School of Veins II. Deleuze’s Three Syntheses of Time and Zhu Xi’s Feeling, Nature, and Mind

With the aim of further bringing into resonance the two philosophies of Zhu Xi and Gilles Deleuze, I shall describe Zhu Xi’s theory of feelings (qing 情), nature (xing 性), and heart/mind (xin 心) in terms of Deleuze’s three syntheses of time in his Difference and Repetition: the “living present” of larval subjects, the virtual pure memory, and the pure form of time. Deleuze distinguishes, in case of the first two syntheses, between a more fundamental “passive synthesis” and a derived “active” one; for Zhu Xi the main distinction is, in case of the feelings, between a clear and a muddy qi 氣 involved in them; and in case of nature, between a narrow or obstructed and broad or unimpeded expression of it. The third synthesis of time, for Deleuze, involves the fractured “I” (Je) or the dissolved “self” (moi), so that through a transformation, finally, “what the self has become equal is the unequal in itself” (Deleuze 1993: 90). Using very different metaphors, Zhu Xi refers to different self-cultivation methods, that “enlarge the heart/mind” (daxin 大心). The apotheosis of this is the figure of the sage, who is the most capable of transformation and, to whom Deleuze’s citation of being equal to the unequal applies well.