Overthrowing Eastern and Western Economics: Economics by Chán Zhōng Shuō Chán (Chapter 10)

2006/8/3 19:29:35

At the very beginning of this book, it was stated: "The 'people' here are not so-called economic agents or social beings, but simply a set that includes all living biological organisms that could be called human in the biological sense, past and present." In truth, this seemingly definitional sentence was merely a concession to your existing modes of thought at the outset. Through the analysis above, we can now go back and properly examine this sentence.

Faced with any definition that can be defined by humans, one inevitably confronts a circular definition based on human existence and differentiation—where the definer is included within the definition. For example here, "could be called human in the biological sense"—this definition presupposes human existence, forming a fundamental circularity. This "could be called human in the biological sense" is actually from the definer's perspective, a fantasy of the definer's ideology.

What exactly constitutes a human being—this seemingly simple question has in fact never had any unified answer. If you accept the six realms of reincarnation, then humans are merely one form of the cycle; if you accept materialism, then humans are nothing more than material phenomena organized according to a certain pattern; if you believe in Confucianism, then having a human appearance doesn't make you human, because you might be a beast in human clothing; if you believe in God, humans are merely things bearing original sin awaiting judgment. Of course, there are countless other accounts of what humans are, and even from a biological standpoint, the definition of "human" is merely a fantasy at our current level of understanding. If so-called humans still exist 100 million years from now, the biological standards of that time will certainly differ from today's, just as we don't consider gorillas to be humans now.

Here, one could introduce the concept of history, treating all concepts as historical. Yet history itself presupposes human existence, while humans are historical—here, history and human existence form yet another circular definition, built upon the foundation of the circular definition of human existence and differentiation. The historical perspective is certainly a very clever one, yet any perspective is ultimately just a fantasy. The reason for not adopting the historical perspective can itself be justified by a very fantastical reason: that one can find an even greater fantasy that encompasses the fantasy of history—though of course, "encompasses" is itself a fantasy too.

But regardless of how humans are defined, the preceding analysis has demonstrated that the most fundamental logical relationship of human existence and differentiation is independent of how "human" is defined. Here, it is even unrelated to so-called history, and equally unrelated to so-called non-history. It is both historical and non-historical; it is non-historically being historical, and historically being non-historical. Like a seamless iron mallet—those mosquitoes of logic, non-logic, history, non-history, existence, non-existence, fantasy, non-fantasy, human, non-human, differentiation, non-differentiation, and so on—none of them can find a spot to sink their teeth into.