Before Self-Negation: Four Philosophical Paths and the Place of Sustenesis

By Geoffrey Chen

What I want to compare is not only what Yang Guorong, Deng Xiaomang and Zhao Tingyang have proposed. I am more interested in where each of them begins philosophically, and in how the Sustenesis framework I am developing relates to their different paths.

These theories do not operate at exactly the same level. Yang reconstructs concrete metaphysics around the concept of shi, or human affairs and activity. Deng begins from the self-negation of language in his reconstruction of contemporary metaphysics. Zhao transforms tianxia, “all under heaven”, into a political philosophy addressed to the world. Sustenesis, by contrast, asks about the basic conditions under which any form of existence, knowledge, subjectivity or order can form and persist. If they are reduced to the labels of practice, language, relation and structure, the comparison soon becomes a list of categories and the more important differences disappear.

Nor am I making this comparison in order to affirm or reject any of these theories prematurely. In particular, I have not yet read Deng Xiaomang’s three-volume Toward the Post-Linguistic: The Reconstruction of Contemporary Metaphysics in full. My present understanding comes from Deng’s own video presentations, material released by the publisher and other commentary. Any judgement I make about the work must therefore remain a preliminary reading of its publicly presented structure, not a substitute for close study of the books themselves. Sustenesis is also at a decisive stage of construction. Its core framework is now in place, but many of its conceptual relations still require clarification and argument. The purpose of this comparison is to widen the theoretical field and test the starting point of Sustenesis, not to rush towards a conclusion in intellectual history.

Entering the Real World through Shi

Yang Guorong’s “concrete metaphysics” seeks to overcome the distance between abstract metaphysics and real existence. He does not begin with an isolated entity, a pure idea or a linguistic form. Instead, he understands shi as a form of existence originating in human knowing and acting and unfolding through the practices of life. From the standpoint of shi, mind and thing, knowledge and action, fact and value, and the cultivation of oneself and of things are no longer treated as separate domains. The real world is not merely a ready-made object standing before us; it continually takes shape through human activity.

This is a genuine project of philosophical construction. It does not simply revive a traditional Chinese concept. By making shi its pivot, it attempts to reorganise the relations among ontology, epistemology, ethics and practical philosophy. It draws on Chinese philosophy’s concern with the unity of knowing and acting, the mutual cultivation of self and things, and the realities of lived practice, while also employing modern methods of conceptual analysis and systematic construction. It would therefore be inaccurate to understand Yang only as a historian of Chinese philosophy. He has developed a framework with its own centre of inquiry and its own organising concept.

The objects of concrete metaphysics are not confined to China. Human beings and the world, mind and thing, knowledge and action, existence and meaning are all general philosophical problems. Yet the framework did not arise as a direct continuation of a problem sequence internal to Western metaphysics. Shi, together with the relations between cultivating oneself and cultivating things and between knowing and acting, is more directly connected to resources within Chinese philosophy. Kant, Hegel, Marx, Heidegger and other Western thinkers form an important comparative and argumentative background. This is not a theoretical defect. It does mean, however, that when concrete metaphysics enters the shared argumentative space of world philosophy, it must explain how shi differs from concepts such as action, practice, event, process or praxis, and why it can offer an account of existing problems in Western metaphysics that those concepts cannot replace. The generality of a theory’s subject matter does not by itself establish cross-traditional argumentative force.

The centre of gravity of Yang’s framework nevertheless remains “human beings and the human world”. He distinguishes the world as it is in itself from the real world. Reality that has not entered into a substantial relation with human beings appears in an original or in-itself form. Through the many forms of shi, human beings act upon reality, and the real world acquires a human shape. This brings the formation of a human world of meaning and the connections among knowledge, action, morality and history into one theoretical field. Whether the framework can also bear the weight of a general ontology depends on how it defines the boundaries of both shi and the human.

If the formation of the real world is centred in principle on human knowing and acting, further questions arise. Where should we place cosmic structures that existed before life, natural processes without human participation, and artificial systems that may preserve knowledge, perform tasks and alter their environment with a degree of independence? Yang does not deny an in-itself reality or the physical principles of things that do not depend on human beings. The question is therefore not whether his theory can acknowledge existence beyond humanity. It is how the theory explains the formation of structures within in-itself existence, and whether centres of activity other than the human can generate real relations of their own.

Artificial intelligence makes this question more immediate. When knowledge can be preserved, retrieved, tested, revised and put into operation without a human subject being present at every moment, and when artificial systems begin to establish relatively independent feedback processes, it becomes necessary to ask whether a bearer of shi must in principle be human. This is an external test that I derive from the development of AI, not a judgement that Yang himself has made. It does not directly refute concrete metaphysics. It tests whether this is fundamentally a metaphysics centred on concrete human existence or a general ontology capable of extending to non-human structures.

Yang’s philosophy can therefore still be discussed as a theory of human beings, practice and a world of meaning when it is removed from its original Chinese background. Its subject matter is general and not valid only for Chinese experience. Yet shi, the cultivation of self and things, and the mutual achievement of human beings and the world retain a strong humanistic and practical orientation. Whether they already provide a common starting point for the human world, natural structures and non-human intelligence remains to be shown. AI does not invalidate this philosophy; it makes the test of its scope more urgent.

Language, Self-Negation and the Reconstruction of Metaphysics

Deng Xiaomang’s path comes from a different intellectual tradition. His long engagement with Kant, Hegel and Marx has been accompanied by an attempt to bring free will, subjectivity, self-consciousness and reflection into the analysis of Chinese intellectual culture. In Toward the Post-Linguistic: The Reconstruction of Contemporary Metaphysics, he develops these long-standing studies into a new metaphysical system and explicitly presents a “philosophy of self-negation” in the third volume. According to his public account of the project, self-negation is not merely an outcome reached at the end of the theory. It is raised to the position of the beginning of metaphysics. Language can move beyond established meaning because language itself has the capacity for self-negation.

The wording of the title is significant. “The post-linguistic” does not simply abandon the philosophy of language. It attempts to open a new route to metaphysics from within language after the linguistic turn has already taken place. The word “toward” also suggests a possible Hegelian resonance of spiritual unfolding: thought does not remain at a fixed starting point but moves through itself towards a form not yet completed. This is my interpretation based on the title, Deng’s intellectual background and the available descriptions. Whether the wording deliberately organises the structure of the whole work can only be established through the text itself.

Giving self-negation a foundational place supplies the project with considerable theoretical force. According to its published outline, the framework seeks to explain why language is not a closed symbolic system, why a subject can reflect upon itself, why a culture can break through an inherited form, and how Chinese and Western philosophy might enter a movement beyond established determinations. In contrast to declaring an existing Chinese or Western concept to be universal, self-negation at least attempts to explain how concepts and subjects can leave an existing position.

Yet an earlier question remains. For anything to negate itself, it must in some way form and persist as a self that can be recognised. The self-negation of language presupposes distinguishable signs, rules, contexts and relations of meaning. For a subject to reflect upon and negate itself, it must have formed a structure capable of persistence, return and reorganisation. Without such conditions, the “self” cannot be identified and negation loses its object.

This is what I mean by “before self-negation”. “Before” does not refer to chronological sequence but to structural conditions of possibility. It does not suggest that a finished entity first exists and is only later, and accidentally, negated. The claim is that self-negation itself requires difference, constraint and some degree of sustained coherence. Only if a structure retains a minimal recognisability through change can that change be described as self-negation rather than as an unrelated event.

From the standpoint of Sustenesis, negation is not the first unit of movement. It is one form in which differences are reorganised under constraints. Self-negation may be crucial, but it is not a final starting point exempt from explanation. Why self-negation is possible, what sort of structure can negate itself, and why the result can still be understood as a movement of the same structure all call for an account more fundamental than negation alone.

This question does not yet amount to a refutation of a philosophy of self-negation. Deng could answer that the self is not a completed entity prior to negation but is constituted through the movement of self-negation itself. The Hegelian tradition would likewise resist any static identity placed in advance. The real comparison is therefore not about whether identity or negation comes first in time. It concerns whether the movement of self-negation has already explained how differences are organised, how a structure remains recognisable, and why change can still be attributed to one continuing process. Sustenesis poses a question about structural conditions; it does not restore a fixed entity before negation.

Whether Deng has already answered these questions through his accounts of linguistic structure, self-consciousness or dialectical movement will require a systematic reading of the three volumes. It cannot be decided from public summaries alone. What can already be said is that Sustenesis and the philosophy of self-negation are not two vocabularies for the same claim. The latter places negativity at the beginning of metaphysics; Sustenesis places the structural conditions under which negation can occur at a more basic level. Their difference lies not in whether they recognise change, but in where they locate the possibility of change.

Tianxia and the Difficulty of Universalisation

Zhao Tingyang is concerned first of all with world politics. He is not satisfied with interpreting China through Western political philosophy. He reconstructs tianxia as a political philosophy addressed to the world. Through the ideas that “tianxia has no outside”, relational rationality and the world as a whole, he seeks to move beyond a modern political order organised around individuals, sovereign states and international competition, and to ask how multiple subjects can form a common world. The level of comparison needs to remain clear. The tianxia theory has ontological premises, but it is primarily a philosophy of world politics and does not directly correspond to the full range of questions addressed by general metaphysics or Sustenesis.

Zhao’s intellectual resources are Chinese, but his method of construction does not remain solely within the language of traditional Chinese thought. He abstracts, systematises and universalises a historical concept that combines geographical space, civilisational order, political legitimacy and ethical relations, and places it in dialogue with Hobbes, Kant, cosmopolitanism and modern international relations theory. This is recognisably a modern method of academic philosophy and reflects an explicit ambition to bring a Chinese concept into world philosophy.

The difficulty arises within this very process of universalisation. Tianxia carries dense meanings from Chinese history. If these are retained, the theory can appear as a model of world order centred on Chinese experience and must answer questions about centre and periphery, individual rights, political consent, constraints on power and institutional legitimacy. If the historical content is abstracted until little remains beyond global wholeness and relational rationality, tianxia may approach existing forms of cosmopolitanism, relationalism or global-governance theory, weakening its own distinctiveness.

This is not an accidental problem peculiar to Zhao. It confronts any theory that seeks to raise a culturally embedded concept to the level of universal philosophy. The richer the cultural content of a concept, the more difficult it is to establish immediate cross-cultural validity. The further the concept is abstracted, the greater the risk that it will lose the features that made it philosophically distinctive. A theory cannot resolve this difficulty merely by pointing to structural differences between Chinese and Western thought, because overcoming those differences is part of the argument the theory itself must provide.

From Bridges between Buildings to the Foundation

The real issue is not whether a philosophy may have a cultural origin of its own. Every philosophy arises within a particular historical and cultural environment, and Sustenesis is no exception. The environment in which a theory originates and the dependence of its basic concepts on that environment are two different matters.

If the basic concepts of a theory come from a particular cultural tradition and acquire their full meaning only through the historical experience and intellectual assumptions of that tradition, the theory may still become philosophically important and may certainly enter other cultural contexts. But when it also claims to provide a common foundation for different philosophical traditions, it encounters a structural limit. One of the objects it is meant to explain is the very cultural tradition from which those basic concepts derive.

Using established concepts from Chinese philosophy to interpret Western philosophy, or established concepts from Western philosophy to interpret Chinese philosophy, can produce important results. Yet either approach has already selected a point of observation. It can establish connections between the two bodies of thought, but it is less able to provide the common ground from which both took shape.

This is the difference between building a bridge between existing buildings and returning to their foundations. At least as a theoretical requirement, a genuinely foundational theory must be capable of treating both Chinese and Western philosophy as objects in need of explanation. It cannot simply take a developed concept from one as the explanatory starting point for the other.

This does not mean searching for a philosophy without any cultural origin. Such a philosophy is impossible. What must be reduced is not the cultural background of a theory’s formation, but the logical dependence of its foundational concepts on one particular tradition. More precisely, basic concepts should not require the assumptions of any single tradition as a condition of their validity. They should be recognisable, testable and usable within intellectual structures formed by different cultures.

Yang’s shi, Deng’s self-negation and Zhao’s tianxia can all travel beyond their original settings, but each retains a distinct intellectual genealogy. Shi is centred on human knowing, acting and the formation of a world of meaning. Self-negation remains deeply connected to German Idealism and especially to Hegelian dialectical movement. Tianxia cannot be detached from the historical memory of Chinese civilisational order. Intellectual origin is not in itself a theoretical defect; every philosophy has a context of emergence. What must be tested is whether these concepts maintain stable definitions beyond that context, enter the problem sequences of other traditions, and support arguments that do not require others to accept their cultural presuppositions in advance.

The Level Chosen by Sustenesis

I did not propose Sustenesis in order to bridge Chinese and Western philosophy. It begins with more general questions. How does an existence form and persist? How can knowledge be preserved and remain operational without a constant knowing subject? How does a subject emerge? Why can a structure be sustained, break down or transform?

Sustenesis takes difference, constraint and sustained coherence as its three basic concepts. They are not a mathematical sum and they are not three ready-made properties placed side by side. Its current foundational proposal is that without difference there are no terms capable of entering relations; without constraint differences cannot form a bounded structure; and without sustained coherence, formed relations cannot remain recognisable and effective through change. Existence is the sustained coherence of a sustenetic structure. “Sustenesis” refers at once to formation and continuation. It does not describe a completed thing first coming into being and then being maintained from outside. These remain foundational propositions that require argument; they are not conclusions established merely by definition.

These concepts are also expressed in modern language and inevitably bear traces of my time, knowledge and intellectual path. Sustenesis cannot claim to stand outside culture. It seeks not cultural neutrality but a form of conceptual independence in which its foundations do not require the presuppositions of Confucianism, Daoism, German Idealism, phenomenology, analytic philosophy or any other single tradition. Different traditions may understand and test these concepts in their own languages, but none should monopolise the source of their meaning.

A Chinese system of thought can contain differences, be subject to constraints and form sustained coherence. The same is true of a Western philosophical system. Life, language, social institutions and artificial intelligence can likewise be examined through these structural relations. Chinese and Western philosophy need no longer be understood first as two completed systems waiting to be connected. They can instead be treated as different philosophical structures that formed and persisted under different historical conditions, social structures, linguistic environments and intellectual constraints.

The question then changes. It is no longer only how Chinese philosophy might be translated into Western philosophy, or how Western philosophy might reinterpret Chinese philosophy. The more basic questions are why different cultural constraints produce different philosophical structures, why those structures persist over long periods, and why they change under new constraints. If an explanation at this level can be sustained, the connection between Chinese and Western philosophy need not depend on one-to-one correspondences between their mature conceptual systems. They can preserve real differences while sharing structural conditions that can be investigated in common.

Sustenesis has a metaphilosophical function here because it examines how philosophical categories and theoretical frameworks themselves form. But it is not merely an external classification of philosophies. It also makes first-order claims about existence, knowledge, subjects and structures, and is therefore a developing framework in ontology and epistemology.

This position gives Sustenesis a potentially wider scope and a correspondingly heavier burden of argument. A wider scope marks a difference in the level of its claims; it does not automatically make the theory more correct. Sustenesis must identify the relevant differences within each domain, show how constraints operate, explain how sustained coherence can be recognised, and account for why one structure forms while another does not. If every phenomenon can be redescribed after the fact in the language of difference, constraint and sustained coherence, these concepts will decline into a general vocabulary rather than a philosophical explanation capable of distinguishing among alternatives.

Sustenesis must also include itself among the things it explains. It was proposed by a particular person in a period of rapidly developing AI, through Chinese and English and with the resources of modern science and philosophy. It cannot be without historical conditions of its own. If it can explain only how other philosophies are culturally constrained, but cannot explain why it arose under its own constraints or allow research in different cultural settings to test and revise it, it will place itself in an unearned position of superiority. A common foundation does not stand outside all cultures. It must withstand both cross-cultural and reflexive examination.

Where Philosophy Begins

The differences among these paths also concern how philosophers enter philosophy. Yang Guorong and Deng Xiaomang developed their theories through long and systematic work in the history of philosophy. Zhao Tingyang reconstructed a Chinese concept through the problem of world political order. My path is different. Sustenesis did not begin by organising the concepts of an established philosopher. It grew out of a long-standing way of observing: from an early stage, I found myself asking why something became what it is, how a person, a society or a body of knowledge remains itself through change, and under what conditions it can no longer continue.

I call this capacity philosophical intuition, or, in a more conversational sense, “philosophical sensibility”. It is neither a mystical experience nor a talent exempt from intellectual training, and it cannot replace conceptual analysis or argument. It describes a sensitivity to the structure of problems that may exist before a mature theory, allowing someone to notice relations in concrete things that available concepts have not fully explained. Knowledge of philosophical history can train and correct this intuition, but need not be its only source.

Sustenesis must nevertheless enter the history of philosophy, compare itself rigorously with existing theories, and accept the constraints of logic, evidence and interdisciplinary knowledge. Intuition may discover a problem; it cannot prove an answer. Conversely, if philosophy becomes only the expert interpretation of established texts, it may reach a high scholarly level yet struggle to produce new foundational questions. These are not simple opposites but a tension that philosophical creation must sustain.

I therefore do not judge the value of another theory by whether it agrees with Sustenesis, nor do I turn differences in research paths into judgements about a philosopher’s personal capacity. The point of comparison is to identify what each theory treats as a starting point beyond further question, and what each leaves for later explanation.

The Place of the Four Paths

Yang Guorong begins with human shi and places mind and thing, knowledge and action, fact and value within an interconnected inquiry, thereby constructing concrete metaphysics. His subject matter is general, but his central framework did not arise directly from a problem sequence internal to Western metaphysics. To enter the common argumentative field of world philosophy, it must explain both how shi differs from related Western concepts and who or what can bear shi when the theory moves from human practice to non-human structures.

Deng Xiaomang begins from the self-negation of language and attempts to reconstruct metaphysics after the linguistic turn. He places change, reflection and the capacity to exceed established determinations at the centre. Sustenesis then asks how self-negation can be identified as the movement of one continuing structure. But this question must confront a possible answer from the philosophy of self-negation—that the self is generated within negation—rather than presenting itself prematurely as a completed criticism.

Zhao Tingyang reconstructs tianxia from a Chinese historical concept into a philosophy of world politics and directly addresses the coexistence of multiple subjects. His difficulty is to retain the philosophical distinctiveness of tianxia while showing that its foundational significance does not depend on prior acceptance of Chinese civilisational experience.

Sustenesis attempts to specify the structural conditions under which activity, negation, relation and order can occur before shi, self-negation and tianxia are respectively adopted as theoretical starting points. Here “before” refers only to the level of the conditions being sought. It does not mean that Sustenesis has already proved itself historically or logically superior to these theories. It was not conceived to surpass any particular philosopher, and it cannot announce in advance that it has completed a more thorough philosophy. It has chosen a broader and therefore riskier theoretical task.

“Before self-negation” does not ultimately mean rejecting self-negation. It means asking about the conditions on which negation depends. It does not deny the reality of shi, but asks what structures form before and beyond human action. Nor does it reject the global ambition of tianxia. It asks why different cultural orders produce different concepts of the world.

The point at which Chinese and Western philosophy may genuinely meet perhaps lies not between their completed conceptual systems, but in the conditions under which those concepts form, persist and transform. Sustenesis is at present a theoretical beginning whose core framework has formed while crucial problems remain unresolved. Whether it can provide such a common foundation will not be decided by theoretical ambition. It can only be demonstrated through further conceptual clarification, concrete explanation and cross-cultural testing.

References

Yang Guorong, Ren yu shijie: yi “shi” guan zhi [Human Beings and the World: Viewed through Shi], Beijing: SDX Joint Publishing Company, 2021; revised ed., Beijing: Peking University Press, 2023.

Yang Guorong, the four-volume Concrete Metaphysics collection: Dao lun [A Treatise on Dao], Lunli yu cunzai [Ethics and Existence], Chengji yu chengwu [The Mutual Cultivation of Self and Things], and Renlei xingdong yu shijian zhihui [Human Action and Practical Wisdom], Beijing: Peking University Press, 2020. https://chinese-thought.ecnu.edu.cn/d5/c0/c22341a316864/page.htm

Feng Lin, “How Is ‘Concrete Metaphysics’ Possible? An Interview with Professor Yang Guorong”, interview for Renmin University of China Reprinted Materials, reposted by the Confucius Research Institute, 9 January 2025. https://www.kongziyjy.org/nd.jsp?id=2465

Deng Xiaomang, Zouxiang yuyanxue zhihou: dangdai xingershangxue de chongjian [Toward the Post-Linguistic: The Reconstruction of Contemporary Metaphysics], 3 vols, Beijing: Commercial Press, 2024–2026. Vol. 3, Philosophy of Self-Negation, ISBN 978-7-100-26202-6.

Commercial Press, “Book Launch for Deng Xiaomang’s Toward the Post-Linguistic Held in Beijing”, 9 September 2026. https://www.cp.com.cn/Content/2026/09-09/1457431002.html

Zhao Tingyang, Tianxia tixi: shijie zhidu zhexue daolun [The Tianxia System: An Introduction to a Philosophy of World Institutions], Nanjing: Jiangsu Education Press, 2005; rev. ed., Beijing: Renmin University of China Press, 2011.

Zhao Tingyang, All under Heaven: The Tianxia System for a Possible World Order, trans. Joseph E. Harroff, Oakland: University of California Press, 2021.