Hegel’s “China” and Fenollosa’s “Fusion”
Hegel’s interest in the Orient in general and China in particular is limited because he is concerned with the Greco-Judeo-Christian World. He has some dozen or so scattered remarks about China in his 1830 Lectures On the Philosophy of World History [Cambridge, 2002]. In his Philosophy of History lectures from the 1840s [Dover 1956 reprint of an 1899 translation (hence the archaic punctuation); all citations below from this edition] he devotes just about one hundred pages to the Orient which constitutes the three distinct and necessary stages that predate the beginning of World History proper in the ancient Greek polis. The stages are: China, India, and Persia. Hegel devotes about 30 pages to China, the first stage. History—in the sense of Universal History—begins in China and then leaves it behind altogether. China becomes an eternal and abstract Empire of Space devoid of any universal development. India, the second phase of History, likewise calmly and serenely closes in on itself but as abstract Time. The Persian Empire contains in itself a concrete Unity of Nations (one of which is Judea) and cannot close in on itself (since Judea is antithetically at odds with all other nations because of its singular and jealous God). Persia thus contains an “Antithesis in lively and active form” [114] which is the paradigm of History proper.
Getting to China, I begin with Hegel’s conclusion to the China discussion since it gets concisely to the point and captures the no-nonsense tone of Hegel’s brief treatise:
This [the preceding pages] is the character of the Chinese people in its various aspects. Its [China’s] distinguishing feature is that everything which belongs to Spirit—unconstrained morality in practice and theory, Heart, inward Religion, Science and Art properly so-called—is alien to it. The Emperor always speaks with majesty and paternal kindness and tenderness to the people who however cherish the meanest opinion of themselves and believe that they are born only to drag the car of Imperial Power. The burden which presses them to the ground seems to be their inevitable destiny; and it appears nothing terrible to them to sell themselves as slaves and to eat the bitter bread of slavery. Suicide, the result of revenge, and the exposure of children, as a common, even daily occurrence, show the little respect in which they hold themselves individually or humanity in general. And though there is no distinction conferred by birth, and everyone can attain the highest dignity, this very equality testifies to no triumphant assertion of the worth of the inner man, but a servile consciousness—one which has not yet matured itself so far as to recognize distinctions [138].
What or Who is Spirit? There is no one simple definition. In one place we read: “Spirit came into being as the truth of nature which has translated and suspended itself” [Encyclopedia, #308]. In another section we read that Spirit is “the unity of the soul and consciousness” [Encyclopedia, #363], and in another place [Encyclopedia #453] we learn that “the concept of Spirit has its reality in Spirit”. At no point does Hegel say that Spirit is man, human being. At no point in the Encyclopedia or Phenomenology of Spirit does Hegel unambiguously define Spirit. All we can say definitively is: Spirit is Spirit, the Absolutely In-itself For-itself, the Identity of Substance (exteriority, difference) and Subject (interiority, identity). Absolute Spirit is the Aristotelian/Christian Soul at the end of History. It is not unlike Wealth in Adam Smith. Jean Hyppolite will say that Spirit is History and History is Spirit. In any case, Hegelian philosophy is not humanism and not a religion and it is not simply a philosophy. It is the last idealistically systematic philosophy. Hegelian philosophy is a system that accounts for everything of significance: Everything of significance constitutes ‘moments’ within the History of Spirit. This History begins in the East, in China, like the rising sun; it ends in the West with Napoleon in Germany. A Hegelian may read Fenollosa’s “Coming Fusion” with curiosity but he would find it devoid of any historical significance. The fusion would merely be an insignificant episode in the era of the “last men”. Truly Historical men do not “fuse”. They fight, die, or surrender and work for their leaders.
How does History begin? It begins with the Chinese modification of Mongolianism: “Both [China and Mongolia] have the patriarchal constitution for their principle [but] so modified in China, as to admit the development of an organized system of secular polity; while among the Mongols it [the principle] limits itself to the simple form of a spiritual, religious sovereignty. In China the Monarch is Chief as Patriarch” [112]; whereas in Mongolia, the Lama “is honored as a God” [113]. The modification was capital for, in China, we witness the birth of the civil-ization of an essentially religious structure. In China, the civil absorbs the divine and the terrestrial into One. China became and remained the one and only thoroughly civilized people (to the point that Japan, their imitators, had no option but to become a thoroughly “snob culture”, Kojève could remark (though we do not know how seriously he meant this)). The Aufhebung of God (absolute sovereign) and Man (men and women, human beings) is the (or a) Emperor-Patriarch, and the basis of civilization is the family: “This family is also the basis of the [Chinese] Constitution, if we can speak of such. For, although the Emperor has the right of a Monarch, standing at the summit of the political edifice, he exercises it paternally. He is the Patriarch, and everything in the State that can make claim to reverence is attached to him. For the Emperor is chief both in religious affairs and in science […] This paternal care on the part of the Emperor, and the spirit of his subjects—who like children do not advance beyond the ethical principle of the family circle, and can gain for themselves no independent and civil freedom—makes the whole an empire” [122]. As the sublation of God and human the Emperor is an “all-encompassing personality” [123, my emphasis].
This was a colossal achievement, for the religious, the moral, the civil, and the natural are now One Substance and this One Substance is the State and it is entirely external to any one individual (or to any group or class, for who is not in a group that was not previously born into a family? Even an Emperor was born into a family). In the pages that follow Hegel shows that the Chinese State henceforth mirrors the Family and the Family (any family) mirrors the State (any state, any dynasty). There is no antithesis possible, and so Chinese History had ended as immediately as it began. Emperors will grow old and die as ordinary fathers will grow old and die, but others will replace them; the mirror-structure will remain in tact. What remains for the Chinese is simply to conform to this structure century after century; there is no antithetical negation possible that could significantly interrupt it.
The important point for Hegel is that this structure is entirely exterior—exterior to any Chinese person, to any Chinese family, or to any Chinese Emperor—and thus the Chinese people tend to become imitative, slavish, and devious. The essence of the State is outside itself in the Family and the essence of the Family is outside itself in the State. Spirit here is entirely Substantial, that is, exterior to itself, different from itself. It admits of no Subjectivity or Interiority. Spirit is arrested as for-itself without any way to return to itself in-itself. This can be contrasted to the Jews who experience themselves as a people, as individuals, and as human because their Jehovah can negate the individual, the people as a race, and humanity as a whole. Jews acquire a Spiritual experience of all three (in the form of negation only, however). This is completely outside the Chinese experience.
The characteristics of the Chinese people can be deduced from their mirror-structure. For example: “The Chinese have as a general characteristic a remarkable skill in imitation, which is exercised not merely in daily life but also in art. They have not yet succeeded in representing the beautiful, as beautiful […] although a Chinese painter copies European pictures (as the Chinese do everything else) correctly; although he observes accurately how many scales a carp has; how many indentations there are on the leaves of a tree; what is the form of various trees; and how the branches bend—the Exalted, the Ideal and the Beautiful is not the domain of his art and skill” [137; emphasis Hegel’s]. With regard to science the Chinese are capable of invention but not advanced application (the Jesuits built them their first cannon; the moveable printing press was never developed); in mathematics there is skill in calculation but no advances to higher aspects of mathematical theory; and their well known astronomical observations had yet to yield a scientific cosmology [136 ff]. Instead, the Chinese people confine themselves to astrology. With regard to religion, the Emperor embodies all power and thanksgiving for blessings; “above” the Emperor is thus nothing more than tien, “sky” or perhaps “heavenly sky”. Hence religious sentiments, thoughts, proscriptions are not spiritually internalized. What matters are the decrees of the Emperor before whom all Chinese are equal and “all are alike degraded. As no honor exists, no one has an individual right in respect of others, the consciousness of debasement predominates and this easily passes into utter abandonment. With this abandonment is connected the great immorality of the Chinese. They are notorious for deceiving wherever they can. Friend deceives friend, and no one resents the attempt at deception on the part of another if the deceit has not succeeded in its object or comes to the knowledge of the person sought to be defrauded. Their frauds are most astutely performed, so that Europeans have to be painfully cautious in dealing with them” [131]. Europeans themselves are, quite naturally, considered by the Chinese to be “beggars” since they abandon their families and seek wealth outside their own country [137-38]. There is no fundamental distinction between murder and accidental homicide since such would require a legal-moral notion of subjectivity and conscience, and anyways the civil result is the same [129]. Somebody died; somebody caused it; somebody has to pay. The nature of the cause is insignificant, undifferentiated; the death penalty is applied in either case. Consequently, in the case of insult “a Chinese prefers killing himself rather than his opponent since in either case he must die.” In killing himself he is given an honored burial and may hope that his family will be rewarded the property of his opponent by the Emperor’s court [130].
I could go on but it is clear that Hegel’s interest in China was limited to a pre-properly-Historical role, and he wanted to move hurriedly to India and then Persia in order to get to Athens. Fenollosa was also a man in a hurry—not to leave the Orient, but to “fuse” it to “us” and to “lead it” in the “final crusade” [164, all citations hereafter from The Chinese Character As a Medium for Poetry (Fordham 2008)]. Not a philosopher of history, Fenollosa (writing this piece in 1898) was a prophet [164] who saw a “crisis” that “the future historian will look back upon as […] unique, the most breathless in human annals” and as “man’s final experiment” [155]. There is no time for patient unfolding of reason and argument. In my opinion, Hegel may have flirted with madness; Fenollosa with being a crackpot. His essay is difficult to follow since it is peppered with slogans, partial thoughts, undefined terms, and anachronistic key words that connote an archaic affect. He is writing at around the time when Japan is massively modernizing and industrializing. Fenollosa predicts that China will follow suit if it can avoid being partitioned by Russia, France, and Germany. With the rise of the East on the horizon the time was ripe (and I choose that term deliberately) for the West to respond with leadership. But not France, Russia, nor Germany whom “[w]e cannot trust” [165]. Neither will China be able to lead since “[t]heir chief defect is that their practice needs to be led by ours” [164]. The responsibility falls to “the Anglo-Saxon race […] because it alone can conceive of a fine balance between society and the individual, of a universal federation and arbitration” [165]. If “we” are successful we shall enter “literally into his [Christopher Columbus’s] dream, and carry the Aryan banner of his caravels where he aimed to plant it—on the heights of an awakened East” [165].
Fenollosa is hard to understand, his intellectual filiations are obscure, but I’ll give it a try. The “fusion” Fenollosa has in mind is the archaic sexuality of Eros: the upsurge of life from out of undifferentiated matter and its search for an other life to bond with. I don’t know how many times Fenollosa refers to “awakening”, and the essay is filled with references to fruit and planting, to nerves, to soil and blood, fusion and infusion, seeds and sowing, and so on and so on. He goes so far as to imagine East and West as “bride and groom” preparing for a “world-marriage” [I kid you not, 156]. Although “[w]ealth is the key to world control” [162] wealth and control are not the issue since they cannot be ends but only means [162, 164]. The purpose is a “final crusade” [164]. But a crusade for what? To reclaim what? It is not clear, but he does proclaim that, with the fusion “the races that shall realize the ideal and idealize the real shall be the culmination of humanity” [164]. Which means what? Certainly if East and West fuse then it will mean the culmination of humanity with the death of East as East and West as West since, by elementary logic, the two will have become One—something new and final. There is thus the underlying affect of the death drive: Thanatos to accompany Eros.
Say what you like about Hegel’s judgments on China, India, and Persia, he is a true philosopher, and he leaves his footprints everywhere. Anyone who reads Hegel, even a little bit, sees that his method involves taking even superficial observations, then enhancing and sharpening them into essential distinctions which negate each other and create the condition for the next step in the History of Spirit. If Hegel does have anything worthwhile to say about the Chinese it is a by-product of a broader ambition and anybody who reads Hegel on China must filter his text accordingly. Hegel’s China exists within his philosophy. Fenollosa however belongs to another tradition that may include Maimonedesian prophetic esotericism of the 12th century which was resuscitated in the 20th beginning with Franz Rosenzweig’s rebellion against Hegel. I mention this since it is revelation and culmination (not method and origins) that interests this branch of thought. Fenollosa falls a generation after Hegel and a generation before Rosenzweig (and Barth, Strauss, Guttmann, Benjamin, and others each of whom sought to re-interpret knowledge tout court). These thinkers originated a profoundly anti-modern sentiment which still exists. However, Fenollosa is not interested in a new way of knowing per se nor is he religious in the latter thinkers’ sense. Thus he presents us with revelation without religion (or is there an implicit religion?) and urges a sort of society of religious affect unburdened by Law and Scripture. He appeals to Aryans who feel that modernity has been the death of primordial affect where by affect I mean feeling (including the feeling of life and the enthusiastic assenting to life up to the point of death) prior to its domestication and codification as the sweetness and sadness of emotions. And also by affect I mean mythic affect—not the affect that can be detected by biologists. That is to say, Fenollosa and those who are his other untimely companions (in their own ways Nietzsche, Bataille, D. H. Lawrence, Charlotte Bronte, Ayn Rand, others—I’m still working on this) were on a sort of crusade to awaken an affective dimension whose existence is mythical, not actual, and not directly experiential (as Bataille lucidly understood). Like Hegel’s, Fenollosa’s China is a key to a broader agenda and his remarks must be filtered accordingly. To Fenollosa, China was to be the catalytic partner that would allow the West (i.e. that would allow Aryans) to ecstatically experience its own demise. He cites no evidence that the East shares “our” enthusiasm about the coming fusion/suicide pact.
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