Human Becomings by Roger T. Ames;

Author:Roger T. Ames;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Published: 2020-02-14T16:00:00+00:00

One is Many, Many One

Tang Junyi introduces a cosmological postulate he calls yiduobufenguan 一多不分觀 that we might summarize as “one is many, many one.” This persistent characteristic of Confucian cosmology provides us with yet another way of conceiving of this dynamic process of personal identity formation. Tang would insist that this protean expression is a distinctive, generic feature of the Chinese processual cosmology locating our persons as vital and specific foci that have implicated within each of us a boundless field of relations. Importantly, yiduobufen is another way of describing the doctrine of intrinsic, constitutive relationality we have contrasted previously with external relations. It is, simply put, the assumption that in the compositing of any “one,” there is implicated within it the contextualizing “many.” This yiduobufen proposition can be read in many different ways, as it speaks at once to the following: the inseparability of the one and the many, the continuity between particular identity and context, the copresence of uniqueness and multivalence, the mutuality of continuity and multiplicity, the inclusiveness of integrity and integration, the dynamics of a shared harmony emerging out of relational tensions, the expression of the specific details in the totality of the effect, and so on.18 It also restates in a different language the focus-field conception of persons: each self-conscious person, as well as each impulse in the life of each person, has implicated within it the boundless “many.” This defining feature of Chinese natural cosmology is fundamental to our understanding of the relationally constituted, focus-field conception of persons. Again, as Mencius says, “The myriad things of the world are all implicated here in me.”19

Cosmologically, this proposition of the inseparability of one and many is an alternative principle of individuation that stands in contrast to a classical Greek essentialism, the Platonic one-behind-the-many ontology presupposing that some self-same, reduplicated, identical characteristic defines all members of a particular class. Individuation in Confucian cosmology is effected in a different way. All unique events or foci—particular persons, as an example—are constituted by an unbounded field of more or less relevant relations that collaborate to sponsor them, and they achieve their individuated identities as a function of the quality of coalescence they achieve within these unique fields of relations. That is, moving from description to prescription, a dynamic reading of yiduobufen is a summary of the way in which the opportunity is available to each of us to optimize the boundless possibilities that honeycomb the relationships between particular persons and our environing conditions. Tang Junyi’s postulate asserts not only that any phenomenon in our field of experience has implicated within it the contextualizing, unbounded many but further that as a unique “one,” it can find self-conscious resolution and purpose. But it can also be focused in many different ways according to the multiplicity of roles that come to define its narrative. Importantly, any claim to uniqueness and individuality, far from excluding a person’s relations with others, is a function of the quality that this person has been able to achieve within the unique configuration of these same relations.

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