





















































François Jullien: The Double Transit of Human Life


Elementa
Intersections between Philosophy, Epistemology 
and Empirical Perspectives

2 
(2022) 

1-2

Transitions

Edited by Tommaso Sgarro

First Section

Tommaso Sgarro
Editorial I – Transitions: New and Different Perspectives 9

Tommaso Sgarro
The Human “Historicity” as a Permanent Transition 13 
in the Philosophy of Ignacio Ellacuría

Luis Roca Jusmet
François Jullien: The Double Transit of Human Life 27

Jordi Riba Miralles
The Event, beyond the Permanent Crisis 37

Alessia Franco
For an Epistemology of Transition: Paul B. Preciado, 51 
Psychoanalysis and the Regime of Sexual Difference

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Elementa. Intersections between Philosophy, Epistemology and Empirical Perspectives

Second Section

Tommaso Sgarro
Editorial II – Governing Transitions 67

Pierpaolo Limone - Maria Grazia Simone
Becoming Support Teachers at the University of Foggia 71 
During the Pandemic. An Exploratory Survey

Francesca Finestrone
Music: For a Sustainable Community and the Promotion 85 
of Well-being

Gennaro Balzano - Vito Balzano
Educating for Transition in Work Contexts 101

Giuseppina Maria Patrizia Surace
The Future We Want: The Transition to Adulthood 111 
of Unaccompanied Minors

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François Jullien: The Double Transit 
of Human Life
Luis Roca Jusmet
Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona – UAB (Spain)

doi: https://dx.doi.org/10.7358/elementa-2022-0102-roju
 lroca13@gmail.com

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.

Keywords: China; duration; François Cheng; François Jullien; freedom; process; 
real life; second life; silent transformation; time; transit; true life.

François Jullien (1951) is a French philosopher, trained in Hellenism, who 
makes his geographical, cultural and linguistic journey to China to access, 
from the most distant, the unthinkable in our Greco-Roman-European 
tradition. Jullien finds in the classical Chinese texts fascinating ideas that 
arise from a way of thinking differently from that of conceptualization and 
argumentation.

In Chinese logic, everything is conditional and complex, and we are 
part of a process that is never closed, that is always open to new combina-
tions. François Jullien not only deals with the issue of efficiency in terms 

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Luis Roca Jusmet

of strategy, but also offers an approach to its morality from a reading of 
Mencius, compared with Kant (Jullien, 1997).

What Jullien proposes, rather than focusing on the differences 
between European and Chinese approaches, is that we need to build a 
bridge instead of noting the distance between one and the other, which 
would consist of taking the Chinese idea and putting it in dialogue with 
our own to create new conceptualizations. One of them is to understand 
human life as a double transit. On the one hand, we are part of life as a 
transit because we are part of nature. On the other hand, he proposes an 
ethics that has as one of its keys what he calls the second life.

1. The first transit: life as a process of silent 
transformation

The theme of time is another key issue. Jullien deals specifically in a book 
with the theme of time as an element of a philosophy of life (Jullien, 
2001). In the Chinese language there are no verbal tenses, the being is 
always a being in phase and the basic notion is that of duration. There are 
no abstract concepts of Space or Time, but at the same time in China both 
space and time are always present in a qualitative way in the form of loca-
tions and moments. Time understood as eras, seasons and epochs. Spaces 
as domains, climates and orientations. Always linked to each other: each 
period in solidarity with a climate. The basic notions are moment-occasion 
and duration. It is necessary to follow the natural course, not to force it. 
Everything is immanent. Time is understood as a “between moments”, 
that is to say as transits. Our being in the world is seasonal, which means 
that it is the transit between one season and another that marks our vital 
rhythm. There is no conception of continuity either in space or in time. 
The cyclical character is marked by this idea of transition, which is neither 
a circular nor a linear process. It is the idea of the return of transitions that 
determines the way in which temporality is experienced. All are transfor-
mations in which continuity and modification unfold at the same time. 
Everything is based on the existence of two principles, yin and yang, and 
the change that takes place in the dominant factor.

In the human case, aging is understood not so much as a journey as a 
transit. One does not pass through different stages in the path of life: birth, 
childhood, youth, maturity, old age. Growing old is the transit of life, the 
one that goes from birth to death. It is not about “living in the present”, 
which is based on a past-present-future scheme that is not contemplated in 
China. It is about living in the moment, adapting to the process in which 

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François Jullien: The Double Transit of Human Life

it is inscribed, being open to grasp the opportunity that each moment 
gives us.

The theme of time is taken up again in his book on silent transforma-
tions (Jullien, 2009), which indicates that change is not what manifests 
itself when there is an apparent rupture. Rather, it is the consequence of 
a silent transformation from a subtle, almost imperceptible twist of which 
it is the result, a visible emergence of a long invisible process. The cause/
effect relationship itself is diluted in this approach, since it is necessary to 
refer to the duration of the process and the global framework in which 
it is framed. It is necessary to situate all the conditioning factors that 
allow us to understand what is happening. Aging, for example, is neither 
decadence nor degradation but one more element in the process of living. 
Death is not a rupture but just another consequence of life; there is neither 
Christian drama nor Greek tragedy, not even the melancholic heroism of 
romanticism. What matters is not the extraordinariness of the new event 
that may come, but the persistence of the ordinary. It is like the seasons, 
which transform one into the other without a strict limit that marks their 
separation. The Chinese sage has no ideas (Jullien, 2001) because he knows 
that any vision is partial and what he wants is to be open to the whole and 
not to distort it with prejudices. The idea of duration is complemented 
by that of the moment, which allows us to get out of the impasse of a 
present, different from the past and the future that wants to materialize in 
an instant that always escapes it.

Chinese thinking is fundamentally strategic (Jullien, 1999), but with 
a conception of effectiveness based on the idea of transformation through 
indirect and oblique action. We must not force, we must not control, we 
must follow the propensity of things, take advantage of what we call the 
potential of each situation. For this we must facilitate the most favorable 
orientation, the conditions in which what interests us appears as a conse-
quence of the natural process. For this we must, of course, be open. This 
approach is not based on any of the dualities with which we move: theory/
practice, ends/means, model/application, objectives/plans. There is neither 
decision nor dramatic choice, only adaptation to the course of things we are 
a part of. We must seek the potential energy of each situation and obtain 
much effect with little effort, adapting to the circumstances by gathering 
what is best for us, facilitating what is favorable to our own advantage. 
There is no established plan because what we have to do is to be alert 
to what is happening, always evaluating the forces that come into play. 
The art of governing consists of invisibly making others converge naturally 
in the position we seek from others. If it is necessary to act, it must be 
done as soon as possible, before the process is structured, to modify what is 

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soft before it becomes rigid. Chinese rationality is established on the basis 
of the relationship between condition and consequence, while Western 
rationality is established between means and ends. In the first case, we 
always look for the most favorable conditions and gather the most profit-
able, and in the second case, it is posed in terms of calculation and success 
or failure, victory or defeat. On the Greek side, origin of the European, 
the strategist is like a ship’s pilot who sails on the high seas to reach his 
destination overcoming unforeseen threats: it is the epic and the heroic in 
a dramatized narrative.

At the same time, the idea of the necessary emptiness is also impor-
tant: one must not fill anything completely or fill everything: one must 
always leave a margin, an empty space. The Chinese reference is agricul-
ture, the growth of plants. It is not necessary to push the plants to make 
them grow faster, it is necessary to facilitate their growth by separating 
everything that hinders their development. It is necessary to try to win 
without confrontation, to prevent conflict before it appears. With Chinese 
wisdom, life is understood as a process that matures, giving a consequence, 
which is the good harvest.

It should also be noted the approach that the French philosopher 
makes, from the classical Chinese texts, to the figure of the sage (Jullien, 
2021). The Chinese sage “has no ideas”. This means that he is not impris-
oned by an ideology, by a particular way of looking at things. It is not that 
he has no ideas, it is that he does not put any of them before the others so as 
not to fall prey to partiality. The choice of wisdom is that of variation, not 
progression. We do not go forward on a certain path that prevents us from 
seeing the other possible ways. We must not close ourselves off, we must 
always remain open, we must embrace everything. He does not conceptu-
alize, does not argue, does not demonstrate. He approaches by surrounding, 
observing, looking for the evident. And he speaks little, only to indicate, to 
point out, to evoke. The rules depend on the situation, they do not pretend 
to apply universally to all situations. The sage knows when to be rigid and 
when to be flexible. The wise man keeps his mind sufficiently empty to be 
available, to be able to see the obvious that our prejudices hide. It is the 
paradox of relativizing everything without being relati vistic.

Living is like a maturation process in which one must direct one’s 
energy well, without dispersing or wasting it. The Greek-European notion 
of happiness, absent from Chinese wisdom, implies fixity and finality, 
whereas what the Chinese sage does is to develop one’s own capacities in 
a natural way, without aim. It is the unintended result that counts, the 
natural attainment of a wise attitude towards life (Jullien, 2007a). It is to 
go towards harmony, which is a self-regulated dynamic balance.

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François Jullien: The Double Transit of Human Life

2. The transition to the second life

We are going to enter into the work that Jullien has been doing in the last 
few years along the lines of the construction of the ethical subject for a true 
life. It is about the transition to a second life.

In Filosofía del vivir (Jullien, 2012), the first approach is the need to 
be present, but without understanding it exclusively in terms of something 
that has already been insistently said, which is attention. It is to approach 
time as a moment, finding the balance between not procrastinating but 
counting on the delay that involves accepting the maturation process in 
which it is framed. Because carpe diem has something of haste. It is neces-
sary to move towards what is evident, what we see clearly, but knowing 
how to withdraw so that the new can emerge. Jullien thus conceptualizes 
the importance of the “between” in life, this frontier where things are not 
between what they are and what they are not, this gray, transitory moment, 
which flees from this need of our culture to choose between black and 
white, to flee from the ambiguous, which is what is at the bottom of every-
thing if we do not force it into polarizations. It is a question, for example, 
of not having to choose between being selfish or altruistic, but to move 
in this “between”, which is still the world of nuances. Here appears, for 
the first time, the possibility of a “true life”. Here he will also quote Pierre 
Hadot and his proposal of “spiritual exercises”. To keep always “on the 
lookout for things”, as the Japanese poet Basho says. To be alert, ready, 
available, to seize the opportunity, the good encounter. To avoid concat-
enating too much, to avoid being chained to the discourse, to be open to 
immediacy. It is not about looking for models, nor rules or formulas that 
tell us how to know, how to live. It is about living in transparency, in the 
sense that things show themselves to us. But this world is not given to us 
beforehand either, it is not a matter of wanting to return to the naivety 
of the lost paradise. But neither is it necessary to invent finalities or to 
duplicate it in another ideal world. We remain in immanence, renouncing 
postponement in order to be able to see, when it appears, the opportune 
moment. Allowing it to arrive when it has to arrive, knowing how to delay 
it. A life that is sustained in “a between” that we must know how to manage 
without the need to polarize ourselves because it does not allow us to grasp 
this background of ambiguity of things. We do not dream then of a “true 
life” but we have access to it.

In 2016 Jullien published in French edition his work Vivre en existant. 
Une nouvelle Éthique (Jullien, 2016), which we can consider his first clear 
essay in this line of what I pointed out with regards to how to build an 
ethical subject for a true life. In this essay the philosopher orients all that he 

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learned in his dialogue with China in a double proposal of transformation 
of the self. “Living by existing” is an ethical proposal that implies an inner 
work that consists in establishing a distance with respect to what Jullien 
calls our surface of adherence, which is the first thing we are attached to. 
It is about having the capacity to decide on that which in a primary and 
largely unconscious way we invest with affection, with desire. From this 
point of view, freedom is, in a certain way, the capacity to break these 
primary automatisms, to let go of those moorings that chain us. But it is 
also the ability to invest desire, in a light way, without dependencies, which 
can nourish our vitality. It also implies the need to resist, understanding in 
a dialectical way the value of negation that opens the way to the possible. 
It is therefore necessary to avoid stagnation, to avoid getting bogged down 
in inertia, in routine. It is a process that supposes a work on oneself in 
which we learn to grasp both the turn that leads to stagnation and the one 
that will take us out of it. This occurs, most of the time in the framework 
of silent transformations (Jullien, 2010). Although it sometimes appears 
as a rupture, whether it is meant as a beginning or as an end, in most 
cases it remains an illusion because it is still the consequence of a process. 
This happens both when something visible emerges or disappears. As Paul 
Eluard told us, to live means the hard desire to last. We all live, says Jullien, 
but we must “exist”, which means transforming this desire to live into vital 
power. In order to do so, one must un-coincide with oneself, not identify 
oneself with a self-image. Duration is maintained by its continuous process 
of renewal, of actualization of energy. To dis-coincide means not to identify 
oneself, not to fix oneself, to keep the spirit open. Certainly, it is necessary 
to live “here and now”, which does not mean to understand it as doing it 
in the instant but to live it as a process, since our present is this permanent 
passage from the future to the past. To live in the immanence of this world, 
of this whole of which we are a part. Existence is verified directly in experi-
ence, learning from it …

François Jullien continues this conceptualization in a very impor-
tant essay, which is where he conceptualizes what he calls “a second life” 
(Jullien, 2017b). There is a step from life to existence, he told us, and 
he calls this step “a second life”. The starting point is immanentist: we 
have only one life, from which there is no replacement, from which we 
cannot leave and re-enter. The second life is therefore a transformation. 
But a transformation that does not arise from a rebirth or a conversion, nor 
from the voluntaristic act of reinvention. It is the result of a maturation, 
of the silent transformation to which our own experience leads us. It is 
the result of the lucidity that we acquire through the elaboration of what 
we have lived, which separates us from illusions. It is the consequence of 

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continuous work on oneself. But it is not the spontaneous result of old age 
either, but rather the turn we acquire from this will to “live while existing”. 
The second life becomes the good “winter” of our life if we have prepared 
ourselves for it. All this concludes in what he calls the “true life”.

In his latest book, entitled De la vraie vie (Jullien, 2020) Francois 
Jullien comes to summarize in a very lucid way the proposal. It is not to 
aspire to another idealized life, it is not to lose oneself in illusions nor to 
look for extraordinary moments. It is to be able to try to live a life worthy 
of being lived, accepting what there is of tension and ambivalence, in a 
permanent and daily combat against inertia, routine and stagnation. To 
live in dis-coincidence, in an opposition that we are able to sustain without 
provoking conflict. It is a life lived in the moment, not alienated in the 
banal or in absence. It is not a conversion but a transformation without 
idealization or intensification. It is an open process that is moved by desire. 
It is a power that is being lost but that must be recovered through emotion. 
It is an attempt to live that is to experience the difficulty of living and to 
survive the non-life that withers life. It is both a yes and a no, a yes to life 
and a no to non-life. This tension cannot disappear, there is no conversion 
that eliminates the no in order to install us in the yes. True life is, then, a 
combat that does not rest on a determined conception.

3. Transit and freedom

The approach of life as a double transit is interesting. But Jullien himself 
already points out in his book on silent transformations that a historical-
strategic-political concept is missing (Jullien, 2009). This concept is that 
of the free subject, with all the ethical and political implications it entails. 
China has traditionally accepted its political system and has had a commu-
nitarian idea in which the communitarian has prevailed. Or, in the Taoist 
proposals, an individual autonomy based on a certain withdrawal from 
society. The idea of a subject that can be built ethically and cooperating 
with others in a democratic system is missing.

François Cheng (1929) spent his childhood and adolescence in China 
and as a young man settled in Paris. He is one of the clearest examples of 
the power that interculturality can have in the same subject (Cheng, 2002). 
Precisely what he tells us is that China must learn from the West the idea 
of Subject (autonomous, beyond the community) and Law (just, beyond 
positive laws). Both ideas refer to the idea of freedom. But what the West 
has to learn from China is this idea of transit, what he calls “half-empty”, 
which is precisely what allows this transformation and allows to get out of 

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the conflict of polarities. In this way, transit and freedom complement each 
other in an ethical and political proposal that can open a very suggestive 
horizon.

References

Cheng, F. (2002). El diálogo. Pre-textos.
Jullien, F. (1997a). Fundar la moral. Dialogue of Mencius with a philosopher of the 

Enlightenment. Taurus.
Jullien, F. (1997b). Le Détour et l’accès. Stratégies du sens en Chine et en Grèce. Édi-

tions Grasset & Fasquelle.
Jullien, F. (1999). Tratado de la eficacia. Siruela.
Jullien, F. (2001). Un sabio no tiene ideas. Siruela.
Jullien, F. (2005a). La China da que pensar. Anthropos.
Jullien, F. (2005b). Of “time”. Elementos para una filosofía del vivir. Arena libros.
Jullien, F. (2006). Si parler va sans dire. Du logos et autres ressources. Seuil.
Jullien, F. (2007a). Nourishing your life: Beyond happiness. Katz.
Jullien, F. (2007b). Chemin faisant, connaître la Chine, relancer la philosophie. Seuil.
Jullien, F. (2008). La urdidumbre y la trama. Katz.
Jullien, F. (2009). L’invention de l’Ideal et le destin de l’Europe. Gallimard.
Jullien, F. (2010a). Las transformaciones silenciosas. Ediciones Bellaterra.
Jullien, F. (2010b). De lo universal, de lo uniforme, de lo común y del diálogo entre 

las culturas. Siruela.
Jullien, F. (2012). Filosofía del vivir. Octaedro.
Jullien, F. (2013). Five concepts proposed to psychoanalysis. El Cuenco de Plata. 
Jullien, F. (2016). Vivre en existant. Une nouvelle Éthique. Gallimard.
Jullien, F. (2017a). Dé-coïncidence. D’où viennent l’art et l’existence. Le livre de Poche.
Jullien, F. (2017b). Une seconde vie. Éditions Grasset & Fasquelle.
Jullien, F. (2019). De l’écart à l’inouï. Éditions de l’Herne.
Jullien, F. (2020). De la vraie vie. L’Observatoire.
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L. Llevadot & J. Riba (Eds.), Filosofías Postmetafísicas. 20 Años de Filosofía 
Francesa Contemporánea. UOC.

Roca Jusmet, L. (2017). Ejercicios espirituales para materialistas. El diálogo (im)
posible entre Pierre Hadot y Michel Foucault. Terra Ignota.

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Enrahonar, 67, 159-172.

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Riassunto

François Jullien incontra l’“impensato” della nostra tradizione filosofica nel suo viaggio 
attraverso la cultura cinese. Una delle idee che ricava dal quest’ultima è intendere la na-
tura come un processo, non formulato in termini di continuità ma di transito. In questo 
transito, come tutte le vite, è inscritta la vita umana. Ma in Jullien c’è anche un impegno 
etico a comprendere questa vita umana come aperta alla possibilità di un altro transito, 
quello di una seconda vita. Si tratta di idee interessanti da riprendere, ma all’interno dei 
limiti dell’approccio cinese. Come sottolinea François Cheng, infatti, mancano in questo 
approccio le idee di soggetto e di diritto. Andando oltre potremmo dire che manca l’idea 
stessa di libertà. Jullien tuttavia supera questi limiti, evidenziando egli stesso queste 
mancanze e provando a risolverle all’interno della sua proposta. Come evidenzia sempre 
Cheng, è proprio l’idea del transito come via d’uscita dai nostri dualismi e polarità che 
può insegnare qualcosa di più e di nuovo agli occidentali.

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How to cite this paper:
Roca Jusmet, L. (2022). François Jullien: The double transit of human life. Elementa. 
Intersections between Philosophy, Epistemology and Empirical Perspectives, 2(1-2), 27-35. doi: 
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	Sommario.pdf
	First Section
	Editorial I
	Transitions:
New and Different Perspectives

	The Human “Historicity”
as a Permanent Transition
in the Philosophy of Ignacio Ellacuría
	François Jullien: The Double Transit
of Human Life
	The Event, beyond the Permanent Crisis
	For an Epistemology of Transition:
Paul B. Preciado, Psychoanalysis
and the Regime of Sexual Difference

	Second Section
	Editorial II
	Governing Transitions

	Becoming Support Teachers
at the University of Foggia
During the Pandemic *
	Music: For a Sustainable Community and the Promotion of Well-being
	Educating for Transition in Work Contexts
	The Future We Want:
The Transition to Adulthood
of Unaccompanied Minors
	An Exploratory Survey





