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14 R. T. Ames

Far from making any kind of a universalistic claim here, we are arguing for the
primacy of relationality and the value of complexity and vagueness. We insist that
first at the level of the theoretical and practical distinction:

The comparative philosopher, at least as much as the intracultural thinker, must be aware
that the important questions do not so much involve the translation of a term from one
semantic context to another, but its translation into (or from) practice. . . . We must be at least
as concerned with the rationalization of practices and their illustration of ideas and beliefs as
we are with “defining our terms.” (Hall & Ames, 1995, p. 173)
Again, our focus-field theory of philosophy of culture like Lao’s “double-struc-
tured theory” can also be explained in the holographic and aspectual vocabulary
of “forming and functioning” and Tang Junyi’s postulate, “the inseparability of
the one and the many”:

A productively vague model of cultures would construe them as local distortions of a
general field which is itself without specifiable boundary conditions. This focus/field
model contrasts readily with both positivist and idealist models by offering an alternative
sense of abstraction. … Any “part” abstracted from the whole adumbrates the whole. As a
consequence, the partiality of the elements of a cultural field advertises the complexity of
the field (Hall & Ames, 1995, p. 178).

We in our own work like Lao have aspired to be “intra-cultural” philosophers for
whom the subject of philosophy itself, far from by being fragmented by focusing
on the comparison among, or the conjoining of erstwhile discrete elements, is one
complex thing. For us too, philosophy having no outside, can be reconnoitered
only from within. Philosophizing so conceived is a kind of Wittgensteinian “criss-
crossing”: the selecting and correlating of some episodes of insight from among
the boundless many within the wholeness and continuity of our ever-evolving
personal and philosophical narrative.
Hegel in positing his strongly teleological philosophy of culture is in many
ways making explicit (if not overdetermining) what is implicit in the traditional
understanding of the term “culture” itself—that is, the traditional understanding of
culture as it has evolved under the influence of Western cultural metaphors in the
European languages. We might begin from first acknowledging that it is our
horticulture and husbanding occupations with their strong teleological pre-
suppositions that serve as the metaphors underlying our term “culture.” Such
assumptions are wont to persuade us uncritically that the “cultivation” of
“culture” has to do with conserving, nurturing, and actualizing a specific set of
inborn potentialities that are driven by a given telos or inherent design. As I
observed above, Hegel’s strong teleology with its seemingly theological implica-
tions brings logic and history together by conceptualizing both nature and history