Lovers of Sophia
Page 60
is by no means suggesting a sacrifice of oneself through uncritical
empathy with various willful dogmatists. While it is important
not to “start from a conclusion” in relating to another, the person
to whom one relates may be far from capable of also setting aside
473
lovers of sophia
“comparison and condemnation.” A relationship that is unmediated
in both directions is possible only among free spirits, but establishing a relationship to the other that is at least unmediated on one’s own
end helps one to defeat opponents by being less rigidly conditioned
by unconsciously held beliefs than they are:
When real feeling occurs, such as anger or fear, can the stylist
express himself with the classical method, or is he merely
listening to his own screams and yel s? Is he a living, expressive
human being or merely a patternized mechanical robot? …Is his
chosen pattern forming a screen between him and the opponent
and preventing a “total” and “fresh” relationship?1
Jeet Kune Do is “the Way of the Intercepting Strike” because the delay in the opponents attacks on account of his psychological
conditioning affords one’s unconditioned mind the chance to
decipher it and allows one time for interception. The opponent gives himself away through his psychological deliberation and lack of
versatility in his actions.
Lee hung this motto on the wall of his Los Angeles school:
“Man, the living creature, the creating individual, is always more
important than any established style or system.” We should couple it
with these lines from the Tao of Jeet Kune Do: “Classical forms dull your creativity, condition and freeze your sense of freedom…When
one is not expressing himself, he is not free… But in classical style, system becomes more important than the man!” A student of Drama as much as of Philosophy, Lee was the first person to view martial
art first and foremost as art, not merely in the sense of techne or
‘crafts’ artistry but in the fullest sense of poesis:
The aim of art is to project an inner vision into the world, to
state in aesthetic creation the deepest psychic and personal
experiences of a human being. It is to enable those experiences
to be intelligible and general y recognized within the total
1 Bruce Lee, The Tao of Jeet Kune Do (California: Ohara, 1975), 15.
474
jason reza jorjani
framework of an ideal world… We must employ our own souls
through art to give a new form and meaning to nature or the
world.2
This is unquestionably a Western development of Eastern traditions
that, as we have seen, Lee has already deconstructed as ‘traditions’.
Lee’s own work as the Hol ywood director, choreography, and
screenplay writer of Way of the Dragon (1972), Enter the Dragon (1973), and the uncompleted Game of Death attests to his own
artistic ability. In Game of Death he symbolical y represents the steps in finding one’s own way in martial arts, until one attains the style
of no style. He chooses the Buddhist temple of Pope Ju Saw as his
shooting location. On the site a 33 meter high Buddha statue (caste
in one mold, with 150 tons of bronze, largest such standing figure
in all of Asia) stands in front of five-story pagoda. In his role as the protagonist, Lee takes on advocates of different styles at every level and, having no fixed style of his own, is able to fit in with each and defeat them according to their limitations. A green bamboo whip
that he uses at one point represents flexibility, the pliable adaptability needed in order to change with change. His character wears a one-piece yellow tracksuit rather than a traditional uniform, because
while it is comfortable and flexible it has no affiliation with any style.
Very aware of how camera angles worked in fight scenes, Lee was
a perfectionist on the film set, choreographing all of the fights and
reshooting them many times. Lee’s footage from the uncompleted
original version of Game of Death is considered by many “the most graceful and dynamic presentation of the human form in hand to
hand combat ever captured on film.”
As in the Western tradition of fine arts, he recognizes that “Art
cal s for complete mastery of techniques” but that to produce a work
of creative genius – a genuine work of art – the artist must be able to use his disciplined skill to channel the limitless source of the
unconscious and irrational. This insight lies at the heart of how Jeet Kune Do approaches training in diverse techniques, just as a great
2 Ibid., 9-10.
475
lovers of sophia
painter studies many styles diligently before breaking out of his
schooling:
Having “no form,” then, does not mean having no “form.”
Having “no form” evolves from having form. “No form” is the
higher, individual expression. No cultivation does not real y
mean the absence of any kind of cultivation. What it signifies is a
cultivation by means of non-cultivation. To practice cultivation
through cultivation is to act with conscious mind.3
The liberated, authentic individual and the creative genius in touch
with the wel spring of the unconscious mind are one and the same:
“Art reaches its greatest peak when devoid of self-consciousness.
Freedom discovers a man the moment he loses concern over what
impression he is making or about to make.” According to Lee,
“Artistic skil ” is only one “step in psychic development”, and “artistic perfection” cannot be attained until: “An artist’s expression is his
soul made apparent, [behind] his schooling… behind every motion,
the music of his soul is made visible.” Lee laments that the martial
arts have hitherto stunted the kind of psychic development of the
individual that we see in the fine arts, where training in technique is only a preparatory tool for creative self-expression:
The second-hand artist blindly following his sensei or sifu accepts
his pattern. As a result, his action and, more importantly, his
thinking become mechanical. His responses become automatic,
according to set patterns, making him narrow and limited.4
In combative arts, it has been the problem of ripening. This
ripening is the progressive integration of the individual with his
being, his essence. This is possible only through self-exploration
in free expression, and not in imitative repetition of an imposed
pattern of movement.5
3 Ibid., 25.
4 Ibid., 22.
5 Ibid., 24.
476
jason reza jorjani
However, this is not simply a case of the adoption of ‘Western’
values over Eastern ones. Bruce Lee has an understanding of artistic
creativity that surpasses that of both monotheistic and materialistic
Western aesthetic theorists and that emerges from out of the core of
Eastern spirituality. In a 1972 interview with his leading biographer, John Little, Lee made it clear that he not only had no religious
affiliation whatsoever, but that he did not believe in God at al .
Rather than postulating ‘God’ or the ‘Absolute’ as the unconscious
source tapped by the creative genius, Lee understands that: “Art
reveals itself in the psychic understanding of the
inner essence of
things and gives form to the relation of man with nothing, with the nature of the absolute.” This inversion of “the nature of the absolute”
into nothing is significant not only as a critique of the Judeo-Christian-Islamic worldview, but also as a Buddhist modification of
the Taoist understanding of nature. In The Tao of Jeet Kun Do Lee describes the non-referential self-expression of the true (martial)
artist as “Zen” and he follows the Zen masters in their fusion of Tao and Shunyata. He describes “thusness – what is” in terms that are clearly Taoist: “Thusness does not move, but its motion and function
are inexhaustible.” At the same time, Lee equates this “isness,
or…suchness” in “its nakedness” with “the Buddhist concept of
emptiness.”
To some extent, this leads Lee in the same direction as it led
the Japanese Zen masters, namely beyond Taoist naturalism and
Buddhist pacifism and onto the Heraclitean view that: “Life is
combat.” There are lines in The Tao of Jeet Kune Do, where the influence of D.T. Suzuki is clear: “Jeet Kune Do teaches us not to
look backward once the course is decided upon. It treats life and
death indifferently.”6 This kind of decisionism is the exception
and does not sit well with Lee’s overwhelming influence on
personal expressiveness arrived at through “a continuous state of
inquiry without conclusion.”7 He realizes that a true relationship
to nothingness, wherein one has the “insight [that] one’s original 6 Ibid., 12.
7 Ibid., 19.
477
lovers of sophia
nature is not created” – in effect that there is no fixed human nature endowed by God or anything else – does not nihilistical y negate the
individual, but frees one for creative self-expression: “Creation in art is the psychic unfolding of the personality, which is rooted in the
nothing. Its effect is a deepening of the personal dimension of the soul.”8 Martial art cultivates fearlessness for this honest encounter with the Abyssal, and it, in turn, expresses the creative power
unleashed through the destruction of retarding and constraining
beliefs that takes place when one enters the life-giving Void: “The
void is all inclusive, having no opposite… It is a living void, because all forms come out of it and whoever realizes the void is filled with
life and power and the love of all beings.”9
Again, this does not mean surrendering to one’s opponents.
The two purposes of using one’s natural tools in Jeet Kune Do are
“to overcome your own greed, anger, and fol y” and “to destroy the opponent in front of you – annihilation of things that stand in
the way of peace, justice and humanity.”10 Since Lee advocates the
self-deconstruction of all judgmental and prejudicial fixed beliefs,
by “the way of peace, justice and humanity” he cannot mean any
definite ideology but rather the “annihilation” of al ideologies “that stand in the way” of a free society dedicated to the creative self-expression of individuals in dynamical y open relationship to one
another.
Unlike the early Taoists and orthodox Buddhists, whose apolitical
pacifism opened a vacuum that has allowed Asians to be dominated
by collectivist tyranny for most of their history, Lee shares the
classical Greek concern with a just society. However, unlike most
Greeks, with the possible exception of Heraclitus, Lee recognizes
that Justice is not an absolute form, a universal concept come down
from on high that instantiates itself in this imperfect world of
relativity and change. Instead, a just society can only be grounded
in an encounter with Nothingness and a consequent recognition of
8 Ibid., 10.
9 Ibid., 7.
10 Ibid., 13.
478
jason reza jorjani
the artificial, provisional character of all forms. This means a society that has “annihilated” faith in the Abrahamic God, and one wherein
Tao ism and Buddh ism have deconstructed themselves through their own deepest insights.
479
PHILOSOPHY, SCIENCE, AND ART
The attempt to define Philosophy as a discipline distinct
from Science and Art, one justified by its unique type of
productivity, is Gilles Deleuze’s central concern in What
is Philosophy? Philosophy, Science, and Art all aim at
establishing order in the face of Chaos – or infinite variability – by some means other than the insulation of mere opinion.1 Whereas the
sciences crystallize the field of experience into functions of variables and the arts break up an accretion of clichés by cultivating chaos in
the form of varieties of percepts and affects, philosophers produce conceptual personae whose variations cut planes of consistency through Chaos. In the following, I argue that on the contrary, the
unity of Philosophy/Science may be discerned with a view to the
aesthetic nature of conceptual personae. Deleuze himself makes
observations that undermine his tripartite disciplinary distinctions.
My ultimate aim is to demonstrate that, on Deleuze’s own terms, we
can see the partial observers of science and the aesthetic figures of
art as ultimately indistinguishable from conceptual personae.
Deleuze does not accept Martin Heidegger’s idea that Philosophy
has irretrievably disintegrated into the disparate empirical sciences
and that a scientific thinking that could reflectively regulate technical endeavors, would require some irreducibly aesthetic insight. He refers to talk of “the death of metaphysics” or “the overcoming of
philosophy” as “tiresome, idle chatter”, and he concludes that “even
1 Gilles Deleuze, What Is Philosophy? (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), 203.
480
jason reza jorjani
if it is called something else” philosophy persists insofar as there is still “a time and place for creating concepts.”2 The “concept” belongs to philosophy alone.3
Deleuze identifies two types of inseparability distinctive of
concepts. Firstly, on account of both the conditions of historical
genesis enfolded within it and its insufficiency to grasp the totality of its present situation, each concept relates to (it does not “refer”
to) concepts other than itself. Second, while the components that
constitute a concept are somewhat distinct, at their threshold they
neighbor each other in a zone of ultimate indiscernibility that
renders them analytical y inseparable and confers the concept that
they collectively constitute with its endoconsistency.4 These zones
of indiscernibility also deny concepts any conditions of reference.5
Each concept is that point at which its coincident components
accumulate and condense into a certain consistency.6 Deleuze also
describes this development of concepts as the emergence of “centers
of vibrations” that “resonate” rather than refer.7 Moreover, these
vibrations are not measurable in terms of mathematical magnitude;
the concept “has no number.”8
Consequently, Deleuze claims that there are no concepts in
science, which is strictly concerned with the conditions of states
of affairs in terms of propositions and functions.9 The elements of
these scientific functions are functives, which are at work in different forms in sciences as diverse as physics, where they are explicitly
m
athematical, and biology, where they are the functions of lived
states.10 Unlike the philosophical concept, scientific functions
2 Ibid., 9.
3 Ibid., 34.
4 Ibid., 19.
5 Ibid., 143.
6 Ibid., 20.
7 Ibid., 23.
8 Ibid., 144.
9 Ibid., 33.
10 Ibid., 117, 151.
481
lovers of sophia
consist of individual features that can be categorized into variable
species under one or another constant genus.11 Confusing concepts
with propositions that can be linked together, as in logicians’
“infantile idea of philosophy”, is what leads to the mistaken belief
that there are scientific concepts.12 Unlike concepts, propositions
are concerned with the referential relationship between bodies
extensional y situated in states of affairs.13 This is a relationship
between independently isolable variables or convertible units, whose clean separation admits of them being “varied” or interchangeable.14
A state of affairs grasped in terms of scientific propositions is, in
turn, a complex variable expressing a relationship between two or
more variables.15
Unlike independent variables that interlock into states of affairs
like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, philosophical concepts resonate
with one another on what Deleuze alternatively cal s a “plane of
consistency” or “the plane of immanence of concepts.”16 One cannot
simply add a new component to a concept without causing the whole
concept to break up or catalyzing a radical change that transforms
it into a different concept addressing problems of a different order.17
The concept is not an aggregate. Its whole is more than the sum of its parts.18 It is a unity of diversity that may be disturbed in such a way as it crystallizes into a new unity; it has a wholeness that remains
open to catalytic change.19 This means that the plane of consistency
is not a concept of (the) concepts (to be found on it). If it were, the concepts would lose their genuine singularity and planar openness
and instead become universals that are closed off – therefore dead,
11 Ibid., 20.
12 Ibid., 22.
13 Ibid.
14 Ibid., 23.
15 Ibid., 122.
16 Ibid., 35.
17 Ibid., 31, 90.
18 Ibid., 50.
19 Ibid., 35.