Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Franfurt School in JCP
Franfurt School in JCP
JAY GOULDING
Abstract
I. I NTRODUCTION
Even though he feels the 1928 Frankfurt lectures are not Wilhelm’s
best, Jung admires the effort to bridge the gap between East and
West.51 In his comments on Golden Flower, Wilhelm quotes Goethe:
‘‘Orient und Occident, Sind nicht mehr zu trennen.’’52 ‘‘East and West
can no longer be kept apart,’’ is another slogan which Wilhelm utilizes
at Frankfurt’s China Institute. Jung’s Western ideas of animus and
anima are shaped by Wilhelm’s Eastern interventions. In his commen-
tary on Golden Flower, Jung retells Wilhelm’s logic in translating hun
(arising consciousness) as animus: ‘‘the term ‘animus’ seems appropri-
ate for hun, the character for which is made up of the sign for ‘clouds’
and that for ‘demon.’ Thus hun means ‘cloud-demon,’ a higher breath-
soul belonging to the yang principle and therefore masculine.’’53 Jung
also inspects the translation of po (descending consciousness):
‘‘‘Anima,’ called p’o [po], and written with the characters for ‘white’
and ‘demon,’ that is, ‘white ghost,’ belongs to the lower, earthbound,
bodily soul, the yin principle, and is therefore feminine.’’54 Formerly,
Jung uses anima in an analogous way to the Chinese po. Anima is not
transcendental but ‘‘within the range of experience.’’ After much
investigation, Jung sees anima as: ‘‘a feminine figure in the uncon-
scious, hence the feminine name: anima, psyche, Seele. The anima can
be defined as the image or archetype or deposit of all the experiences
of man with woman.’’55 For his own purposes, Jung prefers to connect
the Chinese hun with kόcο1 which aligns with ‘‘clarity of conscious-
ness’’: ‘‘just as hun corresponds to hsing [xing], translated by Wilhelm
as Logos, so the Eros of woman corresponds to ming, ‘fate’ or ‘des-
tiny,’ interpreted by Wilhelm as Eros.’’56
In the above, Jung is proposing his view of Western psychology: ani-
mus is a depository of male principles in the female unconscious and
anima a depository of female traits in the male unconscious. Wilhelm,
however, is speaking of Chinese thought. Traditional Daoist philoso-
phy might not make Jung’s divisions because male/female and physi-
cal/psychic are eternally bonded in and through each other. But from
THE FORGOTTEN FRANKFURT SCHOOL 177
V. C ONCLUSION
The impact of East Asian thinkers in Germany in the 1920s and 1930s
has a lasting effect. Both Heidegger and Buber attempt translations of
Laozi’s Daodejing in the 1940s: Heidegger completing eight chapters
in German and Buber finishing eight chapters in Hebrew.90 Today,
Wilhelm’s 1923 translation of the Yijing is respected as one of the
most authoritative. At Wilhelm’s China Institute, global scholars are
drawn into a whirlwind of interactions. Coupled with Buber’s contri-
butions to Asian thought, Wittfogel’s empirical work on China and
Jung’s presence, Tillich, Fromm, Benjamin and others are exposed to
a creative environment. In the 1928 Frankfurt lectures, Wilhelm
teaches the Daoist wisdom that he learns in two decades in China:
The rhythm of life is simply entrance and exit. Entrance is birth, exit
is death. And because the rhythm of entering and leaving takes place
continually, Laozi says:
See, all things however they flourish
Return to the root from which they grew.91
YORK UNIVERSITY
Toronto, Canada
Endnotes
I welcome the enthusiastic comments from the Editor-in-Chief in his close reading of
the article. His question is how does Heidegger fit in? Indeed my scholarship revolves
around Heidegger and his East Asian interlocutors. Heidegger’s phenomenology
seeks to make visible the invisible. As a guide to my thinking, I would not have been
able to ‘‘dis-cover’’ Frankfurt’s forgotten China Institute or ‘‘gather’’ its three diver-
gent thinkers without Heidegger. Both Chinese and Japanese scholars migrate to
both Freiburg and Marburg in the 1920s and 1930s. Yamanouchi Tokuryū 山内得立
studies Husserlian phenomenology with Heidegger in the early 1920’s, and later lec-
tures Greek thought at Kyoto University; Tanabe Hajime 田辺元, another Kyoto
School mainstay concentrates on Heidegger’s ontology and nothingness; Kuki Shūzō
九鬼周造 dialogues with Heidegger on the Japanese idea of iki いき, and in 1933 pub-
lishes the first book on Heidegger, The Philosophy of Heidegger (Haideggā no tetsu-
gaku ハイデッガーの哲学); Watsuji Tetsurō 和辻哲郎 explores existential philosophy;
Nishitani Keiji 西谷啓治 studies in Germany from 1938 to 1940, and again in 1964 and
1972, concentrating on Buddhist emptiness and Heidegger’s nothingness; Tezuka
Tomio 手塚富雄 stimulates Heidegger’s 1959 ‘‘A Dialogue on Language: Between a
Japanese and an Inquirer’’; the Zen monk Hisamatsu Shinichi 久松真一 conducts a
colloquium with Heidegger on ‘‘Art and Thinking’’ in 1958; Tsujimura Koīchi 辻村公
一 pursues a comparison of Zen and Heidegger’s phenomenology; Xiong Wei 熊偉
studies with Heidegger in the 1930’s and supervises the translation of Being and Time
(cunzai yu shijian 存在與時間) into Chinese in the 1980’s; Hsiao Shih-yi 蕭師毅 begins
a translation of Daodejing h道德經i with Heidegger in the 1940’s; and Chang Chung-
yuan 張鍾元 from University of Hawaii finishes his own Daodejing translation with
Heidegger in the 1970’s. The Chinese scholars generally focus on dao 道 as a way of
meditative practice interpenetrating with Heidegger’s weg (way) of hermeneutics and
phenomenology, and his path breaking interpretations of the ancient pre-Socratic
Greek kócο1 (laying, saying, waying). Heidegger learns about Daoism and Buddhism
as he interrogates the relationships between Being and being, Being and Nothing, and
Being and Time. His near monastic life-style draws him closer to the wisdom of Dao-
ism and Buddhism. Along the way, these conversations help shape his idea of Lich-
tung (the clearing) where beings are illuminated. From Xiong Wei in the 1930’s to
Hsiao in the 1940’s to Chang Chung-yuan in the 1970’s, Heidegger’s concern with Chi-
nese philosophy and especially with dao influences his studies of kócο1. Therefore, his
understanding of hermeneutic phenomenology and ontology are conditioned by
interaction with Chinese thought. What Heidegger implicitly learns the most from
Chinese thinkers is the idea of yin-yang 陰陽 polarity. Being does not have to win out
over being or Being does not have to conquer Time. The two parts of the pairing can
be mutually conditioning, eternally linked and oppositely charged as in yin and yang.
Together they are co-constitutive, co-resonating, and equiprimordial. This constitutes
the dao. China’s long history of the complementarity of Daoism and Buddhism helps
him understand this possibility. Conversely, Chinese interaction with Heidegger sets
the stage for the introduction of hermeneutic phenomenology into East Asia that still
has its impact today. As a result of my scholarship and others, the above is well known
and quite visible. However, the Chinese scholars at Frankfurt’s China Institute are vir-
tually unknown and otherwise invisible. The purpose of this article is to illuminate
their interactions with three Western scholars, namely Wilhelm, Jung and Buber.
Indeed Heidegger and Jung read both Wilhelm and Buber’s translation of Chinese
Daoist classics. Hence, the East-West scholarship of Freiburg and Marburg are inex-
tricably interwoven with that of Frankfurt. Also, I welcome the perceptive comments
and questions raised by the blind-reviewer. Rather than attempt a pan-historical
account of East-West encounters which would be a hefty book length study, this arti-
cle explores a unique moment that history forgot, namely the development of the lost
China Institute at University of Frankfurt in the 1920s and its philosophical gathering
of three kingpin thinkers: Wilhelm, Jung, Buber. The article focuses on an alternative
spotlight – not ‘‘the history’’ of the China Institute as a collection of dates and facts
but the question of the opening of a concealed convergence. Following Heidegger as a
‘‘thinker of history’’ (Geschichtsdenker) rather than an ‘‘historian,’’ I attempt to
restore history itself to its inexplicability (Unerklärbarkeit) as Heidegger might say.
184 JAY GOULDING
Most of history avoids history by speaking of itself as the past. Phenomenological his-
tory is not past but futural.
It ‘‘springs up’’ or ‘‘emerges’’ (geschehen) as an ‘‘event’’ (er-eignis) that stands before
us as that which comes into view. Hence, the article brings into view three primary
scholars whose independent works can still be collectively recovered through their
unique interpenetrations. Since almost all the documents regarding the China Insti-
tute were destroyed during the War, I am employing Heidegger’s hermeneutics as a
type of phenomenological historiography to make visible the invisible. As Wang Bi 王
弼 (226–249 CE) reconstructs the lost Daodejing h道德經i from fragments, I recon-
struct the lost China Institute from fragments. See my feature article, Jay Goulding,
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/china_review_international/v014/14.1.goulding.html
Rudolf G. Wagner, The Craft of a Chinese Commentator: Wang Bi on the Laozi; A
Chinese Reading of the Daodejing: Wang Bi’s Commentary on the Laozi with Critical
Text and Translation; Language, Ontology, and Political Philosophy in China: Wang
Bi’s Scholarly Exploration of the Dark ([玄學] Xuanxue)’’ China Review International
no. 1 (2007): 61–67. I have also reconstructed the nearly forgotten Collegio dei Cinesi
(The Chinese Institute) at Naples in the 1700s. Whereas the philosopher Gottfried
Wilhelm von Leibniz (1646–1716) was influenced by the China scholar and Jesuit
Priest Matteo Ricci (1552–1610), Giambattista Vico (1668–1744) was influenced by
an equally knowledgeable China scholar Father Matteo Ripa (1622–1746). Ripa
resided at the court of Kangxi 康熙, Emperor of China’s Qing 清 Dynasty. When Ripa
sailed back to Italy, he arrived with copper engraved world maps and garden vistas,
Chinese poetry, and a handful of Chinese scholars. These events stimulated Vico’s
1725 Scienza Nuova (The New Science) and his image of a world which could give rise
to the ancient past in the present. See my chapter Jay Goulding, ‘‘Society,’’ in New
Dictionary of the History of Ideas, vol. 5 ed. Maryanne Horowitz (New York: Charles’
Scribner’s Sons, 2005), 2238–2241.
6. Salome Blumhardt Wilhelm, ed., Richard Wilhelm: Der geistige Mittler zwischen
China und Europa (The Spiritual Midway between China and Europe) (Düsseldorf-
Köln: Eugen Diederichs Verlag, 1956), 339, 374–5.
7. Kenneth Ch’en, Buddhism in China: A Historical Survey (Princeton: Princeton Uni-
versity Press, 1964), 457–60.
8. Roger J. Corless, ‘‘History of Buddhism in China,’’ in Buddhism: A Modern Perspec-
tive, ed. Charles S. Prebish (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press,
1975), 191–2.
9. Roger J. Corless, ‘‘Chinese Buddhism and the Communist Regime,’’ in Buddhism: A
Modern Perspective, ed. Charles S. Prebish (University Park: Pennsylvania State
University Press, 1975), 208–209.
10. Wilhelm, Richard Wilhelm, 355.
11. Kirk A. Denton, ed., Modern Chinese Literary Thought: Writings on Literature,
1893–1945 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996), 515–6.
12. Hu Shi, ‘‘Some Modest Proposals for the Reform of Literature,’’ in Modern Chinese
Literary Thought: Writings on Literature, 1893–1945, ed. Kirk A. Denton (Stanford:
Stanford University Press, 1996), 123–139.
13. Wilhelm, Richard Wilhelm, 339.
14. Carl Gustav Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, revised ed., trans. Richard and
Clara Winston (New York: Vintage Books, 1961), 375.
15. Richard Wilhelm, the Preface to The I Ching or Book of Changes, trans. Richard Wil-
helm, rendered into English by Cary F. Baynes (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1967), xlv.
16. Richard Noll, The Jung Cult (New York: Free Press Paperbacks, 1997), 56–57.
17. Jung, the Foreword to I Ching, xxi–xxxix. See Jung, the Commentary on The Secret of
the Golden Flower: A Chinese Book of Life, trans. Richard Wilhelm (New York: Har-
court, Brace, 1962), 81–149.
18. Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, 196.
19. Ibid., 197. For a painting of the golden castle, see Jung, The Red Book, Liber Novus,
ed. and introduction Sonu Shamdasani (London: Norton, 2009), image 163.
20. Ibid., 374.
THE FORGOTTEN FRANKFURT SCHOOL 185
21. Ibid.
22. Hu Shih (Hu Shi), ‘‘Chan (Zen) Buddhism in China: Its History and Method,’’ Philos-
ophy East and West 3, no. 1 (1953): 21. Compare Youru Wang, ‘‘The Pragmatics of
‘Never Tell Too Plainly,’’’ Asian Philosophy 10, no. 1 (2000): 8–9.
23. Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, 375.
24. Ibid., 377.
25. Richard Wilhelm, Lectures on the I Ching: Constancy and Change, trans. Irene Eber
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979), 135.
26. Quoted in Ibid., 137.
27. Ibid., 137.
28. Richard J. Smith, China’s Cultural Heritage: The Qing Dynasty, 1644–1912 (Boulder:
Westview, 1994), 140–2.
29. Tun-yi Chou, ‘‘An Explanation of the Diagram of the Great Ultimate,’’ in Sources of
Chinese Tradition, comps. William Theodore De Bary, Wing-Tsit, Chan, and Burton
Watson (New York: Columbia University Press, 1960), I:458.
30. Smith, China’s Cultural Heritage, 145.
31. Wilhelm, Lectures on the I Ching, 138.
32. Ibid., 138.
33. Ibid., 138–40.
34. Ibid., 139.
35. Ibid.
36. Jay Goulding, ‘‘Kuki Shūzō and Martin Heidegger: Iki (いき) and Hermeneutic Phe-
nomenology,’’ in Why Japan Matters!, eds. Joseph F. Kess and Helen Lansdowne
(Victoria: Centre for Asia-Pacific Initiatives, University of Victoria, 2005), II:680–1.
37. Wilhelm, Lectures on the I Ching, 140.
38. Ibid., 141.
39. Ibid., 142.
40. Ibid., 146.
41. Ibid.
42. Kuang-ming Wu, The Butterfly as Companion: Meditations on the First Three Chap-
ters of the Chuang Tzu (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990), 136.
43. Wilhelm, Lectures on the I Ching, 147.
44. Thomas Cleary, trans., The Secret of the Golden Flower (New York: Harper Collins,
1991), 3–5, 134.
45. Wilhelm, The Secret of the Golden Flower, 3.
46. Ibid., 13.
47. Ibid., 12.
48. Ibid., 13.
49. Ibid., 18.
50. Compare Cary F. Baynes’ diagram in Wilhelm, Secret of the Golden Flower, 65.
51. Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, 376.
52. Wilhelm, Secret of the Golden Flower, 10.
53. Carl Gustav Jung, Alchemical Studies, trans. Richard Francis Carrington Hull
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967), 39.
54. Ibid.
55. Ibid., 40.
56. Ibid., 41.
57. Ibid., 39–43.
58. Cao Xueqin, The Story of the Stone: The Golden Days, trans. David Hawkes (London:
Penguin, 1973), I:55.
59. Robert Henry Mathews, Chinese-English Dictionary, revised ed. (Cambridge: Har-
vard University, 1944), 620.
60. Kenneth G. Henshall, A Guide to Remembering Japanese Characters (Tokyo: Charles
E. Tuttle, 1990), 249.
61. Gary L. Ulmen, The Science of Society: Toward an Understanding of the Life and
Work of Karl August Wittfogel (New York: Mouton, 1978), 16.
186 JAY GOULDING
62. Jonathan D. Spence, The Chan’s Great Continent: China in Western Minds (New
York: Norton, 1998), 212–3.
63. Paul Tillich and Hisamatsu Shin’ichi, ‘‘Dialogues, East and West: Conversations
between Dr. Paul Tillich and Dr. Hisamatsu Shin’ichi (Part One),’’ The Eastern Bud-
dhist 4, no. 2 (1971): 89–107,‘‘Dialogues, East and West: Conversations between
Dr. Paul Tillich and Dr. Hisamatsu Shin’ichi (Part Two),’’ The Eastern Buddhist 5, no.
2 (1972): 107–28. See Erich Fromm, ‘‘Zen Buddhism and Psychoanalysis,’’ in Zen
Buddhism and Psychoanalysis, Erich Fromm, D. T. Suzuki, and Richard DeMartino
(New York: Harper and Row, 1977), 77–141.
64. Hannah Tillich, From Time to Time (New York: Stein and Day, 1973), 143. See
Rainer Funk, Erich Fromm: His Life and Ideas, trans. Ian Portman and Manuela Kun-
kel (New York: Continuum, 2000), 94.
65. Buber, Chinese Tales. See Jonathan R. Herman, I and Tao: Martin Buber’s Encounter
with Chuang Tzu (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996).
66. Parkes, ‘‘Rising Sun over Black Forest: Heidegger’s Japanese connections,’’ in
Heidegger’s hidden sources: East Asian influences on his work, Reinhard May (Lon-
don: Routledge, 1996) 79, 108.
67. Maurice Friedman, Martin Buber’s Life and Work: The Middle Years, 1923–1945
(Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1988), 99.
68. Ibid., 281.
69. Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History of the Frankfurt School and the
Institute of Social Research, 1923–1950 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1973), 200.
70. Walter Benjamin, Selected Writings: 1913–1926, eds. Marcus Bullock and Michael W.
Jennings (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1996), 1:498, 500.
71. Walter Benjamin, Understanding Brecht (London: New Left Books, 1977), 70–4. See
Walter Benjamin, Selected Writings: 1927–1934, eds. Michael W. Jennings, Howard
Eiland, and Gary Smith (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 1999), II:786, 805.
72. Benjamin, Understanding Brecht, 74.
73. Benjamin, Selected Writing, II:805.
74. Herman, I and Tao, ix–x.
75. Martin Buber, ‘‘The Text Translation: ‘Talks and Parables of Chuang Tzu,’’’ in
Herman, I and Tao, (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996) 25.
76. Buber, ‘‘The Commentary: ‘Afterword,’’’ in Herman, I and Tao, (Albany: State Uni-
versity of New York Press, 1996), 69.
77. Ibid., 72.
78. Ibid., 73.
79. Ibid., 78.
80. Ibid., 83.
81. Martin Heidegger, Identity and Difference, trans. Joan Stambaugh (New York:
Harper and Row, 1969), 36.
82. Martin Heidegger, On the Way to Language (New York: Harper and Row, 1971), 92.
83. Mathews, Chinese-English Dictionary, 884.
84. Irene Eber, introduction to Chinese Tales, by Martin Buber, trans. Alex Page (New
Jersey: Humanities Press International, 1991), ix–xii, xxi.
85. Buber, Eclipse of God: Studies in the Relation between Religion and Philosophy (New
Jersey: Humanities Press International, 1988), 78–91, 133–7.
86. Martin Buber, ‘‘China and Us,’’ in Pointing the Way: Collected Essays, trans. and ed.
Maurice Friedman (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1957), 125.
87. Herman, I and Tao, 124.
88. Quoted in ibid., 12.
89. Kuang-ming Wu, The Butterfly as Companion: Meditations on the First Three Chap-
ters of the Chuang Tzu (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990), 23.
90. Paul Shih-yi Hsiao, ‘‘Heidegger and Our Translation of the Tao Te Ching,’’ in Heideg-
ger and Asian Thought, ed. Graham Parkes (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press,
1987), 93–103. See Herman, I and Tao, 203.
91. Wilhelm, Lectures on the I Ching, 144–5.