School of Veins I. Veins and Energy

In this and the following two chapters I propose an interpretation of Zhu Xi 朱熹 (1130–1200) seen through the ontology of Gilles Deleuze (1925–1995). Zhu Xi is one of the most prominent Chinese philosophers, the figurehead of the so-called Neo-Confucian school, and Deleuze is arguably one of the most important Western philosophers of the twentieth century. Both philosophers presented an ontology of differentiation, whose main aspects or stages I try to analyze in this chapter: Deleuze’s notions of the virtual, dark precursor, field of individuation, intensities and the actual; and parallel to these, Zhu Xi’s notions of the veins (li 理), supreme ultimate (taiji 太極), energy (qi 氣) and things (wu 物). I argue that a Deleuzian (re)interpretation of Zhu Xi is possible and that it may open new tools of analysis for studying Chinese philosophy, thaw up thought-habits, create resonances between two different constellations of concepts, as well as dislocate and redistribute existing concepts.