent to wondrous being. In his discussion, both are understood to be original nothing or nothing as being. 5. CONCLUSION By comparing the similarities and differences between the concept of nothing in Heidegger, Daoism and Buddhism, I have tested my threefold typology of nothing. If we distinguish the conceptions of nothing into three basic types, namely, privative, negative, and original nothing, then Heidegger's and Daoism's conception of nothing can be characterized as ―original nothing‖. The unique Daoist cosmogonical-ontological approach renders nothing more ―original‖ than its parallels in Western philosophy. In contrast, the emptiness in Madhyamaka Buddhism is basically a type of privative nothing, but its tendency to negate all existents at the ultimate level leads to negative nothing. And finally, the emptiness in Yogācāra Buddhism is basically nothing as absence or privation, but its affirmation of ultimate reality leads to original nothing. The latter sense of emptiness was more influential among East Asian Buddhists, and more easily confused with the Daoists' original nothing. With this analysis, I hope that I have clarified some confusion in the understanding of nothing in Heidegger, Daoism and Buddhism. This typology of nothing also sheds light on the central philosophical issue of ―what there is not‖. The perplexity of this issue is attributed to the fact that nonbeing or nothing, by its very nature, escapes from falling into a being or something and thus resists any 20 Madhyāntavibhāga I.13ab: dvayābhāvo hy abhāvasya bhāvaḥ śūnyasya lakṣaṇaṃ /. 21 See the relevant studies in Luo 2003 and Zhao 2007. 87 Comparative Philosophy 1.1 (2010) YAO attempt of definition or characterization. In the history of Western philosophy, the mystery of nothing is usually associated with two equally mysterious questions. One is why, according to Parmenides, can we not think or talk about nonbeing? This question becomes even more intriguing in contrast to the fact that we can talk about nonbeing or nothing with ease in our ordinary language. The other is the famous Leibnizian–Heideggerian question: ―Why is there something rather than nothing?‖ which has been taken to be the fundamental question of metaphysics. According to my typology of nothing, when Parmenides forbade us from thinking or talking about nonbeing, he was warning us against the altogether not or absolute nothing, e.g., square-circle and the son of a barren woman. It is evident that this type of nothing was mainly a logician's concern, including Moists, Hindu and Buddhist logicians, and contemporary analytical philosophers since Russell. Given its nature of being logically contradictory and impossible, this type of nothing, as predicted by Parmenides, does not really enter into the realm of knowledge, but rather functions as an indicator of the limit of human knowledge. What does enter the realm of our knowledge and ordinary language is a different type of nothing. To break the curse of Parmenides, Plato and his followers were approaching ―what there is not‖ in the sense of ―difference‖ or, in Indian terminology, mutual nonbeing. As the absence or privation of being, this type of nothing is always an essential part of our knowledge. So the reason that we can think or talk about nonbeing or nothing with ease is not because Parmenides was wrong, but because we are approaching a different interpretation of nothing. Leibniz was the first philosopher to put forward the perplexing metaphysical question: ―Why is there something rather than nothing?‖ Various attempts to answer this question have understood nothing as an absolute nothing that is logically impossible. As a result, the existence of something is believed to have a higher probability or necessity. The question then becomes purely speculative, as if it is possible for a state of absolute nothing to exist prior to something. However, if we understand nothing in the Heideggerian or Daoist sense of original nothing, then the question is a matter of cosmogony, i.e., how a concrete something with form and image comes about from a formless imageless state. To answer this, Christian theologians would resort to God's will, whereas Daoists would rely on the creativity of Dao. In either case, nothing should not be understood as absolute nothing or absence; such an interpretation will lead to vain speculations. Instead, nothing is a formless imageless state of existence, which is described as earth and water covered with darkness in the Book of Genesis, or simply as chaos in Daoist writings. It is only with this conception of nothing that we can make sense of this fundamental question of metaphysics. I have expounded my typology of nothing by comparing the conceptions of nothing in Heidegger, Daoism and Buddhism (three representative philosophical trends in the West, China and India). Each has explored negativity to a great depth and preliminarily answers two perplexing questions in the philosophical discourse of nothing, i.e., ―why we cannot think or talk about nothing‖ and ―why there is something rather than nothing‖. The depth of these discussions shows that it is wrong to indiscriminately exclude all kinds of nothing from the proper realm of philosophy. Instead we should treat the subject more seriously by engaging with traditional sources in the East and West with the hope that we may eventually know 88 Comparative Philosophy 1.1 (2010) YAO better ―what there is not‖. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Earlier version of the paper has been presented in a conference in Hong Kong. For its current revised version, I am grateful to the constructive remarks and suggestions of three anonymous reviewers. REFERENCES Abe, Masao (1985), ―Non-being and Mu – the Metaphysical Nature of Negativity in the East and the West‖, in William R. LaFleur (ed.), Zen and Western Thought (London: Macmillan), pp. 128-30. Carnap, Rudolf (1931), ―Überwindung der Metaphysik durch logische Analyse der Sprache,‖ Erkenntnis 2: 219-41. Heidegger, Martin (1963), Sein und Zeit (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag). ---- (1978), ―Was ist Metaphysik?‖ in Wegmarken, GA 9 (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann). ---- (1990), Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Logik im Ausgang von Leibniz, GA 26 (Frankfurt am Main: V. Klostermann). ---- (1997), Besinnung, GA 66 (Frankfurt am Main: V. Klostermann). ---- (1998), Patmarks, edited by William McNeill (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press). ---- (1999), Contributions to philosophy (from enowning), translated by Parvis Emad and Kenneth Maly (Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press). Kant, Immanuel (1956), Kritik der reinen Vernunft (Hamburg: Verlag von Felix Meiner). Kobusch, Theo (1984), ―Nichts, Nichtseiendes‖, in Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie (Basel and Stuttgart: Schwabe & Co AG Verlag), Band 6, pp. 813-9. Kwan, Tze-wan (1982), Die hermeneutische Phänomenologie und das tautologische Denken Heideggers (Bonn: Bouvier Verlag Herbert Grundmann). Lin, Chen-Kuo (1999), Kong-Xing-Yu-Xian-Dai-Xing: Cong-Jing-Du-Xue-Pai, Xin-Ru-Jia-Dao-Duo-Yin-De-Fo-Jiao-Quan-Shi-Xue [Emptiness and Modernity: From Kyoto School, New Confucianism to Buddhist Hermernitcs] (Taipei: Li-Xu-Wen-Hua-Shi-Ye-You-Xian-Gong-Si) Lin, Chien-Te (2007), ―Lao-Zi-Yu-Zhong-Lun-Zhi-Zhe-Xue-Bi-Jiao‖ [A Comparison between the Philosophies of the Lao-Zi and the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā], Dissertation, National Taiwan University. Liu, Xiaogan (1997), Lao-Zi [Lao Zi] (Taipei: Dong-Da-Tu-Shu-Gong-Si). Luo, Yin (2003), Kong-You-Yu-You-Wu: Xuan-Xue-Yu-Ban-Ruo-XueJiao -Hui-Wen-TiZhi-Yan-Jiu [Emptyness versus Being and Being versus Nothing: A Study of the Relationship between Dark Learning and Wisdom Learning] (Taipei: Guo-Li-Taiwan-Da-Xue-Chu-Ban-Wei-Yuan-Hui). May, Reinhard (1996), Heidegger's Hidden Sources: East-Asian Influences on His 89 Comparative Philosophy 1.1 (2010) YAO Work, translated with a complementary essay by Graham Parkes (London and New York: Routledge). Nagao, Gajin (1991), Mādhyamika and Yogācāra: A Study of Mahāyāna Philosophies, edited, collated, and translated by L.S. Kawamura in collaboration with G.M. Nagao (Albany: State University of New York Press). Pang, Pu (1999), ―Shuo- Wu'‖ [On ―Nothing‖], in Dang-Dai-Xue-Zhe-Zi-XuanWen -Ku: Pang-Pu-Juan [Selected Works of Contemporary Scholars: Pang Pu] (Hefei: Anhui-Jiao-Yu-Chu-Ban-She), pp. 348-63. Sorensen, Roy (2009), ―Nothingness‖, in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy <http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/nothingness/>. Stambaugh, Joan (1996), Being and Time: A translation of Sein und Zeit (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press). Wang, Zhongjiang (2001), Dao-Jia-Xing-Er-Shang-Xue [Daoist Metaphysics] (Shanghai: Shanghai-Wen-Hua-Chu-Ban-She). Wirtz, Markus (2006), Geschichten des Nichts: Hegel, Nietzsche, Heidegger und das Problem der philosophischen Pluralität (Freiburg and München: Verlag Karl Alber). Zhao, Weiwei (2007), ―Lao-Zi-De-Wu-Yu-Zhong-Lun-De-Kong-Zhi-Yi-Tong‖ [Similarity and Differences between Nothing in the Lao-Zi and Emptiness in the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā], Zhong-Guo-Zhe-Xue-Yu-Wen-Hua [Journal of Chinese Philosophy and Culture] 2: 324-41.


Philosophy

Kant, Rawls, and the Moral Foundations of the Political Nythamar de Oliveira Porto Alegre, Brazil In: Kant und die Berliner Aufklärung: Akten des IX Internationalen Kant-Kongresses, ed. Volker Gerhardt, Rolf-Peter Horstmann und Ralph Schumacher, Berlin: W. de Gruyter, 2001, 286-295. Abstract: This paper recasts the problematic of the moral foundations of the political in light of John Rawls's critical appropriation of Immanuel Kant's practical philosophy (GMS, KpV, MdS, and political writings). It is shown to what extent one may succeed nowadays in preserving the normative principle of universalizability without falling back into moral foundationalism and in accounting for the stability of a "well-ordered society" in the very terms of an unsociable sociability combining morality and legality (articulation of the universal principle of justice and the categorical imperative). By recasting a theory of justice as fairness, starting from the "fact of pluralism" and from a conception of a "public political culture", Rawlsian contractarianism not only corrects its own inconsistencies but reiterates its Kantian-inspired proceduralism. Despite its shift from a comprehensive doctrine of justice in his 1971 masterpiece (A Theory of Justice), Rawls's later political conception of justice (esp. Political Liberalism) recasts Kant's procedural device of self-determination and autonomy insofar as social agency is inevitably caught in reflective equilibrium. In lieu of celebrating a shift from the moral foundations of the political towards a specifically political theory of justice, Rawls's constructivism recasts some of the very problems inherent in a Kantian critique of moral realism and intuitionism in ethics and political philosophy. This paper reflects the partial results of a broader research on the so-called Rawls-Habermas debate.[1] As indicated by the title, I am dealing here with the problem of justifying (in the sense of begründen, grounding, giving reasons for) a theory of justice in light of John Rawls's political appropriation of Kantian constructivism. What is ultimately at stake hence is the task of reappropriating Immanuel Kant's political theory of justice as a constructivist alternative to what has nowadays been identified with moral foundationalism in realist, intuitionist attempts to ground a political theory. No other work has received as much attention and raised as many criticisms in political philosophy today as Rawls's A Theory of Justice and the later writings that led to the volume on Political Liberalism.[2] It is my contention here that Rawls's monumental work not only emerges as a useful referential in today's ethical-political framework, but it also rescues the Kantian thrust of our contemporary debate opposing universalists and communitarians, constructivists and intuitionists, realists and anti-realists, deontologist and utilitarian models in ethics and political theory. From the very outset, I should like to outline the main theses and sets of problems that guide this study: 1. Rawls's "Kantian interpretation" offered in A Theory of Justice (§ 40) can be ultimately reconciled with his later writings (esp. Political Liberalism) as long as his conception of political constructivism is regarded as evolving out of his own self-critical recasting of the foundations of a theory of justice, in agreement with his later critique of Kantian moral philosophy, especially as it was mistakenly identified with moral realism. Whatever may be taken for Rawls's "Kantian interpretation" should not, as Pogge pointed out, be confused with a Rawlsian interpretation of Kant or a Kantian interpretation of Rawls.[3] I am dealing thus here with Rawls's revisiting, reviewing, and recasting of his conception of justice as fairness so as to turn political constructivism into the groundwork of a political liberalism that distances itself from a moral constructivism. 2. Rawls's attempt to overcome the supposedly foundationalist "fact of reason" in Kant's moral philosophy fails to fulfill its promises in the very refusal of comprehensive doctrines --among which Kant's transcendental idealism, whose primacy accorded to the practical use of pure reason over its theoretical counterpart seems to betray, in Rawlsian reasoning, a return to the foundationalist problematic that shortcircuited Cartesian rationalism (substantialism) and empirical idealism (psychologism). The moral grounds of political justice would come down to an aporetic project and Rawls would have hence sought to broaden and elaborate on the Kantian groundwork so as to point to a new direction, foreign to Kant's original critique of metaphysics, its presupposed pure rationality, and a priori systematic unity. Perhaps one finds here Rawls's critique of transcendental reason, beyond moral realism and intuitionism, in a coherentist approach that would help justify a wide reflective equilibrium and a reasonable pluralism. What makes thus Rawls's shift less defensible than his earlier version is to conceive of his political theory --in his later writings-in such a way that seems to exclude every other competing model, since the latter may be simply dismissed as just another "comprehensive doctrine," including moral and political theories. And yet, some have argued that Rawls does not entirely reject the transcendental model of Kant's groundwork in his attempt to attain to a non-foundationalist theory of justice. Even though I do not think he is simply abandoning a moral, normative model of foundation towards a political, pragmatist conception (which, some would add, without any interest in foundations at all), Rawls's ethical-political proposal may still be numbered among deontological transcendental (or quasi-transcendental) models of theories of justice, as long as his constructivism refuses the main premises of utilitarian and teleological models at the very emphasis he continues to lay on the primacy of right over the good. Even as one starts from the fact of political pluralism --in PL, as opposed to the original position in TJ-within a given public political culture, one still resorts to a contractarian device of representation on the level of reasonable, intersubjectively shared values and norms without hastily identifying the latter with the main source of morality or asserting the primacy of particularized traditions over universalizable normativity--as communitarians do (esp. Sandel et al.). Such is indeed one of the merits of Rawls's political philosophy as the whole problem of recasting the foundations of a theory of justice nowadays, in non-foundationalist terms, inevitably refers us back to the Kantian idea of universalizability, inherent in the categorical imperative, and in contrast with utilitarian and teleological conceptions of ethics and political thought. 3. Now, Rawls's later writings brings in the question of a concrete ethos, its actualization in everyday practices of our intersubjective, sociallyand linguistically-mediated lifeworld --to employ a phenomenological term--, showing thus some limitations in the Kantian model as one moves from noumenal selves towards the social, political, and economic institutions that render human sociability a fact of sorts. And yet, it is precisely because such an account cannot be reduced to or dealt with as a natural fact that the Kantian-Rawlsian model remains an alternative to post-Hegelian and post-empiricist approaches. 4. It is here, at what Rawls calls a public political culture, that those practices may or may not be justified in rational/reasonable terms --without simply squaring it with a morally grounded political theory. And this leads us back to the Kantian contention that political life, just as sociability itself, cannot be rationally conceived without resorting to a theory of morality rationally grounded in the very conception of autonomy or as pure practical reason being selfdetermined qua willing what ought to be freely willed. Although one seems to be either begging the question or moving back to square one, it is the problem of "vindicating reason," as O'Neill put it, that must be tackled here: as one attempts to avoid foundationalism, one is inevitably caught in the self-referentiality of a critical standpoint that posits problems rather than provides axiomatic solutions, is historically reflexive (circular), and nevertheless remains open-ended.[4] 5. Freedom therefore is thought as the Idea that allows for a representation of practical reason in its own self-determination. Freedom cannot be reduced to any of the particular instantiations of freedom-such as freedom of expression and the civil liberties (what Rawls terms basic liberties) but must be presupposed by the former --in Kant's comprehensive liberalism-as humanity is an end in itself and embodies such an ideal in a kingdom of ends. Once again, one is brought to the constructivist critique of intuitionism and moral realism, which is ultimately caught up in the naturalistic fallacy, together with utilitarian and other teleological models that seek to avoid foundationalism by starting from empirical facts or given traditions and contexts. 6. Rawls's attempt to overcome the dualistic conception of human nature in Kant's constructivism seems to betray here the very strength of a theory of justice that seeks to do strike a balance between egalitarian and libertarian trends in political thought. Precisely because the tension between the social good assigned to a Rousseaunian volonté générale and the individual rights of Lockean liberalism could not be dissolved in a philosophy of history, Rawls recasts Kant's interplay of autonomy and heteronomy in light of an economically determined state of affairs, so that primary goods would meet not only material needs but also the moral demands of his conception of persons: full autonomy is political, not ethical (PL 77). The political specificity of his theory succeeds somewhat in bridging the gulf between an ever-growing economic surplus and a decaying moral normativity, and yet it leaves to be desired how the political accounts for the moral (without succumbing to a communitarian turn) and how both the former and the latter are not inherently reduced to an economic effect. I placed this inquiry into the foundations of a theory of justice at the heart of the current debate among universalists insofar as the nature of morality and political philosophy is concerned. According to this view, political philosophy cannot account for the nature and justification of social, political institutions without presupposing a universalizable, normative conception of morality. Such is the Kantian thrust of this view, as opposed to the communitarian grounding of ethics and political philosophy upon the tradition and context out of which discursivity itself takes place. Grosso modo, both universalists and communitarians can be called "cognitivist," insofar as they agree on the possibility of knowing the foundations of moral principles and the necessity of coming up with some moral theory. In short, there must be objectivity in moral reasoning, as one seeks to avoid the pitfalls of both foundationalism and relativism. In this sense, both teleological (i.e., virtue ethics and utilitarianism) and deontological ethics (i.e., Kantianinspired and others) are to be opposed to noncognitivist approaches to moral philosophy. As Kenneth Baynes has shown in his seminal work on Kant, Rawls, and Habermas, the constructivist account of practical philosophy advocated by these thinkers aims at specifying "a procedure for critically assessing the legitimacy of social norms and institutions by reference to a normative conception of practical reason". Moreover, by elaborating on the main arguments of these versions of constructivism, the latter is shown to constitute a highly defensible "clarification of the normative grounds" of social criticism, whose justification is "ultimately reflexive or recursive in the sense that there can be no higher appeal to something beyond the idea of that to which free and equal persons can rationally agree."[5] "Justice as fairness," according to John Rawls, "is a theory of human justice and among its premises are the elementary facts about persons and their place in nature."(TJ 257) In effect, Kant seems to shift away from the non-demonstrable Faktum der Vernunft assumed in the second Critique[6] towards a human practical reason in his later writings (notably MdS and political writings) so as to account for the tension between autonomy and heteronomy in the very "unsociable sociability" that characterizes human nature. Hence the modern problem of articulating ethics and political philosophy through a critical conception of human nature lies at the heart of both Kant's and Rawls's critique of metaphysical foundations. For Kant, the place of human persons in nature constitutes the counterpart to the Copernican revolution in theoretical philosophy (KrV). Rawls carefully contrasts a plausible interpretation of a Kantian intuitionism in the theoretical use of pure reason with the constructivism of his practical philosophy. According to Rawls, such is indeed the systematic, philosophical hallmark of Kant's transcendental idealism, namely, that the unity of reason stands and falls with the two-world thesis. In order to avoid a foundationalist predicament, Rawls views the original position "as a procedural interpretation of Kant's conception of autonomy and the categorical imperative"(TJ § 40) with the proviso that "the person's choice as a noumenal self" is taken as "a collective one."(TJ 257) O'Neill has convincingly shown that Rawls's shift from his use of the metaphor of "contract" in TJ to that of "construction" in PL deserves further investigation, particularly in its tension between an idealized, instrumentalized conception of practical rationality and a relativist, historicized view of practical reason anchored in a liberal, political culture.[7] O'Neill points thus to a problematic "coherentism" supposedly grounding Kant's practical philosophy, according to Rawls's interpretation, especially as outlined in his Stanford paper on "Themes in Kant's Moral Philosophy."[8] It is within this problematic that Rawls resorts to the distinction between the conceptions of "reasonable" and "rational" so as to maintain the Kantian articulations of theoretical and practical reason, on the one hand, and of autonomy and heteronomy, on the other, accounting for human action in non-utilitarian, non-teleological terms. Later on, Rawls will resort to the same line of reasoning in order to reject Kant's moral constructivism insofar as the latter's view of autonomy fails to justify in political terms the overlapping consensus underlying the fact of reasonable pluralism in our liberal democracies. That would also amount to an attempt to respond to both Sandel's criticisms of a supposedly metaphysical self and the communitarian critique of Rawls's political shift in the later writings. In effect, the criticisms raised by utilitarians and communitarians against Rawls's theory of justice seem to converge on the correlated problems of maintaining, on the one hand, the Kantian priority of right (Recht) over the good --or the universalizable principle of justice over the principle of utility-and a model-conception of the person in a given political culture, on the other hand. Although the former problem appears to be dealt with in TJ while the latter is only formulated in PL, I argue that they complement each other and are essential to a correct understanding of Rawls's constructivist theory of justice, as over against moral intuitionism and utilitarianism in both texts. It is thus my contention here that Rawls's political constructivism can be better understood in the very terms of its critical account of the foundations of a theory of justice, and more specifically, in light of his critical appropriation of Kantian moral constructivism. One of the greatest pretensions (and, to my mind, one of the greatest merits) of Rawls's theory of justice is to provide us with an ethical-political conception of the normative foundations of social life. The theory of justice may be thus viewed as a universalizable procedure of construction capable of accounting for human sociability in constitutional, democratic societies, where claims to basic liberties and fair participation in social life allow for the pluralist coexistence of different, incompatible religious, philosophical, and moral beliefs. Therefore, at the very level of its foundation, the concept of justice is to practical philosophy what truth is to the theory of knowledge(TJ § 3).According to Rawls, "a conception of justice characterizes our moral sensibility when the everyday judgments we do make are in accordance with its principles."(TJ 46) The two fundamental principles (the Equal Liberty Principle and the Difference/Equality Principle) formulated by the Rawlsian theory of justice, as well as the original devices (dispositifs) of the original position and reflective equilibrium, are to be understood in this precise context of foundation--if not in the sense of a Kantian Grundlegung, at least as a Begründung--, insofar as they must be understood as formal-procedural rules capable of establishing normative criteria and determining results to be judged fair (beurteilen). Just as the sense of grammaticalness is presupposed in everyday practices of speaking one's mother-tongue (or at least "functioning" in a certain language) and a rational faculty is presupposed in the conception of judgments and thoughts, the sense of justice and capacity for a conception of the good are inherent to the conception of moral persons, free and equal, living in a democratic society. "Justice as fairness," according to Rawls, seeks to unveil the fundamental ideas (latent in common sense) of liberty and equality, of an ideal social cooperation and the person. Rawls continuously reviews his theory of justice so as to better elucidate its foundations. In particular, Rawls addresses many of the questions raised by his critics as for his interpretation of Kant's moral philosophy, on the one hand, and as for the arguments he uses against utilitarian conceptions, on the other. A "theory of justice" was already understood as a philosophical analysis of what justice is, avoiding both metaethical and substantive exclusive approaches to ethics. Thus, Kant's moral philosophy, a refutation of eudaimonism, intuitionism, and utilitarianism, the rehabilitation of the concept of justice inherent to constitutional contractarianism--classical-liberal (Locke) and radical-democratic (Rousseau)--, the problem of constructivism, the question of the foundation of moral principles, the question of the just and the good (Aristotle)-these and other related problems are all thematized by the TJ. At the end of the book (TJ § 87), Rawls reminds us that his conception of the foundations or justification of morals is to be distinguished from the two models that prevailed in the history of ethics, namely, the Cartesian deductive model (inferring a body of standards and precepts out of self-evident, moral first principles) and the naturalist model (definitions of moral concepts can be compared/reduced to nonmoral concepts). Rawls clings to the Socratic principle (TJ § 9) insofar as moral theory always brings us back to review our principles and judgments, and stresses that "justification rests upon the entire conception [of justice] and how it fits in with and organizes our considered judgments in reflective equilibrium."(TJ 579) Only then can we proceed to a "substantive theory of justice". By his implicit reformulation of a theory of society and of a theory of moral person, a theory of justice as fairness is supposed to strike us as being more defensible and more effective than any other version of contractarianism.(TJ 584) This is of course understood to be extended to any other theory of society. If human beings want to live in society and keep all their cultural, religious, and moral differences they should subscribe to such a theory of justice. My main contention here is that the question of its foundations (Rawls's constructivism) underlies the entire development of concepts that structure the Rawlsian theory as a whole, being extended and more explicitly articulated with questions of political-practical order in later writings, notably in his lectures on "Kantian Constructivism in Moral Theory" (Columbia University, 1980) and in the volume on Political Liberalism. Despite all the criticisms and methodological problems that separate these works, I am stressing their continuity so as to highlight the question of foundations. Even when he seems to concede to some form of theoretical retraction, Rawls ends up reformulating an original concept or its first version in TJ so as to deepen the central theses of his theory of justice. For instance, in PL Rawls indicates straightforwardly that the major problem with TJ lied in the inconsistencies between the account of stability (part III, in part. § 76, the problem of relative stability) and the rest of his magnum opus. In other words, the question of articulating a well-ordered society, conceived as a regulative ideal of a society that seeks to promote its well-being through the public conception of justice, with a basic notion of an "association of social cooperation." In spite of his insightful remarks on the idea of social union in TJ § 79, the question of sociability remains problematic in Rawls's conception of a hypothetical society strategically idealized in a form accepted by each citizen who also knows that all the others accept the same principles of justice, satisfied by the basic social institutions (TJ § 69). According to a theoretical-conceptual construction of the original position in TJ, the two principles are the only ones to be effectively chosen by the parties for the realization of society tout court, i.e., to account for the state of civil society. The problem, as reformulated by Rawls in PL, is to sustain this theory as an alternative to utilitarian and intuitionist conceptions of morality underlying our liberal, democratic societies. In effect, the alliance of these apparently opposed traditions (the liberal and democratic contractarian models, respectively upheld by John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau) constitutes the politicalphilosophical platform common to Kant, Rawls, and Habermas. Rawls's "Kantian interpretation" is precisely what marks him off from Habermas's appropriation of the same principle of universalizibility. The democratic pluralism of liberal societies, as opposed to the ideal speech situation of discourse ethics, is regarded as a problematic starting-point by Rawls, not so much for the diversity of religious, philosophical, and moral doctrines, but for the pluralism of comprehensive doctrines that prove themselves incompatible for not being accepted by all involved parties --Rawls resorts thus to a distinction between the public and the nonpublic viewpoints (non-private). To be sure, Rawls does not distinguish between the moral and the political in TJ (cf. PL xv), the social contract being understood within moral philosophy: whatever is just always excels that which is better for society. A just well-ordered society must be founded in such a way that people will put up with all their religious, ethnic, and cultural differences, as free and equal persons who seek to live well. TJ is later presented as a procedural construction, more precisely as a procedural device of construction capable of theoretically representing the two fundamental principles of political justice (PL III 93). The guiding idea of TJ (§ 3/p. 11) is after all that "the principles of justice for the basic structure of society are the object of the original agreement." As principles that regulate all subsequent agreements, pacts, and contracts, they specify the types of social cooperation and forms of government to be established. What is at stake, therefore, is to justify the procedure that best accounts for the construction of a free and fair, reasonable society. Just as the overall aim of TJ was, according to Rawls, to generalize and carry "to a higher order of abstraction the traditional theory of the social contract as represented by Locke, Rousseau, and Kant"(TJ 11), he will maintain later that his conception of the contract is not utilitarian but Kantian, at the very level of its normative foundations.[9] "The principles of justice are also categorical imperatives in Kant's sense"(TJ § 40), insofar as the CI procedure claims no validity on the basis of the agent's desires, aims, inclinations, motivations, or intentions, but solely in virtue of the person's nature as a free and rational being. According to Kant, "nothing in the world --indeed nothing even beyond the world-can possibly be conceived which could be called good without qualification except a good will."[10] The categorical imperative provides us with the principle of universalizability according to which the form, matter, and end of our moral actions are selfdetermined by the modeling of maxims upon the moral law itself, in a procedure that accounts for the equation of the will with pure practical reason. Nevertheless, critics of Rawls have questioned his Kantianism, on the basis of his indebtedness to contractarian and supposedly utilitarian arguments, esp. when dealing with issues of rational choice. The book on Political Liberalism recasts the main theses of TJ, so as to corroborate the public conception of justice as fairness in a society where political power is exercised in accordance with a constitution --whose essentials must be endorsed by all citizens in light of principles and ideals accepted to them as reasonable and rational. According to Rawls, "this is the liberal principle of legitimacy."(PL 136f., 216f.) The Kantian conception of practical reasonableness (constructivism) is thus combined with the contractualism of liberal-democratic tradition. The liberalism at stake is of course political and not economic, just as Rawls's constructivism is said to be "political," and not metaphysical or moral. For Rawls, Kantian constructivism turns out to be the most appropriate normative model for the foundation of a theory of justice today. The foundations of a theory of justice must be understood in procedural terms, following the Kantian premises outlined in the Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, in the second Critique, in the Metaphysics of Morals, and in the political writings (esp. "On Perpetual Peace" and "Idea for a Universal History"). Rawls succeeds in recovering the political-constitutional dimension that ensures the juridical fulfillment (de jure) of moral conscience qua "fact of reason" (de facto), fundamental to Kant's practical philosophy. In order to elaborate on his theory of justice, Rawls recasts the Kantian foundations of ethics. Besides its refusal to ground the supreme principle of morality in a conception of the good or in a principle of utility, the Kantian procedure refuses the intuitionist thesis, according to which pure or sensible intuition or the experience of the senses, instincts, and emotions could found morals. In its broad definition, Rawls conceives of intuitionism as "the doctrine that there is an irreducible family of first principles, which have to be weighed against one another by asking ourselves which balance, in our considered judgment, is the most just."(TJ 34) On the one hand, Rawls maintains the moral-political correlation established by Kant, as well as the distinction between legality and morality. On the other hand, he seeks to recover the binding force of the principle of justice inherent to Kant's appropriation of the liberal, democratic conception of contract, as a regulative idea of practical reason. According to Rawls, universalizability and the primacy of right over the good are precisely what allow for a nonmetaphysical, detranscendentalized formulation of the principles of justice in reflective equilibrium. It is in this sense that Rawls emphasizes the strictly political-philosophical character of the foundations of a theory of justice. By recasting Kant's constructivism, Rawls aims at the normativity of practical reason in a contractarian context, ordered by a constitution and formed by free, morally equal persons, historically and socially conditioned --and not in a supposedly neutral standpoint. Rawls's contractarianism combines thus the Lockean principle of tolerance with Rousseau's general will, already appropriated by Kant. In the conception of Recht (justice/right) lies an articulation between the moral-rational Sollen and the political-constitutional Wollencapable of carrying out the "volonté générale" of the social contract. Hence the role of political philosophy lies in the construction (an idea-like abstraction) of a fair society ordered according to the rational principles of freedom that make us act out of duty. For Rawls, the watershed consists in Kant's contention that the moral foundation of the political cannot be done away with. It must be recalled that for Kant, the object of anthropology is defined in terms of a knowledge of human rationality, where humans are conceived, at once, as beings endowed with reason that they are (animal rationabile) and as rational beings they ought to be reasonable(animal rationale)(Anth B IV, 673). It is very instructive that Kant's conception of a human Sollen is found in the articulation of human nature in terms of rationality and historicity in such a manner that political philosophy is made dependent on moral philosophy. According to Kant, history is concerned with narrating the appearances of freedom of the will, or human actions, which like other natural events are determined by universal laws. Kant does not seek what gives the noumenal-phenomenical relation its foundation and justification on the same level of representations, but on a transcendental a priori that makes representations themselves possible. A new metaphysics had to emerge, as "a system of pure rational concepts independent of any conditions of intuition" (MdS 375), so that philosophical knowledge could deal with representations. Transcendental philosophy is precisely what accounts for the positivity of the social, juridical norms. For the transcendental field reveals a nonempirical, finite subject that determines in its relation to an object = x all the formal conditions of experience in general, making possible the synthesis between representations. While theoretical philosophy deals with the problem of representations and their determinations in the subject-object relations of knowledge, practical philosophy seeks to account for the self-determination of the human will and its representations. Such is therefore the legacy of the critical revolution that decentered metaphysical truth towards a region defined within the limits of human reason. By the methodic, systematic attacks of the Kritik on the pretensions to suprasensible knowledge, Kant set out to establish the true principles that constitute metaphysics as a science that makes possible legitimate knowledge of both nature and freedom. Hence, from the outset, Kant was led to draw the fundamental distinction between the theoretical and practical uses of pure reason, whether constituting or regulating the representations of its objects, respectively directed by the understanding (Verstand) applied to the cognition of nature or by reason (Vernunft) applied to the realm of freedom. Rawls uses thus the procedural representation of the categorical imperative (required by pure practical reason in the formulation of reasonable, universalizable maxims) so as to construct the content of a political conception of justice (in TJ, the two principles of justice are chosen by the parties in the original position) in order to represent their societal interests, although the original position is not itself constructed. However abstract as it sounds and actually is, Rawls's "Kantian interpretation" does justice to the latter's conception of justice at least insofar as the veil of ignorance is "thought up" (upbuilt) in the original position. There is no possibility of thinking justice without having not already presupposed such a device of representation. And yet Rawls's political constructivism fails to fulfill its anti-realist promises as the political thrust of his liberalism still refers us back to the moral conceptions of personality and correlates (sense of justice, concept of good, human freedom). Even the political view of liberal toleration seems to betray a definite commitment to moral principles --if not to a certain "morals by agreement". By way of conclusion, as Carlos Thiebaut put it, "Rawls's contribution proves itself to be contractarian insofar as the contract theory is the Kantian theory."[11] ENDNOTES 1. Funded by the Brazilian National Research Council (CNPq), which also supported my participation at the IXth International Kant Congress at Humboldt-Universität, Berlin, where this paper was read in March, 2000. I am particularly grateful to Onora O'Neill, Pierre Kerszberg, and Avery Goldman for their critical remarks and insights. A printed version of this paper is found in Kant und die Berliner Aufklärung: Akten des IX Internationalen Kant-Kongresses, ed. Volker Gerhardt, Rolf-Peter Horstmann und Ralph Schumacher, Berlin: W. de Gruyter, 2001, p. 286-295. For an elaborated account of the Kantian arbitration between Rawls and Habermas, cf. my Tractatus ethico-politicus (Porto Alegre: Edipucrs, 1999), and the essay "Critique of Public Reason Revisited: The Rawls-Habermas Debate," Veritas 44/4 (2000): 583-606. 2. John Rawls, A Theory of Justice, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971; Political Liberalism, New York: Columbia University Press, 1993. Abbr. TJ and PL. For an overview of Rawls's theory of justice, cf. my Rawls (Rio de Janeiro: Zahar, 2002). 3. Thomas W. Pogge, Rawls, München: C.H. Beck, 1994, p. 189-198. 4. Cf. Onora O'Neill, "Vindicating Reason", in P. Guyer (ed.), Cambridge Companion to Kant. Cambridge University Press, 1992, p. 280-308. 5. Kenneth Baynes, The Normative Grounds of Social Criticism: Kant, Rawls, Habermas, Albany: SUNY Press, 1992. 6. I am using the following abbreviations for Kant's works: KrV, KpV, GMS, and MdS. 7. Onora O'Neill, Constructions of Reason: Explorations of Kant's Practical Philosophy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989, p. 206-218. 8. In Eckart Förster, ed., Kant's Transcendental Deductions: The Three Critiques and the "Opus Postumum", Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1989, p. 81-113. 9. Cf. TJ viii: "The theory that results is highly Kantian in nature." 10. GMS, Trans. Lewis White Beck, Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merril, 1959, p. 9. 11. Contrato Social: Ontem e Hoje, ed. P. Krischke, São Paulo: Cortez, 1994, p. 284.