Conclusions: Facets of Self across Cultures
Authors: Stanchina Gabriella 
Published: January 2025

In the concluding chapter, I address in a systematic way the challenge posed to us by the contraposition between a vertical and a horizontal self. The key argument raised by Mou Zongsan, i.e., that it is Confucianism that opens the door to the subjective universe, may seem controversial. Indeed, since its foundation, Western thought seems to have revolved precisely around the subjective dimension. It is therefore necessary to analyze the three main characteristics of self—interiority, solitude, and reflection—and to see how these characteristics present themselves in Western epistemologically-oriented thought, and in that moral-metaphysical dimension which is Mou's original contribution to the philosophy of self.

Interiority: starting from Plato and Descartes, the realm of the self is presented as a kind of fortified citadel, an ideal refuge for spiritual hermitage and contemplative life. The premise for the constitution of this inner space is that the subject withdraws from any relationship with the universe outside itself, and this operation of radical isolation and detachment causes the subject to play the role of spectator rather than of participant in the world. The “hard problem of consciousness,” i.e., the enigmatic connection between the subjective qualia and the objective structure of the brain, is the latest formulation of this topological divide between interiority and exteriority. According to Mou, interiority can be reformulated as inherence. Human beings possess in themselves an autonomous principle of actualization and concretization. If the mind’s interiority represents its structural capacity to embody the creativity of heaven and Earth and extends this creative capacity to all things, giving them meaning and value, then interiority is both centripetal and centrifugal. The Chinese traditional concepts of “inner resonance” (ganying 感應) or “inherent connection” (gantong 感通) efficaciously condense human’s ability to extend the sphere of their own mind-body oneness to all things, experiencing others and the universe as a sensible part of themselves.

Solitude: analyzing both philosophical and poetical rendition of the singularity of individual self, we may conclude that the loneliness of the contemplative subject is an inevitable consequence of the withdrawal, isolation, and rupture of all relations wrought by the subject. On the contrary, the solitude pursued by Confucians through the practice of “vigilance in solitude” (shendu 慎獨) is positive and revelatory of the common origin of the self and the universe. The state of solitude in a vertical dimension is no more a condition of aloneness and seclusion, but a return to the auroral and silent state of mind, when subjective understanding and objective universe have not been yet divided and contraposed. Paradoxically, in a moral-metaphysical dimension, solitude as silent resonance makes possible maximum alertness and responsivity.

Reflection: how can we formulate the idea of self-reflection in a way that avoids a reduction to the centripetal tension, self-objectification, and self-enclosure that we have seen to be dominant in Western thought? According to Mou, the mind, through its being implicated in and morally participating in the affairs of the world, reveals itself to itself and becomes self-conscious. Thus, the “self” already contains the dynamism of resonating with the things of the world and responding and corresponding to them. Bringing myself to completion implies bringing all things to completion; through turning back, I go back to the origin of the co-creation of mind and world. This unity of the human heart and the universe is not the mystical contemplation of a static One but the timely practical realization of becoming one body shared by self and universe. Indeed, the second responsibility of the moral mind is to emancipate things from the domain of the useful and the exploitable and to look at them as an absolute finality, that is, as that “thing-in-itself” which Kant could not attain through his merely cognitive quest.

Finally, Mou Zongsan’s moral metaphysics implies that “self” is only fully realized in a vertical dimension, which means that absorbing and processing information is not the primary function of the subject. When I speak of a “self,” I mean a dynamism of uninterrupted self-transcendence and a desire to ascend to a higher level of realization. Furthermore, it is not the will to knowledge that unlocks the dimension of interiority, but the manifestation of the all-encompassing moral mind through my practical action.