On the meaninglessness of philosophical questions

·期刊原文
On the meaninglessness of philosophical questions

By Paul Wienpahl

Philosophy East and West

v.15 (1965)

p.135-144

Copyright 1965 by University Press of Hawaii

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p135

when the logical positivists demonstrated that metaphysical or philosophical statements (and, by extension, philosophical questions) are meaningless, many of us thought that metaphysics was ended. We went from a felt to a conscious awareness of the vacuity of certain questions. Nor will we forget the feeling of relief which came from learning that the frustration which these questions caused was due simply to the fact that they are meaningless. It was a feeling which contributed to the impression that one need no longer be bothered by them.

However, Wittgenstein and then John Wisdom and others went on to show that philosophical questions may have uses even though they are meaningless in any ordinary view which one might take of them. They may, for example, be regarded as requests for a linguistic convention and the answers to them as illuminative "of the ultimate structure of facts, i.e., the relations between different categories of being or (we must be in the mode-) the relations between different sub-languages within a language."[1] The game was afoot again—with differences.

In the following remarks another use which philosophical questions have is to be considered. It is likely that not all those questions which seem or are | meaningless or nonsensical have this use. Probably these questions have many uses, and they are not all used in the same way. The use which is considered in this article is one made of certain of these questions by Buddhists of the Zen sect called Rinsai.

An aspect of the manner in which the logical positivists called attention to the oddness of philosophical questions will be stressed; the demonstration, namely, that they are meaningless. Attention is directed to this meaninglessness, and the suggestion is made that it has a function other than that of causing us to abandon metaphysical questions as the positivists proposed. The hope is thereby, paradoxically, to show or to begin to show in another way

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[1]John Wisdom, "Philosophical Perplexity," Proceedings of The Aristotelian Society, Vol. 37. (London: Harrison and Sons, Ltd., 1937), p. 73.

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p136

than the logical that metaphysics can be abandoned, though only after philosophical questions have been taken seriously Just as they first occur to us.

I

By this time an author can safely presume that the readers of a magazine such as this have heard about Zen Buddhism and kōans. He may even assume that they have read some kōans. He cannot, however, be sure that many people are clear about kōans and their use. And he can be quite sure that many misleading notions about Zen Buddhism lurk in the minds of most people. For being straight on Zen Buddhism, as is true of anything else, requires a firsthand acquaintance with the thing, a knowledge which is obtainable now mainly in Japan, and there only with great difficulty or unusual good fortune. Therefore, a few facts should be stated concerning kōans and Rinsai Zen Buddhism.

A kōan is one of two things, (a) It is a public record of a dialogue between two Zen Buddhist teachers, or between a teacher and a pupil, or it is the record of an anecdote or a question, (b) It is a question about such a record. An example which illustrates this twofold usage of the word "kōan" and to which reference is made subsequently is the kōan variously called the mu kōan, Jōshu's dog, etc. The record is that a monk asked Jōshu whether the dog has buddha- nature or not—to which Jōshu replied, "Mu." The question about the record is: What does that "mu" mean? Depending upon your use of the word "kōan" when you are speaking of the mu kōan, you are referring either to the story about the monk's question and Jōshu's reply or to the question about the meaning of Jōshu's "mu." It may be argued that the question directs attention^ to the record and that it is the record which is the kōan. Nevertheless, it is the question about the meaning of "mu" as well as the record, on which generations of Buddhists of the Rinsai school have been working when they have been "studying" the mu kōan[2]

Zen Buddhism is a Far Eastern branch of Buddhism, which is distinguished from other branches of Buddhism on the basis of the difference in the method which its adherents employ from the method employed in other branches of Buddhism (the goal, so to speak, of all branches of Buddhism is the same). The

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[2] In the language of the Zen Buddhist, the person called the teacher is referred to in the Japanese tongue as a rōshi. "Rōshi" literally means "old teacher," but it has most often been Englished by the word "master" and the phrase "Zen Master." "Master" is all right when it is thought of in connection with phrases like "head master" (of a school) Otherwise, it is misleading, though not inaccurate, since we also have the phrase "master of arts," and a rōshi is a master of a technique. In the English literature on Zen Buddhism people have been referred to as Zen Masters who are not roshis.

This account of the mu kōan comes from Zuigan Gotō Rōshi who gave it to the author in Kyoto in April, 1959.

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p137

Zen branch is in turn divided into five schools, again on the basis of the method r employed by its various adherents. The five Zen schools are distinguished : from each other by means of variations in the method basic to them all.

This method is meditation. "Zen" (Chinese "ch'an") means "meditation." And for these Buddhists meditation is fundamentally sitting in a certain manner and breathing in a certain way. What you may then "meditate" on, or how you then "meditate" (given the sitting and breathing), varies from Zen school : to Zen school, and with the amount of your experience in meditation. But

"zen" means "meditation (sitting)" first of all. And the Zen Buddhist, regardless of school, spends a lot of time per day while "studying zen" sitting. How are you to study zen (sitting) without sitting?

It is worthwhile to add that, given the foregoing, what is referred to as the zen experience is at least a meditative experience, and what is referred to as the zen person is at least a meditating person. The literal translation of the word "zen" cannot be over-emphasized now, since it has thus far been so under-emphasized that the aim of the Zen Buddhist has been made a mystery.[3] Of the five Zen schools, the Rinsai alone employs the kōan exercise (kōan "study") systematically in connection with sitting. This exercise is pursued '' roughly as follows. After the pupil has become somewhat adept at sitting, he is given a kōan by his teacher and asked to "solve" it. In the case of the mu kōan, for example, he is asked to find the meaning of Jōshu's "mu" (the Japanese word "mu" means "no," "nothing," "none," "emptiness," depending on the context when translated into English). Thereafter he "works" daily on the kōan, much of the time sitting, and reports once or twice daily to His teacher I concerning the results of his work. Sometimes during intensive periods of work he will report as many as five times daily. These sessions with the rōshi are called sanzen and are of short duration, lasting from a few seconds to three or four minutes. Sitting in the Zen Buddhist manner is called zazen.[4]

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[3] One of the great Zen teachers, Dōgen, said that the aim is meditation. See, for example, H. Dumoulin, A History of Zen Buddhism (New York: Random House, 1963), pp. 159-166, especially p. 166.

[4] These few facts about kōans and Zen Buddhism are set forth here less to be informative than because they are essential. However, they are accurate, though they are : by no means adequate. It is impossible to lessen their inadequacy within the compass of this paper. However, I must add that the use of the kōan which I am presenting is not its only use by Buddhists, nor is the outcome of the use of which I treat the only outcome ' of the use under discussion. The uses of the kōan are far more subtle and intricate, and the results of its uses more far-reaching, than can be even indicated in a short essay. It may help the reader to gain perspective in this matter if I point out that my remarks are based on an experience of three months study of one kōan, whereas the Zen Buddhist student who completes his zen studies requires ten years of work (or more) on several hundred kōans. And, after his kōan studies are formally completed, he is in most cases required to mature for fifteen years before he can teach.

On the other hand, one soon learns that there is no mystery in and about zen study.

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p138

II

(a) The use of philosophical questions in kōan study to which reference is made consists in confronting a student with a meaningless question in such a way as to bring him to the meaninglessness of the question and, so to speak, into it and through it to meaninglessness itself. That the questions so used can be rated as meaningless may be urged only by asking you to consider the question: "What does that 'mu' mean?" and by citing another kōan often presented to the beginner in zen study: "What is the sound of one hand clapping?"

The positivists showed that certain questions are meaningless, and reasonably advised against asking them. The Zen Buddhist uses such questions to bring about in himself the characteristic which these questions have. And he does this by first seeing that there is the meaningless. It might be said that he makes the idea of the meaningless real, uses the meaningless question to bring about meaninglessness. The positivist arrived at meaninglessness on the Intellectual level—and shied away from it. The Buddhist heads into it, takes the next step, and gets to it on the physical or non-verbal level. The positivist got to the notion of the meaningless. The Buddhist gets to the thing. It is good to remember here that an essential part of the Zen Buddhist's "study" (exercise) is sitting quietly.

(b) John Wisdom saw that the odd questions which philosophers ask can be compared to "Does 2 + 3 = 6?" But this comparison, though apt, he showed, obscures the fact that they can be questions about words; that is, that they are very odd but not entirely meaningless, so to speak. The Zen Buddhist accepts their meaninglessness and thereby finds the meaningless. It might be said that in zen study these questions are used like a knife for cutting through the meaningful to the meaningless. Then, having seen that "meaningless" is "meaningful," or, rather, by seeing that it is (that there is meaninglessness), he arrives at a state of mind in which he no longer does metaphysics old-style which is what the positivist recommends. This state of mind is called no-mind.[5]

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Mainly, all that is involved is hard work. One can thus early in the game speak with confidence about zen study, provided that he does not pretend that he knows any more about it than the proportionate amount of his acquaintance with it would indicate that he might know.

[5] Seen in this light, Wisdom's treatment of philosophical questions may be regarded as a dodge, a way of continuing "metaphysics" or the intellectual game, a refusal to come up against meaninglessness. And one wonders as one reads "Philosophical Perplexity especially if it be taken literally, how philosophers ever came to request a linguistic convention in such a curious manner.

On the other hand, how can one accept the insistence that philosophical questions have a use without having accepted the use (as against the meaning) notion in general, which is equivalent to giving up metaphysics old-style? Well, there is a distinction between accepting a notion and realizing its consequences.

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p139

The use, then, of the mu question is to drive one to no-mind,[6] which might be defined as the state in which one does not need to ask philosophical questions. The positivists said that we should not ask them because they are meaningless. The Zen Buddhist asks them because they are meaningless. And he asks them so seriously that he gets to the state which enables him to stop asking them. This shows how intellectual we are and how practical one can be. What practicing philosopher in the West except Wittgenstein has stopped ask­ing philosophical questions without giving up the fight before it is won and becoming a kind of scientist?[7]

(c) But, one wants to say, you are suggesting that "meaningless" means something at the same time that you are supporting Wittgenstein's "Do not look for the meaning, look for the use." Well, how about this: "Meaningless" must mean something; otherwise, to say that some questions are meaningless means nothing (is meaningless). But does "meaningless" mean "without meaning"—just as "nothing" is not a noun, as Carnap showed? Very well, then, you can get around it in this fashion. However, if you do, you remain in a way unconvinced by the positivists' work and go on believing in metaphysics old-style, albeit with some difference. That is, you believe that metaphysical ques­tions are Just the result of "grammatical" errors and believe that they can be "translated" into meaningful questions.[8] Or you think that they are disguised questions about language, for example. And then you say that philosophy is just clarifying concepts or you talk of categories of being. And in both cases you escape the meaningless. Philosophy may be these other things, but it may also be facing up to the meaningless.[9]

The positivists' insight was that metaphysics is meaningless.[10] It appeared otherwise to some of us at first but it now seems that this insight leads to, not away from, nonsense—to the non-rational, the non-intellectual, the non-verbal, ' the physical.11 Otherwise, to put it differently, one misses the postiveness of

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[6] and egolessness.

[7] either turning apparently meaningless questions into meaningful ones by neat logical tricks or rejecting out of hand those with which he cannot do this.

The reference to Carnap in the following paragraph is to his article, "ϋberwindung der Metaphysik durch logische Analyse der Sprache," in Erkenntnis, II (1931).

[8] Example: "Is this the same Socrates standing here now who was sitting there ten minutes ago?" This question leads to confusion and nonsense (talk of the soul), if it is taken to be about Socrates. It is, however, a simple question, though important, when it is taken to be about the word "same" (how is "same" used?).

[9] Annihilation, boredom, death—the connections with existentialism and with life. And since it is the meaningless which we face we cannot understand and accept it by just talking or thinking, for these are concerned with the meaningful as they are ordinarily conceived.

[10] Of course, it may also be about language. It probably is. There is no reason why philosophical questions should have but one use.

[11] This, of course, is in a way what the positivists thought. But it is as though they

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the positivists' work, that meaninglessness is "meaningful," that the meaninglessness of philosophical questions "means" something.12

Has not Wisdom shown that philosophical questions have uses, and is this not a move in the positive direction? Yes and no. By showing that they are often disguised sensible questions (and that the disguise is essential) he has enabled us to "use" them. But this sort of use turns one from the meaningless: It obscures that into which it seems that one must delve in order to see fully that philosophical questions are meaningless and hence may have uses.

III

Partial explanations:

(a) Metaphysics old-style is the belief or results from the belief that statements have meaning instead of use.

(b) "Belief that statements are meaningful" is somehow equivalent to "belief that life has purpose (is meaningful)" and to "belief that the riddle exists.

(c) Life does not have meaning. We give it meaning by talking. Otherwise, it is meaningless, and we escape from it by talking.

(d) The theory that metaphysical statements are meaningless, if treated purely intellectually, gives positivism. When it becomes a physical as well as a mental affair, the result is a Zen Buddhist. A way of describing the Zen Buddhist, then, is to say that he is a real as well as a theoretical positivist, a positivist in fact as well as in theory. He has accepted not only the fact that metaphysics is meaningless (the conceptual), but the fact that life also is meaningless (the non-conceptual).13

(e) If it is pointed out that there is a contradiction in talking of the use while urging that "meaningless" means the meaningless (the thing), the reply is: this notion (notation) is being used for present purposes. In any case, after all the discussion is over, one sees that "dog" does indeed mean dog.

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did not go far enough with it to be effective, and philosophy became just ordinary language

12 Compare to Heidegger's going through nothing to something, Descartes' through doubt to certainty, Wittgenstein's through the unreasonable (no rules, no standards) to : the reasonable (philosophy leaves everything as it is).

13 Zen Buddhism is not being recommended here or elsewhere in this piece. The phrase "Zen Buddhist" is simply a handy name for referring to anyone who has faced the meaningless squarely in theory as well as in practice and has seen thereby that it has "meaning," or that it is meaningful to face it, or that it, too, can be used.

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IV

It would not be fair ("logical"?) if we left it at this. And the matter may be approached differently by an outline of what happens during one step of heading into a meaningless question, and therefore into the meaningless, instead of away from it. This can be no more than a report, for the step takes sitting (Practice) as well as thinking.14

A monk asked Jōshu whether the dog has buddha-nature or not. Jōshu replied, "Mu." What does that "mu" mean? Well, it is clear from reading about Zen Buddhism that the Zen Buddhist tries to get beyond theories to facts. Look at the world. "Do not interpret it11 might be the slogan. So, Jōshu said, "Mu," to drive the monk out of a theory to the facts. But is this not interpreting; relating the kōan to what we know of Zen Buddhism, to theory? "What does the kōan say? What is it? It says that the dog does not have buddha-nature. So, "mu" means "mu?"

Compare this to Carnap on Heidegger and "the nothing nothings." Instead of listening to Heidegger (and one can see why he did not), Carnap asked how he could have said that the nothing nothings.15 This is extraordinary ingenuity, because Heidegger made a "grammatical" mistake. "Nothing," as relational logic helped to make clear, is not a noun. And this interpretation fits with the theory about the nonsense character of metaphysical propositions. But this is to deal with how Heidegger might have said what he did and not with what he said.16 And that is not to listen to him. But, if you listen, you get nonsense. How can you think about nothing? "Nothing" does not mean anything, and to say that it does is double talk. And, when you try to think that nothing means something, you feel a rising tension. It does not mean any­thing. Why, then, did he say it ?

Back to interpretation. Do not listen to him. Try to "understand" him ; make allowances for him (that is reasonable). This way of dealing with him is made easier by the fact that people do sometimes talk nonsense—idiots and neurotics, for example.

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14 The philosophic method of the Zen Buddhist is not completely intellectual. It is a method which involves the whole individual. One sees, by seeing this, why a Westerner can be a positivist or a pragmatist or an existentialist only in theory, for our philosophic methods have been wholly intellectual, although the tendency of some has been empirical.

15 How to solve a kōan: learn to listen to the kōan. Most of the time we listen to ourselves. Work on a kōan takes time because it takes time to learn to listen without interpreting, to see things as they are. The answer to a kōan is in the k5an. Each kōan has a classical answer and only one answer. Seeing a thing as it is is not mysterious. It is seeing it without yourself being mixed up in it, that is, without thinking that you have a self and thus being able to get your "self" mixed up in what you see.

16 Psychology, not philosophy. See where a danger lurks in psychoanalysis and relying too much on science.

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However, it is easy to overlook the fact that Heidegger is not an idiot, to fail to compare him to known idiots, and to see that his pattern is not theirs. Unfortunately, it is also easy to do this quickly and to "see" that his pattern is oddly like theirs. Or at least enough like it that he would make an incredible blunder. Therefore, away with interpretation. What was Heidegger saying? We must pay attention to nothing, to Nothing. This is impossibly difficult.

What did Jōshu say ? He said, "Mu." What does that mean ? In sanzen you tell the rōshi that it means that Jōshu wanted to disabuse the monk of a theory, or to settle his doubts about the dog's buddha-nature. For he must have doubts or else he would not have asked Jōshu. After all, the Buddha himself had said that dogs have buddha-nature. You tell the rōshi this, and he replies, "Mu" . And he does this day after day to whatever you say in order to give the meaning of "mu." No. No. No. Mu. Mu. Mu.

All right. "Mu" means "mu." So, he has been giving you the answer all along. It is as simple as that. (It has been said that there is nothing mysterious about Zen, that it is your everyday life.) What does the kōan say? Listen to it. Jōshu said, "Mu." So, you finally tell the rōshi that the "mu" means "mu. And he replies, "That is logic. I want you to transcend the categories of being and non-being. If a = b, and b = c, then a = c. That is logic. Get beyond it. Transcend the opposites."[17]

Very well, then. So logic is not what is wanted. And you remember reading that the answer to a kōan is always some non-sequitur. Question: What is the cardinal principle of Buddhism? Answer: the pine tree in the court.[18] All right. What does the "mu" mean? "Bow wow!" There is illogic. (The rōshi replies, "You must grow up." And you think of saying "Bow wow" louder the next time.)

Yet, look at the "logic" there, everywhere in there. A dog is referred to in the kōan. You wanted to be illogical. So, you bark at the rōshi like a dog. Not logical ? Well, there is some kind of connection—certainly there is no complete

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[17] I cannot forbear remarking here that the rōshi has not heard of Heidegger. But still I am not trying to prove anything. Yet, compare what he says with what Heidegger says early in "What Is Metaphysics?" For example: "Because we continually meet with failure as soon as we try to turn Nothing into a subject, our enquiry into Nothing is already at an end—always assuming, of course, that in this enquiry 'logic' is the highest of appear..."

Heidegger often seems to be punning in this essay. In philosophy, a pun is not a pun. M. Heidegger, Existence and Being, Werner Brock, trans. (Chicago: Henry Regnery and Co., 1949), p. 360.

[18] Compare to: " What is the general form of a proposition?" The riddle does not exist. Philosophical Investigations, G. E. M. Anscombe, trans. (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1953), sections 92, 94, 114. Tractatus, D. F. Pears and B. F. McGuiness, trans. (London: RoutSedge and Kegan Paul ; New York: The Humanities Press, 1961), 6.5.

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break. And when you did bark louder the rōshi said, "Transcend the opposites,"

Now what? It seems that there is nothing you can say. For now anything that you might say will have some connection with the kōan. Say nothing, then. But that is logical, too. You can see the logic in that move. So, there is nothing (sic) you can do. You are caught. It is an impasse. How can you do nothing?

Here is a break. It is as though something else intervenes. The day comes when you say nothing.[19] You do not say nothing, so to speak. You Just cannot say anything. You are silent, not as a result of deliberation or deliberately.20 You say nothing (sic) just because no words will come—not for a reason but from a cause. You sit before the rōshi mutely, and, even if you are 40 and not trying to become a Zen Buddhist, mildly horrified. You are lost, so to speak, in the meaningless. He smiles and says, "Go deeper" and then, "Mu."

"Mu" means mu, not "mu." Why cannot "nothing" be a noun, after all? "Mu" means not a word but a thing. How do you transcend logic ? By going beyond words.[21] By going from the words to the things (from words to things, if you do not like the notion of meaning, the notation of "meaning" ). There has been all this talk of meaninglessness. What is the thing—meaninglessness ? Why should there not be such a thing as well as the word (to use this manner of speaking) ? Do not talk about "of" and "not." We know those are not nouns.

So there is a thing—mu. "Mu" does not mean "mu." It means mu. When you put quotes around it you are limited to the word. Do not be limited to it. Use it. [22] And now the "logic" in the kōan becomes apparent. And "mu" means mu. How do you get at mu? Partly by saying it. You put it into a word. Mu. Mu. Mu. [23]

Gone are the interpretations of Jōshu's "mu," the metaphysics. In other words, you have stopped trying to find the meaning of "mu." And you no longer have to worry about that odd concept, buddha.-nature. No need any longer to think about "mu" or the kōan. It is the thing—mu—you are working with now. Mu. Mu. Mu. You are trying to become mu, at first by saying "mu" and then by gradually getting beyond the question and anything that you might

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[19] Note that the discussion cannot be logical here, that it has to be a report.

[20] That is how you can do nothing. The time may come in his zen studies when the Zen Buddhist monk is carried by force to his interviews with the rōshi .

[21] Sitting, heretofore not done as philosophy but as a means to philosophy. The practice as well as the words; the two going together. Is this not really all that was missing?

[22] When one is breathing zazen-style, uttering "mu" on the exhalation is useful—at least in the early stages of zazen.

[23] You see that you did not say anything that day because you had got to the meaningless. But you did not know it Now, deeper, you do. Now you can speak in order to stay in that condition or to deepen it, make it more pervasive.

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say about it. You see its meaninglessness and thereby meaninglessness. "Meaningless" has ceased to be opaque and has become transparent. You see through it to the things. And now it is all right to say "mu" because you are no longer concerned with it, and therefore not with an answer to the kōan, with words. You are using it to attain some "things" which have been called egolessness.

Now the sitting is different. You are using the mu kōan. You say "mu" every day to the rōshi as your "answer" to the kōan. And it no longer matters that it is the answer.24 The transition is from saying "mu" and meaning it to saying "mu" and being mu.25

Nor is there a thing—mu—left. That was a way of talking which had a certain use, a use which was blocked by playing tricks like saying that "nothing" is not a noun. Of course, it may not be. But suppose it is. Use it as a noun. Otherwise, you can classify it as you please. So, the positivists were right. Metaphysics is meaningless. The only addition one can make to this is to accept it; to accept meaninglessness in fact as well as in theory, or for facts as well as for theories; to accept the thing as well as the word, the things as well as the words; to become meaningless as well as to talk about it; to use "mu" as well as to talk about it—nothing as well as "nothing" (which is all, ironically, that Carnap got out of Heidegger).

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24 It is only fair to remind one here that I am describing one step in the work on a

26 There is also the concept of non-duality in Zen Buddhism.