Download Deconstruction, Zen Buddhism and the Ethical

Deconstruction, Zen Buddhism, and the Ethical
Jin Y. Park
American University
(Summery of Paper)
(Philosophical Encounter, July 14, 2006, Hong Kong)
This paper is based on the claim that deconstruction offers its own ethical paradigm and that the nature of
deconstructive ethics is different from the traditional ethics based on metaphysics. With this assumption,
this paper demonstrates the ethical mode in deconstruction and Zen Buddhism in threefold: the first section
explores the ethical in Derridean deconstruction focusing on Derrida’s short essay “On Cosmopolitanism”
(1997/2001); the second section investigates contemporary Western discourse on Zen ethics; in the third
section, I conclude by proposing deconstructive Zen ethics as an alternative to normative ethics.
1. Deconstructive Ethics or Deconstructing Ethics
Derridean deconstruction marks a gap in a discourse. By marking a fissure and thus finding internal
chasms and self-contradictions in a discourse, deconstruction dismantles a being’s self identity, which has
constituted the foundation of metaphysical thinking. In reading a text, Derrida demonstrates moments of
indecidability imbedded in a discourse. The structure of this indecidability is called a double-bind, which
Derrida sees as involved in each moment of our decision making. In his late writings, Derrida has
addressed the impact of deconstructive marking of indecidability and double-binding on our consideration
of ethics. One such example appears in his essay “On Cosmopolitanism”(“Cosmopolites de tous les pays,
encore un effort!” 1997), in which Derrida discusses the concept of hospitality as articulated in Kant’s
essay “To Perpetual Peace”(Zum ewigen Frieden, 1795). In this essay Derrida addresses the issue of the
possibility of universal hospitality, which can be summarized as follows.
In “To Perpetual Peace,” Kant outlines five preliminary articles to maintain permanent peace among states,
which is followed by his proposal of three definitive articles for eternal peace. In the Third Definitive
Article, Kant brings our attention to the concept of universal hospitality. Here Kant treats hospitality not as
an issue of philanthropy but “of right” as he states: “Hospitality means the right of an alien not to be treated
as an enemy upon his arrival in another’s country.”1 Kant’s idea of the right to universal hospitality is
based on the fact that no region of the earth originally belongs to anyone and thus everybody has a right to
be on any part of the earth. In other words, the earth is owned by no one and is thus open to everybody.
Kant thus states: “the right to visit, to associate, belongs to all men by virtue of their common ownership of
the earth’s surface; …because originally no one had a greater right to any region of the earth than anyone
else.”2
From the perspective of the twenty-first century in which the modernist concept of separate nation-states
became a standard of regional divisions, no statement might sound more naïve than this claim of the
universal right for individuals to be on any part of earth. However, no period in recent history makes us
more aware of the truth and reality of this statement, that we all live on earth and if humanity wishes to
survive, we need to live together. By saying so, in our understanding of territorial ownership, we are
already in the realm of a double bind in the sense that Derrida will argue in his reading of Kant. Just to get
the sense of what Derrida means by the double bind, let us consider the following questions: to whom
should we open “our” territory and how should we open it? What limitations should we impose on the
foreigners who will be on “our” territory? Is “unconditional” opening of “our” territory an option at all? If
our acceptance of foreigners has conditions, what are the grounds of this conditionality? Since when does
this land belong to “us,” and exclusively to “us”? What about a nation-state’s responsibility to protect its
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citizens? But can a nation survive, either in Kant’s time or in the twenty first century, without cooperation
with other nations economically, politically, environmentally, or humanistically?
The indecidability and double bind that we find in our attempt to answer these questions are the double
bind that binds the concept of universal hospitality as well. Kant himself must have been aware of this
problem. Hence, after he declares the universal ownership of the earth, Kant sets conditions for universal
hospitality. That is, Kant limits the right of universal hospitality to the right for foreigners to visit and not
to reside in the foreign soil. And the residential right will be speculated by the sovereign power of the
region. Hence, we need conditions to execute unconditional hospitality. This statement falls into aporia.
If universal hospitality has conditions, can it still be universal? This is exactly what Derrida finds as the
double bind in Kantian concept of hospitality. Derrida thus states: “in defining hospitality in all its rigor as
a law… Kant assigns to it conditions which make it dependent on state sovereignty, especially when it is a
question of the right of residence.”3
In Kant’s hospitality, the distinction between the “universality,” and thus unconditionality of hospitality,
and the conditions of such hospitality can be compared to the distinction between the natural surface of the
earth and the institutions established on that natural surface. An example is the sovereignty of a nation.
One may be on any part of the earth because all of us share the ownership of the earth’s “surface” but to be
a resident means to be a part of an institution. A society, or a nation-state as an institution, is not merely a
“surface” of the earth, but it is institutionalized --or civilized, if you prefer,-- space. However, where does
the natural state of earth end and the institutionalized space of a nation begin? Kant does not ask this
question. Some might argue that Derrida’s claim is naïve or even perverted, because no nation in reality
can accept all and any foreigners without imposing some limitations in order to protect its own citizens.
However, in the ultimate sense it is not merely an issue of whether a nation should accept foreigners or
emigrants without imposing conditions. The very fact that that is not possible in reality, and thus the
application of hospitality is always limited, and that the universal hospitality is always to be done ununiversally, is the double-binding nature of hospitality. That the “universal” is subject to conditions,
thereby becoming partial in being universal, is the status of the universal. In this context, Derrida
compares our exercise of hospitality to that of ethics, as he declares: “ethics is hospitality”4 (emphasis
original). The limits and perversion of our practice of hospitality is, from Derrida’s perspective, the very
limits of ethics that we practice.
Why is ethics hospitality? Because ethics, like hospitality, begins with one’s relationship with others;
ethics, like hospitality, begins with one’s desire to have a favorable, good and right relationship with
others; and like hospitality, ethics, in one’s attempt to be fair, be right, and be good, always gets caught in
the double-bind of the impossibility of making decisions without appropriation. From Derrida’s
perspective, the function of ethics does not lie in merely offering precise rules for our decision-making.
Instead, ethics, from a deconstructive perspective, reminds us of the question of appropriation and
domestication involved in our thinking, decision-making, and action-taking. Deconstructive ethics is thus
an interruption.
Why is normative ethics problematic to Derrida and deconstructive mode of thinking? Normative ethics
grounds itself in the belief of human beings’ capacity as rational beings capable of distinguishing between
right and wrong or good and bad, as well as the metaphysical foundation of those concepts. Normative
ethics is a corollary of identity-principle of metaphysical tradition. Deconstructive mode of thinking
understands a being as a differential notion; identity is inevitably non-identity, because in the concept of
identity is already others. When we expand this idea of identity of non-identity further, we encounter what
Derrida calls the inexhaustibility of context. The non-saturability, inexhaustibility, and thus
inconceivability, of the full scope of our reality is the secret that every moment of life and every being
contains within itself.
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Deconstructive operations do not deny the fact that decisions should be made in our daily lives and
especially in the public and political realms. Conversely, the fact that decisions are there to be made each
and every moment of our personal and public life does not mean that the appropriation of the inexhaustible
contexts of our existence and the excluded part in decision-making should also be forgotten.
Deconstructive ethics provides us with the possibility of thinking the ethical without resorting to the
metaphysical grounding which traditionally functioned as foundation for ethical value judgments. It also
demonstrates that ethics is not just about making distinctions, and that ethics is also possible by realizing
the impossibility of making the final decision. The idea of indecidability and double-bind which Derrida
sees at the core of a being and a being’s relationship with the world reject finality of any decision-making
and thought-process.
Derrida’s idea of the differential notion of a being and the insaturable contexts in which a being exists
connect deconstruction with Zen Buddhist world view. By the same token, deconstructive ethical
paradigm can be shared with Zen Buddhism as well.
2. The Ethical in Contemporary Discourse on Zen Buddhism
Since Zen Buddhism’s entry into the Western world, the ethical nature of Zen Buddhism has become one
of the most discussed topics. This topic, however, has largely been disregarded in the discourses of Zen
Buddhism in East Asia. Recent Buddhist scholarship in the West provides us with two opposing reports
regarding the status of Zen Buddhism in the context of ethical discourse. On the one hand is the claim that
Buddhism in general, and Zen Buddhism in particular, needs to offer a clearer blueprint on social issues
and demonstrate its viability as an ethical discourse in order for the tradition to survive in the West. In
contrast to this demand for a Zen Buddhist ethical layout, recent scholarship on Zen Buddhism has
revealed how “un”-ethical Zen Buddhism has been. In that context, Robert Sharf, for example,
demonstrated how Zen Buddhism was closely related to and even a result of Japanese nationalism during
the first half of the twentieth century.5 Brian Victoria has also brought our attention to Zen Buddhism’s
involvement with Japanese militarism during the World War II, raising doubts about Zen Buddhism’s
capacity as an ethical discourse. Despite of such grim aspects of recent history in Zen Buddhism, they
cannot completely negate the capacity of Zen Buddhism to offer an ethical discourse. In fact, scholars
attempting to create Zen Buddhist ethics have produced results worth considering for the future of Zen
Buddhism’s viability as a social theory. In that context two opposite views on Zen ethics is noticeable.
T. P. Kasulis finds the foundation of Zen Buddhist ethics in the pure state of pre-thinking. Unlike rulebound nature of western ethics based on metaphysical foundation, Kasulis argues, Zen ethics is a mode
which “eliminates selfishness by modeling oneself after oneself and, therefore, forgetting oneself.”
Interpreting the well-known passage from “Genjōkōan” in Dōgen’s Shōbōgenzō, Kasulis locates the ethical
ground of Zen Buddhism in the realization of the presencing of things as they are. Kasulis sees Dōgen’s
view of enlightenment as the realization of “the authentification of our own experience,” which goes in line
with “the idea of hongaku (“primordial enlightenment”).”6 According to Dōgen and the hongaku thought,
this “prereflective state” is given; the dualism of the subject and object is a result of our reflection. Hence
Kasulis states: “our isolation from each other arises upon reflection.”7 The state of pre-reflection, “the preego mode of without-thinking,”8 is the source in which both wisdom and compassion radiate, Kasulis
claims. In sum, Kasulis claims the pre-reflective state of original enlightenment, which Zen Buddhism
considers to exist in every being, as the ground of Zen ethics.
There are, however, fundamental issues that the Kasulisean approach needs to resolve in order to be
seriously considered as Zen ethics. The first is the relationship between awakening and ethics. In other
words: How does the attainment of enlightenment, or awakening to the original enlightenment, enable an
individual to behave virtuously? Kasulis claims that compassion and intuitive wisdom are one. However
even the Buddha himself went through the period of hesitation before he made a decision to teach his
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enlightenment to other human beings, which seems to me a clear evidence that awakening or original
enlightenment does not have to be immediately transferred into virtuous actions. Secondly, if Zen ethics is
possible only in the state of pre-reflective experience, which is available only to those who attained
awakening, what is the status of ethical behaviors for the sentient beings who live in the world of reflection,
and who are yet to attain the state of pure pre-reflective awakening? Without clear answers to these
questions, the Kasulean version of Zen ethics does not seem functional as an ethical discourse.
James Whitehill seems to be aware of the problem involved in taking the pre-reflective state as a ground
for ethics. Critical of what he calls the “transcendence trap” of the romanticized Buddhist ethics, which
considers the moral life as “a nonrational expressiveness, something natural, spontaneous, non-linguistic,
and uncalculating,”9 Whitehill emphasizes the importance of will in Buddhist ethics, the model of which
he found in the disciplined life style of early Buddhism.10 From Whitehill’s perspective, Kasulisean
interpretation of Zen Buddhism, instead of offering any ethical paradigm, will end up demonstrating the
incompatibility between Zen Buddhism and ethics. That is so, because, to Whitehill, such a paradoxical
statement as “nirvana is samsara” creates an obstacle in the path to Zen ethics, because of its incapacity to
make distinction between the two, which he considers as a critical blow in ethics.
Kasulis’s and Whitehill’s proposals of Zen ethics stand in stark contrast with each other. By characterizing
Zen ethics as the non-rational, pre-reflective state of original enlightenment, Kasulis’s vision of Zen ethics
faces the challenge of how to actualize the pre-reflective state of non-discrimination in a world that
requires discriminatory judgment. On the other hand, by over-emphasizing moralistic aspects of Zen
Buddhism, Whitehill’s proposal of Zen ethics faces the problem of reducing Zen tradition into one part of
early Buddhism with emphasis on vinaya, disregarding the entire history of Zen Buddhism in its attempt to
problematize the reifying tendency of human mind. Put side by side, the limits of Kasulisean ethics lies in
the equation of wisdom and compassion without explaining the actual path linking the two, whereas the
problems of Whitehillean ethics arises from applying substantialist views of ethics to Zen Buddhism,
which is basically non-substantialist. The structure of Zen Buddhism does not call for the rule-bound
ethics as the early Buddhism might do. Constant revolts against conventional forms of communication,
which mark the history of Zen Buddhism, symbolize Zen rejection of any fixed configurations in our
handling of the world. That this revolt itself has a structure that might have led to the creation of specific
forms of power and authority, as claimed by Dale Wright, for example, in his view of Zen monastic
language game, does not completely negate Zen efforts to deconstruct the reified mode of thinking. Seen
from this perspective, a third view on Zen ethics is necessary if we want to consider Zen Buddhist ethics at
all. My proposal as a third form is deconstructive Zen ethics, which I will outline based on our discussion
of deconstructive ethics in the previous section.
3. Deconstruction, Zen Buddhism and Non-substantialist Ethics
Purity of the transcendental is violence. And the violence is both symbolic and actual. It is as much
militant as philosophical. The violence of the purity, the pure transcendental in its ethical form, and the
violence of the Other without the play of différance is war, a concrete form of which we witness in various
types of war-- a war between nations, between different genders, between different ethnic groups, between
individuals. When the Other is reified, absolutized, and frozen within the subject, the subject’s identity is
also reified.
When Zen Buddhist discourse problematizes the discriminating mind and challenges the traditional ethical
category, this does not necessarily indicate a symptom that Zen cannot have an ethical project of its own.
Nor does this mean that Zen Buddhism needs to redirect itself to early vinaya codes in order to create Zen
ethics. Instead, like deconstructive ethics, Zen ethics proposes a new paradigm in thinking the ethical
without absolutizing the categorical division of the good or the right as in metaphysical ethics.
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What happens when Zen does not make distinctions? What happens when Zen rejects the metaphysical
nature incorporated in the fixed concepts of good, right and evil, and confirms that they are conditioned
like any other things in the samsaric world? Like the deconstructive ethical mode, marking the fabricated
nature of ethical categories becomes an ethical statement for Zen Buddhism. This reminder itself brings
the Zen mode of thinking into the ethical realm. Let us take an example of śūnyatā and see how the
concept of emptiness can function as an ethical category. Śūnyatā as an ethical reality does not simply
mean that everything is empty, that one should not thus make a distinction between good and bad, or right
and wrong. Nor does the idea of śūnyatā, which, in the ultimate sense, negates the existence of the good
and the bad, promote the attitude of anything-goes anarchism. Instead, śūnyatā reminds us of the human
being’s tendency of absolutizing and reifying the ethical categories.
Reification of the fabricated concepts comes together with power and authority. The exercise of such a
power becomes most visible when the reification functions within an institution. Ethics more often than
not locates itself on the border between abstract conceptualization and concrete institutionalization.
Institutionalization by nature goes against the non-substantialist stance of both deconstructive and Zen
Buddhist ethics. As Derrida testifies, no thought system is intact from the reification resulting from its use
of the institution called language. The ever-renewed deconstructive modes in the use of language that
marks the history of Zen Buddhism demonstrate Zen Buddhism’s efforts to challenge the reifying mind of
human beings. When institutionalization suppresses the capacity to destabilize its own system, nonsubstantialist mode of thinking turns itself into the totalitarian vision such as Zen militarism or Zen
authoritarianism. Like deconstructive ethics, Zen Buddhist ethics is possible by marking the border of the
traditional ethical categories, including the subject and the object. The impossibility of delineating this
division in the ultimate level and at the same time necessity to have categories and meaning and value
system in the provisional level, functions as an ethical beginning point in the non-substantialist thought
system. By bringing our attention to the aporetic understanding of the meaning of normative ethical
categories, both deconstructive and Zen Buddhist ethics urges us a radical reconceptualization in our
ethical mode of thinking, which I call the non-substantialist ethical paradigm, which I hope could offer
some insight into our ethical dilemma in postmodern, multi-cultural and globalized world.
Notes:
Immanuel Kant, “To Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch,” trans. Ted Humphrey, in Perpetual Peace and
Other Essays (Indianapolis, Indiana: Hackett Publishing Company, 1983), 107-143, p. 118.
2
Kant, “To Perpetual Peace,” p.118.
3
Jacques Derrida, Cosmopolites de tous les pays, encore un effort! (Paris: Éditions Galelée, 1997), p. 56;
English translation by Mark Dooley and Michael Hughs, “On Cosmopolitanism,” in On Cosmopolitanism and
Forgiveness, trans. Mark Dooley and Hichael Hughes (London and New York: Routledge, 2002), p. 22.
4
Derrida, Cosmopolites de tous les pays, encore un effort! p. 42; “On Cosmopolitanism,” p. 17.
5
Robert H. Sharf, “The Zen of Japanese Nationalism,” Donald S. Lopez, Jr., ed., Curators of the Buddha: The
Study of Buddhism under Colonialism (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1995):107-160, p. 107.
6
Kasulis, Zen Person Zen Action (Honolulu, Hawaii: University of Hawaii Press, 1981), p. 88.
7
Kasulis, Zen Person Zen Action, p. 91.
8
Kasulis, Zen Person Zen Action, p. 98.
9
James Whitehill, “Buddhism and the Virtues,” in Damien Keown, ed. Contemporary Buddhist Ethics
(Richmond, Surrey, Curzon Press, 2000): 17-36, p. 21.
10
Whitehill, “Buddhism and the Virtues,” p. 23.
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