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A Conversation between Charles Taylor and WeimingTu
Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen (Institute for Human Sciences)
Vienna, Austria, June 11th, 2011
(Source: accessed 9/26/11)
(Unauthorized, this interview was transcribed and lightly edited by Samuel C. Porter, Ph.D.)
Charles M. Taylor, Ph.D., is Professor Emeritus, McGill University and anInstitutfür die Wissenschaftenvom Menschen(Institute for Human Sciences) Permanent Fellow.
WeimingTu, Ph.D., (杜维明教授) is Director of Institute for Advanced Humanistic Studies and Lifetime Professor of Philosophy Peking University. He is also a Senior Fellow of the Asia Center and Professor Emeritus at Harvard University.
WeimingTu: Why don’t I begin with a thought, which might very well be wishful thinking, that there is – basically in the world of ideas but even in the so called profession of philosophy, I wouldn’t call it a spiritual turnlike linguistic or epistemological turns but – recognition of the importance of religion broadly defined, especially spirituality.
My own experience is limited. But, as I’ve observed, even Derrida,[1] when he was alive, talked about [inaudible word; pardon?] back to the Jewish tradition. Your case is obvious. And Hilary Putnam, before he retired, gave a course on four Jewish thinkers: Maimonides, Franz Rosenswieg, Martin Buber, and Emmanuel Levinas. He also offered a course on non-scientific knowledge. I think even Gianni Vatimmo, who is a post-modern thinker, returned to Catholicism, though not to the Vatican version. So the kind of deconstruction, which Richard Rorty exemplifies, is only one of those possibilities, and maybe not even the most persuasive one.
Now your book,A Secular Age,[2] seems to give a very strong argument that the secular age should end somehow, even though people may not accept your idea about the re-emergence and importance of transcendence. So I’d like to see your reaction to this.
Charles Taylor: Yeah, I think that – several things – that the changes you see I also see. People now that used to dismiss religion, or even talking about religion or spirituality – a lot of those people have shifted. Or they aren’t listened to as much anymore by other people. But it’s a very specific kind of change in this sense: I think a lot of people who have no faith, particularly – even don’t think necessarily very highly of people of faith – have come to the realization that if you exclude thinking and talking about religion you exclude so much of human life, so many of the sources of good and bad things. I mean morality but also the terrible things in human life. Such people realize you’re crippled in your understanding of what human life is if you exclude religion.
WeimingTu: Diminished.
Charles Taylor:Yeah, diminished. Very much so. Of course, when you think in terms of the Western tradition – Dante’s Inferno and Bach’s Cantatas and so on – obviously you have something herewhich has nourished a faith tradition which has something very important to say to us.
So I think that those people got impatient with the hard-line secularists who said, “Let’s not talk about religion, let’s marginalize it” and so on. Not necessarily that they are seeking a spiritual path themselves. Some people may be. But because –
WeimingTu: They’re concerned.
Charles Taylor: They’re concerned about the narrowing of our understanding of the human.
WeimingTu: But even if you ask them whether you are religious they may say no. Many people say, “I’m religious even though I don’t belong to an organization.”
Charles Taylor: Yeah, and some people say,“I’m spiritual but not religious” and some people would even not say spiritual. But –
WeimingTu: But have ultimate concerns.
Charles Taylor: Yeah. But I mean they just don’t think that it doesn’t have any interest for us to look at religious traditions, what religious people have done, what religious people have thought.
Because, although they may interpret it differently, they think there is [something] very important about human life, which all this somehow explores and reveals.
And I think we’ve gone into a new period – well, we’re polarized because we, strangely enough, this is exactly the same period as you have these very angry atheists in the West who really would like to destroy, expunge religion totally. And that may be there for something in this change. Maybe that finally produced a reaction where a lot of people say, “Okay, I agree with them and religion may not be the right path but they are behaving in a ridiculous fashion – a fashion of overkill which is going to impoverish our lives.” So they’re reacting against that. I think that part of it they’ve helped to crystallize by their very aggressivity and narrow-mindedness.
WeimingTu: I was – while I probably didn’t deserve it – given a kind of life-long achievement award by the American Association of Humanists. Maybe Ed Wilson proposed [inaudible word or two] as a member of that [organization]. They also invited Salman Rushdie to give a talk. So when I was giving my talk – [inaudible name] was there too – I said, look, Confucianism is a form of humanism to be sure. But it’s definitely not a secular humanism. You can say it’s a comprehensive [inaudible word] humanism.
Nature – an Indian scholar by the name of – an Indian philosopher, maybe one of the leading philosophers, by the name of [inaudible name; Para Subramanya (sp?)] in a paper he presented to a conference I co-organized with [inaudible name] on Indian and Chinese philosophical perspectives on knowledge, wisdom and spirituality. The paper argues very persuasively – even to some of the people who consider Confucianism simply social ethics or a kind of social philosophy – that we should characterize Confucianism as spiritual humanism. That to me is really quite remarkable.
So I think the kind of strong belief in materialism not in a Marxist sense. But like University of Texas, Austin, Physics Professor Steven Weinberg, that the world has no meaning and it’s just a kind of physicalism. Everything is reducible to the outward reality or to the high energy of physics.
Charles Taylor: Yeah, to what can be understood by physics.
WeimingTu: You can touch it. You can quantify it. I think that position is no longer held by some of the most brilliant scientists, especially in the instance of quantum mechanics, chaos theory and so forth.
So I think that the reason – or my conjecture is – you were rewarded with the Templeton Foundation Prize, which was originally focused on science and religion, and I think that … I’m sure that your position is persuasive not only among people in the humanities and the social sciences but elsewhere.
The first time I encountered your work on the sources of the self and, of course, authenticity, I felt a very strong, spiritual or religious component there. But this is a personal question. I don’t know. As a professional philosopher, I know most people want to make a clear distinction between my personal belief and also my philosophical work. In my case, I’ve always been committed to the Confucian tradition. So, obviously, the totally disinterested position is no longer available to me.
What is the situation in your case? Very early on you were self-consciously trying to say I am a Catholic.
Charles Taylor: Yeah, because – I mean this is how I see the situation in philosophy. I think we have to present arguments in philosophy that could, in principle, convince anyone. So if I presented an argument that says, “It follows fromthe fact that God exists” and so on – that’s not a philosophical argument because it’s not starting with something that someone else with some other position can start from.
So, definitely, we have to speak to everybody even though we don’t convince everybody. But I think it’s also true that there’s a much higher likelihood of one’s having certain intuitions if one has one kind of position and of one’s having other kinds of intuitions if one has another kind of position.
So, in a way, full disclosure is a very good thing in philosophy. It will give people a sense of “Where I’m coming from. What’s one of the sources of the intuitions I’m coming up with? This is what it is.” But that doesn’t mean that I’m not arguing with everybody. I’m not presenting something that –
WeimingTu: It has to pass the test of rigorous analytical –
Charles Taylor: Yeah, I mean, in a sense, what we’re dealing with in these philosophical and human questions is a question of interpretation. Who can make the most sense out of the text, out of life, out of history? So you have one view and I have another. And I want to say to you, “Well, you’re view is not bad on this but it’s too narrow on that. It can’t really understand that. And I have a view that I think can encompass that.” It’s that kind of argument that goes back and forth.
So I’ve got to try to convince you on the basis of, “Well, these kinds of things happened in history and how do you interpret them?”
But the fact that I have a certain take on this is just inseparable from my whole –
WeimingTu: I totally agree.
Charles Taylor: So let’s be frank with one another. I’m coming from here. You’re coming from there. [a few inaudible words.] But everyone knows where you’re coming from. But you’re not presenting arguments that could, in principle, not convince everybody that this is a good way to be, to operate and so on.
WeimingTu: Let’s say in a more philosophical senseHans-Georg Gadamer’s notion of preunderstanding and your bias and so forth.[3] But in ordinary language my own personal experiences – this only happened in the last three or four years – I tried to make a distinction between private and personal.
Following John Stuart Mill, you have to develop a sense of privacy, which is absolutely critical. If you don’t have that, like in China, then the freedom of expression and so forth will be compromised as well. So when I say this is my private matter, my diary and so forth, I don’t want to share it with anyone.
But the word personal may have a totally different connotation. When I say this is my personal view it may say this is subjective and private. But it also may mean I’m existentially committed. If, say, in the latter sense, precisely because it is personal, I would like to argue with you and it’s not only accountable and transparent. It can also be falsified. So my personal – this follows of course this incredible discussion within the natural sciences, I guess, of Michael Polanyi’s notion of “personal knowledge”[4] –
Charles Taylor: Yes, that’s right.
WeimingTu: So in that sense, earlier, a great Confucian thinker by the name of Tuang Chou Yi [sp?], when he gave the inaugural lecture as the [inaudible word?] professor of philosophy at the Chinese University of Hong Kong – and this of course in the ‘60s and ‘70s when analytical philosophy was quite overpowering. He said we really should develop a sense of awe, a sense of respect, as philosophers, for what we read and for what we do. Right now it’s so sensible and everybody accepts it. But at the time he was attacked, especially by some analytical philosophers who said, “This guy is not philosophical enough.” If you say, “I have a sense of awe,” that means you’re talking about religion. You know, the distinction between religion – when a philosopher, at that time, says [to another philosopher], “You’re doing religion,” it’s a kiss of death, meaning you don’t have an argument, the power of reasoning and so forth.
So my sense now is that fruitful discussion is sometimes not possible. But the more you’re aware of what you do and the more that you’re willing to share your personal – not your private – sense of “Why is it meaningful to me,” a position I took early on, you assume a kind of risk.
If I say, “I am a Confucian,” they say, “Okay, then your discussion of Confucianism is biased because you love it.”
Actually, I was severely criticized by a noted, widely respected historian. He said, “The problem with WeimingTu is that he really loves it. What he’s doing now is making something which may be outmoded and feudalistic into something beautiful, something to which people would be attracted. That’s why he got this reputation in the United States or in the English speaking world because he seems to give the impression that it’s a great thing you should learn.”
I said, “No.” If you talk to a theologian, or if you talk to a Buddhist teacher, and the theologian is of course immersed in Christian discourse and gives the best argument about something as basic as, say, the resurrection or the trinity. That’s as true with the Buddhist idea of karma. Why, as a Confucian, can’t I give an argument about something which I strongly believe such as humanity, rightness or civility and so forth? I’ve had a lot of trouble with that.
Charles Taylor: I think that what your critics don’t see is that an important part of reason can be articulating a new vision. In other words, it’s rather like Tom Kuhn’s idea of a paradigm shift.[5] You don’t get anywhere in science if you just go over and over the evidence until somebody gets a new paradigm idea which makes the evidence relevant in a new way. And then, wow, things begin to fit together. So getting those insights can be tremendously important. But, you see, you get insights about Confucianism because you love it.[6]
WeimingTu: Right.
Charles Taylor: You wouldn’t get them if you didn’t love it. So, as being somebody creative who can contribute to the debate – we’ve got to have somebody who loves something, right? Otherwise they have nothing to tell us. I think this idea – as though all the issues were laid out before hand and we don’t need any inventionand we just have to rigorously test this or that and so on – is a kind of old style positivist view.
WeimingTu: And it’s still extremely powerful –
Charles Taylor: Extremely powerful.
WeimingTu: – especially in China.
Charles Taylor: Really?
WeimingTu: Yeah. China suffers, I think in general, a kind of scientism, an outmoded positivistic science. Even a very respected scholar of Chinese philosophy, David Nivison, who taught at Stanford and trained more than one generation of outstanding scholars. Once he confided to me and I was astounded because he’s one of the best interpreters of the Confucian tradition, especially virtue ethics. He said,“I’m moving out of philosophy. I want to do something very different.” I said, “What?” He said, “I’m going to do something like dating. I want to date – ”
Charles Taylor: Texts?
WeimingTu: No, no, no. Not texts. He said, “I want simply to argue – a very ancient time, the Zhou –which was the dynasty that Confucius loved – that the Zhou Dynasty, the conquest of the Shang Dynasty by the Zhou happened in a certain year. According to my own work it’s probably 1045 B.C.E. And I want to – ” I said, “Why? This is not something philosophers are interested in.”
He said, “I’ve been a philosopher for so long and with any argument I presented there would be counter arguments and then there’d be more arguments and more counter arguments. I now want to do something that is so factual that nobody else will be able to say, ‘No.’”
Charles Taylor: Conclusive.
WeimingTu: Well, he spent 10 years on that problem. Obsessed with it. I was so astonished. When one of his students – a very brilliant student – questioned his conclusion about 1045, or 1047, he disowned him and became totally violent. He sent me a letter denouncing his student.
Charles Taylor: Really?
WeimingTu: He just became paranoid, or I don’t know. Anyway, that to me is very strange. The idea to get it right. I have a very good friend who is a historian and his position is this: We historians should present aRankean,[7] source-based accurate description of what happened and we do not make any judgments. We become neutral, value neutral. We present all this material for philosophers, intellectual historians and others to interpret. We just get the facts. I said, “God, this guy is playing God.” He said, “We got it. This is the neutral ground.”
So the more I do it the more I feel that it is not only in philosophy and religion but also history and sometimes even in science. Because, according to Kuhn, the scientific community – why the Copenhagen school? Why is this problem considered important? Why not the other problem? Or that problem? It’s not just the sociology of knowledge. Within the structure of scientific inquiry [there is] personal involvement. If you don’t love it, how can you be a first-rate scientist?
Charles Taylor: Absolutely. I think we totally agree on that and it’s just so evident today that I can’t understand why there is this blockage.
WeimingTu: But still you are a minority.
Charles Taylor: Yeah, but I can see that the hold of positivism is very, very strong. It’s gotten to be for many people synonymous with reason and they just can’t deviate from it. They feel very uncomfortable if you ask them – I mean, also you just know when you look at them that they do love certain things. They love certain principles.
WeimingTu: Sure.
Charles Taylor: So they’ve got a kind of unconsciousness of their own modus operandi.
WeimingTu: One thing you just mentioned, that it’s probably a deviation from reason, but my own sense is the complexity of the question of rationality itself. You have instrumental rationality in Weber’s sense. But the questions about the limits of rationality – they have to be addressed. There are so many areas where rationality is either irrelevant or it doesn’t matter. For example, our common sense ideas. Sometimes you don’t have a good reason but it’s done. So, I don’t know.