Excellent article, thank you. I'm wondering that, if means and ends are 'one thing' (Aldous Huxley's book "Ends and Means {an Enquiry Into the Nature of Ideals and Into the Methods Employed for Their Realization)", 1937}, then the ends can never justify the means (bye-bye 'just war theory', for example) - and adds weight to the idea that use has no use. Believing it does seems to be a matter of 'level-confusion'.
Apologies, Joshua. I've just noticed that I didn't post my reply under your comment:
Thank you for reading! Yes, 'level confusion' is a good way to put it. There's nothing wrong with usefulness, exactly, but the category of 'use' is incomplete and doesn't contain its own justification. For that, you need to operate on a different, higher level, as you say.
There's a long tradition in western philosophy, pre-utilitarianism, opposing "calculative" reason to contemplative reason or theoria. Arendt always seems to side against calculative reason, even though she elevates action to an equal status with contemplation. She's threading some kind of needle here, since one would think means/end reasoning would be appropriate for someone who is action oriented. Then again, action for Arendt is performative; it's not necessarily meant to accomplish anything per se. (So her ethic of promise-keeping and forgiveness is meant to deal with actions that result in unintended and sometimes bad consequences. She obviously doesn't have a lot of faith in human calculation to determine good action -> outcomes reliably.) Kant also fits in here, since Arendt builds her idea of "judgment" (of words and deeds of political actors) on his third critique. Kant's ascribes to beauty: "purposiveness without purpose," meaning that the form of something suggests a purpose, but it is pleasing for its own sake, independent of any use.
Giorgio Agamben, in the tradition of Heidegger and Arendt, deals heavily with "use" across his works. He's after "pure means" or "pure potentiality" to escape the means/ends dynamic. I'm not sure if he's about performance or not. Maybe.
So interesting to bring in Zhuangzi. He seems to be operating out of a different ethos altogether. Daoism promotes (pure) participatory experience, whether in various contexts (as you note) or as being(s)-in-transformation (butterflies, dreaming humans), just going with the flow of things. This seems different from all three western frameworks of use/uselessness: calculation, contemplation, or performance.
Anyway, "use" is a big topic. I can think of some other ancient/classical (rhetorical, scriptural, patristic-theological) references as well, but no need to get into that.
It may be (I’m just now thinking this for the first time) that, for Arendt, means and ends are an appropriate category within the realm of action; the speaker of words and doer of deeds, after all, will typically have some purpose in mind, notwithstanding the fact that the condition of human plurality often brings about consequences that are different from what was intended. But means and ends isn’t an appropriate category for contemplation, due to its receptive character.
I took a risk here by bringing together such separate traditions: modern European and ancient Chinese thought. But what Zhuangzi is doing often does come strikingly close to Heidegger as well as some other developments in twentieth century philosophy (all of which have at least some connection to Heidegger anyway). Zhuangzi’s ethos (particularly in the short conversation I’m quoting) mirrors something of Heidegger’s openness to what shows itself, distrustful of the human-shaped purposes which we impose on the world. I have found the philosopher Yuk Hui’s 2016 book The Question Concerning Technology in China very illuminating in this connection.
I’ll have a look out for that book. Thanks for the recommendation. I’ve seen a study somewhere that talks about the influence of Chinese thought on German philosophy, maybe earlier than Heidegger. There is definitely something there. I wouldn’t feel any compunction about juxtaposing east and west thinkers esp when both are given due attention in their own right!
It's great to see another post here. This was a pleasant surprise in my inbox the other week and I am glad to have spent a bit of time with it. I especially appreciated the opportunity to here about Zhuangzhi. I do, however, have a couple of quibbles. (Although I have thought about your essay for several days now, the following is a bit of a braindump, so my apologies if it is scattered or leaves things unanswered.)
First, I wonder about your use of the word "utilitarianism" and your descriptions of it as a philosophy without ends, only means. This is not my understanding of utilitarianism (though I am far from an expert). My understanding of utilitarianism is that, in general, it does posit an end, namely "happiness," "well-being," or "utility." Utilitarianism tries in various ways to maximize utility, whether that utility be through the pleasure of eating spaghetti, of admiring works of art, or of spending time in leisure with friends. It does not go beyond "utility" and therefore is somewhat shallow, but it seems to me that it still posits an end according to which various means could be evaluated. (This does not deny that there are other various serious criticisms of utilitarianism, in particular that it is given to gross injustice in the name of maximizing utility.) I wonder if instead you mean to refer to "pragmatism," which posits that the true is the useful and, to my knowledge, denies the possibility or validity of ultimate ends. In pragmatism, there is only an endless chain of means and to imagine anything more is fallacious. (Though perhaps pragmatism went by the name of "utilitarianism" in Lessing's day.) It might be worth double checking this. Nevertheless, your basis point about the "use of use" remains the same.
Second, I think it might be helpful if your more clearly distinguished terms like "use/useful" "utility" and "means." You seem to be using them more or less synonymously, but I think it would be helpful to distinguish them and it might provide new insights into Zhuangzhi's exchange with Huizi. I have already noted above how "utility" does not necessarily mean "useful" or a practical means to an end.
To illustrate my point, I am reminded about the Aristotelian taxonomy of goods: there are things that are good for the sake of something else (instrumentally good), things that are good only for their own sake (instrinsically good), and things which are both; Aristotle famously says that the second kind is the greatest kind of good, because its goodness is self-contained. It seems to me that in light of this Aristotelian taxonomy, "use/useful" and "useless" can both have two meanings. "Useful" could refer to instrumental goods or it could refer to intrinsic goods (hence you refer to art as useful in its beauty, even though in my mind it is not instrumentally good). "Useless" could refer to intrinsic goods which have no instrumental value, OR it could refer to instrumental goods whose instrumentality is not yet apparent. So the meanings of "useful" and "useless" are not immediately clear and do not necessarily line up with "means" or "utility" (whether we take "utility" to mean either means or end/happiness etc).
In the case of Zhuangzhi's exchange with Huizi, I was struck by the image of standing and walking upon the ground. The ground below your feet is useful because you are standing on it right now. The ground you are not standing on, is useless. You are clearly right to say that the useful depends on a larger context of uselessness or else it becomes far less useful. But what does Zhuangzhi mean by "useless"? Having read virtually nothing else of Chinese thought and absolutely nothing from Zhuangzhi, it seems possible that "useless" means something like "intrinsically good" or "having no instrumental value" and that the "useful" must ultimately refer to something to something without instrumental value if it is to be useful in the first place. But it also seems possible to me that the "useless" might mean "having no apparent instrumental value" without implying an intrinsic value. (E.g. the mortar to build a house when we do not have bricks or know what they are.) It struck me that in the metaphor of standing on ground, there is no categorical difference between the ground we stand on and the ground we do not -- what makes the latter "useless" is that we do not yet stand on it, i.e. that we are not currently exercising its instrumental value. Both the ground we stand on and all the other ground are "useful," but one's use is actual/apparent and the other's use is potential/not apparent. It is not clear that Zhuangzhi is necessarily referring to the "useless" as "intrinsically good."
I should note here that this does not necessarily contradict anything you wrote, but it seemed to me that these distinctions could be clearer.
If we take the metaphor of useless ground in this latter sense--as referring to the not yet/not apparently useful--it makes me think of Heideggerian equipmentality. Each tool we use, everything that is ready-to-hand, necessarily implies a interconnected network of useful, which Heidegger refers to as a whole as "equipment". The hammer implies the nail and the wood, and implies the house to be built, and the warmth it provides, etc, etc. Presumably, however, there are some aspects of "equipment" which escape our notice or understanding: someone may have a hammer, not yet understanding that it may also build a horse stable or how horses should be cared for. Even within the interconnected network of "equipment", there would be some things that appear to us as "useless." (And we would not need to reference the intrinsically good to explain this "uselessness.") Exploring the world, we would find ourselves constantly encountering a horizon of uselessness, a horizon which would recede as we explore and discover further uses. In that sense, the useful depends on the useless because it belongs to the same Equipmental whole which necessarily implies both. Zhuangzhi's words could be useless not because they have no instrumental value, but because their instrumental value lies beyond Huizi's current equipmental horizon.
In this sense, it would still be important for us to retain a certain freedom and spontaneity so that we could continue exploring new uses, but we would not need to refer a standpoint outside usefulness.
Thanks for your thoughts, Bryan. To your first point, I take Lessing to be saying that utilitarianism organizes itself around the principle of utility, which means that it doesn't have a good answer to the question "what is the use of use?" A utilitarian might answer that 'happiness' or 'utility' is good in itself and is therefore self-justifying, but that, strictly speaking, is no longer a utilitarian position per se. It is an affirmative statement of value which exceeds the mere reckoning with utility. I would suggest that the key feature which distinguishes utilitarianism from other moral systems is not so much what it aims at, but rather the way it raises expediency as its chief value. Utilitarians of different stripes disagree about what constitutes 'utility,' but they agree about maximizing it by whatever means.
Regarding your second point, "equipmentality" is a good way to think about it, rather than "intrinsically good." What you say here really nails it: "Exploring the world, we would find ourselves constantly encountering a horizon of uselessness, a horizon which would recede as we explore and discover further uses. In that sense, the useful depends on the useless because it belongs to the same Equipmental whole which necessarily implies both. Zhuangzi's words could be useless not because they have no instrumental value, but because their instrumental value lies beyond Huizi's current equipmental horizon." The point is that the useless DOES have a use—this is why Zhuangzi calls it "the usefulness of the useless"—but what's useful about it is different from what's useful about more straightforwardly useful things: its "use" comes from the fact that it completes the whole, without which the category of 'useful' itself makes no sense.
Excellent article, thank you. I'm wondering that, if means and ends are 'one thing' (Aldous Huxley's book "Ends and Means {an Enquiry Into the Nature of Ideals and Into the Methods Employed for Their Realization)", 1937}, then the ends can never justify the means (bye-bye 'just war theory', for example) - and adds weight to the idea that use has no use. Believing it does seems to be a matter of 'level-confusion'.
Apologies, Joshua. I've just noticed that I didn't post my reply under your comment:
Thank you for reading! Yes, 'level confusion' is a good way to put it. There's nothing wrong with usefulness, exactly, but the category of 'use' is incomplete and doesn't contain its own justification. For that, you need to operate on a different, higher level, as you say.
There's a long tradition in western philosophy, pre-utilitarianism, opposing "calculative" reason to contemplative reason or theoria. Arendt always seems to side against calculative reason, even though she elevates action to an equal status with contemplation. She's threading some kind of needle here, since one would think means/end reasoning would be appropriate for someone who is action oriented. Then again, action for Arendt is performative; it's not necessarily meant to accomplish anything per se. (So her ethic of promise-keeping and forgiveness is meant to deal with actions that result in unintended and sometimes bad consequences. She obviously doesn't have a lot of faith in human calculation to determine good action -> outcomes reliably.) Kant also fits in here, since Arendt builds her idea of "judgment" (of words and deeds of political actors) on his third critique. Kant's ascribes to beauty: "purposiveness without purpose," meaning that the form of something suggests a purpose, but it is pleasing for its own sake, independent of any use.
Giorgio Agamben, in the tradition of Heidegger and Arendt, deals heavily with "use" across his works. He's after "pure means" or "pure potentiality" to escape the means/ends dynamic. I'm not sure if he's about performance or not. Maybe.
So interesting to bring in Zhuangzi. He seems to be operating out of a different ethos altogether. Daoism promotes (pure) participatory experience, whether in various contexts (as you note) or as being(s)-in-transformation (butterflies, dreaming humans), just going with the flow of things. This seems different from all three western frameworks of use/uselessness: calculation, contemplation, or performance.
Anyway, "use" is a big topic. I can think of some other ancient/classical (rhetorical, scriptural, patristic-theological) references as well, but no need to get into that.
Thanks for reading, Tracy!
It may be (I’m just now thinking this for the first time) that, for Arendt, means and ends are an appropriate category within the realm of action; the speaker of words and doer of deeds, after all, will typically have some purpose in mind, notwithstanding the fact that the condition of human plurality often brings about consequences that are different from what was intended. But means and ends isn’t an appropriate category for contemplation, due to its receptive character.
I took a risk here by bringing together such separate traditions: modern European and ancient Chinese thought. But what Zhuangzi is doing often does come strikingly close to Heidegger as well as some other developments in twentieth century philosophy (all of which have at least some connection to Heidegger anyway). Zhuangzi’s ethos (particularly in the short conversation I’m quoting) mirrors something of Heidegger’s openness to what shows itself, distrustful of the human-shaped purposes which we impose on the world. I have found the philosopher Yuk Hui’s 2016 book The Question Concerning Technology in China very illuminating in this connection.
I’ll have a look out for that book. Thanks for the recommendation. I’ve seen a study somewhere that talks about the influence of Chinese thought on German philosophy, maybe earlier than Heidegger. There is definitely something there. I wouldn’t feel any compunction about juxtaposing east and west thinkers esp when both are given due attention in their own right!
Incredible essay!
Glad to hear you liked it. Thank you for reading, Vincent!
Patrick,
It's great to see another post here. This was a pleasant surprise in my inbox the other week and I am glad to have spent a bit of time with it. I especially appreciated the opportunity to here about Zhuangzhi. I do, however, have a couple of quibbles. (Although I have thought about your essay for several days now, the following is a bit of a braindump, so my apologies if it is scattered or leaves things unanswered.)
First, I wonder about your use of the word "utilitarianism" and your descriptions of it as a philosophy without ends, only means. This is not my understanding of utilitarianism (though I am far from an expert). My understanding of utilitarianism is that, in general, it does posit an end, namely "happiness," "well-being," or "utility." Utilitarianism tries in various ways to maximize utility, whether that utility be through the pleasure of eating spaghetti, of admiring works of art, or of spending time in leisure with friends. It does not go beyond "utility" and therefore is somewhat shallow, but it seems to me that it still posits an end according to which various means could be evaluated. (This does not deny that there are other various serious criticisms of utilitarianism, in particular that it is given to gross injustice in the name of maximizing utility.) I wonder if instead you mean to refer to "pragmatism," which posits that the true is the useful and, to my knowledge, denies the possibility or validity of ultimate ends. In pragmatism, there is only an endless chain of means and to imagine anything more is fallacious. (Though perhaps pragmatism went by the name of "utilitarianism" in Lessing's day.) It might be worth double checking this. Nevertheless, your basis point about the "use of use" remains the same.
Second, I think it might be helpful if your more clearly distinguished terms like "use/useful" "utility" and "means." You seem to be using them more or less synonymously, but I think it would be helpful to distinguish them and it might provide new insights into Zhuangzhi's exchange with Huizi. I have already noted above how "utility" does not necessarily mean "useful" or a practical means to an end.
To illustrate my point, I am reminded about the Aristotelian taxonomy of goods: there are things that are good for the sake of something else (instrumentally good), things that are good only for their own sake (instrinsically good), and things which are both; Aristotle famously says that the second kind is the greatest kind of good, because its goodness is self-contained. It seems to me that in light of this Aristotelian taxonomy, "use/useful" and "useless" can both have two meanings. "Useful" could refer to instrumental goods or it could refer to intrinsic goods (hence you refer to art as useful in its beauty, even though in my mind it is not instrumentally good). "Useless" could refer to intrinsic goods which have no instrumental value, OR it could refer to instrumental goods whose instrumentality is not yet apparent. So the meanings of "useful" and "useless" are not immediately clear and do not necessarily line up with "means" or "utility" (whether we take "utility" to mean either means or end/happiness etc).
In the case of Zhuangzhi's exchange with Huizi, I was struck by the image of standing and walking upon the ground. The ground below your feet is useful because you are standing on it right now. The ground you are not standing on, is useless. You are clearly right to say that the useful depends on a larger context of uselessness or else it becomes far less useful. But what does Zhuangzhi mean by "useless"? Having read virtually nothing else of Chinese thought and absolutely nothing from Zhuangzhi, it seems possible that "useless" means something like "intrinsically good" or "having no instrumental value" and that the "useful" must ultimately refer to something to something without instrumental value if it is to be useful in the first place. But it also seems possible to me that the "useless" might mean "having no apparent instrumental value" without implying an intrinsic value. (E.g. the mortar to build a house when we do not have bricks or know what they are.) It struck me that in the metaphor of standing on ground, there is no categorical difference between the ground we stand on and the ground we do not -- what makes the latter "useless" is that we do not yet stand on it, i.e. that we are not currently exercising its instrumental value. Both the ground we stand on and all the other ground are "useful," but one's use is actual/apparent and the other's use is potential/not apparent. It is not clear that Zhuangzhi is necessarily referring to the "useless" as "intrinsically good."
I should note here that this does not necessarily contradict anything you wrote, but it seemed to me that these distinctions could be clearer.
If we take the metaphor of useless ground in this latter sense--as referring to the not yet/not apparently useful--it makes me think of Heideggerian equipmentality. Each tool we use, everything that is ready-to-hand, necessarily implies a interconnected network of useful, which Heidegger refers to as a whole as "equipment". The hammer implies the nail and the wood, and implies the house to be built, and the warmth it provides, etc, etc. Presumably, however, there are some aspects of "equipment" which escape our notice or understanding: someone may have a hammer, not yet understanding that it may also build a horse stable or how horses should be cared for. Even within the interconnected network of "equipment", there would be some things that appear to us as "useless." (And we would not need to reference the intrinsically good to explain this "uselessness.") Exploring the world, we would find ourselves constantly encountering a horizon of uselessness, a horizon which would recede as we explore and discover further uses. In that sense, the useful depends on the useless because it belongs to the same Equipmental whole which necessarily implies both. Zhuangzhi's words could be useless not because they have no instrumental value, but because their instrumental value lies beyond Huizi's current equipmental horizon.
In this sense, it would still be important for us to retain a certain freedom and spontaneity so that we could continue exploring new uses, but we would not need to refer a standpoint outside usefulness.
Thanks for your thoughts, Bryan. To your first point, I take Lessing to be saying that utilitarianism organizes itself around the principle of utility, which means that it doesn't have a good answer to the question "what is the use of use?" A utilitarian might answer that 'happiness' or 'utility' is good in itself and is therefore self-justifying, but that, strictly speaking, is no longer a utilitarian position per se. It is an affirmative statement of value which exceeds the mere reckoning with utility. I would suggest that the key feature which distinguishes utilitarianism from other moral systems is not so much what it aims at, but rather the way it raises expediency as its chief value. Utilitarians of different stripes disagree about what constitutes 'utility,' but they agree about maximizing it by whatever means.
Regarding your second point, "equipmentality" is a good way to think about it, rather than "intrinsically good." What you say here really nails it: "Exploring the world, we would find ourselves constantly encountering a horizon of uselessness, a horizon which would recede as we explore and discover further uses. In that sense, the useful depends on the useless because it belongs to the same Equipmental whole which necessarily implies both. Zhuangzi's words could be useless not because they have no instrumental value, but because their instrumental value lies beyond Huizi's current equipmental horizon." The point is that the useless DOES have a use—this is why Zhuangzi calls it "the usefulness of the useless"—but what's useful about it is different from what's useful about more straightforwardly useful things: its "use" comes from the fact that it completes the whole, without which the category of 'useful' itself makes no sense.