1 Aquatic Beginnings: A Philosophy of Water by Elizabeth McAnally Throughout its history, philosophy has tended to express questions that

center on form. Philosophical themes such as truth, idea, reason, logic, will, essence, being, identity, difference, and even nature, existence, experience, and life have all been interrogated with little or no reference to how their formal meanings belong to materiality. In the following discussion, I will explore a philosophy that explicitly takes its initiative from matter, particularly from the matter of water. In other words, I am seeking a philosophy that expresses its forms and images according to the materiality of water, and not merely its formality. (By philosophy, I am not referring to any particular type, but rather any wonder, reflection, meditation, or contemplation that explores and articulates some aspect of the world that was previously hidden, sedimented, or forgotten.) In our search for beginnings of a philosophy of water, we need to realize that philosophy begins (and is perpetually beginning again) in many different cultures, within many different texts, everywhere we find expressions of the latent power and mystery of water. Because the history of philosophy is such an extensive and often disputed terrain, I will explore a small but diverse sample of beginnings of a philosophy of water, considering first the sixth-century Greek philosopher, Thales. In the accounts of Thales that have been handed down to us,i we find a thinker expressing wonder at the immensity of water, at the unending potency of water. Thales found water to be the source of all beings, the arche. Thales expresses the arche not as some mere formalism, but as the primordial, aquatic stuff of which everything is composed. Water constitutes everything; everything has its beginning in water; and to

2 water everything returns. Nietzsche noted that Thales philosophy marks the beginnings of the philosophical doctrine stating that everything is one.ii Thales implies that everything is one because everything is fundamentally related to water, because whenever the source or latent power of nature is explored, water comes to the surface. It seems fairly obvious to us why Thales, living on the shores of the Aegean Sea, might have been driven to make the claim that water is the arche. All things that are responsible for the generation and preservation of living thingsseeds, semen, amniotic fluid, blood, milk, waterare moist. From these readily apparent examples, we can get a sense for the immensity of water as it appears all throughout the natural world. It is this encompassing immensity of water that Thales articulates by assigning to water the causal power of the original source, the arche. With Thales, the formal structure of the arche is intertwined with the materiality of water. As I noted above, we can find beginnings of a philosophy of water apart from the Western tradition of philosophy and its roots in ancient Greece. For instance, such beginnings are also contained in the Tao Te Ching, the ancient Chinese text attributed to the legendary Old Master, Lao Tzu.iii In this text, we can find a sense of wonderment and devotion to the way (tao) of the myriad things and their sources, especially in terms of the way of water.iv For example, chapter 78 of the Tao Te Ching reads as follows: Nothing in the world is as soft and yielding as water. Yet for dissolving the hard and the inflexible, nothing can surpass it. The soft overcomes the hard; the gentle overcomes the rigid. Everyone knows this is true, but few can put it into practice. True words seem paradoxical.v

3 Soft and yielding as it is, water is able to slowly change things that appear to be hard and inflexible. Waters power to alter things softly and slowly is apparent in the phenomenon of the Grand Canyon: over a time-span of millions of years, the Colorado River has been able to gently wear down rigid rock piece by piece, creating the distinguished canyon we find today. Although it might seem paradoxical that such a soft and gentle thing as water could possess such erosive capabilities, we know for a fact that this is indeed true. Within this chapter of the Tao Te Ching, we can see wonderment at the seemingly paradoxical way in which water manifests itself. When one practices the gentle yet effective way of water, one informs ones own embodied, material activity according to the tao of water, that is, according to the ability of water to gently yet effectively transform its surroundings. In chapter 66, we also find water initiating aquatic philosophy: All streams flow to the sea because it is lower than they are. Humility gives it its power. If you want to govern the people, you must place yourself below them. If you want to lead the people, you must learn how to follow them. In this excerpt, we notice a reflection on the way of government expressed in terms of the seemingly paradoxical integration of humility and power evoked by the way of water. Because the sea is lower than streams, it is able to do nothing and still receive the power of the streams, for higher streams will naturally flow to the lower sea. Those who desire to govern and lead others are urged to let their actions be informed by the people they govern, as water lets its course be informed by the channel it traverses. The actions of government are encouraged to mimic the actions of wateractions at the limits of action, where action

4 is non-action. Here the very power of government is understood according to the way of the flowing stuff of water. Thus, we can see the beginnings of a philosophy of water as the way of government is articulated in terms of the gentle efficacy of water. Furthermore, the gentle efficacy of water is likened to the tao itself in chapter 8 of the Tao Te Ching: The supreme good is like water, which nourishes all things without trying to. It is content with the low places that people disdain. Thus it is like the Tao. With both Lao Tzu and Thales, the fundamental power of the world (tao, arche) is articulated according to the material of water, and thus not merely as a formal expression. In the thirteenth century, the founder of the St Zen school of Japanese Buddhism Dgenwrote a sutra in which he uses water to express the very nature of sh (enlightenment or realization).vi Like the Tao Te Ching, Dgens Mountains and Waters Sutra is filled with examples concerning the paradoxical characteristics of water, which reflect a truth about the way of the world, a truth which Dgen and Zen Buddhists call emptiness (k). Throughout sections 11 through 16, Dgen writes that while most humans only see water as continuously flowing, it is not the case that all beings see water in this same way. For instance, the dragons and fish living within the sea do not perceive their home as something flowing, constantly moving and changing; on the contrary, they see water as an abode, a palace, a stable, structured dwelling. The palaces of human beings, on the other hand, appear to dragons and fish to be flowing (unlike the water-palace they inhabit), similarly to how we see the homes of these sea beings not as a stable palace, but as flowing water. By expressing the different ways that water is experienced, Dgen helps us to realize that waters flow and do not flow. Seeing the relativity of the flowing and not-

5 flowing of water means realizing that no form belongs inherently to water as such, because the material of water is informed according to the situation of the informer, so that it is empty of any inherently existing form. The various ways in which waters appear lead Dogen to express the emptiness of water, and thus the emptiness of all reality. In other words, Dgen found that one could come to a realization (sh) of the emptiness of water by reflecting on that everyday activity (sh) whereby water is informed by fish, humans, and other beings. In realizing the emptiness of water, one realizes that all beings are empty and thus the same in their emptiness. Here we can see within Dgens sutra that the appearance of the relative forms of water reflects the practice-realization (shush) of the emptiness of all beings. Beginnings of a philosophy of water appear here in Dogens sutra insofar as the very stuff of water is initiating a wonder at the interdependence (and thus emptiness) of the various forms of its material (e.g., its flowing and non-flowing) and the perspectives of the beings that inform it. Now that we have seen beginnings of a philosophy of water in ancient Greece, ancient China, and thirteenth-century Japan, I wish to turn our attention to the possibility of a philosophy of water beginning in our present situation. One key place for us to look is within the work of Gaston Bachelard entitled Water and Dreams: An Essay on the Imagination of Matter. In this book, Bachelard investigates how the water of the physical world is one element of the matter from which we form our dreams, reveries, and images. When we meditate on the matter of water (that is, when we wonder at water), we are cultivating a water mind-set that enables us to participate more fully in the aquatic reality of nature.vii Indeed, this water mind-set enables us to fathom the very mystery of nature. Thus, Bachelard writes, A leap into the unknown is a leap into water.viii From

6 this single sentence, we see that for Bachelard, an exploration that plummets into mystery invokes the image of leaping into water and fathoming its fluid depths. Bachelard comments in his first chapter that humans try to understand themselves in the way of Narcissus, by reflecting on water.ix The image of Narcissus is an image of a human being knowing, loving, and penetrating into its own mysterious depths. This image does not merely express some formal, psychological structure; it also expresses a material image of water, appropriated for the sake of understanding the mystery of self-reflection, wherein an embodied being fathoms its own embodied thickness. The way in which our imagination informs the mysteries of self-reflection is initiated by our familiarity (or lack thereof) with the material depths of water. Narcissus loves the image of himself that appears reflected in still water. Water, unlike a mirror, allows Narcissus to participate in his image; it provides the depth and continuity that a static mirror is unable to offer, as a mirror remains a superficial reflection, a barrier that does not allow the self to penetrate inside itself in reflection. Only water allows Narcissus to enter into his own image and fathom the mystery beneath the surface. Bachelard also shows that material imagination sees water as an archetype of purity, having the power to cleanse both matter and form.x While it is evident that water can clean a dirty body, it is often forgotten that water has the power to purify an impure soul (ones internal, formal structure). The Christian may say that the ritual performance of baptism purifies the soul; the historian of religion may talk about water as a symbol that points to purification. However, Bachelard argues that the purifying power of water lies within the very liquid stuff of water. Thus, whether in a baptismal ceremony, in the Fountain of Youth, in the Exodus of the Israelites, or in the many rituals performed in the

7 Ganges River, water has the power to purifyto bring one out of original sin, out of old age, out of slavery, or out of any sort of dirt or destitution. Bachelards general project of wondering at the appropriation of matter by the forms of the imagination is taken up by Ivan Illich in his book H2O and the Waters of Forgetfulness, wherein he looks specifically to the relation between urban water and urban space. Integral to Illichs investigation is his distinction between water and H2O. Illich, following Bachelard, says that water is a living, archetypal fluid, a fertile material that is informed by our imagination and dreams. Having the ability to both purify form and clean matter, water communicates its purity by touching or waking the substance of a thing and it cleans by washing dirt from its surface.xi On the other hand, H2O is water that has been transmogrified, reduced to a chemically constituted fluid with which archetypal waters cannot be mixed.xii Unlike living, archetypal water (which has the power to purify and cleanse), the fluid of H2O is in need of cleansing and purification. H2O needs to be cleansed of the diseases and pollutants that often accumulate in it, whether it be stagnating or circulating through pipes. H2O needs to be purified of its abstraction from the archetypal waters, purified of what Whitehead would call the fallacy of misplaced concreteness and what Husserl would call the forgetfulness of lifeworld. The transmogrification of water into H2O has brought water into the service of industrial development and technological progress, which has saturated water with the very dirt and grime that it used to be able to clean, and which has abstracted the chemical form of water from the heterogeneous mixture of its living flow. Thus, in bringing H2O into our modern technocracy, water has been forgotten, abandoned in favor of a formula, a technologized, domesticated

8 abstraction. Instead of letting the materiality of water inform our imagination, our modern technocracy lets the scientific information that supports its development manipulate and control water. In other words, instead of letting waters movements initiate our information, we let our information of water control the movement of water, forgetting that we would have no information about H2O were it not for the archetypal waters that have been abandoned to the oblivion of forgetfulness. By wondering at the differences between living water and abstract H2O, Illich shows us the possibility of a philosophy of water in our present situation. Both he and Bachelard contemplate the materiality of water as it initiates various forms of our imagination, whether these forms are appropriated by technoscience, poetry, religion, or any mode of expression. Thus, we can see beginnings of a philosophy of water wherever someone inquires into the materiality of aquatic images. Throughout this investigation, I have discussed the materiality of aquatic images appearing as arche, tao, shush, self-reflection, the archetypal cleanser and purifier, and H2O. Furthermore, there are many more aquatic images that can be interrogated; there are many more water metaphors that can serve as beginnings of a philosophy of water. For example, William James speaks of the activity of consciousness not as a chain, not as a train, but as a stream of consciousness, for only the flow of streaming water can express the immediate connectedness of conscious experience.xiii In speaking of this metaphor, James explicitly points to the way in which the very materiality of water influenced his interpretation of consciousness as a stream. However, a philosophy of water must not restrict its beginnings to images that are explicitly aware of their dependence upon aquatic materiality. Just as Illich has noted, if

9 we want to recover water in its living, informed reality, we must also investigate those images that have forgotten their relation to the materiality of water. For example, electrical current is articulated in a mathematical formula, wherein the time rate of the flow of electricity (I) is equal to the voltage (V) divided by the resistance (R) of the conductor. This formula and the way it is taught and applied rarely (if ever) show how the quantified and mathematicized amperes of electrical current belong with the materiality of waters current.xiv A philosophy of water looks at all images, even abstract formulas, with a view to their relationship to the archetypal aquatic material. A philosophy of water imagines with forms and materials, interrogating their intertwined ambiguity, never fully separating the image from the material. Whether the materiality of water is explicitly expressed in the image or hidden beneath the surface, a philosophy of water begins when any image is interrogated in terms of its relationship to the liquid, flowing stuff of water. For any philosopher, water can initiate a reflection that fathoms the depths of the self and indeed, the depths of all beings. In other words, water can initiate a philosophy of water, which reflects on any image and attempts to articulate its place with water.

Cf. Richard D. McKirahan, Philosophy Before Socrates: An Introduction with Texts and Commentary (Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company, 1994), pp. 23-31. ii Cf. Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks, trans. Marianne Cowan (Regnery, 1996). iii Bearing in mind that the historical existence of Lao Tzu has been disputed, the date of this texts authorship is widely disputed; however, it is agreed that the terminus a quo is the 6th century BCE, and the terminus ad quem is the 3rd century BCE. Cf. A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy, ed. and trans. Wing-Tsit Chan (Princeton University Press, 1963), p. 137. iv Although there have been widely variant translations of this text, many translators (including Stephen Mitchell, D. C. Lao, John C. H. Wu, and Wing-Tsit Chan) agree that water symbolism accurately conveys the meaning of numerous tropes represented in the Chinese text.

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All excerpts of the Tao Te Ching used in this paper are borrowed from Stephen Mitchells translation (Harper Perennial, 1992). vi A translation of the Mountains and Waters Sutra (Shansui-Kyo) is printed within the book edited by Kazuaki Tanahashi entitled Moon in a Dewdrop: Writings of Zen Master Dgen (New York: North Point Press, 1985). Hajime Tanabe, a philosopher of modern Japan, asserted in 1939 that Dgen was the first Japanese philosopher (Tanahashi, p. 24). vii Gaston Bachelard, Water and Dreams: An Essay on the Imagination of Matter, trans. Edith R. Farrell (Dallas: The Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture, 1983), p. 5. viii Ibid., p. 165. ix Cf. Clear Waters, Springtime Water and Running Waters: The Objective Conditions for Narcissism, chapter 1 of Water and Dreams, pp. 19-43. x Cf. Purity and Purification: Waters Morality, chapter 6 of Water and Dreams, pp. 133-57. xi Ivan Illich, H2O and the Waters of Forgetfulness (Berkeley: Heyday Books, 1985), p. 27. xii Ibid., p. 7. xiii Consciousness, then, does not appear to itself chopped up in bits. Such words as chain or train do not describe it fitly as it presents itself in the first instance. It is nothing jointed; it flows. A river or a stream are the metaphors by which it is most naturally described. In talking of it hereafter, let us call it the stream of thought, of consciousness, or of subjective life. William James, The Stream of Consciousness, in Pragmatism and Other Writings, ed. Giles Gunn (New York: Penguin Books, 2000), p. 177. xiv A philosophy of water would further investigate the way in which the material current of water has been remembered or forgotten in the use of metaphors that represent current as the present, the now, the contemporary. For instance, when current events are spoken of in the media or in the classroom, the material current of water is used metaphorically to express the feeling of being caught up in the intense flow of information disseminated constantly. However, there is much water in our experience of current events that is yet to be remembered. Whatever depth, purity, and other archetypal characteristics of water that might be flowing in the current of current events are rarely questioned, especially with reference to water.