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- [00:00]
A
Hello everybody. This is Marshall Po. I'm the founder and editor of the New Books Network. And if you're listening to this, you know that the NBN is the largest academic podcast network in the world. We reach a worldwide audience of 2 million people. You may have a podcast or you may be thinking about starting a podcast. As you probably know, there are challenges basically of two kinds. One is technical. There are things you have to know in order to get your podcast produced and distributed. And the second is, and this is the biggest problem, you need to get an audience. Building an audience in podcasting is the hardest thing to do today. With this in mind, we at the NBM have started a service called NBN Productions. What we do is help you create a podcast, produce your podcast, distribute your podcast, and we host your podcast. Most importantly, what we do is we distribute your podcast to the NBN audience. We've done this many times with many academic podcasts and we would like to help you. If you would be interested in talking to us about how we can help you with your podcast, please contact us. Just go to the front page of the New Books Network and you will see a link to NBN Productions. Click that, fill out the form and we can talk. Welcome to the New Books Network.
- [01:07]
B
Welcome everyone. This is Jessica Zhu. I am an assistant professor of religion at University of Southern California at Dornsife and a New Books Network host in Buddhist Studies. Today we are super lucky to have Professor Mercedes Valmisa from Gettysburg College again to talk with us about her new book, All Things act, published by Oxford University Press 2025. So welcome Mercedes, thank you so much for writing another amazing book. It's just totally different take on philosophy of action and philosophy of agency. Some listeners may find it mind bending to think of things non human actors like mountains, rivers, have agency, but for those steeped in non Western philosophies, there's a certain sense of yes, of course. Thank you for spelling out this for us. And for new materialist series in the audience, you may also see many cross cultural resonances. So, Mercedes, I'd like to start our interview with this traditional New Book Network question. Could you please tell us a bit more about yourself again and how you came to write about the philosophy of action agency. Drawing theoretical resources from Chinese philosophy, but also most recent scientific and theoretical developments.
- [02:24]
C
Well, Jessica, thank you so much for having me again. So to answer your question, while I was doing my PhD, as you know, I was working on this idea of adapting, right? And that led me to read classical Chinese philosophy through the lens of philosophy of action. And most people working in this field approach this text primarily through moral philosophy or political philosophy. And they are right in doing that, because those dimensions are absolutely central to these texts. But at the time, what struck me is that there is also this deep and sustained concern with action itself in early Chinese philosophy. And that concern is already at work in moral and political discussions, because these philosophers are constantly asking how to be effective, how to produce real effects in the world, how to change things, how to exercise some form of control or power, right, both as a leader and also in a person's individual life. So reading the cassocks this way made me realize that this focus on action emerges from a very distinctive conception of agency. In much of early Chinese philosophy, action is not understood as something that an individual does on their own. Actions are collectively constituted and also collectively carried out, which means that how one acts becomes an especially pressing question, because my actions are never just mine, they're never just my own, they're always shaped by others and by broader situations and contexts. So the thing is that I find. I personally find this conception of agency incredibly compelling. And I don't think that it's only relevant to classical China or to China or to Asian philosophy. So I decided to explore it using as many resources as I could as I had available, like, for example, contemporary analytic and European philosophy, but also fields like biology and physics and sociology and even art. And here my goal wasn't to present like a shocking or an exotic picture of classical Chinese philosophy. It was rather to develop a new way of thinking about action and agency for contemporary audiences. One that is inspired by this text that I'm so familiar with and that I like so much, but also in conversation with a wide range of contemporary theories. And what surprised me as I was exploring all this is that there is so much convergence across all these fields, as different as they are. I think that there is an overlap to suggest that something important is happening here. And that is worth taking this way of thinking about action and agency seriously.
- [05:11]
B
Thank you, Mercedes, for sharing such important insight. That Chinese philosophy has so much cross cultural concept. And for me, you know, this book is a kind of the best example of how you do comparative philosophy in a respectable way in, you know, according to all cultures. But the book itself has a bit of a structure. It has an introduction, five chapters, but chapter one and three each have is followed by its own appendix and then an epilogue. So let me start with our interview with an introduction, a preliminary approach to the collective character of all actions. I want to ask two questions. Question one is on page two and three where you wrote. Let me just quote you. That's a long quote. I think if resonances would just share aside, but with more concrete information. You wrote. My main claims throughout the book, this book, are that there's no such a thing as an individual action, that agencies collectively distributed across a heterogeneous field of actors, human, non human. Rather than explore considering how it can be the case that two or more individuals engage in a joint activity, I aim to show that all actions, including those that appear to be individual. For example, my motivation to write a book, my writing this book by typing words on my computer, etc. Are collectively constituted and performed by an assembly of actors. So, Mercedes, please tell us more about how things tend to act, how things can act as well, and how come agencies distribute it rather than located in our own unique human free will.
- [07:00]
C
So, Jessica, what I'm trying to do in this book is shift where we think that action and agency actually happen. Because we usually assume that actions start inside an individual through intention or through free will, free will or volition, right? And then they get carried out in the world. But when you look closely at how anything really gets done, that picture doesn't hold up very well. Take something as simple as writing a book. Like you quoted from the example, right, in the introduction. Of course I have intentions, I have skills, I have motivations. But none of that is enough on its own. The action of writing a book only happens through a whole network of things. Things like language, writing technologies, my own body, habits, institutional expectations and support, of course, other people's ideas and other people's books. And of course also material conditions like time, a room and a computer of my own, a healthy body. My point is that all these things don't just enable my action from the outside. They actively shape what I do, what I can do, and even what I want to do, to do, right? My how I form intention about what I'm going to do and also how I do it and what the outcome becomes. So when I say that things can act, I don't mean that objects have intentions or that they have free will, right? Or that they are conscious or can think. What I mean is that they make a real difference in the world, right? They make a real difference in how actions unfold, which makes them participants in the emergence of actions as much as we are. So actions are collective events and agency is not something located inside a single subject like a human, but something that emerges from the interaction of many heterogeneous actors, which are human and non human alike, when they're working together, when they're collaborating. And from this perspective, then the interesting philosophical question is no longer how individuals occasionally manage to act together, but rather how anything ever appears as an individual volitional action in the first place. So what the book shows is that individuality and free will and intentionality are not the starting point of action, but simply one possible outcome of a much more collective process.
- [09:31]
B
Many thanks for such a fascinating and fresh perspective. To think about agency, basic, you ask us to look under the hood, occluded by this sense of individualism. Free agents, free agency, free will, anything. And that leads to my question about methodology. So your take on philosophy of action and philosophy agency is quite unique. On page six you wrote this. Let me just quote this. The ongoing relational, processual and horizontal turn that has been taking place across all these field, from the natural sciences to metaphysics, that's actually informed your understanding of agency action. So please tell us more about your insight into this philosophy of action of agency, and then the relational processual aspect of it, and their role in your participation in this ongoing relational, processual, horizontal turn in academic studies of philosophy.
- [10:32]
C
So methodologically, what I'm doing is aligning philosophy of action with this broader shift that is already happening across many fields in the natural sciences, in the social sciences, in contemporary metaphysics, there is a move away from thinking in terms of isolated substances or even autonomous agents, and toward thinking in terms of relationships, prostitute interactions. And also there is this shift towards decentering the human right so that we can better understand human action as part of the world, rather than something that stands outside of it and has to be explained differently. So my contribution, I would say methodologically, is to bring philosophy of action fully into this conversation. And rather than treating agency as something that belongs to a sovereign individual, and then asking how it connects to the world, I start from the world as already relational and dynamic, and ask how agency emerges within it, which means thinking of action as something that unfolds over time, across bodies, across tools, environments, social structures, rather than as a discrete event that is caused by an internal decision that only humans can make. So. So my role in this relational, perpetual horizontal term is not to introduce a whole like entirely new theory from scratch, but to show how philosophy of action can be reoriented once that we take seriously what many other disciplines are already telling us, that agency is distributed, that causation is shared, that no single actor ever fully acts alone.
- [12:16]
B
Thank you for clarifying this very intricate points for listeners now. Chapter one. Philosophy of Action Agency A Shift in Perspective. This chapter opens with a concise and apt summary of the main orientation of Western academic analytic philosophical discussions on questions of action and agency. Chief among them is a palpable kind of drive to distinguish events and actions, which can be limiting the tendency to view agency as a capacity, faculty or property to be owned by some individual entity. That's page 23. But for you, agency is. Let me quote you. It's not an abstract capacity lurking behind the surface, unquote. But you said is page 24, right? Let me quote you. Is a dynamic process emerging from the interactions between networks of both human and non human actors. And later on you wrote agencies but a label, a useful shortcut or discursive ticket, referring not to an inner faculty, but to the concrete social material processes that arise from the collaborative efforts of multiple entities and acting together. So related to this agency as dynamic process. Another surprising view of intention as relational and emergent is not a natural kind, but something emerging through processes of explanation. And here you actually employs Ans Combi's insight. You wrote on page 29 that intentions are collectively constituted because of. Because the process of explanation, which include the goals, purpose and ascriptions of future possibilities and effects to movements, to designate them as intentional actions. They arise from concreted conditions and environments that mark some constraints while affording some possibilities. So like agency, right. Intentions are attributable to. Let me just quote you again, networks of actors, human, non human, who are in turn situated within a particular social material environment. So please tell us more about this very surprising view of agency as a dynamic process. Intention as emergent from social, material and intersubjective relational networks.
- [14:47]
C
Yeah, so the notion of intention is a very important one here. It's central because in the dominant view of agency, only intentional actions are proper actions. Right? And so intentionality is what separates proper action from a mere event. Right? Something that merely happens. So my core idea here is that intentions are not inner mental objects that exist first and then cause actions, but instead, intentions emerge as part of the process through which actions become intelligible as things that we can explain, that we can justify, and then we can respond to. So when we say that someone acted intentionally, we are already drawing on a whole set of shared practices, norms, material conditions, expectations that make that action count as intentional rather than accidental or mechanistic. And these explanatory practices don't belong to an individual mind alone. Right. They arise from concrete situations that both constrain what can be intended and open up certain possibilities for explanation and for action as well. So in the same way that agency is distributed across, like I said, valleys, tools, environments, situations, roles, social relations, all these things, intentions are equally collectively constituted. They don't belong to just a single individual person, right? They're attributes of networks rather than properties hidden inside individuals. And I have to say that this doesn't deny human responsibility or human deliberation. Rather it help us see how these are always transformed and sustained within social material and intersubjective context rather than in isolation.
- [16:41]
B
Thank you. I really appreciate this eye opening insight on how relational metaphysics just totally changed the way we think about ourselves and the world. So for listeners interested in this chapter, please also check out other amazing ideas such as two way power, degree of agentive engagement, human agencies, really just not solely human. But more importantly, check out the appendix of this chapter, the making of a Chinese Bronze Vessel. That's on page 46 to 57. Many of my colleagues in art history and East Asian studies are already kind of excited of applying these kind of interpretive methods to their own works. And I myself as a teacher is designing a lecture based on this material for my Gen Ed course. But in the interest of time, let's move on to chapter two things. Here you use. I'm pretty much sure I'm going to butcher this name, Giuseppe Arcimboldo's renowned portrait the New Materials philosopher Bruno Latour's metaphor of black box to make a very important and to some students of my graduate seminar in preciseual philosophy, a very bold ontological claim that's on page 61. And let me just quote you because it's a bold ontological claim. You said you wrote. Each of these individuated things that act as building blocks of the painting entity is in turn constituted by particular relations between many other lower level components. They constitute black boxes of their own, hiding the processes, interactions they're in at work at comprum comprise comprise their contingent shape and temporary stability. There is no final substratum upon which reality wrecks itself, unquote. And this is an ontological claim, not epistemological one. You wrote further that we are saying that there's no ultimate core substance or substratum that things are. That what things are is always found in something else other than themselves, just like a human face. In Archibald, though portraits is found in an aggregate of fruits and vegetables and non human animals placed in particular ordered relations to each other. So please tell us more. What magic could happen when we apply these relational gates upon the world.
- [19:08]
C
So what I'm doing that chapter is applying what I'm calling irreductionism, which is a term that I borrow from Bruno Latour, as both an ontological and a methodological stance. Now, the main idea is pretty simple, but it's also bold and perhaps a little bit radical. That's the idea that there is no ultimate core or sustraton for things upon which things stand. Things, then, cannot be fully explained by appealing to something deeper beneath them or inside them. And they also cannot be explained fully by isolating them from the relations that make them what they are, because what a thing is, it's always found in something other than itself, right? In that network of relations that temporarily hold it together. So this means that the boundaries that we impose on things when we say, this is a human, this is a book, this is climate change, these are always conventional. These boundaries emerge from contextual reductions, which are the ways in which we decide which relations matter and which relations we can safely ignore, right? And we do this all the time in our ordinary life, in our knowing practices, we reduce things to other things all the time. For example, we care about seeds because of the apple tree that they will become. Or we think about sex in terms of pheromones or in terms of social dynamic or in terms of relationships, depending on what we are trying to explain, right? Depending on our purposes. So this is all very well, this is something that we do and that we need to do to do reductions. But irreductionism reminds us that none of these reductions exhaust the thing under description, because its boundaries are always contingent and they can always be recreated in a new way, because there is no essential core, right, holding things together. And these figures that you've mentioned, figures like Arcimboldo or Bruno Latour, they make this concrete, right? For example, Arcimboldo's portraits show that what looks like a unified human face really is just an assemblage of fruits, vegetables, animal parts, elements from the natural world. And then Latour has this concept of the black box, which explains why we often fail to notice this, because once that something becomes stabilized, we stop looking at the complex processes that are dynamic and that sustain it. So methodologically, irreductionism encourages us to treat our reductions, all our distinctions, our categories, our framings, to treat them as tools and not as ontological truths. So these are tools that we can and that we should use for particular purposes, but we should also stay alert to what they leave out, because they always leave a lot out, right? So Like Archimboldo's paintings, this approach invites us to look closer, to notice relations that were previously neglected, and also to see new patterns and possibilities emerge. So that magic right of this gate isn't really a mystical kind of magic, it's a methodological it's instead of asking what something ultimately is, we ask how it is made, how it is maintained, how it is transformed. And this changes how we understand everything, including human, because the human then it is no longer that foundational unit of reality. It's just a temporarily stabilized outcome within a web of non human relations. And once that we see that, then we can think more carefully. And I want to think also more responsibly about how actions, power and perhaps responsibility itself actually emerge in the world.
- [23:15]
B
Many thanks Mercedes, for such elusive explanation of such a profound relational metaphysics. And for me the most amazing part is that once you look into these relational gaze, you find inexhaustibility, infinity, infinite kind of knowability of just like, oh no ability of everything, every single thing or every single person. But for listeners startled by this kind of relational perceptual philosophy, you can check out the links in my blog post on the physicist Carlos Rovelli's talk about how and why Nagarjuna is always right. You know, Nagarjuna is the Buddhist Madhyamakas, philosophers saying exactly the same thing. There's no core and everything just like turtles all the way down. And also if you are more, you're more philosophy inclined, check out Ian Lestroff's book on the non existence of the external world. So but for now, in the interest of time, let's move on to chapter three, powers. In contrast to substantial view of powers as something we can own or lose. We see you here see power. Let me just quote you as an umbrella term to refer to things, doings, their behavior, their tendencies, their dispositions and their affordances. That's on page 95, which is often rendered in Chinese as xing o qing. To get away from this hierarchical boundary of active passive kind of, you know, thinking, which Jane Bennett often terms of as this as kind of influx and eff flux whose proper verbs are the middle voice ones such as, Let me just quote you quoting Jane Bennett like partaking, corroborating, inaugurating, floating, promoting, am I doing it right? Collaborating and adapting. That's on page 99. And then on PA you wrote because efficacy is relational and collectively constituted as effectively amidst so we can learn about things, powers so that we can act along with them more effectively when engaging in deliberate purposeive and volitional modes of action. So please share with our listeners this relational view of power and how it will help our actions to become more efficacious.
- [25:42]
C
Yeah, so I am rethinking power as relational and also as dabby, contingent. Meaning that it depends both on the features of the thing to which power is attributed, and also on the social material conditions in which that thing exists. So that environment, the network of interactions around it. And this matters in two ways. The first way is that understanding that behavior, tendencies, dispositions of things, their powers, this help us collaborate effectively with them. For example, if you're rowing a boat, you can just like exert force blindly, right? You need to understand the currents, the boat's design, your own body, the water, the winds, how all these elements interact with each other, so your actions can be coordinated and effective. Which means that rowing isn't a power that the rower owns. Rowing is a power that emerges in interaction with the boat, the oar, the water, and so on. So that's one way of thinking about it. And then second way is that seeing powers as distributed across humans, non humans, social, material environments and so on, changes how we think about important things. Things like ability and disability, for example, because our capacity aren't inherent or fixed. If we see that they depend on many different conditions that make action possible, then what is an ability and what is a disability that's going to shift? Take the example of walking, that appears a lot in the disability literature. We tend to think of ourselves able because walking feels self sufficient, right? We can just do it on our own, but we only walk under favorable conditions that there is solid ground, for example, that our feet or legs are not injured, conditions of sobriety as well. Or for example, not not being tied up to a bed, right? You can think of many different things. My point is that these conditions are not just opportunities for us to exercise our ability to walk. They are actually contributors. They are participants in the action itself. And philosophers of disability have really emphasized this point, right? That the environment, whether it is material, social, or even ideological, shapes the things that we can do. Say if the library has stairs, then I can enter, but someone who uses a wheelchair cannot enter, right? Then you add a ramp and both of us have the ability to enter. And then you change the requirement to flying, to having wings and flying, then neither one of us can enter. So that's an important point, that when you see powers as distributed beyond the subject into the environment. And this is a point that classical change philosophers made a long time ago, for example, in The Art of War. We see that rock that is immobile until it is based on a slope or in a current in a river. And then it gains the power to roll, to move, to hit a target. So powers don't belong to ourselves. But we often fail to notice these dependencies. Walking really seems self sufficient because our environment is curated for walking people. And that makes the conditions that enable walk in invisible to us. And at the same time, someone using a wheelchair is labeled dependent, right? Even though both the walk in and the wheelchair using person rely on favorable conditions, just in different ways. So we tend to forget our own contingency and we only see it in those who don't fit the norms that have been established for the majority. And this is true not only for physical abilities, but also for mental or cognitive abilities. Which means that if we change the conditions, many so called disabilities would disappear, right? Since they are contingent not only upon individual features, but also upon social material conditions.
- [29:59]
B
Many thanks, Mercedes, for another amazing chapter. And I just want to kind of prime our listeners that disability philosophers in disability studies, we need to pay attention to them because, you know, not everybody will be born like Asian, black, white or woman, man, right? That's just like fixed for life. But at some point in our life, we are doomed to become disabled, okay, either by injury or by old age. So we need to start thinking along that lines. But again, I'm skipping over so many important points in this chapter, such as agential ignorance, power and empowerment, and how to think about power of drugs in this relational gaze and early career scholars of Buddhist studies. We need to study meditative experiences through these kind of perceptual relational gaze. And I want to prime our listeners this chapter's appendix, Music and the Power of Reorganization that offers a brand new way of understanding music not just as art, but as a technology. In that, let me just quote you, Mercedes. It is a technology that makes available not only things powers that are considered relevant to humans, but also effective human collaboration with such particular powers by means of expanding the range of possible modes of interaction. That's on page 129. Again, I'm designing a lecture based on this appendix and teachers in the audience. I highly recommend this appendix because students are going to love this because we know how music. Let me just quote you again, allows to expand the way in which we can feel the world, to correct specific modes of feeding that aren't helpful or fitting, and to optimize the modes of feeding that appear helpful and fitting. Unquote. All right, and with this, let me Segue to chapter four, swarm agency, which in contrast to chapter three which is about intentional mode of engaging with things. Now we are analyzing the unintentional and maybe some subconscious modes of acting along with others. So mercidis and experience especially like. I especially love how you bring together both cutting edge biological findings such as self organizing systems and emergence with the ancient Chinese notion of he right. Harmonization of action, of harmonizing. More like a process of co creation, harmony with creative tension, harmony with creative synchron, synchronicity, but in a way that's mutually illuminating, that is in the new interpretation of harmonization as a subtype of self organization, the kind of decentralized organization that works, let me quote you, that's on page 180 to 81. That works via local nonlinear interactions and feedback loops between components that are mutually responsive, but don't force, demand or push for a particular action to follow. Please share with our listeners this awesome insight on how we can act together non coercively.
- [33:08]
C
Yeah, so what I aim to show in this chapter is not only that we can act together non coercively, but that we do it all the time, we are already doing it as we speak. And that it's often also the most effective way to act. So to show this I turn to those self organizing systems where coordinated collective behavior emerges without intention, without central control, and definitely without coercion, right? So we see things like flocks of beards or beehives, musical ensembles, teen sports, even human conversations. These are all examples of self organizing systems. And in these systems, each participant responds locally to neighbors and to the environment. And these decentralized interactions allow the system as a whole to gain powers that no single component could achieve alone. And in Chinese philosophy, like you said, we have that concept of harmony or harmonization as a process which is presented of the highest good. But a harmonization is not about everyone agreeing or doing the same thing. It's actually a dynamic co creative process in which participants with conflicting properties, behaviors or conflicting aims adjust to each other in real time, producing effects that could not be generated by any one of these individuals. So take the example of a Catholic wedding. And you have different elements that compose the wedding, right? Like you have the priest, vows, music, guests. The open bar is a very important part of it. Now all these elements together create the novel causal power to legally and symbolically unite a couple when they're interacting in a particular way. But that power emerges non linearly, indirectly and also non coercively. Very interesting. Also by means of constraints, because all the elements are constrained by norms and positions by a certain structure. But it's precisely because of these constraints that new powers can be produced. If you think about it like the priest can only sanctify a marriage by following the ritual, right? By following very precise actions. So it's only by giving up some levels of freedom that we can gain some power to act in ways that we cannot act alone. And then another crucial point here is that we don't need pre existing shared values for harmonization to happen. So norms are created in the moment together by means of the interactions. An example would be like a jazz musician, and he hits the right note while it is like he or she is improvising, right? So the right note comes after the previous one, making it right. And even some failures of coordination that we can see in certain rituals, like greeting rituals or mismatched gestures, right? Something that seems to fail because the participants do not seem to be familiar with the others. And norm, these are always corrected in real time, all the time, right? So they produce this emergent level of cooperation even when we are not starting from this shared familiarity of norms. And sometimes that divergence arises not from unfamiliarity of cultural norms, but from active descent. I think this is a very interesting case that is very telling for how harmonization works. If you think about, you know, like Marilyn Fry's classic example of the ritual of a man opening the door for a woman, which she says that reinforces oppressive gender norms, right? So if you think about that, and when a woman refuses the gesture of the man opening the door for her, the whole system of harmonization momentarily breaks down, right? But then this friction, I think, should not be considered a failure, but rather as a sort of a productive disruption. Because by challenging that dominant norm, then the participants get to renegotiate and to create new norms of harmonization, like, for example, in this case, holding doors for everyone, regardless of gender, right? Which is already that something that we do. So two conclusions that I find interesting in this chapter when we think about cooperation and effective action at a collective level are that first, that harmonization is relational, that it is dynamic, that it's emergent, right? That it cannot be achieved by individual effort alone, that it only arises nonlinearly through this ongoing cooperation and the constraints that are imposed by multiple actors. And that it's continuously negotiated and recreated, right? It's processual, if not static, ever. And then the second, importantly, is that conflict and tension are necessary and productive, that they're not harmful, that they don't obstruct harmonization but they actually drive the system's adaptability and creativity that they enable that dynamic unfolding of effective and cooperative action without coercion.
- [38:36]
B
Thank you. This is so illuminating, especially how conflict and tension is required in this kind of process. And you know, now I think we need to move on to my favorite chapter, chapter five, the Power of the Assembly, A new interpretation of Wu Wei. It's my favorite because I'm very selfish. I might focus some perceptual social philosophy, especially on how Buddhist teachings had been used to build a democracy. Relational non domination and a culture where the friendliness friendly not only survive but also thrive. But Lao Tzing already really just speaks to this sort of society governs through relational non domination. And as you just mentioned in the previous chapter, is not a kind of a relational non domination, everybody acting exactly the same way. It's really a renegotiation through conflicts and kind of reach, changing, reforming the norms. And it's also not a quaint ancient dream because you draw upon Ursula Le Guan and Octavia Butler, two of my favorite sci fi writers and their contemporary imagination of this Dao De Jing's relational non domination, this mutual responsiveness and this kind of a two way power through this metaphor of mud like agent. And my favorite message in this chapter is this one on page 218. Here you wrote the Tao Te Ching exhorts humans to observe and reflect on the fundamental ways in which their actions are continuous with nature and interconnected with natural processes. And as it happens, non centralized self organization based on the emergent power of the collective. That's Mu Wei is chief among what we learn when observing the behavior of non human assemblage. So please share with your listeners about this Wu Wei non action or maybe self organizing action as the emergent power of the collective.
- [40:44]
C
So as you know, Wu Wei is often translated as non action, right? In the literal sense. But in the Taoist sense, it's really about collective emergent action without central control or coercion, right? So the key idea is that effective social order cannot be achieved by a ruler or by anyone imposing their own individual plans, their own standards, their own values. Wu Wei then is about enabling, about channeling, fostering conditions in which things, people, communities, institutions can self organize. Just as we see in those flocks of birds, in the beehives, in the musical ensembles or in those rituals like weddings that we just mentioned. The Tao Te Ching the describes the most excellent ruler as someone who acts in this mode, not controlling, not asserting, not trying to manufacture order individually, but adapting to the mutual interactions of things by allowing spontaneous coordination and creativity to emerge. So in classical Chinese terms we have that Wu Wei is a Xiandran, which is a mutually caused state of affair that produces the feeling of, the feeling of being self caused, of a spontaneous action. So in other words, each participant experiences the outcome as if it were their own natural and direct individual action, even though it arises from the collective. And I know that you're a fan of Ursula Le Guin, as am I. And so her image of that granite agent to me really captures the opposite of Wu Wei that, that rigid, individualistic, controlling kind of agent. And Wu wei works through, through, through the opposite, right? Through the soft, indirect, non intricate guidance, what she calls the mad agent, well, she calls like being like ma, right? That lets diversity and difference generate novel and mutually enhancing effects. So a ruler practicing Wu Wei doesn't gain ownership, doesn't insist on compliance, doesn't take sides. Instead they could act as a catalyst that allows the system emergent powers to flourish for things to self organize. And I know that this sounds like pretty abstract, but it's actually not. That's why I have found very illuminating turning to the natural sciences like biology, because we see, see this pattern of effective causation everywhere, right? We see it in social insects, in all kinds of ecosystems, in our own bodies, right. In our cities, in molecules. And so what I think the dao stages we're doing is simply observing these non human assemblies and asking the question, what if we let the same dynamic unfold in social and political organization as well? Because this social and political organization otherwise tend to be dominated by volitional centralized control. Right? So in this sense then OE is then passivity, but rather it's that deliberate practice of what we can call relational attentiveness and a facilitation that maximizes collective efficacy without domination.
- [44:10]
B
Thank you so much. This is just amazing. I just want to add that during the winter I had the privilege of reading some crazy books like Honeybee Democracy, Microbial kind of civilizations that have this democratic practice of quorum sensing and stuff. So democracy runs long. You know, this kind of Wu Wei collective is really just like, just like a natural way for us to, for all sentient beings to organize ourselves. So you know, I'll put the links in the blog post and you know, I've been struggling to explain how these non coercive societies for us humans are possible and why. Right. I'm just very grateful you offered me such rich resources to push this line of political civilization further. And now We've reached our epilogue, non cruel optimism, where you actually talk a little bit about your own teaching and writing processes and how you put this acting along with others kind of insight into your own teaching in the classroom. And my favorite passage is actually on the social aspect of the non group optimism. And that if we see agency and intentionality through the relational gates, then we can still hold people partially responsible for their actions. But here, let me just quote you. But we must avoid, avoid placing the entire burden on individuals. Instead, we should acknowledge the material, social, ideological, political, institutional, etc. Conditions contributing to the propensity and trajectory resulting in such actions. And to address social issues we find problematic, we must look beyond individual choices and consider old entities that contribute to the emergence of behaviors we seek to avoid and similarly to promote those we seek to reinforce. So unquote. So this will result in a non cruel optimism and hopefully we can start building a non cruel community around us right now and scale up to society and hopefully the world. But Mercedes, I would like to have the final word on your own vision of this non cruel optimism. Just say a bit more how you know, what kind of. Yeah. What that looks like for you daily life and then maybe in the larger work.
- [46:33]
C
So non queer optimism is about rethinking our relationship to agency, to responsibility, social change, and also our both the personal and collective flourishing, like you said, without basing the entire burden of responsibility on individuals. Because in much of contemporary society we assume that people are fully autonomous, that we are self reliant, that we're in complete control of our actions. Right. This is the ideology of individualism, right. That is so dominant in the contemporary context across the world. So I interpret this ideology of individualism as a form of what Lauren Berlant calls cruel optimism. Right? That's her concept. So cruel optimism is an attachment to objects, ideals or ways of life that we believe that will fulfill us, that will be good for us, but instead they obstruct our flourishing and they can even cause harm, right? So we attach to things that we think are good, but actually they're doing the opposite. So when I read the ideology of individualism under this lens of cruel optimism, we think about things like our belief in unimpeded individual freedoms, right. And how it often undermines the very good roots that we seek because it prioritizes personal desire over social justice and collective well being, which will eventually turn against us, even if we are among the privileged group. Right? So my project on the collective character of action aims to cultivate a sort of optimism that is not cruel. Right. One that is neither naive nor self defeating as so many contemporary ideologies tend to be. So non cruel optimism rejects that seductive dream of total individual self determination and self reliance, but it also does not leave us completely exposed or powerless. I think it's quite the opposite that it encourages us to form attachments and to pursue goals that genuinely promote coercion while also recognizing our profound interdependence as not being a negative thing. Right. But making full use of it. So in other words, it is an optimism that got inherit a relational, generative and ethical approach to engaging with the world that is beginning with our own persons and in our immediate communities, but that has the potential, I hope, to scale up to society at large.
- [49:09]
B
Thank you. I greatly appreciate that insight. It reminds me of these kind of biological systemic theory thinking of like we control nothing, therefore we don't need to dominate anything, but we influence everything because we are interconnected. So Mercedes, we've taken a lot of your time. Since we have only one hour and your book is so rich. Is there anything else in the book that we didn't have time to discuss at all but you'd like to prime or highlight for listeners and future readers?
- [49:41]
C
I don't know, I mean there is so much more. But we have discussed a lot of the chapters in detail. Right. I think like maybe that my hope is that this way of thinking about agency and action is not something that stays only with academic communities and in the classroom and with, you know, with philosophers and scholars, but it's something that can be a little bit more transversal, more, you know, cross disciplinary and that even like gets out of like academia and can be imported into real life decisions, political decisions, ethical considerations and things like that. So that's my hope for this project and it's something that I will continue working on to make this all more accessible for multiple audiences beyond people working in analytic philosophy or philosophy of action or working in Chinese philosophy and things like that.
- [50:37]
B
Thank you. One thing I want to kind of comment on is that how readable this book is. It's not your typical kind of philosophy book just like that. All my students in my graduate seminar greatly appreciate it. So, last question before we part our ways. Our new traditional New Books Network. Question. What are you working on? What keeps you busy now?
- [51:03]
C
Well, so right now I'm working on something quite different. I'm working on a project in auto theory, which is a genre that bends personal experience with philosophical theorizing. And it's about showing how our everyday lives, our feelings, our choices, our struggles as well, how they are connected to larger social, political and ethical questions. Right. That the personal. So it's political. Right. Like that classic feminist Maxine. Right. But for me, it's also a way to write that is more honest and more vulnerable, where thinking and living happen together and not separately, which is most often the case with academic writing. So this is something that is really appealing to me right now. I kind of need right now. And it's also a different way to think philosophically and to share it with others as well. Right. And I'm loving it because it's more messy, it's more pluralistic and it's also more open ended. It doesn't try to give any final definitive answers. It doesn't even try to speak with any authority. Right. And because of that, I think it might have the potential to create a space to reflect more freely and more honestly, maybe to connect with others, maybe even, you know, to, to heal. Right. In, in different ways. So that's, that's what I'm doing right now.
- [52:29]
B
That's fascinating. But again, thank you for your time, Mercedes, and for writing this amazing book and for sharing many, many insights and unforgettable metaphors in this interview. And because this book is so readable, I highly recommend this to all teaching teachers of giant courses and also for listeners teachers, if you only teach like one lecture on Chinese culture, please consider using one of her chapters or one of her two appendices. And then Mercedes, I'm really looking forward to reading your new work soon. Thank you.
- [53:03]
C
Thanks so much, Jessica.