1

METAPHYSICS AND MANAGEMENT: Understanding how Eastern Philosophical Assumptions shape Conceptions of Self,

Action and Performance

Robert Chia Department of Management

School of Business and Economics University of Exeter

Streetham Court Rennes Drive

Exeter EX4 4PU

November 2000

Working Paper

Please do not quote without author's permission

2

Abstract Interest in so-called Asian-styled Management and Japanese Management techniques and practices, so much written and talked about in the eighties and early nineties, has somewhat abated. Western management thought appears to have moved on to other preoccupations. What remains relatively unacknowledged and hence unexamined however is the metaphysical gulf separating Eastern and Western forms of thought and their consequences for managerial action and performance. This paper examines two contrasting traditions of knowledge-creation - 'empiricism' and 'rationalism' - and attempts to show how a reworking of our understanding of empiricism will enable us to grasp the significantly different metaphysical orientation driving notions of self, action, profit and performance in the Eastern mindset. Although there are clearly substantial differences within the sub-categories that make up the 'East', it can be shown that the common tenet that unites them is an unequivocal rejection of the competency of logic, language and utterance for determining the dominant mode of man's being. Such a metaphysical orientation perpetuates a deep sense of lack and 'incompleteness' within the Eastern psyche and fuels the underlying ontological restlessness that some have labelled Asian or Confucian Dynamism. It is argued here that this dynamism is nothing more than a manifestation of the obsession with the perfecting of action and performance in all arenas of Oriental life.

3

Introduction ‘The idea of “being” is the Archimedean point of Western thought…the whole tradition of Western civilisation have turned around this point. All is different in Eastern thought…The central notion from which Oriental…belief as well as philosophical thought have been developed is the idea of “nothingness”’

(Y. Takeuchi, 1959: 292)

Rapid and revolutionary changes in the political, social and technological landscapes are

transforming the rules of competition for businesses around the world. This trend signals

the necessity for developing new theoretical frameworks and practical understandings of

the strategic priorities, decisional imperatives and modes of management operating in

diverse geographical locations throughout the world, and in particular within the

emerging economies of the Asia-Pacific. Whilst America and Western Europe have

registered impressive economic revivals over the last few years it is clear that such

continued strengthening of the Western economies is increasingly dependent upon other

global trading partners such as Japan, China and the Asia Pacific countries. Despite the

recent so-called 'Asian Crisis', a number of Pacific Rim economies such as Korea,

Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand have emerged much strengthened and expecting to

register significant growths in the forthcoming years. In addition, Japan, whilst still

languishing in a recessionary mode, nevertheless remains a key player in the global

arena. These, together with the immense potential of China as an economic superpower

this century, necessitates an urgent conceptual reassessement of the underlying cultural

forces shaping managerial attitudes and mindsets towards self, action, profits and

performance in the East. Although there are clearly substantial differences within the sub-

categories that make up the 'East', it will be shown that the common tenet that unites them

is an unequivocal rejection of the competency of logic, language and utterance for

determining the mode of man's being. Such a pervasive metaphysical orientation

perpetuates a deep sense of lack and 'incompleteness' within the Eastern psyche and fuels

the ontological restlessness that some have chosen to label Asian or Confucian

dynamism. We argue there that this so-called dynamism is nothing more than an overt

4

manifestation of a deeper existential obsession with the perfecting of action and

performance in all arenas of Eastern life beginning especially with the arts. In all such

activities, the ultimate aim is to achieve that moment of pure and spontaneous Zen-like

encounter with reality where form, boundaries, identities and distinctions are totally

dissolved in a singular and uninterrupted field of performative action. This existential

urge to attain 'the form of the formless, and hear the sound of the soundless' (Shimomura,

in Nishida: A Study of Good, 1960: 211) lies at the heart of Eastern culture. It is this

deeply-rooted cultural tradition which distinguishes the East from the West. Such a

contrasting metaphysical orientation can only be fully appreciated by a systematic

excavation of the underlying philosophical assumptions shaping Eastern and Western

mindsets.

Much of the contemporary management literature, however, is distinctly driven

by Western (particularly Anglo-Saxon) metaphysical attitudes that elevates form, order,

stability, rational-logical thought, clarity of end-goals, short-termism, and the

advancement of self-interest as the sine qua non of business. This metaphysical

orientation has served the West well, accounting for its unprecedented and impressive

economic and technological progress over the last two centuries in particular. As a result,

the West, and in particular the United States, have tended to define, legitimise and dictate

the conceptual frameworks and the theoretical agenda for analysing and identifying the

underlying reasons for technological, ideological, economic and social progress for the

rest of the world. The undeniable material successes associated with the underlying

principles of Western modernity has inevitably spurred the ever-more intense pursuit of

what Dallmayr (1996) calls ‘one-world formulas’; the chronic obsession with a ‘global

blue-print’ and the universalistic principles associated with it for bringing about

economic, social and technological as well as ideological transformations. It is against the

shadow of this still-unshakeable belief in ‘Western supremacy’, especially in its more

subtle and implicit ideational forms, that the current dominance of Western management

concepts and theories can be better understood.

This dominance of Western ideals and ideas is such that even contemporary

attempts to define and resurrect ‘Asian-styled’ management characteristics, priorities and

practices are often couched within the familiar conceptual categories of Western

5

discourse and the epistemological priorities associated with them. An inevitable 'dilution'

thus occurs in this process of conceptual translation. Thus, ‘Confucian Ethics’ substitutes

for ‘Protestant Ethics’ as the crucial causal feature underlying the rise of Asian

capitalism, the rationalistic language of ‘Strategy’, ‘Organizational Structure’ and

‘Human Resource Management’ are uncritically used as convenient conceptual templates

for interpreting Japanese and East Asian approaches to dealing with economic exchanges,

working arrangements and employment relationships, and Asian ‘collectivism’ is

contrasted with Western ‘individualism’ as one of the key causal differences influencing

the preferred operating modes of management. Such comparisons may be superficially

helpful in crudely stereotyping the attributes and orientations of non-Western business

priorities and practices, but they are essentially Occidentally-inspired conceptual

templates through which other cultural traditions, such as the Eastern economies, are

made to ‘speak’ in terms understandable to the West (Said, 1978). Often though, they do

not begin to address the genuinely deep and fundamental differences that exist and persist

between East and West (Heidegger, 1971; Needham, 1962; Nishitani, 1982, Dallmayr,

1996) and their real consequences for managerial attitudes and priorities. The

appropriation of Japanese manufacturing techniques and their decontextualised

translation into American-inspired populist terms such as ‘Just-in-Time’ and ‘Total

Quality Management’, is one example of how foreign and unfamiliar practices, inspired

by a long tradition of artistic perfection, are forcibly inserted into the dominant language

of Western managerial discourse and repackaged to meet the largely Western penchant

for novelty. Whilst, it cannot be denied that some of these popularised, surface-causal

explanations, formulated within a vastly contrasting metaphysical tradition, may still find

some resonance with local lived experiences, it is argued here that such forms of analyses

lack the necessary reflexive awareness to really show out the critical differences. They do

not reach at the heart of the basic differences between ‘East’ and ‘West’, which, we

maintain, are essentially ontological in character. It is argued here that, only by

excavating the intellectual roots of these deeply sedimented metaphysical orientations

will we begin to fully appreciate how the Eastern (and in particular the Chinese and

Japanese) metaphysical attitudes differ from the largely Greek-inspired tradition of

Western logic and rationality. This obviously has wide ranging ramifications for our

6

understanding of the strategic orientations, business priorities and practices in Asian

businesses.

This essay begins by firstly charting out the dominant metaphysical traditions

shaping western thought. An attempt is then made to contrast this with the eastern

metaphysical tradition. Cultural attitudes towards self, action profit and performance are

then carefully examined. This then leads to an explanation of eastern managerial attitudes

and mindsets including the phenomenon of 'Asian Dynamism'. The paper ends with some

reflections on general economics and capitalism and attempts to show how a revised

understanding of the latter can help bring about a more balanced attitude towards

efficiency, profit and performance.

Dominant Intellectual Traditions in Western Thought

Aristotle's description of knowledge assumes that the world lends itself to the grasp of language, it has a logical or discursive character, a systematic structure. Knowledge becomes, on this view, a linguistic matter, and not a matter of sensation. To know is to define, and definition occurs insofar as any one of a series of general classifications is applied to the "what" of a thing thereby rendering the "what" or "this" of a thing a "this somewhat" (Carter, 1990: 21).

Western thought and theory-building are based upon two types of philosophic thinking

which the American philosopher William James (1909/96) identified as 'empiricism' and

'rationalism'. Empiricism, in its broadest sense, is the habit of explaining universalities

from the particulars of experience whilst rationalism is the tendency to explain particulars

in terms of universalistic and idealised categories. Knowledge is thus created either by

extrapolating from concrete experience or derived from the logical verification of

immutable laws and principles. The romantic Coleridge is often quoted as saying that

everyone is born either a platonist or an aristotelian. By aristotelian he meant the

empiricist tendency to rely on personal experience and observation whilst the platonist is

a rationalist who relies on logic and reason to arrive at truth. Rationalists are the men of

abstract principles empiricists are the men of facts. For James, however, the theoretic

knowledge derived from rationalism is a knowledge about things as distinguished from a

'living or sympathetic acquaintance with them' (1909/96: 249). Rational thought deals

7

solely with symbols and concepts and is unable to penetrate the thickness and depth of

reality. On the other hand the empiricists repeatedly fail to provide an adequate account

of the perceived regularities of nature. Conventional empiricism fails because it denies

the reality of hidden universal causes and is therefore unable to account for why things

appear as they do. Because of this inadequacy, rationalism is believed to be a superior

mode of knowing since it is able to provide for the seeming regularity of events by

postulating immutable causal agencies external and transcendent to the observed

phenomenon under investigation.

In the intervening one hundred years or so since James first made his

observations, Western thought has undergone a series of metaphysical transformations.

Positivism, which naively relied upon the kind of conventional empiricism that James

was critical off, has been since tempered with rationalistic properties. The result is a

dominant empirico-deductive tradition that combines empirical observation with

rationalistic deductions. This is the kind of realism that now readily acknowledges the

existence of underlying and very often unseeable causal mechanisms (Keat and Urry,

1975). Realism has, in recent times, become the dominant orthodoxy in place of

Positivism. Putnam (1981), Harré (1986) and Bhaskar (1978, 1989), amongst others are,

in varying degree, advocates of this kind of 'critical realism' which does not stop at only

observable phenomena but boldly postulate the existence of an unseen and unseeable

reality. Yet for all their interpretative differences all three emphasise the reality of

universalistic and enduring entities and causal mechanisms existing independently of

thought. It would be fair to say that this metaphysical orientation also underpins much of

contemporary Western management theorising.

Yet, this unique realist combination of empirical and rationalistic tendencies

represents only one among a range of other epistemological possibilities. Such a realist

way of adjusting for the inadequacies of empiricism brings in unnecessary and

unaccountable factors which only further detaches us from the primacy of our lived

experiences. Realism starts by identifying a thing with a ready-made concept or symbol

and then rapidly proceeds towards a precise definition. In this way, portions of our lived

experiences are force-fitted into pre-existent conceptual templates. As a convention this

practice is initially a harmless and convenient way of dealing with the seemingly

8

intractable nature of lived experience. However, the real misuse takes place when, in

using such definitions and concepts unreflectively, we begin to deny the very properties

with which the things sensibly presented themselves to us in the first place. 'Concepts

first employed to make things intelligible, are clung to even when they make them

unintelligible' (James, 1909/96: 219). A useful practice first becomes a method, then a

habit and finally a dogmatic tyranny that eventually defeats the end it was originally used

for. Whitehead (1929) called this tendency the 'fallacy of misplaced concreteness'.

Instead of adopting a rationally-modified empiricism because of the apparent

inadequacies of empiricism, it may be better, therefore, to revise the realist critique by

assuming that the flux of experience itself contains an immanent logic and rationality that

has hitherto been overlooked:

'May not the flux of sensible experience itself contain a rationality that has been overlooked, so that the real remedy would consist in harking back to it more intelligently, and not in advancing in the opposite direction away from it…to the pseudo-rationality of the supposed absolute point of view. I myself believe that this is the real way to keep rationality in the world, and that traditional rationalism has been facing in the wrong direction' (James, 1909/96: 73).

This turn towards experience and away from abstract representations marks a genuine

alternative to realism. It is a world-view that resonates deeply with Eastern thought. As

the Japanese philosopher Masao Abe puts it 'It is a transcendence or, better, trans-

decendence towards rather than away from lived experience' (Abe, in Nishida, 1990:

xvii). This uncompromising insistence on a return to the purity and primacy of lived

experience is what has been called ‘radical empiricism’(James, 1912/96).

Radical empiricism is a world-view that is predicated upon the idea of a pure and

unmediated experience as its necessary starting point. Pure experience is that ‘instant

field of the present’: a plain ‘unqualified actuality, or existence, a simple that’ (James,

1912/96: 4) out of which consciousness and then knowing emerges. To know, in its most

rich and basic sense, therefore, is to experience – directly, immediately and purely. Such

an intuitive knowing must not be confused with intellectualised knowledge that we

acquire of things. It is a knowing prior to the creation of the subject/object distinction. In

this pristine state, there is no separation of knower and known. Separation of knower and

9

known only occurs when a given “bit” is abstracted from the flow of experience and

retrospectively considered in the context of other categories. This form of radical

empiricism is vastly different from the orthodox empiricism previously discussed.

Contemporary realism, on the other hand, unreflectively reduces experience to a

succession of stable, distinct, substantive elements – ideas, images, percepts, sensations –

elements that can be held before the attention and introspectively examined. This

punctuate, discontinuous view of experience overlooks and falsifies immense tracts of

our inner life and is completely at odds with the 'dynamic, flowing, stream-like quality of

consciousness' (James, in Taylor and Wozniak 1996: xi-xii). For James, as for Eastern

thought, real live experience is undifferentiated and indiscriminate. And it is out of this

‘aboriginal sensible muchness’ that attention carves out and conception names:

‘in the sky “constellations”, on earth “beach”, “sea”, “cliff”, “bushes”, “grass”. Out of time we cut “days” and “nights”, “summers” and “winters”. We say what each part of the sensible continuum is, and all these abstracted whats are concepts’ (James, 1948: 50).

This insistence on a return to the primacy of the immediate flux of life as the starting

point of human consciousness provides us with an alternative metaphysical foundation or

Weltanschauung for understanding Eastern attitudes towards knowledge and knowledge-

creation.

Contrasting East-West Metaphysical Attitudes

'the Western mind cannot help but think that all reality has been done away with when all “being” (form, substance) has been negated; but the East has found that the removal of the immediate and overpowering face of reality is but a necessary condition for what is really real to appear’ (van Bragt, 1982: xxv-xxvi) The belief that Eastern, and in particular Chinese thinking, is distinctly different from the

Western mind-set has led to much serious comparative studies and thoughtful

conjecturing by some of the most outstanding East-West scholars of our time (Needham,

1962; Chang, 1963; Nishitani, 1982; Graham, 1989). Needham (1962), for instance,

argues that for the Greek-inspired Western world-view, ‘what mattered was an ideal

world of static form which remained when the world of crude reality was dissolved

10

away’. For the Chinese on the other hand, ‘the real world was dynamic and ultimate, an

organism made of an infinity of organisms, a rhythm harmonising an infinity of lesser

rhythms’ (Needham, 1962: 292n). In the former case, it has led to the Aristotelian-

inspired belief that signs and symbols are eminently suited to the task of describing

reality since ultimate reality is assumed to be fixed, permanent and unchanging. For this

Aristotelian tradition, to know a thing is to be able to name it and to give it an identity by

locating it in a pre-established system of classification. The Aristotelian method of

knowing thus entails the breaking down, fixing and locating of all experienced

phenomena into discrete manageable parts so much so that only the fixed within the flow

of lived experience and the universal in the particular are accorded legitimate knowledge

status. Such a world-view inevitably privileges end-states or outcomes rather than

process, literal, precise meanings rather than metaphorical allusions, the analytical

breaking-up and decontextualising of experienced phenomenon rather than its

wholesome, deeply contextual, encounter, the use of rational causal explanation as the

sine que non of intellectual analysis rather than a reliance on the immediate and dynamic

intuition of things.

In contrast the tradition of Eastern thought has always remained sceptical or

suspicious of the capacity of rational analysis in particular and language in general to

adequately capture the deeper aspects of the human condition. This is one of the critical

observations that the sinologist A. C. Graham made in his study of Chinese thought and

practice: ‘reason is for questions of means; for your ends in life listen to aphorism,

examples, parable and poetry’ (Graham, 1989: 7). The awareness of the incompetence of

language and analysis in the important matters of life is deeply entrenched in the

collective psyche of the East. As Nishitani Keiji, a leading contemporary Japanese

philosopher puts it, there is a deep-seated ‘awareness of the incompetence of utterance as

the mode of man’s being in regard to that which should remain unspoken, and the insight

that utterance and human thinking can return to and rest in its own nature only when that

awareness of incompetence is truly gained, have been, I think, common tenets throughout

Indian Brahaminism, Chinese Taoism and Japanese Shinto’ (Nishitani, 1981: 31). In

consequence the Eastern mind has opted to privilege as more fundamental and profound

that which lies beyond the ordinary grasp of language and logic and which is only

11

approachable through a complex, spiralling form of paradoxical utterances that contain

‘infinitely suggestive nuances of feeling-tone’ (King, in Nishitani, 1982: x). They merely

allude to an ultimate reality beyond the realms of intellection. For the Eastern mind,

ultimate reality is essentially ‘nameless’ or ‘unnamable’. Thus, in place of the insistence

on straight-line clarity and distinctiveness in logical argumentation, the Eastern mind

prefers to ‘circumnavigate an issue, tossing out subtle hints that permit only a careful

listener to surmise where the unspoken core of the question lies’ (van Bragt, in Nishitani's

Religion and Nothingness, 1982: xl). Communication of thought is often indirect,

suggestive, and symbolic rather than descriptive and precise. Here, the emphasis does not

lie in grasping the meaning of individual distinct notes or words. Instead the relentless

combinations, variations and recombinations involved in the thematic build-up, work to

awaken our hitherto dormant sensitivities to the implicit master-theme that lies beyond

the individual instanciations. As the eminent Buddhist monk Kao-seng Chuan puts it:

‘Symbols are to express ideas. When ideas have been understood, symbols should be forgotten. Words are to interpret thoughts. When thoughts have been absorbed, words stop…Only those who can take the fish and forget the net are worthy to seek the truth’ (Kao-seng Chuan, in Chang, 1963: 43).

In matters of deep comprehension one must be able to grasp the absolute, not by words,

but by an unmediated act of intuition. Such an intuition involves a primitive penetration

into the heart of things and can only be achieved in a state of pure unself-conscious

experiencing in which the boundaries between knower and known, subject and object,

actor and action have been completely dissolved. It is the attainment of this primordial

flux and emptiness or nothingness that provides the epistemological grounding for

Eastern thought. As will become apparent in the following pages, the ‘nothingness’ of

which Eastern scholars are fond of alluding to is not a nothingness relative to the fullness

of being, but a positive, fecund and pro-generative emptiness in which something and

nothing, subject and object emerges. This is entirely different from the ‘negative’ form of

nothingness, a nihilistic mood that would result from the insistence on remaining silent or

a refusal to engage. Heidegger’s (1971) ‘conversations’ with a Japanese friend

revealingly shows the metaphysical ‘gulf’ separating Eastern and Western attitudes

12

towards emptiness and nothingness when the Japanese expressed amazement at Western

reactions to Heidegger’s work. ‘We marvel to this day how the Europeans could lapse

into interpreting as nihilistic the nothingness of which you speak…To us, emptiness is the

loftiest name’ (Heidegger, 1971: 20). Yet, this state of ‘absolute nothingness’ (What

Nishitani, 1982 calls ‘sunyatã’) cannot be reached through premature abandonment.

Instead it is attainable only through the long and endless struggles and ‘companionship’

with both language and silence. Neither language nor silence can express the full richness

of the real. We are therefore pushed beyond both language and silence. Words are taken

lightly and only as ‘surface pointers which must not be thought to exhaust the depths of

the actual experiences encountered. At best, they lead to beneath the surface “hows” to

the deeper causes and regularities of things and events, which only the keenest and most

experienced observer will have noticed….it probes beneath the surface of appearances’

(Carter, 1990: 19). It is this relentless and unceasing emphasis on encountering and

engaging with an unseen and unseeable ‘other’ which marks the Eastern mode of thought

from the West.

These crucial observations help us to realise that the Eastern mind, quite

unconsciously in most instances, privileges concrete pre-conceptual experience over

abstract universalised concepts, ceaseless change over permanence and fixity, process

over substance/outcome, chaos over cosmos, formlessness over form, and nothingness or

emptiness over being. The Asian mind, immersed in over five millennium of this Eastern

tradition, is therefore compelled to seek that primordial seat of being: that field of

absolute nothingness or sûnyatâ beyond words in which the self is able to encounter itself

and hence attain its ultimate realisation. It is therefore, no surprise that Eastern thought

places little value on symbols, names and categories in comprehending reality. The

inherent built-in distrust with the adequacy of language and the intellect in the East has

led to the emphasis in Taoism to teach ‘without words’ and to transmit through

‘nonexplanation’(Chang, 1963: 42). Such a claim is hugely problematic for the Western

mind.

While Western thought seek the ultimate fullness of 'form', ‘being’, ‘presence’,

‘perfection’, ‘mastery’, ‘distinctiveness’ and ‘control’ and hence orients itself towards

completion, Chinese thought in particular, and Eastern thought in general find solace in

13

absolute emptiness, stillness, silence, nothingness, undifferentiatedness and formlessness.

In brief, the Western mind cannot but help thinking that all reality has been done away

with when ‘being’ (i.e., form, substance, certainty, order etc.) has been negated. The East,

however, has found that the removal of the immediate and overpowering (superficial)

face of reality is a necessary pre-condition for what is really real to appear. Such

contrasting attitudes inevitably shape perceptions of self, action, productivity and

performance.

The Metaphysical Roots of Asian Dynamism

'all being is a self-unfolding of the eternal, formless nothingness; all finite forms are shadows of the formless' (Nishida, 1958: xi)

In his seminal work An Inquiry into the Good, Nishida Kitaro, arguably the foremost

modern Eastern philosopher, sought to develop a unique philosophical system

synthesizing both Eastern and Western forms of logic and understanding. Nishida began

by stating that: 'I wanted to explain all things on the basis of pure experience as the sole

reality. At first I read such thinkers as Ernst Mach, but this did not satisfy me. Over time I

came to realise that it is not that experience exists because there is an individual, but that

an individual exists because there is experience. I thus arrived at the idea that experience

is more fundamental than individual differences' (Nishida, 1990: xiv). For Nishida, most

attempts to theorise the idea of pure experience is predicated upon the assumption that

experience is individual and hence conforms to the categories of time, space and

causality. Such an assumption, however, does not truly reflect our direct experience for it

has already added a dogmatic idea of the individual to the question of experience. In its

real form experience is not such that first the self exists and then it experiences something

as an object. Rather the self itself is realised in the act of experiencing. True pure

experience is therefore ‘trans-individual’ rather than a property of individuals. This

Nishidean formulation of pure experience harbours three essential characteristics. Firstly,

Pure experience is realized prior to subject/object distinctions. Secondly, pure experience

is active and constructive not passive and static as is generally understood in ordinary

empiricism. Such experience grasped from within is systematically self-developing and

14

self-unfolding - the self in ceaseless construction and reconstruction. Thirdly, in pure

experience, knowledge, feeling and volition remain undifferentiated. Ultimate reality is

not merely registered cognitively but also felt emotionally and volitionally. These three

propositions provide the necessary philosophical grounding for understanding the kind of

intuitive metaphysics that underpins the Eastern system of knowledge-creation.

Nishida identifies three concentric fields of awareness or Basho in this logic of

pure experience (which he calls Absolute Nothingness). Firstly, there is the Basho of

Being. In this Basho ordinary empirical judgements are made unreflectively. For instance

we may make an observation that 'this table is brown'. Such a statement seems to express

pure objectivity. In this instance, the observer is so neutralized that he/she does not even

enter into the judgement. These are statements of what "is" and what "is not" typical of

Aristotelian logic. However, as Nishida points out to neutralize the role of the observer in

this way is to say something about the observer - that its role can be ignored. This is

actually an odd judgement to make, since what is really being said is 'I see a brown table

and since what I see is real and external to my self, I can ignore any reference to myself'.

Nishida therefore concludes that this Basho of Being, within which empirical judgements

are made, itself stands implicitly within a wider field of judgement about the role of the

self. Since empirical judgements of the form advocated by Aristotle treat the self as

nothing, this wider and more encompassing Basho must be one in which the self cannot

be denied. Nishida calls this second Basho the Basho of Relative Nothingness.

From the standpoint of this Basho of Relative Nothingness the self is very much

something. In fact the very thing that ordinary empiricism ignores. This insight, when

taken literally, becomes the basis for idealism and subjectivism where the self is given

exaggerated prominence. According to Nishitani Keji (1982) Sartre's 'nothingness' (in

Being and Nothingness) is one example of this form of subjectivism which remains 'glued

to the ego' so that 'nothingness' even if it initially appears to be a negation of Being in fact

makes itself present as 'an object of consciousness in representative form' (Nishitani,

1982: 33). Sartre’s ‘nothingness’, is immanent to the ego. It is what Buddhism and Zen

repudiates as the ‘emptiness perversely clung to’ (Nishitani, 1982: 33). It is a nothingness

conceptualised within the Basho of Relative Nothingness. For Nishida, the mistake of the

idealists is that they tend to think of the self or ‘I’ as 'something' that is 'substance-like',

15

an 'agent'. According to Nishida, however, the ‘I’ that makes the judgement "I see a

brown table…." is not a thing or an agent but an action or acting intuition. This acting

intuition is never objectifiable because it is always at the background of consciousness. It

is the ground of the self as ‘no-self’which sees but itself cannot be seen. Therefore, the

idealistic Basho of Relative Nothingness is itself encompassed by a third and ultimate

Basho, the Basho of Absolute Nothingness. This is the ultimate ground on which all

judgements, including distinctions such as truth, beauty, and the good are grounded. It is

the ‘place, the openness, the emptiness in which all particular occurrences are to be

found, and yet is known only through their very occurrence’ (Carter, 1990: 45). This deep

acting intuition, or ‘no-self’ forever eludes our conceptual grasp yet is somehow known

or revealed as that background ‘lining’ of everything known and knowable. Nishida

likens it to the hidden lining of a kimono that serves to keep form and shape yet itself

remains unseen. Within this field of Absolute Nothingness where the self is a ‘no-self’

ultimate realty is intuitionally grasped as a unified moment in the here-and-now. It is that

moment of the sublime in which actor and the acted-upon achieves a pure spontaneous

productivity where creativity and vision, subject and object are fused as a unifying instant

that overcomes time, space, individuality and performance. This is what is vividly

encapsulated in what has come to be hailed as the 'greatest goal ever' scored by Carlos

Alberto in the 1970 world cup final.

Reconceptualising Self, Action, and Performance

Late in the game, after a period of sustain midfield possession against their Italian

opposition, Rivelino releases Jairzinho on the left wing: he beats Facchetti at right back

and plays a square ball to Pele who is strolling about in an imperious fashion outside the

Italian eighteen yard box. Pele traps the ball and, at walking pace, rolls it into empty

space towards the corner flag. Suddenly, the Brazilian right-back comes hurtling into

view connecting with perfect timing the ball which rockets into the back of the Italian

net. Brazil 4, Italy 1. This exquisite moment of timeless poetry has been captured and

replayed millions of time all over the world. It is a defining moment that transformed

football into 'the beautiful game'. Pele's pass, in the words of Eric Cantona, the celebrated

and notorious French poet-philosopher of soccer, was a 'poem'. Pele rolls the ball

16

seemingly to nowhere into an empty space with no receiver in sight. But by doing so, 'in

slicing across empty space the pass anticipates and creates, out of nothing, a move of

exquisite precision' (Botting and Wilson, 2000: 2). For Cantona, such an element of

poetic genius exemplifies the qualities of the truly great footballer: 'to create the moment

to step out of time. To create space from nothing. To be truly spontaneous'. The

footballer-poet is thus both a 'surrealist and realist, a magician and a scientist' (Cantona,

quoted in Blackler and Donaldson, 1997: 155). Pele's pass is an act of pure spontaneous

productivity: an immaculate form of commerce where beauty is efficiency at that singular

instance of performance. It is this singular moment that is striven for in those

interminable hours of practice involving the obsessive perfecting of action. Such an

obsession for perfection provides the real driving force behind the kind of trans-

individual creativity and enterprise pervading virtually all facets of Eastern life including

especially the arts.

In his introduction to Eugene Herrigel's Zen and the Art of Archery, D. T. Suzuki

writes: 'One of the most significant features we notice in all the arts as they are studied in

Japan and probably also in other Far Eastern countries, is that they are not intended for

utilitarian purposes only or for purely aesthetic enjoyment, but are meant to train the

mind…to bring it into contact with the ultimate reality' (Suzuki, in Herrigel, 1953/85: 5).

To be a master of any art, one has to transcend technique and arrive at that level of pure

experience so that the art becomes an 'artless art' embedded in the unconscious field of

absolute nothingness. Thus, in the case of archery, for example, the archer and the target

are no longer two opposing objects, but are one reality. 'Bow, arrow, goal and the ego, all

melt into one another, so that I can no longer separate them. And even the need to

separate has gone. For as soon as I take the bow and shoot, everything becomes so clear

and straightforward and so ridiculously simple' (Herrigel, 1985: 86). As the Zen Master

advised Herrigel, it is not 'I' the archer that shoots, rather 'it' shoots!!!. The 'it' signifies the

trans-individuality of pure performance. This example in Zen archery exemplifies the

underlying principle embodied in Pele's pass. It illustrates the underlying motivation

which fuels the relentless discipline and training involved in perfecting the arts and in

seeking to attain that moment of absolute emptiness when 'Even the thought of emptiness

is no longer there' and from whence 'comes the most wonderous unfoldment of doing'

17

(Takuan, in Herrigel, 1953/85: 101). For the Eastern world, attainment of that moment of

absolute emptiness which conjoins us with a fecund and pro-generative reality constitutes

the ultimate aim of any and all human activity.

This same obsession for attaining perfection in the arts is captured in Chuang

Tzu's vivid description of the master butcher.

'A good cook changes his knife once a year - because he cuts. A mediocre cook changes his knife once a month - because he hacks. I've had this knife of mine for nineteen years and I've cut up thousands of oxen with it…What I care about is the Way which goes beyond skill. When I first began cutting up oxen, all I could see was the ox itself. After three years I no longer saw the whole ox. And now - now I go at it by spirit and don't look with my eyes. Perception and understanding have come to a stop and spirit moves where it wants' (The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu, trans. Burton Watson, 1968: 51).

Such aspirations to achieve that moment of unconscious perfection where the self looses

itself in archery, swordsmanship, calligraphy, origami, the tea-pouring ceremony, and

even in such an apparently mundane activity as cutting up oxen exemplifies the

traditional Eastern orientation towards action, productivity and performance. It accounts

for the kind of ontological restlessness and entrepreneurialism that that some have

labelled 'Asian Dynamism'.

Eastern Capitalism: Postmodern Exchange, Efficiency and Enterprise

Business productivity and performance are generally based upon the basic principle of

economic exchange. According to this dominant scheme of things goods and services are

produced with a view to achieving an exchange value that is determined by its reception

in the market. The market provides a kind of 'allocative efficiency' for the product or

service being provided. Such a restricted form of economic exchange, however, does not

exhaust the possibilities for explaining production and performance. Production and

performance are also governed by the existential need for expression and self-

transformation. For instance, in art, drama, musical performances, and even in sports as

we have seen, there are at times a level of productivity and performance achieved that

goes far beyond that determinable by any form of economic exchange in that what is

given or displayed far exceeds what is expected. It is not just the goal that results, but the

18

exquisiteness of Pele's pass. There is a lavishness and extravagance offered that cannot be

strictly explained by the economic theory of exchange. This excess and abundance is an

aspect that has been analysed in some depth by the French philosopher Jacques Derrida.

In 'Economimesis' Derrida (1981) examines Kant's Third Critique and locates

products of artistic achievements as exemplifying values that exceeds all valuation but

that nonetheless provides the baseless basis for all judgemental discourse. In other words,

the artistic principle operates from an originary indeterminate field of absolute

nothingness out of which all subsequent forms of judgement emanate: a fecund emptiness

that grounds all forms of exchange and valuation. Thus poetry and art, as unifying acts of

intuition, are special forms of production that do 'not enter into the economic circle of

commerce' (Derrida, 1981: 9). These are gifts that constitute a 'pure productivity of the

inexchangeable' (ibid). Derrida's emphasis on artistic activity as a kind of 'pure

productivity' not yet defined by exchange and from which value and judgement spring

forth resonates deeply with the kind of pure performance sought in Eastern arts. It

accounts for those rare moments of performance and achievement, such as Pele's pass, in

which something entirely new and novel is created and which thereby redefines the entire

domain of activities that more authentically underpins the otherwise banal rhetoric of

'excellence' in managerial performance: a seemingly 'miraculous' corporate turnaround

achieved against overwhelming odds; new product innovations such as the 'sony

walkman' and 'post-it' in which dreams and ideas predominate and becomes almost an

obsession and hence are more important and exciting than their commercial success;

inspired performances by otherwise 'mediocre employees'; and critical breakthroughs in

terms of novel forms of collaboration and achievement such as the Volvo Kalmar project.

As Jean-Joseph Goux (1997) writes in 'General Economics and Postmodern Capitalism':

'it is precisely at the moment when the entrepreneur must think himself into the model of the most advanced artistic genius, at the moment when the avant-gardist strategy of innovation at any price (my emphasis) becomes the paradigm of dominant economic practice, that the artistic avant-garde necessarily looses its difference, its marginality, its deviance value…it becomes more difficult for the poet to distinguish himself from the grocer, more difficult for the surrealist to differentiate himself from the dishevelled manager' (Jean-Joseph Goux, 1997: 206-207).

19

Goux's claim remind us that the capitalist entrepreneur, the committed employee, the

socially-responsible employer who revels in providing innovative product and services or

in creating the necessary conditions for authenticity and fulfillment at work, can, in many

ways, be viewed as much an artistic genius as the poet or the surrealist. This surprising

insight hinges on a radical re-reading of the real function of capitalist enterprise.

In a landmark publication entitled Wealth and Poverty, George Gilder attempted

to demonstrate the ethical value of capitalism by giving it a theology which showed that

contemporary capitalism is no less animated by the spirit of the 'gift' than the primitive

tribes studied by Marcel Mauss. For Gilder, the current popular notion of a self-

interested, parsimonious capitalism, motivated only by the attainment of material self-

gain is one-sided and erroneous. Instead, at the origin of capitalism is a more elaborate

form of potlatch - the primitive practice of giving without expectation. The would-be

capitalist (including the aspiring football star) invests to supply goods and services

without ever being sure if he/she will achieve any return. This movement, says Gilder, is

no less than that in potlatch where the essence of the gift is not so much about the

absence of all expectations of a counter-gift but an intrinsic uncertainty concerning the

return. 'Like gifts, capitalist investments are made without a predetermined return'

(Gilder, 1981: 30). Thus contrary to commonly held notions, 'The unending offerings of

entrepreneurs, investing jobs, accumulating inventories - all long before any return is

received, all without any assurance that the enterprise will not fail - constitutes a pattern

of giving that dwarfs in extent and in essential generosity any primitive rite of exchange'

(ibid). For Gilder, it is precisely because capitalism is grounded in this irrational attitude

of 'giving without prior assurance', and of giving more than is expected that it is superior

to all other regulatory forms of society. Such is the true nature of capitalism which

consists not so much of 'individualised self-interest' but in the risk and chance associated

with any venture. The capitalist must supply first and then hope to obtain a profit only

later. Guilder's postmodern legitimization of capitalism thus postulates a continuity with

the rituals of primitive societies. Capitalism, thus is viewed not in terms of a secular

rationalist mentality, but in terms of an 'indeterminable, undecideable play', and therein

lies its grandeur, its profound ontological truth, and its harmony with the mysteries of

things. The capitalist entrepreneur is thus cast as a noble and glorious 'gambler' who

20

'sacrifices in order to "supply" with always an uncertain result: wealth or bankruptcy'

(Goux, 1998: 204). This is a business attitude that resonates deeply with the Oriental

cultural attitude. It lies at the heart of some of the most admired and successful Eastern

corporations including especially Sony, Singapore Airlines and Matsushita.

Eastern management practice, despite much recent interest has remained an

enigma in much of the West. There have been numerous attempts to trace the roots of this

difference. Our foray into the philosophical domain has attempted to show the

overwhelming Eastern emphasis on the urge to attain an unspeakable 'pure experience'

from where the development of an 'artless art' or 'acting intuition' becomes attainable.

This ceaseless search for the 'form of the formless and the sound of the soundless' is what

undergirds otherwise trivialised and rationalized terms such as 'tacit knowledge', 'Asian

Dynamism', 'Confucian Ethics', 'Strategic Pragmatism', 'Kaizen' (which essentially means

'ceaseless self-criticism'), 'ringi', 'kuki', 'continuous improvement', 'Total Quality' and

'Just-in-Time' and many more. Such manifestations cannot be properly understood

without a deep appreciation of the underlying metaphysical orientations that shape the

cultural attitudes of the East. The overriding philosophical assumption is that unless our

structures of understanding are rooted in the primordial richness of pure, concrete living

experience we will be easily distracted from our business focus which is rooted in a

collective sense of responsibility towards social order and towards enhancing society at

large. It was this belief that prompted Konosake Matsushita, the founder of the giant

Matsushita Corporation to mastermind a unique management development programme

involving 100 bright young Japanese hand-picked by himself to lead Japan into the

twenty-first century.

The unique feature of this management development programme involved the

participants spending extensive periods in a retreat high up in the mountains where these

young men and women spent inordinate amounts of time perfecting the tea-pouring

ceremony and observing the graceful movements of carps so as to help them develop a

keen sensitivity and awareness to the subtle relationships between form and formlessness,

being and nothingness and to strive to achieve that perfect, timeless moment of pure

experience. The emphasis is on cultivating a deep sensitivity to the abundant wealth of

the tacit and the unsayable yet nonetheless potent forces underlying social relationships

21

which has been elsewhere called 'x-efficiency' (Wada, 1997) as opposed to the 'restricted'

allocative efficiency that is generally meant when the term efficiency is used. Allocative

efficiency, as we have seen, denotes the form of rational calculation that underpins

established forms of economic exchange where a 'zero-sum' assumption is generally

maintained. X-efficiency, on the other hand, is that which, not unlike the practice of

potlatch in primitive tribes, alludes to the possibility of giving more than is expected: a

certain expression of productive extravagance, of the kind of spontaneous productivity

and performance exemplified by Pele’s pass, that cannot be accounted for in economic

exchange theories. X-efficiency is a kind of uncalculating 'immaculate commerce' which

grounds all forms of human productivity, exchange and communication and joins them to

our most basic human aspirations. It is what Derrida means by a pure 'productivity of the

inexchangeable', a form of commerce best exemplified by the spirit of the ‘gift’.

Ceaseless Innovation at All Costs

It is by now common knowledge that the level of customer service available in Asian

countries such as Singapore, Hong Kong and Taiwan especially far exceeds what one

expects to find in most countries in the Western world. This is not just a question of

cheap labour1. Rather it is more about the extreme competitiveness and prevailing

entrepreneurialism embedded in the collective psyche of Asian countries. As many

business travellers to the Asia Pacific will know, a full suit can be tailored and made

ready in a matter of four hours, films processed within the hour. Taxis cost a fraction of

what they are in Europe and the United States even though the cost of vehicles in

Singapore, for example, is more than double that in most parts of the Western world. The

underlying answer for this remarkable level of service performance is simply a tradition

which hinges on an ontological principle totally neutered and obscured by the idea of

'continuous improvement'. Continuous improvement in its more authentic sense is

fundamentally predicated upon the rejection of an ultimate end-point or perfect state of

being. The Western privileging of 'being', 'fullness' and 'completeness' means that

improvement can only be construed as a means and not as an end in itself. For the

1 As a matter of record, the GDP of Singapore and Hong Kong for 1999 in particular far exceeded that of many European countries including especially Britain, France and Spain.

22

Oriental mind, however, the search for absolute nothingness, for completion of this

deeply sensed primordial lack, provides the existential impetus for ceaseless innovation

and entreprenurialism. It is this ontological restlessness which underpins a cultural

attitude best exemplified by the Sony corporation.

The Sony corporation emerged out of the rubble and chaos of Japan at the end of

the second world war with Masaru Ibuka, the founder of Sony, vaguely deciding that they

had to 'do something that no other company had ever done before'. From these

inauspicious beginnings sprang one of the world's most innovative companies with

worldwide sales in excess of US$50 billion, but more importantly, globally admired for

their record of creativity and innovation. Sony corporation's philosophy revolves around

some rather remarkable statements of intent which runs contrary to the priorities of most

other large corporations. Like that espoused by Matsushita, profit for Sony, like in the

practice of potlatch, is viewed as an uncertain 'counter-gift' that cannot be pre-determined

when a new product or service is first offered. It is not a rational target to be aspired

towards. Instead, what is emphasised is the need for offering 'lavishly': for a certain kind

of extravagance towards its community. This corporate philosophy is clearly articulated

in Sony's principles of practice. For instance, in its 'Management Policies' one of the

basic principles made explicit is that 'We shall eliminate any untoward profit-seeking,

shall constantly emphasize activities of real substance, and shall not seek expansion of

size for the sake of size' (Sony Corporation Manual). Employees who join Sony are

encouraged to 'do something truly creative…If something is wrong, I'm the man who

should be accused. As CEO it's my job to take on the critics from the outside' (Akio

Morita, CEO and Chairman of Sony). This reflects an ethos and passion handed down by

its founder Ibuka who is reported to have said 'There is nothing more pitiable than a man

who can't or doesn't dream. Dreams give direction and purpose to life without which life

would be mere drudgery'. Such statements may seem unexceptional if not coupled to a

more fundamental emphasis which resonates with the idea that 'beauty is efficiency' and

with the need for creating the equivalent of 'Pele's pass'. These are the thoughts of Dr

Nobutshu Kihara, head of research at Sony. 'In my engineering intuition, something

interesting comes to mind….I don't worry about marketing figures….Most companies

make profit the first priority. Sony's primary misison is to produce something new,

23

unique, and innovative for the enhancement of people's lives'. This ceaseless striving for

a pure 'inexchangeable productivity' as the basis for business operations is what accounts

for the remarkable achievements of Sony over the years: pocket radios, Sony Betamax,

the Trinitron, the Walkman and the Mavica camera, to name just a few.

It is this deeply imbibed spirit of spontaneous creativity and innovation honed by

a relentless disciplining mentality and grounded upon an unwavering commitment to

attaining that level of performance where efficiency is beauty, which provides the most

convincing explanation for how these Japanese and other Eastern corporations such as

Singapore Airlines continue to dominate the world in their respective fields of operation.

Instead of trivialising these rich cultural traditions by glossing over their external

manifestations, management practitioners and scholars would do well to cultivate a

deeper appreciation of how such metaphysical imperatives have come to shape and direct

the Japanese and more generally Eastern management attitudes and priorities which are

also occasionally to be found, albeit in increasing degrees of rarity, within the Western

world of management.

References

Abe, M. (1990), ‘Introduction’, in An Inquiry into the Good, trans. Abe, M. & C. Ives, New Haven: Yale University Press.

Bergson, H. (1903/49), An Introduction to Metaphysics, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

Bergson, H. (1946/92), The Creative Mind, New York: Carol Publishing Group. Blackler and Donaldson (1997), Eric Cantona Botting, F. & Wilson (2000), 'Homoeconopoesis', in M. McQuillan (ed.) A

Deconstruction Reader, Oxford: Polity Press. Carter, R. E. (1990), The Nothingness Beyond God: New York: Paragon House. Chang, C-Y. (1963/68), Creativity and Taoism, New York: Harper & Row. Chevalier, J. (1928), Henri Bergson, London: Ryder and Co. Derrida, J. (1981), 'Economimesis', Diacritics, 11, 3-25. Dilworth, D. (1986), 'The Initial Formations of "Pure Experience", in Nishida Kitaro and

William James' Monumenta Nipponica, vol. XXIV, nos-1-2, p. 66. Flay, J. (1985), Experience, Nature, and Place', The Monist, Vol. 68, no 4, p. 472. Goux, J. J. (1998), 'General Economics and Postmodern Capitalism', in F. Botting and S.

Wilson (eds.) Batille: A Critical Reader, Blackwell, 1997. Graham, A. C. (1989), Disputers of the Tao, La Salle, Illinois: Open Court. Haldane, E. S. (1932), Hegel’s Lectures on the History of Philosophy

24

Heidegger, M. (1971), On the Way to Language, New York: Harper and Row. Herrigel, E. (1953/85), Zen in the Art of Archery, London: Arkana. Höffding, H. (1916), La philosophie de Bergson, Paris: Alcan. Hume, D. (1740/1992), A Treatise of Human Nature, second edition revised by P. H.

Nidditch, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Hwa, Y. J. (1987), ‘Heidegger’s Way with Sinitic Thinking’ in G. Parkes (ed.)

Heidegger and Asian Thought, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Izutzu, T. (1977) , Towards a Philosophy of Zen Buddhism, Teheran: Imperial Iranian

Academy of Philosophy James, W. (1909/96), A Pluralistic Universe, Lincoln and London: University of

Nebraska Press. James, W. (1911/96), Some Problems of Philosophy, Lincoln and London: University

of Nebraska Press. James, W. (1912/96), Essays in Radical Empiricism, Lincoln and London: University of

Nebraska Press. King, W. L. (1982), ‘Foreword’, in Nishitani, K., Religion and Nothingness, trans. J.

van Bragt, Berkeley: University of California Press. Lacey, A. R. (1989), Bergson, London: Routledge Lacey, D. (1996), 'Interview with Arsène Wenger' The Guardian Nov. 23, p. 26. Needham, J. (1962), Science and Civilisation in China, Vol. 2, Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press. Nishida. K. (1960), Nishida: A Study of Good, trans. V. H. Vigliemo, Japanese

Government: Printing Bureau. Nishida, K. (1990), An Inquiry into the Good, trans. M. Abe and C. Ives, New Haven:

Yale University Press. Nishitani, K. (1982), Religion and Nothingness, trans. J. van Bragt, Berkeley:

University of California Press. Nishitani, K. (1991), Nishida Kitaro, Berkeley: University of California Press. Randall, J. H. (1960), Aristotle, New York: Columbia University Press. Russell, B. (1914), The Philosophy of Bergson, Cambridge: Bowes and Bowes. Sartre, J-P. (1966), Being and Nothingness, New York: Pocket Books Shimomura, T. (1960) ‘Nishida’ in Nishida: A Study of Good, Japanese Government

Printing Press. Takeuchi, Y. (1959), ‘Buddhism and Existentialism: The Dialogue Between Oriental

and Occidental Thought’, in W. Leibrecht (ed.) Religion and Culture: Essays in Honor of Paul Tillich, New York: Harper.

Taylor, E. and R. H. Wozniak (1996), Pure Experience, Bristol: Thoemmes Press. Van Bragt, J. (1982), ‘Introduction’, in Nishitani, K. Religion and Nothingness, trans.

J. van Bragt, Berkeley: University of California Press. Wada, S. (1997), 'Paternalism as the Major Corporate Culture and Stratification Principle

in Japanese Society', Time and Value, April 1997. Watson, B. (1968), The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu, New York: Columbia

University Press. Whitehead, A. N. (1929), Process and Reality, New York: MacMillan. Whitehead, A. N. (1933/1948) Adventures of Ideas, London: Penguin.