François Jullien: The Double Transit of Human Life

Abstract

François Jullien finds the “unthinkable” in our philosophical tradition in his journey to the Chinese world. One of these ideas is precisely that of understanding nature as a process, not formulated in terms of continuity but of transit. In this transit human life is inscribed, like all lives. But in Jullien there is also an ethical commitment to understand this human life as open to the possibility of another transit, that of a second life. These are interesting ideas to pick up even seeing the limitations of the Chinese approach. As François Cheng points out, the ideas of subject and right are missing. We could go further and say that the idea of freedom is missing. But Jullien overcomes these limitations by pointing out this lack and overcoming it in his proposal. But as he also underlines, it is precisely this idea of transit as a way out of our dualisms and polarities that can teach us the most, as Westerners.