linyu gu

“WAITING FOR GODOT”?CONTEMPORANEITY, FEMINISM, CREATIVITY

Overture

“We men and women are all in the same boat, upon a stormy sea. Weowe to each other a terrible and tragic loyalty.”1

Women or men in life often stand hesitating among diverse alter-natives: self or others, truth or untruth, faith or no faith, action or noaction, etc. But since this study is femininity and feminism thematized,my concern shall concretize, analyze, and focus on contemporarywomen and our2 new perplexity.Today, on the one hand, we anxiouslycelebrate our triumphs of feminist movements and our professionallygrown powers; and on the other, we remain undeniably troubled byendless confusion arisen from a “new self.”3 In other words, while weare ecstasized by our privileges, we again find ourselves continuing tofight more delicate dilemmas and doubts in a novel fashion of a newage. However reluctant we are, we end up a classical option: Waittoday for a better “tomorrow.”4

I call the above new predicament “waiting for tomorrow.” To bevivid and specific, below I would like to share two stories of “waiting”in my personal experience, which more or less mirror a generalfacade. One of them is associated to a collective level and the otheran individual encounter. Both explain what background this study isfrom and to whom I speak to.

The first story traces back to an international conference site,whereas festive air was overflowing, the opening ceremony was sol-emnizing. To our surprise, among woman scholars who were nearlyhalf of the total participants, not a single figure was invited to themain speeches at the ceremony. We held a secret faith for the closingceremony. Again, no woman was there! The tolerance had finallyreached its end and we questioned the conference. And then wewaited, waited . . . until a firm promise arrived: This embarrassmentwill not happen in the next conference! Hereafter, we continued towait.

LINYU GU, Ph.D., Managing Editor, Journal of Chinese Philosophy, University ofHawaii at Manoa. Specialties: process philosophy and theology, Chinese philosophy,modern Japanese thought. E-mail: linyu@hawaii.edu

© 2009 Journal of Chinese Philosophy

My second dilemma may sound rather annoying, because we areconvinced by many prevalent beliefs: Gender is not always relevant tothis or to that. However, to our surprise, in the end we have realizedthat everything is relevant. Let me make a dismal confession: Nothingwould seem less easy than to accept fellow man colleagues’/friends’harmful deeds. When my own time comes by, it tears me apart: Nomatter how disdainfully I try to pass by it, there does not seem to bea gracious middle way out. Such experience seems not entirely pecu-liar among my woman conversers. As we strive not to sniff a politicalaroma, we are nevertheless troubled by the consequence: Either arespect is not given or we may appear irritating. Frustrated by this, wethen cannot help but be attracted to “waiting.”5

Suppose that we are guaranteed by a promise from “tomorrow,”shall we wait? The question automatically leads my eyes to the playWaiting for Godot: The characters wait, wait, wait . . . for someonenamed Godot who never arrives.6 Godot’s absence implies the futurepresence to an endless waiting, in spite of that no one knows whenand whether it will take place. What does “tomorrow” mean to us?Why are we drawn to waiting? Whether there is a potential connec-tion between “today” and “tomorrow”?

On the following journey I shall set my task in an interculturaldialogue between process feminism and Chinese cosmology, throughwhich I prospect a harmonious finale of “waiting” and “tomorrow”creatively joining together. My goal is to search for opening a doorwhich leads to a botanic garden: Both “waiting women” and “waitingmen” embrace and rejoice one another. Such enthusiasm shall foreseea blossom in a gender-friendly landscape, in which we all are free fromsufferance of disconnection, separation, and oppression.

Three chapters are choreographed for the above task. Chapter I,“Contemporary Predicament,” anchors and examines two feministintellectuals as models of our new predicaments, in order to discernwhat we “wait” for and the nature of our “waiting,” namely, the“savage” patriarchs of orthodox God and Confucian Tian. Chapter II,“Breaking the One,” introduces Whiteheadian God and its processinseparability through an analysis of how process feminism meta-physically synthesizes our demands for connection as well as alertsour narrow desires for replacing One God with a female singularity,One Goddess. Chapter III, “Harmonizing the Many,” offers Chinesecosmology on creative Tian (cosmic heaven7) and creativeharmony in the dipolar relation of yin–yang . Particularly, suchcreative cosmology suggests a practical application to human conduct.It contributes a broadened and deepened interconnection in thelevel of human practicality to avoid the Whiteheadian philosophyof organic multiplicity. I conclude that both process feminism and

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Chinese cosmology have revealed in our emotional or rational antici-pation how interconnection replaces disconnection, how together-ness displaces differentiation, and how men and women hold handswalking toward our shared destination. Doing so, “Godot” shall notbe afar.

I do not offer a way out but a way through, among many; our voiceis not only for audio/amusing but for echo/act.

I. Contemporary Predicament

By “contemporary,” I allow it to be focused on a concrete group:woman intellectuals. Within such a sphere, my vision may comemore naturally and knowledgably to a certain point. Meanwhile,being an academic Asian woman may also privilege my thinking, toa degree, particular and diverse and far-reaching. Nonetheless, myclaim ensues generalization other conditional truths.

In this chapter, I shall question the nature of our “waiting” in orderto unfold what blocks our way out emotionally or socially or histori-cally. Above my individual confession may rather be a situationalconcreteness, which cannot suffice a diagnosis of our root symptom ina general mentality or habit. But to invoke a deeper sophistication ofour physically distanced and yet spiritually boundary relation with“tomorrow,” I believe my individual sensibility indeed can be empa-thized in a broader level. In this pursuit, I start with two significant butstereotypical woman intellectuals, with whom my above open sharingcan be a hope of transforming a particular struggle into a contempla-tion of common perplexity.

The following two writers are considerably recognized as feministicons: Sylvia Plath (1932–63)8 and Hong Ying (1962–). Althoughthey strikingly astound us with a bold, throaty, and electrifying voice,they, however, have not discarded a classical dilemma: “Waiting fortomorrow.” At this point, my confession may become our confession:What is “tomorrow” really? What we are waiting for after all? Theanswer is: “Godot” is what we are waiting for, whose presence lives inthe absence, and who never comes, if the waiting arrows to a leanerdirection or if it is a one-way street. For Plath as well as for Hong Ying,this “Godot” implicates an abstract form of time-honored masculinereliance and androcentric complexity. Such complexity9 appears inthem as a reoccurring pattern, for it began from the dawn of time withGod and Tian.

In other words, we are too familiar with a world in which classicalor modern types of “waiting women” represent as enchanting objectsof the splendidly feminine and yet the traumatically passive, for

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numerous ages. The very identity of herself is mentally and physicallyattached to and possessed by his attentiveness and responsiveness anddecisiveness, as though he brings her value and meaningfulness ofthis life. Her needs are devoted to fit his. We have long lost in suchcomplexities to our fathers, husbands, male leaders, imagined heroes,fantasized princes, and so on. Nevertheless, for hundreds of years, toseek breathing room, to detach from such bondages, and to thrive foran affirmative subjectivity, our independent awareness, desires, voices. . . have never ceased.10 A genuinely respectful relation is presumablya team work on the common goals of a man and a woman or ahusband and a wife, if both are leading authors of life, equal atprofessional advances and social privileges, and both have legitimatefields of their own, for which each must respect the other. Like anyother human relations, the cooperative work or the marital/familialrelation of men and women is to be genuinely free and respectfullyautonomous.

We have now indeed eventually and fundamentally infused into anestablished role of self-strength. However, ironically the perplexityremains: She seems to devote her independency to a novel form of hisincreased possession: She continues to dissolve herself in himself.11

Meanwhile, as she is fulfilled with self-affirmation and self-realization,after a successful working day, after a legacy of marriage, after adisappointed relation . . . she finds herself, again alone—waiting for anew “hero.”12 History repeats itself, in a contemporary version: She issplit apart by both the classical dependency and the contemporaryindependency, because neither a classical “hero” nor a modern onewants her independence more than “obedience, devotion, loyalty, and,if ideally, beauty.”13

Sylvia Plath and Hong Ying replay the drama of “waiting.” Intel-lectually, both have created undeniable and significant and glowingself-identity and both are exceptionally talented poets and writers,who have a comparable style: direct, rebellious, and truthful. Suchstrong colors of their prolific works, nevertheless, signify a shockinglycreative, beautifully melancholy, and lively opinionated personality.They are amazing simply by being themselves, honestly and uncom-promisingly. No doubt that Plath enlightened her time and has beencontinually admired by this date. As early as her Smith College years,her journal illustrates: A woman’s marital life should be conditionedin a husband’s recognition and respect of her own independent valueand equal competence. Plath’s desire drives beyond many traditionalbounds including family values. For her, without equally giving eachother a combination of independent body and mind and soul, amarital relationship cannot be a woman’s own self-expression of aworthy world.14

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However, in both Plath and Hong Ying’s biographical writings,unavoidably they share a similar childhood, a childhood which hasformed their timeless doubts, searches, and struggles for a fatheringicon and a male hero. This inner continuum shapes the initial resem-blance in them, behind the enormous body of their success, in whichwe are unfortunately sometime tickled by currents of sorrow. Funda-mentally, it is the sensitivity at the patriarchal bondage that sheds thelight on two women’s life journey. At the age of eight, Plath swore tothe death of her father: “I’ll never speak to God again!”15 For adesperate way out, when Plath thought that a father figure or a manidol betrayed and then abandoned her, she autonomously had optedto mark a stop to her life at the age of thirty and in her extraordinarycreative period of a frozen February morning of 1963.

As one of the phenomenally gifted poets of our time, Plath’s act notonly impresses the consciousness of generations but also enlightens uswith her strong emphasis on her true self. To her ambiguous andcomplicated suicide, my conversers often go to two extremes. Oneextreme singularly untangles the act by an abstract theory on Plath’sown historical and clinical explanations; the other is radicallyimprinted by the murderous image of her husband’s promiscuity.These two captivities strike me rather to be subjective and naive andbiased. Scholarly, after Sylvia Plath’s death, a study on suicide hasbeen engaged by, for example, A. Alvarez.16 For him, the act of Plath,like for many other exceptions, explains what an art is about.

I believe that no simple reference should enable to answer thequestions in Plath’s decision that is made by her complexities, shifts,confusions, and despairs. Nonetheless, my own offer is rather meta-physical:The death that Plath finally succeeded in achieving is a ratherserious, deliberate, and philosophical expression of her disappoint-ment toward God, a masculine hope that she had fantasized for toolong. Once it is broken, her rage turns to God as she did at a youngage, when the separation from her father had inflicted her feelinginjured and betrayed. The tremendous upsetness and wounds, whichher deceased father brought to her, had remained in a profoundtorment throughout the years of her childhood as well as adulthood.Without God’s help, it became a plain and natural and logical end toleave God and His17 created world, as life is a creation of God,to reject it is to reject Him, to abandon it is to abandon Him, and todestruct it is to destruct Him.

While I find that annihilating patriarchalism motivates SylviaPlath’s final act, there is a roughly parallel case in the works of HongYing.18 The latter’s version of the “waiting women” is emerged in adifferent resolution, which paints a victorious and ceremonial picture,but it is not too far away from a “glorified” aim—seeking the patriar-

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chal guidance and approval of self-assurance and self-realization. Hervalue, her goal, and her social triumph somehow are eagerly “waiting”for to be discovered, defined, and appreciated by fathers, lovers,masters, heroes, etc. In comparing with and contrasting to Plath’spredicament over God, Hong Ying’s heroine personae seem to asso-ciate to Tian, the cosmic heaven, the yang force, the masculine cre-ativity. The poignancy of Tian in both intellectual and commonChinese culture is immanently connected to ming (predeterminedlife or unchangeable fate) of human existence. Thus, in classical Con-fucianism Tian implicates a symbolic patriarch: It is the creative anddominating power of the universe, at the same time it is the naturalthreat and challenge of our fate. The inseparable relation betweenTian and the world affirms Hong Ying’s understanding on the internaland tangling connection between her leading woman characters andthe cosmic surroundings that they are set in.

Impressively similar, Hong Ying’s female characters share a deli-cate confusion and a vulnerable struggle with those in Sylvia Plath.Throughout Hong Ying’s life, she constantly quests of a father, towhom she feels both painfully separated from and desperatelyattached to. It is such a difficult dilemma which functions the vehicleof the desire and ambition and endeavor to move her to self-exploration. Unfortunately, this process returns to a classical habit:Her achievement stereotypically succumbs to a masculine vision.In her biographical novel Jier de Nüer (HungaryDaughter)19 (title in English version: Daughter of the River20), theheroine, Liuliu , was grown up struggling with identifying father’sidentity, the perplexing feeling follows through her lifetime. Thisperplexity lingers in Hong Ying’s subsequent works as well.

In Hong Ying’s other works, “the daughter of the river” hasbeen transformed from the victimized and self-denied image into a“phoenix,” rising up and flying away from the ligature and alliance ofbondages. Being a provocative and controversial writer, she particu-larly challenges the conventional genre of Chinese woman writers byevoking herself with two epic characterizations. First, she faithfullyadulates the cosmic Tian which gifted a grandiose creativity of herwomanhood, and second, she proclaims this same Tian which impor-tunes her with threatening ming. Ming, an inaudible request, submitsher subjectivity and liberty to a predetermined unchangeablenesswhich leads to her future misfortune. Given these two faces of oneportrait of Tian, Hong Ying’s women on the one hand are exposed ascreative works of nature: unbound, creative, and rebellious, whichrevolts against ming. On the other hand, they remain wont to wait,and they stay stuck in the same old entrapment, and they long for themasculine wisdom of fathers, husbands, and lovers to discover them,

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to grant them a “pseudo-selfhood,” upon the masculine “wisdom.” Inanother word, the women of Hong Ying have not autonomously andfundamentally renewed:They continue to wait and pray for the mercyof a heroic salvation.

No matter how anxiously Sylvia Plath and Hong Ying choreographa creative self, they as well are eager to compete for the recognition of“post-patriarchs.”21 The achievements of the two writers have even-tually turn women against their self in order to appear acceptable totheir own stereotypical attachment to classical complexity. In Plath,God and “daddy” (and later her husband) are always part of herhungry and brilliant and passionate goal of life; while Tian, ming, andfathers have always been braided in the main thread of most of HongYing’s writings. These heat hazes light up the ultimate meaning oftheir own selfhood. Here and now, their struggles plunge into a depthwhich requires a metaphysical anticipation coming to the fore: Is itpossible for such “savage”22 God and Tian to be redefined and recon-structed or is it impossible for contemporary women to be liberatedfrom old time’s “waiting”?

II. Breaking the One

W. B. Yeats remarks: “. . . after all our subtle colour and nervousrhythm, after the faint mixed tints . . . what more is possible? Afterus the Savage God.”23 This God is the most ineffable deity in themonotheism of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam; beyond time andchange. He is the sole reality and infinite perfection among us,regardless of that He is abstract, shadowy, distant, and physicallyunknown. Without the absolute sense of orthodoxy vision in classi-cal theism, the world would seem to lose the eternal truth and ourlife would be led without purposes. Most remarkably, this singularand pompous and arrogant image seems particularly androcentricand traumatic toward womanhood, for that He from the first daywas already personified into the male divine to “[l]et a woman learnquietly with complete submission” of him.24 Hence, after us theSavage God; after her the Savage Him.25

In an emotional mental status, the young Sylvia Plath blamed Godwho killed her father, but in a spiritual sense she has never ceased tolong for this same God, who to her is a man, a father, a masculine-comfort. Inasmuch we cling to the masculine masks of God or Tian,my next question shall call for itself: Can such patriarchal captivity bebroken by a reformed theory or a new vision of God? My voluntaryanswer is positive. But how can we affirm it? No doubt that neither theabove patriarchal sacralization of God nor the heavenly sage-hood of

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Tian suffices such restorative transformation. Hence, a brand newproject on interrelating, reconnecting, and mutual-integrating isrequired for the relationship between divinity and the world, betweenmasculine-complex and women’s self-reliance. This is a demandingand challenging endeavor, but Alfred N. Whiteheadian “process”God and Chinese cosmology on creatively creative Tian have led aprosperous and promising hope. The two alternative worldviews onharmony achieve to alleviate a controlling monopoly that only solidi-fies the inharmonious boundaries.

The present chapter focuses on the Whiteheadian process theology,in which God is not abandoned but rediscovered in an open anddynamic approach. My valuation shall also distribute to the processfeminist theologian Catherine Keller and her creative insights onseparation and reconnection. Before I assess these renaissances, thereis a need to acknowledge a clear number of other Christian philoso-phers and theologians, whose competing views have also opted to theopen understanding of God. William Hasker, one of the major opentheist philosophers, regards these five theories, though there is noabsolute consensus among them, as open theological views: Calvin-ism’s “free will,” Molinism’s “middle knowledge,” “simple foreknowl-edge,” process theology, and the openness of God theory (“free willtheism”).26

Hasker believes that, although process theology’s emphasis onGod’s persuasive power has its impressive strength, yet it is as muchvulnerable to the criticism of excessive deference to philosophy as theclassical theism is; the former is heavily subjected to Greek philoso-phy and the latter to Whitehead. As a free will theist himself, Haskerpresumes that the result of this Whiteheadian “synthesis” could bedamaging to the biblical conception of God. To set a more appealingchallenge, Hasker prospects that the openness of God in “free willtheism” has put forward a portrait of God “as majestic yet intimate, aspowerful yet gentle and responsive, as holy and loving and caring, asdesiring for humans to decide freely for or against his will for them,yet endlessly resourceful in achieving his ultimate purposes.”27 Inspite of all of the disagreements that Hasker has presented to processdivinity, by and large I adulate the lens of free will theism which offersa breaking-through illumination, particularly for anyone who pursuesa satisfying understanding of God.

However, open theism remains vulnerable to its own challenge toCalvinism: Why should we think that God would prefer a world likethat in free-will atheism? Or, is God, as open theism conceives, ableto create a world in which there are “genuinely” free creatures?Therefore, such “free will” has not strictly or ultimately overcome theCalvinist separation between an omnipotent God and His creatures.

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Open theism indeed has improved our relationship with God into arather modest and equal and friendly way; nevertheless, it remains toallow God staying afar to project His plan and action and love towardus. It is also to be pointed out that there is an oversight in Hasker’scollection of five theories. Robert Neville has presented himself tobe a remarkable open theist philosopher who accepts much ofWhitehead as well as comes to be independent of him.28 Meanwhile,together with his distinctive contribution to philosophical theology,Neville grasps a comprehensive perspective of non-Western tradi-tions, which was inadequate in the early process studies.

As an ecstatic change, for Whiteheadian philosophy and theology,the world and God are interdependent, and the relation of the two isnot to be viewed as one-sided dependence—the world on God, butrather, He is one of us:

God is primordially one, namely, he is the primordial unity of rel-evance of the many potential forms. . . . The World is primordiallymany, namely, the many actual occasions with their physical finitude.. . . Thus God is to be conceived as one and as many in the conversesense in which the World is to be conceived as many and as one.29

Open theism does show the logically evident strength on a resourcefulGod who responses to human actions and who takes risks of hisprovidential governance of the world. However, may we ask: Howdoes this openness of God respond to whether there should be bothmasculine and feminine pronouns associating to Him? Open theismhas not yet answered this, to my current knowledge. The leadingprocess thinkers, John B. Cobb, Jr. and David Ray Griffin, remind usof that Carl G. Jung was one of those who first realized that thepsychological impoverishment is the result of lacking female imagesof God, and Jung’s view has become especially valid, challenging, andvaluable today.30

In the above process views, God’s power is to be understood aspersuasive and never oppressive: “. . . God transcends the World, asthat the World transcends God. . . . God creates the World, as that theWorld creates God.”31 It is a harmonious affiliation: God intends topersuade humans and all creatures, but he does not control or compelsavagely any created beings to depend on his will. It is not thatWhitehead has formed a feminist theory on God, but that White-head’s metaphysical interpretation of God rejects the traditional ste-reotypical masculine image. Whitehead portraits God as one of menand women, and He is a persuasive love, tender feeling, and compas-sionate sharing. And these are grounds which have shaped White-headian metaphysical empathy and balance, and they have shifted thetraditional masculine attributes to the traditional feminine attributes.As charming as Leibniz’s world of monads, for Whitehead, “actual

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entity,” the micro being reflects the wholeness of macro beings, andvice versa. In his fascinating and revelatory analysis of Whiteheadiancosmology, Joseph Grange presents a stimulating relationship of oneand many:

There are only modes of wholeness that shine forth for a time andthen recede before the onrush of process in its physical, living, andcultural forms. Such is the consequence of the harmony of the Oneand the Many. The many which become one are always increased byanother one. Imbalance follows on the heels of balance. Disjunctionsucceeds conjunction. No matter how pleasing, wholeness is alwaysbut for a moment.32

Importantly and crucially, one of the frontier process feminists,Catherine Keller, seriously clarifies and simultaneously warns: Whileprocess feminism attributes their appeal to connection instead ofseparation, distance, and difference, their vision is not to be mistakenin the following sheer emotions. A radical switch merely directs to anopposite dead extreme: As long as any doctrines that identify a por-trait of God in male gender or other ethnic personae or nonhomo-sexual, He should immediately be abandoned or destroyed. Kellerjudges that such visions are not capable to resolve the problem, if itturns around to be that One God exclusively becomes One Goddess.

As Keller wisely perceives, the feminist way of interrelating andreconnecting must not idolize a fashionable banner which bindsitself with another particular mode of simplistic authority. Rather,the process feminism is grounded in a metaphorical consciousnessof independent and autonomous self-assertiveness, which guides tothereafter explore a mutual-reaching, pluralistic-becoming, and inter-weaving network. This is not an annihilating process but an endlessand multiply connecting endeavor of netting “one” to “many” and“many” to “one,” again, again, again . . .

When weaving into the Whiteheadian web, Keller questions thecommon sense of selfhood which identifies oneself as a separateworld from its surroundings. This turns out a result in which freedomis expected somehow a name that is clearly estranged from a rela-tional realm. It is true that a complex relation that we are enmeshedin does generate the boundaries, among a self and others. However,for Keller and process feminism, our sensibility of being a true selfdoes not necessarily mean to choose arriving at separation againstconnection. Keller continues to insightfully eyes on a fundamentallyproblematical issue of modern culture which not only assumes asingle view of separation but heads to an extreme vision: sexism.Neither “separation” nor “sexism” functions as a help to the world ofmen, or, that of women.33 Hence, Keller does not believe seeking anempowered center, either in a man or in a woman. For her, such genre

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of consciousness and mentality in repudiating connectedness ulti-mately fertilizes an opposite direction to women’s freedom.

What alternative can there be to liberate a separated individuality?Keller’s own anticipation recommends: “Something new is needed.”34

In moving into Whiteheadian metaphysics, Keller requires her alter-native thinking to go beyond a limited array such as selfhood orgender identity or relational community . . . in order to obtain afarther reach to ideas, feelings, souls, lives. . . . Meanwhile, for her, thisis not a step to escape from our concerns with the time-honoredconfusion on masculine or feminine selfhood, but to think collectivelyand feel intrinsically in a deep affinity rooted in “connective and fluidselves.”35 This is what Keller calls an unlimited array of four nonpolarconceptual motifs: being one/being many, being public/being private,being body/being soul, and being here/being now.36 She illustrates,the highlight of these stimulating pairs have staged the Whitehead’smetaphysical sense of individuality: “Unlike James, or almost anyprofessional philosopher before him, Whitehead attributes feeling byanalogy to every actual individual being in the universe, . . . A newtheory of one and many, of subject and object, is here taking shape.”37

In Keller’s “something new,” we have realized that, God as TheOne is broken into The Many. This is what Charles Hartshorne wouldsympathize: Only if a God is a related one, who is thus capable ofself-enriching and feeling the experience of the world; this God ismore perfect, only if he is capable to surpass himself and depend onthe world he created.38 Keller interprets these words affectionately:The world has a heart, if we embrace the world; God/Goddess livesin us, if we meet Him/Her in the core of our hearts. However,does “something new” unconditionally supposes a mutual dialoguebetween I and Thee, or does it guarantee that a relational connectivitygives birth to her and him? It is clearly not. The central characteristicof a process connection can only be illuminated by a metaphor ofmultidimensional reaching, growing, and connecting among oneanother. That is the cosmological process of “concrescence”:

The novel entity is at once the togetherness of the “many” which itfinds, and also it is one among the disjunctive “many” which it leaves;. . . The many become one, and are increased by one. . . . the “pro-duction of novel togetherness” is the ultimate notion embodied inthe term “concrescence.”39

A particular individual man or woman is only one rhythm of thepulses of the connective stream, and each such single effort can onlybe activated in a complex synthesis of massive feelings. To feel, tounderstand, to relate one another takes two or numerous partners. Toconnect means to merge into other feelings and only can such a two-or multi-way street be hopeful in choreographing the feeler to feel

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while feelings to be felt. Without this process of “concrescence,” noneof any subjective selfhood can be created, nor can any diverse objec-tivity turn into a new subjective oneness. This metaphysical connec-tion between the masculinity and the femininity, between a waitingman and a waiting woman, enlightens us to give each other theirhands, to help each other rising up, and to respond to each other’sfeelings/voice/endeavors, in making a collective self40 out of a pluralworld.With the mask of God or Goddess down, we are to take off ourown marks. While men and women both swim in an adventurous andchallenging ocean, we owe to each other love, faith, and loyalty. Onlyin such a manner, Sylvia Plath’s “God” and “daddy” and “man hero”could have saved her.

III. Harmonizing the Many

While Joseph Grange has a crystal line to portray the balanced andfriendly relation between God (the One) and the world (the Many),Chung-ying Cheng has a complementary addition in viewing theChinese cosmology. What Granges says above precisely can be anapplause of what Cheng has to say about harmony and disharmony:

The world . . . is a process of change and development. . . . [T]heremay appear variation, difference, divergence, tension, opposition, andantagonism in the world . . . the overall tendency of cosmic and socialprocesses as well as individual life conduces to unity and harmony.. . . Reality . . . which encompasses Haven, Earth, humans and themyriad things, in both a process of change and an ordered structure.41

In Chinese cosmology, Tian , as we stated previously, the cosmicheaven or the yang force of the nature, is identified with thepaternal symbol of qian (the creative originativity). While opposedand yet connected to Tian, Di , the cosmic earth or the yin forceof the nature, is embodied in the maternal image of kun (thecreative productivity). The essential principle of the Yijingphilosophy lies in the succinct characterization of harmony betweenTian and Di.

However, interestingly but ironically, as God is a portrayal of mas-culine lord in classical Christianity, in Confucian classics, the cosmicrelations of Tian and Di, qian and kun, and yin and yang are definedand developed into a set of patriarchal morale for human self-cultivation. Both rationally and emotionally, Confucian women aretaught and expected and praised by the virtue of enduring and sub-ordinating their life to the “fate (ming ),” namely, a “predetermined(by Tian)” life journey. In the Confucian fude (goodness of a

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woman), her moral perfection is beatified by a valuable world under ahusband’s (as well as dominant male group’s) leadership, because thisman is an exemplary icon who bears cosmic heaven’s will (tianzhi

) and intention (tianyi ), and comprehensively they representfour principal excellences of a gentleman:

The Confucian age begins with Confucius’s explicit recognition thatthe external t’ien (tian, here and thereafter added) (heaven)has an essential link with the internal te (de) (virtue, power) ofman. . . . The rationality of man is to be realized in the practice andperfection of virtues such as jên (ren) (love and benevolence), yi (ori) (righteousness), li (propriety) and chih (zhi) (wisdom in distin-guishing good from bad).42

A man who owns these four virtues is recognized as shengren(a man of sage-hood) and junzi (a gentleman of goodness).Accordingly and consequentially, Confucian-masculine personality ofthese Confucian gentlemen is fulfilled by great missions on behalfof Tian and thus they are named as tianzi (male descendants ofcosmic heaven), and they are also the ones who forward reigns andinherit thrones. And they determine the rise and fall of dynasties andthey are the ones who are considered as the actual exemplificationsamong the mass of people.43 No one is not familiar with this well-citedsolemn belief of Mengzi:“It is tian that has honored this man with theglorified mission; to accomplish it, tian as well honors him the strengthand courage to overcome the unbearable and intolerable hardship.”44

He has also nuanced it with a supplementary: “This man practicesDao in himself, so that he may guide his wife; he practices Dao withothers, so that he may cultivate his own wife.”45 Such masculine sever-ity particularly separates women from experiencing and possessingthe equal excellence and autonomy.

We now have a vivid vocabulary to read the case: Men are bydestiny emerged from Tian at the same time merged into Tian; andit is Tian, namely, the metaphorical symbol of men, which providesus women lordship, guardianship, and educatorship. Moreover, asidefrom the above social and political and intellectual qualities of theConfucian masculinity, Kam Louie explores one neglected butimportant dimension of it: wu (martial valor). For him, Chinesemasculinity is a model of combining wen (cultural attainment)that is what we discussed above, and wu.46 I appreciate this study asit clearly holds against extreme feminist positions such as biologicalreductionism which can be in a danger of turning into a culturaldeterminism. However, I also find that such a cultural-physicaladvantage entitled by Chinese masculinity, both literally and intrigu-ingly, implies a disadvantaged model of Chinese femininity whichseems not at all culturally (wen) or martially ideal (wu). This is

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untrue, but as for how in history Chinese women are competitiveboth culturally and martially this is not my task here to debate atlength. By and large, together with Confucianism, Louie’s own modeleventually and helplessly proves: after us the Savage Tian; after herand the Savage Him.

Whether it is a Christian woman or a Confucian one, our “painfulconfusions”47 are embodied in the same fable: “When lacking anempowering world, or an inner relation to ourselves, women can alltoo readily act out . . . for others—especially men and children . . . welet our energy, our happiness, ourselves, be eaten away . . . we . . .depend for the success of a particular relationship. . . .”48 Soundsancient? Indeed. But the whimsy of it has been not going away butrather hunting among us, men and women, like a dead metaphorwhich resurrects from time to time. For instance, living today, butlike a large group of marvelously achieved woman intellectuals inChina, Hong Ying is at the peak of her career. However, a profoundmasculine-predicament lingers beneath. We often hear from our menwho are overjoyed by their modern woman fellows’ victories and whoare wowed by a “fact”:The traditional roles are now switched around.Our men may be too optimistically satisfied with the transformationand therefore they have forgotten their own impartment and mission:Reaching out for connection and reconnection with their “victorious”woman comrades.

Catherine Keller reminds us, “something new is needed” for ourcontemporary predicament. I have earlier asked: How do we, men andwomen, both make effort for an interconnection? Whether there isa running stream in which “tomorrow” lives within every drop of“today”? My response continually is to be prosperous and I shalldefend it in the process of re-contemplating and re-appreciating Tianin its original and authentic implication in the Yijing (or the Zhouyi

or the Book of Changes) cosmology. Such defending argumentis theorized by the idea of shengsheng rixin zhi hexie(harmony of creative and re-creative creativity), which underlies themetaphysical structure of the Yijing. I shall foresee: When men andwomen spin together in a new collaboration of mutually caring andequally connecting and constantly reconnecting to one another, acreative harmony may come actualized in not much time of “waiting.”Upon stressing so, I shall also try to avoid a quick response: “Sure,please reach me and I have waited long enough, and I am totally readyfor the harmony!” However, let me ask:Are you ready for an investedcontribution or for its achieved fruits? A contribution requires arevolutionary jump, meaning a price paid by one’s genuine attentive-ness and actual recognition and practical engagement for reaching afellow woman or a fellow man. Harmonization is not a solo dance but

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in a duet or a group performance, and “tomorrow” will not come onits own if we fail to make it “today.”

While God can be a changeable and improvable deity in White-head, who is divine and creative but also personal and emotional,Tian in Chinese cosmology primordially is not a “savage” metaphor ofmasculinity as later elaborated in the main stream of Confucianism.For the Yijing, Tian, in the paternal form of qian, spurs the yangenergy of creativity; Di, in the maternal form of kun, nurtures the yinenergy of productivity. Tian and Di as well as qian and kun are to beobserved as a cocreating process in production and reproduction,and they are integrated with each others to constitute one totality ofpolarities and multiplicities. Therefore, I am a little surprised atKam Louie’s outdated and limited information: “Within the commonsuperficial appreciation of yin-yang theory, femininity and masculinityare placed in a dichotomous relationship whereby yin is female andyang is male.”49 Today either a Western or a Chinese scholar hardlywould regard yin and yang as binary dichotomies other than a har-monious unification of opposites. Nor it is the current situation thatyin and yang have been understood simply as female and malepersons or the two terms are merely operated for the reference mate-rials of sexual etiquette, like Louie gathered.50

However, I am pleased that Louie does come to a genuine andcorrect interpretation: yin and yang are to be seen as two essencescoexisting in a constant interaction whereby yin is generated andrecreated in yang while yang is emerged and reproduced in yin, andyin and yang are in each other throughout a perpetual dynamism.51

This is what the magnum opus, the Yijing, advocates: dayi (thegreat change) and shengsheng. Chung-ying Cheng has a solidifyingstatement:

. . . change is nothing but the continuous production and generationof life (sheng-sheng). The process of continuous generation of life isconceived in terms of the yin-yang metaphysics, yin and yang areuniversally observed and experienced as qualities of things andforces of happenings. They stand for two aspects, two sides, and twopolarities of reality . . . they are dynamically one. . . . The totality ofthings forms the context in which such change will take place.52

“The continuous production and generation of life (shengsheng)” can be also interpreted as “creative creation” or “creatively

creative” or “creative creativity.” The Yizhuan (The Commen-tary of the Yijing) writes: “Shengsheng zhiwei yi (Cre-atively creating is what means by yi).”53 This creativity, which iscontributed by and indebted to the dynamic harmony of yin and yang,satisfies the mutual changing and multiple interchanging in the uni-verse and human life. Tian subjects to such restless change aroused

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and stimulated by yin and yang. In addition, Cheng points out:“. . . thewhole world of things is conceived of as resulting from the samesource of life, which is Heaven. . . . The original Confucian concept ofHeaven gives place to the idea of change.”54

However, to be noticed, the tradition of the Confucian interpreta-tion has gone far to a credible power of Tian and promotes it is acontrolling creativity. In Confucian virtue theories as mentioned pre-viously, Tian, though being conceived to attach internally to andinseparable from Di, becomes enlarged as an independent source inorthodox Confucianism as implied in Cheng. The natural law andorder of the cosmic heaven are conceptualized as moral principles(tianli ). Such Confucian ideas of Tian mirror almost an image ofGod in the biblical tradition, which is the sole creator and dominantoneness of the world. Thereafter, the Confucian heavenly creativityhas substituted a social, moral, and cultural bondage of the Chinesefemininity in a monumentally long history. In order to rediscover themetaphysical implication of the Yijing, mostly Tian should be recog-nized as a harmonious persona. As a potential creativity, Tian shouldrespond to the productivity of Di, in the everlasting and perpetualchanges of the yin and yang movements. To accomplish a creativecreation, the yang energy of Tian cannot stand and act alone, if thereis no Di to complement and equally supply the yin creativity. TheYizhuan says,“Yi yin yi yang zhiwei dao (The naturalway or cosmic law is composed by one yin and one yang).”55

Harmony does not equate with singularity or oneness, just as whatWhitehead proposes that the preestablished harmony in God ispotentially made possible by God’s dipolar natures/poles. As much aswhat God should be given with both masculine divinity and femininedivinity as Carl G. Jung suggested, Tian or qian, as the source of thecreated world, is to be enriched and manifolded by Di or kun. TheYijing tells us:

Da zai qian yuan! Wanwu zishi . . . . . . (Thegreat qian and the great beginning! Ten thousands of things are richlycreated and originated from here . . . )”56 and “Zhi zai kun yuan,wanwu zisheng . . . . . . (The ultimate kun andthe ultimate beginning, ten thousands of things were produced andflourished and manifested . . . )”57

Tian or qian is the origin of all things and life and forms in the world;however, without Di or kun as the productive and nurturing cocre-ator, we may find nothing can be brought to existence at all! If God’screation is the cocreative and coproductive process of “emotional(physical) feeling” and “conceptual (mental) feeling.” Tian and Dieach imparts a harmonious unity. Nonetheless, Tian in Chinesecosmology has no divine implications, but Whitehead continues to

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characterize God as a divine image.58 But this is not the project hereto be completed.

Meanwhile, there is a problem with process connectivity. In theprocess pattern of creativity, tensions, contradictions, disjunctions. . . of The Many are connected by “becoming,” hence, we cannot butnotice that the world of Whiteheadian creativity ultimately implies arealization of organic growing. It takes place through a cosmic evo-lution of philosophical organism rather than an autonomous practi-cality of humanism that signifies Chinese philosophy. In Whitehead,the whole point of weaving a creative web of interrelatedness has verymuch less to do with how an oneness is susceptible to deconstructingmonolithic divinity of God and how an androcentric ego is dissolvedin connecting to other humans in a practical society and actualhumanism.A cosmology like such has not expanded the life of organic“occasions” and cells and plants or other creatures further to thehumanistic extent of our life, and it has not answered how intercon-nection replaces disconnection and how togetherness displaces differ-entiation in our rational or social or emotional anticipation. Suchdistinctive characteristics ultimately and fundamentally distinguishesWhiteheadian cosmology from Chinese cosmology, and later reveals abroadened and deepened interconnection in a concrete and solidlevel of human cultural, social, and virtue practicality.

Additionally, one puzzle is: By embracing a metaphysical together-ness, do we risk for taking prevalent positions such as “universalhumanism”? Anyhow, like Keller, I do not believe universal human-ism can skip over the question of gender identity which is rooted in allour painful contemplations. Our bodies are gifted by diverse genderand our histories are glorified by glowing struggles. The promise ofuniversal humanism seems to offer a void affinity to human particu-larities. I hold: There is no God without dipolar natures of physicaland mental poles for Whitehead, and there is no Tian without binarynatures of yin and yang for Chinese cosmology; thus there is nota human being but a man or a woman. The attempt or the illusion ofabolishing our identity serves no self-affirmation, just as burning lin-gerie cannot guarantee we are liberated from bondages.

Humanism is universal if we do not transcend beyond or away fromour bodies but grow within or through our particular personae. Menor women do not ask for mutually respected and internally connectedin abstract forms of humans, and long for being together as whom weare. We do seek our shared humanism, but we want more: A harmo-nization of our individual identities and colorful differentiations, inwhich we connect separated selves and broken hearts. Whether it isfor Whitehead or for the Yijing, words are weak and actions arelouder.“Creative harmony” or “harmonious creativity” is nothing but

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a call for creative actions of/among men and women to stand firmlytogether in the same stormy sea that we both face to and striveforward. Let’s all take off our masks, let’s rip off our facade, and let’snot to wait as we had done long enough.

JOURNAL OF CHINESE PHILOSOPHY, UNIVERSITY OF HAWAIIHonolulu, Hawaii

Endnotes

I dedicate this work to both “waiting women” and “waiting men.” Particularly this is atribute to two people: Professor Liu Youlan and Dr. Jesse Fleming, who passed awayduring this writing. My dear friend and former teacher, Professor Liu of Beijing DanceAcademy, represented a remarkable scholar and an example of creative femininity. Dr.Fleming, one of the Associate Editors of Journal of Chinese Philosophy, had been a nobleand devoting colleague. As a good friend, I regard Jesse as a true Daoist: he continued tooffer much joyful mind to others while understating his own sufferance in his last days.Jesse had most generously helped my writings, and my profound memory of him is endlessas now I am walking alone. For the current study, I deeply thank Professor Steve Odin,advisor of my doctoral thesis, for introducing the glistening world of process philosophyand theology and feminism. One decade has passed since I firstly criticized ProfessorCatherine Keller, but I have owed so much for her beautiful and powerful mind whenironically I am now entering her “broken web.” My original inspiration of and research fororganizing this special volume are much in debt to Professor Xinyan Jiang. In myriadways, these individuals are equally important to the process throughout: Ms. Jing T. Gussinand Hong Ying, Dr. Friederike Assandri, Professors Joseph Grange,William Hasker,YangHongsheng, Xinyan Jiang, Morny Joy, Philip J. Ivanhoe, Franklin Perkins, On-cho Ng,Lauren F. Pfister, Sandra A. Wawrytko, and Amy Olberding. Overall, I greatly owesynthetic remarks and critical discussions to Professor Chung-ying Cheng.

1. I am thankful to Mathew A. Foust for introducing this quote from G. K. Chesterton,“Christmas,” in All Things Considered (Methuen: Methuen, 1910), http://www.cse.dmu.ac.uk/~mward/gkc/books/11505-h.htm.

2. I italicize such pronouns to refer a general female group.3. I do not intend to label myself a “feminist” or a “nonfeminist.”4. Catherine Keller calls such mentality “women in waiting” or “waiting women” in

From a Broken Web: Separation, Sexism, and Self (Boston: Beacon Press, 1986), 11 andbeyond.

5. For an encouraging example of connecting rather than “waiting,” I would like toacknowledge a connective deed I received from the author of the following article.The author in a personal communication expresses his regrets of an error in hispublication that caused my academic loss and harm by failing to give the correctdescription of actual event. While I sincerely appreciated that the author intended toacknowledge my influence, but my emotion was torn apart: Shall I wait or shall I reachhis nobility? Nearly all of my conversers suggested: “Wait and let it go, because as awoman scholar you are vulnerable to all negative aspects. . . .” After a great battlewith myself, I opted to risk. Unexpectedly, the author appreciated my clarification.Through this experience, I regained the faith. To honor the author’s responsive andresponsible connection, I am now obliged to publish a correction, as I suggested theauthor to do the same in next availability.

In Liu Xiaogan’s “An Inquiry into the Core Value of Laozi’s Philosophy” (SeeMark Csikszentmihalyi and Philip J. Ivanhoe, eds., Religious and PhilosophicalAspects of the Laozi, SUNY Series in Chinese Philosophy and Culture [Albany: StateUniversity of New York Press, 1999], 236–37), note 22 states: “It is the opinion of the

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author that the abstract concept of ‘the Way’ (Dao) provides the value of naturalnessand the principle of wuwei with a metaphysical basis, while the interdependence ofthesis and antithesis of dialectic theory provides naturalness and wuwei with a con-crete proof. The author has discussed this subject in other works. Additionally, nearthe beginning of 1987, Ms Gu Linyu [Linyu Gu, added] , who was then workingon an M.A. at the Shanghai Institute of Social Science, expressed a desire to write onthe subject of naturalness as a value in Laozi’s thought, and came to Beijing to discussher ideas with me. I helped her to define a project that looked at Laozi’s reverence fornaturalness from the perspective of value theory. Her work discusses the issue fromthe perspective of epistemological value, moral value, and aesthetic value. It is notclear where or when this paper will be published. The opinions expressed in thisarticle may have been influenced by the insights of Ms Gu.”

The actual event is: Upon my thesis committee’s arrangement, at the beginningof 1988, I went to Peking University to consult Professor Chen Guying forthe completed draft of my M.A. thesis, and during the time Professor Chen intro-duced me to Professor Xiaogan Liu in a two-hour meeting, and before itI was never acquainted with Professor Liu. At the meeting, Professor Liu hadread my finished manuscript entitled “Laozhi Chongshang Ziran de Jiazhi Quxiang

” (Literally, “Laozi’s Value Approach [or perspective ororientation] in Honoring Ziran [naturalness or naturality]”). The above date clearlyshowed: Before I met Professor Liu I had already accomplished my thesis manuscriptwhich was supervised by my adviser Zhai Tingjin . Based on this, ProfessorGuying Chen further served my consultant.Therefore, Professor Liu Xiaogan had notparticipated in any supervision of the above project. Instead, ten years later, when Imet Professor Liu for the second time, he expressed that my above thesis impressedas well as influenced his later works on Laozi. He thought my approach was anoriginal analysis of the ontological importance of ziran in associating to the valueorientation in Laozi. He informed me that he planned to acknowledge me in apublication of him. But I had not received such acknowledgment until I happened tonotice the note his above article.

For bibliographical references of my M.A. thesis, please see Shanghai Academy ofSocial Sciences M.A. Theses Collection, June 1988. For a published version of theabove thesis, see Xueshu Yuekan (Academic Monthly), January 1989. Thefollowing is a brief English translation of the original outline (produced in late 1987):The metaphysical ground of this thesis, for the first time, discovers that the central andcore value of Dao lies in its fundamental emergence, namely, ziran (naturalnessor naturality). Such naturality, in another word, serves the ontological foundation ofLaozi’s value perspectives, which are carried forward by three dimensions of aneffortless process of wuwei . The methodology of dialectic thinking on zheng(affirmation) and fan (nonaffirmation) is a supporting thread penetrating theinterrelationships among Dao, ziran, and wuwei. First, ziran bears self-emerging,self-being, and self-developing, and thus zhen (originality or authenticity or genu-ineness) gives rise to the first value of ziran. Second, ziran contains a natural virtuewhich persuades our moral conduct to follow through and go along with the uncul-tivated cultivation of the universe, namely the value of shan . Third, accordingly,ziran creates an inartificial value of art, namely, beauty (mei ), which is an effortlesscreativity of “true beauty.” To conclude, doing nothing is not what Laozi has in mindbut acting naturally is.

6. A play by Samuel Barclay Beckett (see Zuoliang Wang and Jueliang Zhou, eds.,Yingguo 20 Shiji Wenxueshi [History of English Literature ofthe 20th Century] (Beijing: Waiyu Jiaoxue yu Yanjiu Press, 2006), 435.

7. The common translation of Tian as “heaven” can be confused with that in Christianity.My usage of “cosmic heaven” bears the original meaning of it in Chinese cosmology.Upon the present article was completed, Mathew A. Foust (see Endnote 37 of hisarticle, “Grief and Mourning in Confucius’s Analects,” in this issue) brought myattention to Roger T. Ames and Henry Rosemont, Jr., who similarly suggest avoidingtranslating tian as “Heaven” which causes the above confusion. According to Foust,Ames and Rosemont define tian as “both what our world is and how it is.” However,

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this definition may in turn fall into another confusion: Can Di (cosmic earth, mytranslation) may be defined the same, namely, what our world is and how it is? And,how then we make a distinction between Tian and Di? Hereafter all Englishtranslations of Chinese terminology are mine and the cases of overlapping arecoincidental.

8. Although dead in the early 60s, Sylvia Plath always is viewed as a contemporary forher characterizing a direct edge connecting to today. See the similar view of FrancesMcCullough’s Foreword in The Bell Jar (New York/London/Toronto/Sydney: HarperPerennial, 2005), xvi.

9. Herewith, it is not my attempt to associate a certain psychological anamnesis inSigmund Freud or Carl G. Jung.

10. In the West, there are George Sand, the Brontë sisters, Jane Austen, Simone deBeauvoir, A. S. Byatt, and so on; in China, especially after the May 4 Movement in1919, educational and economic self-sufficiency have become opportunities, and thesewomen are prophesied in the earliest Chinese feminism: Xiao Hong , ZhangAiling , Lin Huiyin , Xie Bingxin , and so on.

11. We habitually remain hesitated to publish our female names, from George Sand (bornas Aurore Dupin [1804–76]) to A. S. Byatt (1936–).

12. http://wowowow.com was created for discussing these concerns among professionalwomen: Charlie Rose’s interview with the editors of ⟨http://wowowow.com⟩ in PBS onApril 8, 2008.

13. “Not My Life,” a television drama broadcasted in Channel of Lifetime, 3:00 p.m.,November 16, 2008. However, can this standard be a “vice versa”? That is thequestion.

14. Ted Hughes and Frances McCullough, eds., The Journals of Sylvia Plath (New York:Anchor Books, 1998), 29–43.

15. Sylvia Plath, Letters Home: Correspondence 1950–1963, selected and edited withcommentary by Aurelia Schober Plath (New York: Harper Perennial, 1992), 25.

16. A.Alvarez, The Savage God:A Study of Suicide (New York: Norton, 1990), 17.Alvarezintends to counterbalance two prejudices: The high religious theory which placessuicide as one of the moral crimes and the current scientific treatment which dismissesevery serious meaning of the act.

17. I choose to use the conventional masculine pronoun in capital to serve the purpose ofthe present discussion.

18. Hong Ying has proclaimed in various occasions that her writings are largely based onher life events, but all of my discussions are drawn from her published works but nother personal life which is unknown to my information.

19. Hong Ying , Jier de Nüer (Hungary Daughter) (Beijing: WenhuaYishu Press, 2006).

20. Ibid.21. Keller, From a Broken Web, 220.22. Alvarez, The Savage God, 245.23. Ibid.24. Timothy, 3:11.25. Hereby I am not confused “him” with an individual male person.26. William Hasker, “A Philosophical Perspective,” in The Openness of God: A Biblical

Challenge to the Traditional Understanding of God (Downers Grove: InterVarsityPress, 1994 and Carlisle: The Paternoster Press, 1994), 134.

27. Ibid., 154.28. Robert Cummings Neville, Eternity and Time’s Flow (Albany: State University of

New York Press, 1993), xiii.29. Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality, ed. David Ray Griffin and Donald W.

Sherburne, corrected ed. (London/New York: The Free Press, 1978), 349.30. John B. Cobb, Jr. and David Ray Griffin, Process Theology: An Introductory Exposi-

tion (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1976), 134.31. Whitehead, Process and Reality, 348.32. Joseph Grang, Nature: An Environmental Cosmology (Albany: State University of

New York Press, 1997), 242–43.

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33. Keller, From a Broken Web, 2.34. Ibid., 4.35. Ibid., 6.36. Ibid., 5.37. Ibid., 183.38. Ibid., 214.39. Whitehead, Process and Reality, 21.40. Carl G. Jung describes such a collective individuality through discussing “collective

unconsciousness” in The Essential Jung: Selected Writings, selected and introduced byAnthony Storr (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983).

41. Chung-ying Cheng, “Toward Constructing a Dialectics of Harmonization: Harmonyand Conflict in Chinese Philosophy,” Journal Supplement Series to Journal of ChinesePhilosophy (Oxford/Boston: Blackwell, 2006), 28.

42. Chung-ying Cheng, New Dimensions of Confucian and Neo-Confucian Philosophy(Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991), 69.

43. There were few exceptional woman sovereigns such as Wu Zetian and Ci Xi, who had ruled out the long dynasties. However, both are, on the other hand, the

counter-evident illustrations of that such woman rulers are intimately linked to andconstituted by nameable male power.

44. (Gaozi Xia), 12:15 in (Mengzi): “Gu tian jiang jiang daren yushiren ye, bi xian kuqixinzhi, laoqijingu, eqitifu, kongfaqishen, xingfuluanqisuowei.

”45. (Jinxin Xia), 14: 9 in (Mengzi). Some scholars have a tendency to

“re-interpret” the Confucian terms such as nü ( ) (female people) or nüzi ( )(girls and women) . . . by a neutral view, in order to avoid the significant oppressiontoward women in Confucianism. Therefore, I selected this passage which refers to qi

(a wife), to exclude other possible “re-interpretations” which can possibly claimthat “wife” is not female-related.

46. Kam Louie, Theorizing Chinese Masculinity: Society and Gender in China (Cam-bridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 5–6.

47. Keller, From a Broken Web, 4.48. Ibid., 223.49. Louie, Theorizing Chinese Masculinity, 9.50. Ibid.51. Ibid.52. Cheng, New Dimensions of Confucian and Neo-Confucian Philosophy, 95.53. Huang Shouqi and Zhang Shanwen, interpretation and commentary, Zhouyi Yizhu

(The Interpretation and Commentary of the Zhouyi) (Shanghai: ShanghaiGuji Press), 538.

54. Cheng, New Dimensions of Confucian and Neo-Confucian Philosophy, 95.55. Huang and Zhang, Zhouyi Yizhu, 588.56. Ibid., 5.57. Ibid., 25.58. I agree with Julia Ching about that China never produced a personal deity as God in

the Jewish-Christianity, while I do not simply agree with her notion of the cult ofHeaven or her implication of a transpersonal deity in Chinese religions. Specificallyrefer to her Chinese Religions (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1993), 2.

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