Study of Cosmic Love
* Book: Tan Sitong. A Study of Cosmic Love (Renxue).
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Description
"Written in 1896, almost immediately after the Sino-Japanese War (1894– 1895), Renxue, or A Study of Cosmic Love, was one of the first works to radically reinterpret classical Chinese texts in the framework of modern Western philosophy and science" [1]
Review
Viren Murthy:
"Tan begins his treatise by describing ren as both ideal and material. Jiang Guanghui suggests that Tan continues a Chinese tradition of thought in which there is no clear division between the mind and body or the material and the psychic.21 In Tan’s text, ren has an ontological significance and is associated with material substances such as ether.
Tan’s vision brings together unique aspects of premodern Chinese and modern Western patterns of thought. To some extent, we can see Tan Sitong developing an idea that Hajime Nakatani considers prevalent dur- ing the post-Han period, namely that moral characteristics are identical to states of qi or bodily characteristics.
For example, in his Treatise on Personalities (Renwuzhi 人物志), Liu Shao (189–244 ad) defined ren in the following manner: “Thus one whose bones are upright but resilient is called broad minded and strong willed. Being broad minded and strong willed is the essence of ren”.
This passage associates ren with a certain physical disposition and behind this physical disposition is a configuration of qi. In Nakatani’s words: “A person as conceived by medieval authors was then but a passing phase in the consecutive stages leading from qi endowment to its physiological, psychological, ethical and communal realizations.
Tan follows this pattern and connects ren to ether, which as Ingo Schafer has pointed out, in Tan’s thinking has much in common with the traditional concept of qi.25 Like earlier Chinese philosophers’ conception of qi, ether is imperceptible and yet penetrates the world.
The phenomenal world, the world of the void, and the world of sentient beings are permeated by something extremely vast and minute, the cohesive, penetrative, and connective power which embraces all things. Its form eludes the eyes; its sound, the ears; its taste, the mouth; and its smell, the nose. For want of a better term, let it be called “ether.”
Even if we limit our gaze to the Chinese context, the above passages of course draws on more than the medieval connection between qi and ren. Tan expands the medical metaphor associating the flow of qi, health, and ren to envelop the whole world. In his exploration of the influence of Song- Ming Confucianism on Tan’s concept of ren as the world, Shimada Kenji draws our attention to the philosophies of Cheng Mingdao (1032–1085) and Wang Yangming (1472–1529). Cheng Mingdao invoked Daoist and Buddhist conceptions of the unity between humans and the cosmos. We see this vision in a number of classical sources. For example, Zhuang Zi wrote, “Heaven and earth were born together with me,” and the Buddhist Zeng Bi wrote “the myriad things and I are one body.”27 However, Cheng fused this concept of the cosmos with the principles of Confucian morality.
Tan developed the Song-Ming Confucian synthesis of Daoism-Buddhism and Confucianism, in which the ontological source takes on the characteristics of Confucian morality, and ren in particular. Human beings realize this ethical perspective when they allow the cosmos to flow without obstruction and identify their own bodies with the cosmos.
Tan invokes the identity between bodily states and ethical stances to explain moral and religious concepts around the world.
When it [ether] reveals itself in application ( yong), Confucius called it “ren,” “the ultimate source,” and “nature”; Mo Zi calls it “love without discrimination”; the Buddha calls it “the ocean of nature” and “compassion”; Jesus calls it “soul,” “you shall love your neighbor as yourself,” and “love your enemies like friends”; and natural scientists call it “centripetal force” and “gravitational force”—all refer to this thing.
Tan describes the physical dimension of the things in terms of modern scientific concepts such as gravity, which acts on all bodies equally. From this perspective, we might say that the duality between the material and Tan’s cosmological source can be compared to Spinoza’s description of God or Substance having the attributes of thought and extension, which are identical to one another. According to Spinoza as well, every idea can also be understood as some type of physicality or extension. In fact, he even claims that the mind is the idea of the body.
However, while Spinoza avoids calling substance ethical, Tan constantly uses metaphors of the all-pervading substance of ether to derive ethical meanings, such as loving one’s neighbor as one’s self and loving one’s enemies like one’s friends. While previous thinkers may have used qi to establish hierarchical relations, all of the above-mentioned concepts express something similar to the standpoint of exchange value, according to which any thing can be compared to any other. From this arises the ability to stand in for the other. While in Tan’s text this exchangeability or equality is attached to a moral maxim, such as “love thy enemy,” at the same time, it represents a physical force such as gravity.
While in the modern worldview a force such as gravity is devoid of moral content, Tan tries to infuse physicality with the feeling of love and morality. However, unlike medieval authors, Tan faces a world in which physicality appears to resist the imposition of moral norms and human feelings. Thus Tan makes the identity of subject and object or mind and original body or ether into a goal for the reflexive subject to pursue. In other words, the identity between mind and body is Tan’s presupposition but not quite a description of the way things are in the temporal world.
In fact, as we shall see, the unity between the physical and the mental is actually a means to overcome time and finitude; realizing this unity then becomes the true precondition for moral action.”
(https://www.academia.edu/5050630/Tan_Sitong_Zhang_Taiyan_and_Imaginations_of_Time)
Discussion
Updating Tan Sitong's insights
Deng Chen:
- Article: Tan Sitong's Revolutionary Philosophy: Connectivity as the Core of "Ren"
URL = https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/nRygEf1FipzgiaUqQ56gZg
Translation through chatGPT:
"Shortly before the reform, Tan Sitong introduced his revolutionary ideas in his book Renxue (The Study of Benevolence): "Ren (benevolence) is fundamentally about connectivity." He reinterpreted the traditional Chinese concept of ren through the lens of connectivity, referencing Western notions such as ether and medical knowledge about nerves (which he called "brain energy meridians"). He argued that ether and the mechanism of neural electrical signals were mediators connecting the world. His belief in the power of the mind led him to declare that all rigid social structures and constraints could be broken—"shattering the net of entrapment."
Ether: From Ancient Philosophy to Tan Sitong’s Vision
Before Ethereum (Ethereum), ether (aether) was first conceived by the ancient Greeks as a fundamental element of the universe. Modern Western philosophers like Leibniz and Hegel pondered its nature, and Engels described it in Dialectics of Nature as the medium for light transmission—an idea held by 17th- to 19th-century physicists until Einstein's theory of special relativity led to its rejection. Tan Sitong's understanding of ether was influenced by a pseudoscientific self-help book, The Mind Cure by American businessman Warren Felt Evans, which reflected the widespread popularity of the ether concept in the West at the time. However, Tan’s focus was not on mysticism but on proving that humanity was moving toward global interconnectedness—China could not afford to remain isolated and refuse engagement with the world.
A Proto-Cybernetic Vision: Humanity's Evolution Beyond Biology
Through his panpsychist imagination of a "human mind etherization," Tan Sitong’s vision of the future appears strikingly cybernetic—almost transhumanist. He envisioned a future where human consciousness, after transforming or even discarding its biological limitations, would enter a new phase:
"Today's electrical science allows for wireless power and heat transmission, enables us to see muscles, bones, and organs, and can even measure brain energy functions. In time, we shall be able to remove the heavy matter and retain only the light essence… As humans become increasingly spiritual, they will eventually merge their collective consciousness, transforming into beings of pure intelligence and pure soul… able to travel freely among the stars and the sun."
In this vision, humans would use technology to "remove the heavy matter and retain the light essence," shedding biological constraints and enhancing intelligence, ultimately evolving into a "collective consciousness of many spirits." Tan also acknowledged that technological progress would bring risks, but his outlook was one of optimistic accelerationism—concerns like AI replacing humanity were beyond his contemplation.
120 Years Later: Facing Existential Risks
Yet, more than 120 years later, such risks seem urgent. From Vitalik Buterin’s perspective, brain-computer interfaces and mind uploading may be humanity’s only means of avoiding AI domination. He cautions that it is "best led by an open-source movement focused on safety."
From Hierarchical Domination to Open and Equal Networks
Tan Sitong valued the concept of ether because he believed in universal connectivity: first identifying the common elements in all things, then using these commonalities to understand and link seemingly disparate entities. Things that appear different can be reconciled through knowledge, and common elements can serve as technological conduits connecting everything—both ether and electricity function this way.
Science, by transcending subjective biases, allows for an objective understanding of different things as variations of the same fundamental elements. Discovering a shared material basis enables the construction of common infrastructures: international transportation, global trade, communication technologies, monetary systems, linguistic translation, and resource development.
In traditional Chinese thought, ren (benevolence) denotes both kindness between people and sensory perception—ancient Chinese medical texts describe numbness as "insensitivity (bu ren)," attributing it to blocked energy flow. However, in the centralized, clan-based structures of traditional rural China, the flow of ren was largely confined to hierarchical networks. Tan Sitong’s radical departure was to decentralize and universalize ren: for him, China's refusal to engage with the world was itself a form of "numbness," and in modern society, ren should be based on egalitarian friendships.
By the late Qing dynasty, China was on the cusp of immense transformation—new ideas, technologies, and institutions were entering, and democratic associations, organizations, and political parties would eventually dismantle the old Confucian bureaucracy. For Tan Sitong, ren meant treating people as equals, but the dominant power structure—the "Three Bonds" (ruler guides minister, father guides son, husband guides wife)—remained a system of hierarchical subjugation. He believed ren would ultimately overthrow this outdated ideological framework.
Though Tan Sitong never explicitly used the term "protocol," the Confucian hierarchical system he opposed functioned as a societal protocol governing relationships in China. His vision of the future aimed at transnational consensus, such as:
"A law should not only benefit one nation but must not harm others, ensuring mutual prosperity. A religion should not only work domestically but must align with universal reason, allowing both the wise and the ignorant to learn from it."
His proposal for a trans-Eurasian railway built by weaker nations as a "highway for all nations, jointly supported and universally beneficial" envisioned public infrastructure shared globally.
From Papyrus to Protocol Computing
The Chinese term 协议 (protocol) corresponds to the Western word protocol, which originates from medieval Byzantine Greek, referring to a papyrus scroll affixed to official documents. By the 15th century, in Middle French, it came to mean a draft agreement. The idea of protocol as "meta-information" or a "pre-established framework" still lingers in modern usage.
Any medium that processes and transmits information requires an intermediary process of coordination. Beyond information exchange, daily activities also rely on multi-party alignment. In internet technology, the participants are not limited to humans; protocols establish rules for interaction among humans, machines, and data.
In AI development, large language models operate on massive centralized protocol storage. Transformer models are trained on vast textual datasets, learning patterns, logic, styles, and rules of human life. By recognizing these conventions, they generate contextually coherent outputs—new applications based on existing structures.
With centralized storage and large-scale computational processing, AI's familiarity with and speed of handling protocols far surpass human capabilities. Gavin Wood’s 2014 vision for Web3 aimed to return data ownership to users via decentralized blockchain protocols. However, while Web3 is still in its experimental phase, centralized AI giants have already emerged from Web2.0’s vast data accumulation.
d/acc and the Ethos of Protocol-Bound Ren
In My Techno-Optimism, Vitalik Buterin advocates for d/acc (defensive/decentralized/differentiated accelerationism), arguing that individuals and societies must be resilient to survive disasters before they can autonomously develop. The world is facing increasingly powerful offensive technologies, from pandemics to military and political threats—ordinary people need better defensive technologies.
To address the imbalance between AI and humans, he proposes human-AI integration: synchronizing human intelligence with AI to enhance rather than be outpaced by it. Blockchain could allow communities to own and govern their AI models rather than being subject to centralized control.
I support d/acc’s aim to empower civil liberties and advance defensive technologies, but I also see a broader context: protocols govern all aspects of our lives, forming interconnected layers. Whether through digital technologies or social institutions, we must improve these protocols to ensure they serve people equitably."
Tan Sitong’s belief in ren as connectivity finds its modern counterpart in P2P (peer-to-peer) principles: a network of freely associating equals. Over 120 years have passed since his execution. While technological singularity looms ever closer, the vision of a borderless, egalitarian world faces setbacks from pandemics, wars, and deglobalization. Yet, wherever there is numbness (bu ren), ren will inevitably emerge, carving out new pathways."