Zhuangzi (Chuang-Tzu, 369—298 B.C.E.)

zhuangzi

The Zhuangzi (also known in Wade-Giles romanization romanization as Chuang-tzu), named after "Principal Zhuang" was, along with the Laozi, one of the earliest texts to contribute to the philosophy that has come up to be known as Daojia, or school of the Way. According to traditional dating, Master Zhuang, to whom the first vii chapters of the text have traditionally been attributed, was an almost exact contemporary of the Confucian thinker Mencius, but we take no record of straight philosophical dialogue between them.  The text is ranked among the greatest of literary and philosophical masterpieces that China has produced.  Its style is complex—mythical, poetic, narrative, humorous, indirect, and polysemic.

Much of the text espouses a holistic philosophy of life, encouraging disengagement from the artificialities of socialization, and cultivation of our natural "bequeathed" potencies and skills, in society to alive a elementary and natural, simply total and flourishing life. It is critical of our ordinary categorizations and evaluations, noting the multiplicity of different modes of understanding between different creatures, cultures, and philosophical schools, and the lack of an contained ways of making a comparative evaluation. It advocates a style of agreement that is non committed to a fixed system, but is fluid and flexible, and that maintains a provisional, businesslike mental attitude towards the applicability of these categories and evaluations.

The Zhuangzi text is an anthology, in which several distinctive strands of Daoist thought can be recognized. The Jin dynasty thinker and commentator, Guo Xiang (Kuo Hsiang, d. 312 CE), edited and arranged an early drove, and reduced what had been a work in fifty-two chapters down to thirty-three chapters, excising cloth that he considered to be repetitious or spurious.  The versions of Daoist philosophy expressed in this text were highly influential in the reception, interpretation, and transformation of Buddhist philosophies in China.

Table of Contents

  1. Historical Background
  2. The Zhuangzi Text
  3. Fundamental Concepts in the "Inner Chapters"
    1. Chapter 1: Xiao Yao You lot (Wandering Beyond)
    2. Chapter ii: Qi Wu Lun (Discussion on Smoothing Things Out)
    3. Chapter 3: Yang Sheng Zhu (The Principle of Nurturing Life)
    4. Chapter iv: Ren Jian Shi (The Realm of Human Interactions)
    5. Chapter 5: De Chong Fu (Signs of the Flourishing of Potency)
    6. Affiliate 6: Da Zong Shi (The Vast Bequeathed Teacher)
    7. Affiliate vii: Ying Di Wang (Responding to Emperors and Kings)
  4. Central Interpreters of Zhuangzi
  5. References and Further Reading

1. Historical Background

According to the Han dynasty historian, Sima Qian, Zhuangzi was born during the Warring States (403-221 BCE), more than a century after the decease of Confucius. During this time, the ostensibly ruling house of Zhou had lost its authority, and there was increasing violence between states contending for imperial power. This situation gave nascency to the phenomenon known as the baijia, the hundred schools: the flourishing of many schools of thought, each articulating its own formulation of a return to a country of harmony. The first and most significant of these schools was that of Confucius, who became the chief representative of the Ruists (Confucians), the scholars and propagators of the wisdom and culture of the tradition. Their groovy rivals were the Mohists, the followers of Mozi ("Master Mo"), who were critical of what they perceived to be the elitism and extravagance of the traditional culture. The archaeological discovery at Guo Dian in 1993 of an early Laozi manuscript suggests that the philosophical movement associated with the text also began to sally during this menstruum. The strands of Daoist philosophy expressed in the earliest strata of the Zhuangzi adult inside a context infused with the ideas of these three schools. Master Zhuang is commonly taken to be the author of the first seven capacity, but in contempo years a few scholars take found reason to be skeptical non just of his authorship of whatever of the text, simply likewise of his very beingness.

According to early bear witness compiled by Sima Qian, Zhuangzi was born in a village called Meng, in the state of Vocal; co-ordinate to Lu Deming, the Sui-Tang dynasty scholar, the Pu River in which Zhuangzi was said to have fished was in the state of Chen which, equally Wang Guowei points out, had become a territory of the southern state of Chu. We might say that Zhuangzi was situated in the borderlands between Chu, centered around the Yangzi River, and the fundamental plains—which centered around the Yellowish River and which were the home of the Shang and Zhou cultures. Some scholars, especially in China, maintain that there is a connection between the philosophies of the Daoist texts and the civilization of Chu. The diversity of regions and cultures in early People's republic of china has increasingly been acknowledged, and nearly interest has been directed to the state of Chu, in large part because of the wealth of archaeological evidence that is beingness unearthed in that location. As one develops a sensitivity for the civilisation of Chu, one senses deep resonances with the artful sensibility of the Daoists, and with Zhuangzi's style in item. The silks and bronzes of Chu, for example, are rich and vibrant; the patterns and images on fabrics and pottery are fanciful and naturalistic. Nonetheless, while the evidence is persuasive, it is far from decisive.

If the traditional dating is reliable, so Zhuangzi would have been an almost exact contemporary of the Ruist thinker Mencius, though there is no articulate evidence of communication between them. In that location are a few remarks in the Zhuangzi that could mayhap be alluding to Mencius' philosophy, but in that location is cipher in the Mencius that shows any interest in Zhuangzi. The philosopher and statesman Hui Shi, or Huizi ("Principal Hui," 380-305 BCE), is represented equally a close friend of Zhuangzi, though decidedly unconvinced by his philosophical musings. There appears to take been a friendly rivalry between the broad and mythic-minded Zhuangzi and the politically motivated Huizi, who is critiqued in the text equally a shortsighted paradox-monger. Despite their very deep philosophical distance, and Huizi'due south perceived limitations, Zhuangzi expresses great appreciation both for his linguistic abilities and for his friendship. The other "logician," Gongsun Longzi, would too take been a contemporary of Zhuangzi, and although Zhuangzi does not, unfortunately, appoint in whatever direct philosophical discussion with him, 1 does observe what appears to exist an occasional flash in his management.

2. The Zhuangzi Text

The currently extant text known as the Zhuangzi is the result of the editing and system of the Jin dynasty thinker and commentator Guo Xiang (Kuo Hsiang, d. 312 CE). He reduced what was then a piece of work in l-two chapters to the current edition of xxx-three capacity, excising material that he considered to be spurious. His commentary on the text provides an interpretation that has been one of the nigh influential over the subsequent centuries.

Guo Xiang's thirty-3 chapter edition of the text is divided into three collections, known as the Inner Chapters (Neipian), the Outer Chapters (Waipian), and the Miscellaneous Chapters (Zapian). The Inner Chapters are the showtime 7 chapters and are more often than not considered to exist the work of Zhuangzi himself. Because the prove for this attribution is sparse and considering of the miscellaneous nature of the editing, some scholars (McCraw, Klein) express skepticism that we tin be certain which were the primeval passages or who they were written by. The Outer Chapters are chapters 8 to 22, and the Miscellaneous Capacity are chapters 23 to 33. The Outer and Miscellaneous Chapters tin be further subdivided into dissimilar strands of Daoist thought. Much modern inquiry has been devoted to a sub-classification of these capacity according to philosophical school. Kuan Feng made some scholarly breakthroughs early on in the twentieth century; A. C. Graham continued his nomenclature in the tradition of Kuan Feng. Harold Roth has also taken upwardly a consideration of this effect and come up with some very interesting results. What follows is a simplified version of the results of the enquiry of Liu Xiaogan.

According to Liu, chapters 17 to 27 and 32 can be considered to be the work of a school of Zhuangzi's followers, what he calls the Shu Zhuang Pai, or the "Transmitter" school. Graham, post-obit Kuan Feng, considers chapters 22 to 27 and 32 not to be coherent chapters, but merely random "ragbag" collections of fragments. In fact, this miscellaneous grapheme is characteristic of many, if non well-nigh, of the rest of the chapters, and complicates whatever simplistic classification of chapters as a whole. Liu considers chapters 8 to 10, chapters 28 to 31, and the first part of chapter xi to be from a school of Anarchists whose philosophy is closely related to that of Laozi. Graham, again following Kuan Feng, sees these as ii split up merely related schools: the kickoff he attributes to a writer he calls the "Primitivist," the second he considers to be a schoolhouse of followers of Yang Zhu. Liu classifies capacity 12 to 16, affiliate 33, and the first office of chapter 11 as belonging to the Han dynasty schoolhouse known as Huang-Lao. Graham refers to them as the Syncretist chapters. Graham finds the classification of chapter 16 to be problematic. Chapter 30 does not seem to have whatever distinctively Daoist content at all. Though Graham thinks that it is consistent with the Yangist emphasis on preserving life, it is besides consistent with Confucian and Mohist critiques of aggression.

In the following chart the further to the right the capacity are listed, the further away they are from the central ideas of the Zhuangzian philosophy of the Inner Chapters:

The Inner Chapters School of Zhuang Anarchist Utopianism Huang-Lao Syncretism
ane. Wandering Across 17. Autumn Floods viii. Webbed Toes 11. Let it Be, Leave it Alone
2. Discussion on Smoothing Things Out xviii. Utmost Happiness nine. Horse's Hooves 12. Sky and Earth
3. The Principle of Nurturing Life 19. Mastering Life 10. Rifling Trunks xiii. The Mode of Heaven
four. In the Human Realm xx. The Mountain Tree xi. Let it Exist, Leave it Lone 14. The Turning of Heaven
five. Signs of Abundant Dominance 21. Tian Zi Fang 15. Constrained in Will
vi. The Vast Ancestral Instructor 22. Knowledge Wandered North (16?. Mending the Inborn Nature) (sixteen?. Mending the Inborn Nature)
vii. Responding to Emperors and Kings 23.Geng Sang Chu
24.Xu Wugui 28. Yielding the Throne 33. The World
25.Ze Yang 29. Robber Zhi
26. External Things (30. Discoursing on Swords?)
27. Imputed Words 31. The Old Fisherman
32.Lie Yukou

3. Cardinal Concepts in the "Inner Chapters"

The following is an account of the central ideas of Zhuangzian philosophy, going successively through each of the 7 Inner Chapters. This discussion is not confined to the content of the particular capacity, only rather represents a fuller joint of the inter-relationships of the ideas betwixt the Inner Capacity, and also betwixt these ideas and those expressed in the Outer and Miscellaneous Chapters, where these appear to be related. References to "Zhuangzi" below should not exist taken as referring to a historical person, but rather every bit shorthand for the overall philosophy as articulated in the text of the Inner Chapters and related passages.

a. Chapter 1: Xiao Yao Y'all (Wandering Across)

The championship of the first chapter of the Zhuangzi has likewise been translated as "Gratis and Easy Wandering" and "Going Rambling Without a Destination." Both of these reflect the sense of the Daoist who is in spontaneous accord with the natural globe, and who has retreated from the anxieties and dangers of social life, in order to live a good for you and peaceful natural life. In mod Mandarin, the word xiaoyao has thus come to hateful "free, at ease, leisurely, spontaneous." It conveys the impression of people who have given up the hustle and hurry of worldly existence and have retired to live a leisurely life outside the city, perchance in the natural setting of the mountains.

Only this everyday expression is lacking a deeper significance that is expressed in the classical Chinese phrase: the sense of distance, or going across. As with all Zhuangzi's images, this is to be understood metaphorically. The 2d discussion, 'yao,' means 'distance' or 'across,' and hither implies going beyond the boundaries of familiarity. Nosotros ordinarily confine ourselves inside our social roles, expectations, and values, and with our everyday understandings of things. Simply this, according to Zhuangzi, is inadequate for a deeper appreciation of the natures of things, and for a more than successful manner of interacting with them. Nosotros need at the very to the lowest degree to undo preconceptions that prevent us from seeing things and events in new ways; we need to run into how we can construction and restructure the boundaries of things. But we can only do so when nosotros ourselves have 'wandered beyond' the boundaries of the familiar. It is simply by freeing our imaginations to reconceive ourselves, and our worlds, and the things with which nosotros collaborate, that nosotros may brainstorm to understand the deeper tendencies of the natural transformations by which we are all afflicted, and of which we are all constituted. By loosening the bonds of our fixed preconceptions, we bring ourselves closer to an attunement to the potent and productive natural way (dao) of things.

Paying shut attending to the textual associations, we see that wandering is associated with the word wu, commonly translated 'zippo,' or 'without.' Related associations include: wuyou (no 'something') and wuwei (no interference). Roger Ames and David Hall have commented extensively on these wu expressions. Most importantly, they are not to be understood as simple negations, just take a much more circuitous function. The significance of all of these expressions must be traced back to the wu of Laozi: a type of negation that does not merely negate, just places us in a new kind of relation to 'things'—a phenomenological waiting that allows them to manifest, one that acknowledges the space that is the possibility of their coming to presence, ane that appreciates the emptiness that is the condition of the possibility of their capacity to role, to be useful (equally the hollow inside a business firm makes it useful for living). The behavior of one who wanders beyond becomes wuwei: sensitive and responsive without stock-still preconceptions, without bamboozlement, responding spontaneously in accordance with the unfolding of the inter-developing factors of the environment of which one is an inseparable role.

Only information technology is not merely the crossing of horizontal boundaries that is at pale. In that location is likewise the vertical distance that is important: 1 rises to a height from which formerly of import distinctions lose what appeared to be their crucial significance. Thus arises the distinction between the great and the pocket-sized, or the Vast (da) and the petty (xiao). Of this distinction Zhuangzi says that the petty cannot come upwardly to the Vast: petty agreement that remains bars and divers past its limitations cannot lucifer Vast agreement, the expansive understanding that wanders beyond. At present, while it is true that the Vast loses sight of distinctions noticed by the fiddling, it does not follow that they are thereby equalized, equally Guo Xiang suggests. For the Vast nevertheless embraces the fiddling in virtue of its very vastness. The petty, precisely in virtue of its smallness, is not able to reciprocate.

At present, the Vast that goes beyond our everyday distinctions also thereby appears to exist useless. A soaring imagination may be wild and wonderful, merely it is extremely impractical and oftentimes altogether useless. Indeed, Huizi, Zhuangzi's friend and philosophical foil, chides him for this very reason. But Zhuangzi expresses disappointment in him: for his disability to sense the use of this kind of uselessness is a kind of blindness of the spirit. The useless has use, just not every bit seen on the ordinary level of practical affairs. It has a use in the cultivation and nurturing of the 'shen' (spirit), in protecting the ancestral and preserving one'southward life, so that one can concluding out i'southward natural years and alive a flourishing life. Now, this notion of a flourishing life is not to be dislocated with a 'successful' life: Zhuangzi is not impressed by worldly success. A flourishing life may indeed look quite unappealing from a traditional bespeak of view. One may give up social ambition and retire in relative poverty to tend to one's shen and cultivate 1's xing (nature, or life authorisation).

To summarize: When we wander across, we leave behind everything we find familiar, and explore the globe in all its unfamiliarity. We drop the tools that we accept been taught to utilize to tame the environment, and we allow it to teach us without words. We imitate its spontaneous behavior and nosotros larn to reply immediately without stock-still articulations.

b. Chapter 2: Qi Wu Lun (Give-and-take on Smoothing Things Out)

If the Inner Chapters class the cadre of the Zhuangzi collection, then the Qi Wu Lun may exist thought of as forming the core of the Inner Chapters. It is, at whatever rate, the most circuitous and intricate of the chapters of the Zhuangzi, with allusions and allegories, highly condensed arguments, and baffling metaphors juxtaposed without explanation. It appears to be concerned with the deepest and most 'abstract' understanding of ourselves, our lives, our world, our language, and indeed of our understanding itself. The most perplexing sections concern language and judgment, and are filled with paradox, sometimes even contradiction. But the contradictions are not easy to dismiss: their context indicates that they have a deep significance. In office, they appear to attempt to express an understanding almost the limits of understanding itself, about the limits of language and idea.

This creates a problem for the interpreter, and especially for the translator. How do we deal with the contradictions? The almost common solution is to paraphrase them so as to remove the direct contradictoriness, nether the presupposition that no sense tin be made of a contradiction. The almost common way to remove the contradictions is to insert references to points of view. Those translators, such equally A. C. Graham, who do this are following the interpretation of the Jin dynasty commentator Guo Xiang, who presents the philosophy as a form of relativism: patently opposing judgments can harmonized when it is recognized that they are made from different perspectives.

Co-ordinate to Guo Xiang's interpretation, each thing has its own place, its own nature (ziran); and each thing has its own value that follows from its own nature. If so, then nothing should exist judged by values advisable to the natures of other things. According to Guo Xiang, the vast and the pocket-size are equal in significance: this is his interpretation of the word "qi" in the title, "equalization of all viewpoints". Now, such a radical relativism may accept the goal of issuing a fundamental challenge to the status quo, arguing that the established values take no more validity than any of the minority values, no matter how shocking they may seem to us. In this way, its effect would be one of destabilization of the social structure. Here, even so, we see another of the possible consequences of such a position: its inherent conservativeness. Guo Xiang's purpose in asserting this radical uniqueness and necessity of each position is conservative in this fashion. Indeed, it appears to exist articulated precisely in response to those who oppose the traditional Ruist values of humanity and rightness (ren and yi) by claiming to have a superior mystical ground from which to judge them to be defective. Guo Xiang's aim in asserting the equality of every thing, every position, and every role, is to encourage each thing, and each person, to accept its own place in the hierarchical system, to acknowledge its value in the functioning of the whole. In this way, radical relativism actually forestalls the possibility of radical critique altogether!

According to this reading, the Vast perspective of the behemothic Peng bird is no better than the petty perspectives of the trivial birds who laugh at it. And indeed, Guo Xiang, draws precisely this decision. But in that location is a problem with taking this reading too seriously, and it is the kind of problem that plagues all forms of radical relativism when 1 attempts to follow them through consistently. Simply put, Zhuangzi would accept to acknowledge that his own position is no meliorate than those he appears to critique. He would have to acknowledge that his Daoist philosophy, indeed even this articulation of relativism, is no comeback over Confucianism after all, and that it is no less short-sighted than the logic-chopping of the Mohists. This, still, is a effect that Zhuangzi does not recognize. This is surely an indication that the radical relativistic interpretation is clearly a misreading.

Recently, some western interpreters (Lisa Raphals and Paul Kjellberg, for case) have focused their attending on aspects of the text that express affinities with the Hellenistic philosophy of Skepticism. Now, information technology is of import not to confuse this with what in mod philosophy is idea of every bit a doctrine of skepticism, the about common grade of which is the claim that we cannot e'er claim to know anything, for at least the reason that we might ever be wrong about anything we claim to know—that is, because we tin never know anything with absolute certainty. This is not quite the claim of the ancient Skeptics. Arguing from a position of fallibilism, these latter feel that we ought never to make any final judgments that go beyond the firsthand bear witness, or the firsthand appearances. We should simply accept what appears at face up value and take no further beliefs about its ultimate consequences, or its ultimate value. In particular, we should refrain from making judgments about whether it is adept or bad for the states. We bracket (epoche) these ultimate judgments. When we see that such things are beyond our ability to know with certainty, nosotros will learn to let go of our anxieties and accept the things that happen to us with equanimity. Such a state of emotional tranquility they phone call 'ataraxia.'

Now, the resonances with Zhuangzi's philosophy are clear. Zhuangzi also accepts a form of fallibilism. While he does non refrain from making judgments, he withal acknowledges that nosotros cannot be certain that what nosotros call up of as skilful for united states may not ultimately be bad for us, or that what we now think of as something terrible to exist feared (decease, for example) might not exist an extraordinarily blissful enkindling and a release from the toils and miseries of worldly life. When we accept this, we refrain from dividing things into the acceptable and the unacceptable; we larn to have the changes of things in all their aspects with equanimity. In the Skeptical reading, the textual contradictions are too resolved by highly-seasoned to dissimilar perspectives from which different judgments appear to exist truthful. One time ane has learnt how to shift hands between the perspectives from which such different judgments can exist made, so ane can see how such patently contradictory things can be true at the aforementioned time—and 1 no longer feels compelled to choose between them.

There is, however, another fashion to resolve these contradictions, one that involves recognizing the importance of continuous transformation between contrasting phenomena and even betwixt opposites. In the tradition of Laozi'south cosmology, Zhuangzi's worldview is also one of seasonal transformations of opposites. The world is seen as a behemothic clod (da kuai) around which the heavens (tian) revolve about a polar axis (daoshu). All transformations have such an axis, and the aim of the sage is to settle into this axis, and then that ane may discover the changes without being buffeted around by them.

At present, the theme of opposites is taken upward by the Mohists, in their later Mohist Canon, merely with a very unlike agreement. The later Mohists present a detailed analysis of judgments as requiring bivalence: that is judgments may be acceptable (ke) (also, 'affirmed' shi) or unacceptable (buke) (also 'rejected'fei); they must be 1 or the other and they cannot be both. There must ever be a articulate stardom between the ii. Information technology is to this claim, I believe, that Zhuangzi is directly responding. Rejecting also the Mohist style of discussion, he appeals to an allusive, aphoristic, mythological style of poetic writing to upset the distinctions and blur the boundaries that the Mohists insist must be held autonomously. The Mohists believe that social harmony tin can only be achieved when we have clarity of distinctions, especially of evaluative distinctions: true/false, expert/bad, benign/harmful. Zhuangzi's position is that this kind of sharp and rigid thinking can result ultimately only in harming our natural tendencies (xing), which are themselves neither sharp nor rigid. If nosotros, on the contrary, learn to nurture those aspects of our center-minds (xin), our natural tendencies (xing), that are in tune with the natural (tian) and bequeathed (zong) within united states, then we will eventually find our place at the centrality of the way (daoshu) and will be able to ride the transformations of the cosmos free from damage. That is, we volition be able to sense and respond to what can merely be vaguely expressed without forcing it into gross and unwieldy exact expressions. We are then able to recognize the paradoxes of vagueness and indeterminacy that arise from infinitesimal processes of transformation.

Put another way, our knowledge and agreement (zhi, tong, da) are not just what we can explicitly see before the states and enunciate: in modern terms, they are not just what is 'consciously,' 'conceptually,' or 'linguistically' bachelor to us. Zhuangzi also insists on a level of understanding that goes beyond such relatively rough modes of dividing up our globe and experiences. In that location are hidden modes of knowing, not axiomatic or plain present, modes that allow united states to live, exhale, move, sympathize, connect with others without words, read our environments through subtle signs; these modes of knowing as well give the states tremendous skill in coping with others and with our environments. These modes of knowing Zhuangzi calls "wuzhi", literally 'without knowing,' or 'unknowing'. What is known by such modes of knowing, when we try to express it in words, becomes paradoxical and appears contradictory. It seems that bivalent distinctions go out out as well much on either side of the divide: they are too crude a tool to cope with the subtlety and complexity of our non-conceptual modes of knowing. Zhuangzi, following a traditional folk psychology of his time, calls this chapters shenming: "spirit insight."

When we nurture that deepest and almost natural, most bequeathed part of our pysches, through psycho-physical meditative practices, we at the same time nurture these not-cognitive modes of understanding, embodied wisdoms, that enable u.s. to deal successfully with our circumstances. It is then that nosotros are able to cope directly with what from the limited perspective of our 'socialized' and 'linguistic' understanding seems to exist too vague, too open, too paradoxical.

c. Affiliate 3: Yang Sheng Zhu (The Principle of Nurturing Life)

This chapter, like the Anarchist Utopian chapters, deals with the mode to nurture and cultivate one's 'life tendencies' (sheng, xing) and so as to enable one to live skillfully and last out one'due south natural years (zhong qi tian nian). In that location is a 'authorization' within oneself that is a source of longevity, an ancestral identify from which the phenomena of one'south life continue to ascend. This place is to be protected (bao), kept whole (quan), nurtured and cultivated (yang). The outcome is a sagely and proficient life. We must be careful how we understand this word, 'skill.' Zhuangzi takes pains to bespeak out that it is no mere technique. A technique is a procedure that may exist mastered, just the skill of the sage goes beyond this. 1 might say that information technology has become an 'art,' a dao. With Zhuangzi'southward conception, any concrete action, whether butchering a carcass, making wooden wheels, or carving beautiful ceremonial bong stands, becomes a dao when it is performed in a spiritual country of heightened awareness ('attenuation' xu).

Zhuangzi sees civic involvement as specially inimical to the preservation and cultivation of one's natural life. In social club to cultivate one's natural potencies, 1 must retreat from social life, or at least one must retreat from the highly complex and artificially structured social life of the city. I undergoes a psycho-physical training in which 1'south sensory and physical capacities get honed to an extraordinary degree, indicating one's attunement with the transformations of nature, and thus highly responsive to the tendencies (xing) of all things, people, and processes. The mastery achieved is demonstrated (both metaphorically, and literally) by practical embodied skill. That is, applied embodied skill is also a metaphor representing the mastery of the life of the sage, and so it is also a sign of sagehood (though not all those who are skilful are to be reckoned as sages). Thus, we see many examples of individuals who accept achieved extraordinary levels of excellence in their achievements—practical, aesthetic, and spiritual. Butcher Ding provides an instance of a practical, and very lowly skill; Liezi's teacher, Huzi, in chapter vii, provides an instance of skill in controlling the very forces responsible for life themselves. Chapter xix, Mastering Life, is replete with examples: a cicada catcher, a ferryman, a carpenter, a swimmer, and Woodcarver Qing, whose artful skill reaches 'magical' heights.

d. Affiliate 4: Ren Jian Shi (The Realm of Human Interactions)

In this chapter, Zhuangzi continues the theme broached in the final chapter, merely at present takes on the problem of how to maintain and preserve one's life and last out one's years while living in the social realm, especially in circumstances of great danger: a life of borough engagement in a fourth dimension of social corruption.

The Daoists, especially the authors of the anarchistic utopian chapters, are highly critical of the artificiality required to create and sustain complex social structures. The Daoists are skeptical of the ability of deliberate planning to deal with the complexities of the globe within which our social structures take their identify. Fifty-fifty the developments of the social world when left to themselves are 'natural' developments, and as such escape the confines of planned, structured thinking. The more we try to control and curtail these natural meanderings, the more complicated and unwieldy the social structures get. Co-ordinate to the Daoists, no affair how circuitous nosotros brand our structures, they will never be fully able to cope with the fluid flexibility of natural changes. The Daoists perceive the unfolding of the transformations of nature as exhibiting a kind of natural intelligence, a wisdom that cannot exist matched by deliberate bogus thinking, thinking that tin exist articulated in words. The result is that phenomena guided by such bogus structures quickly lose their course, and have to be constantly regulated, re-calibrated. This need gives rise to the development and articulation of the bogus concepts of ren and yi for the Ruists, and shi and fei for the Mohists.

The Ruists emphasize the importance of cultivating the values of ren 'humanity' and yi 'ceremoniousness/rightness.' The Mohists place a bivalent structure of preference and evaluation, shifei. Our judgments tin can be positive or negative, and these ascend out of our acceptance and rejection of things or of judgments, and these in turn ascend out of our emotional responses to the phenomena of do good and harm, that is, pleasure and hurting. Thus, we ready up one of two types of systems: the intuitive renyi morality of the Ruists, or the articulated structured shifei of the Mohists.

Zhuangzi sees both of these equally unsafe. Neither can go on up with the complex transformations of things and then both will result in damage to our shen and xing. They lead to the desire of rulers to increment their personal profit, their pleasure, and their power, and to do so at the expense of others. The best thing is to steer clear of such situations. Simply in that location are times when one cannot do then: there is nothing one can practice to avoid involvement in a social undertaking. There are also times—if 1 has a Ruist sensibility—when one will be moved to do what one can and must in order to meliorate the social situation. Zhuangzi makes up a story about Confucius' most beloved and most virtuous follower, Yen Hui, who feels called to help 'rectify' the King of a country known for his selfishness and brutality.

Zhuangzi thinks that such a motivation, while admirable, is ultimately misguided. There is little to null one can do to change things in a corrupt world. But if y'all really have to try, then you should be enlightened of the dangers, exist aware of the natures of things, and of how they transform and develop. Be on the watch for the 'triggers': the disquisitional junctures at which a state of affairs can explode out of paw. In the presence of danger, do not face it: e'er dance to one side, redirect information technology through skilled and subtle manipulations, that do not take command, simply by adding their ain weight appropriately, redirect the momentum of the situation. One must treat all dangerous social undertakings as a Daoist practiced: one must perform xinzhai, fasting of the eye-mind. This is a psycho-physical subject of attenuation, in which ane nurtures ane's inner potencies past thinning out ane's personal preferences and keeping ane'south emotions in bank check, so that one may achieve a heightened sensitivity to the tendencies of things. One and then responds with the skill of a sage to the unsafe moods and intentions of one's worldly ruler.

east. Chapter 5: De Chong Fu (Signs of the Flourishing of Potency)

This chapter is populated with a drove of characters with bodily eccentricities: criminals with amputated feet, people born with 'ugly' deformities, hunchbacks with no lips. Perhaps some of these are moralistic advisors, like those of chapter 4, who were unsuccessful in bringing virtue and harmony to a corrupt country, and instead received the harsh punishment of their offended ruler. Merely it is also possible that some were born with these physical 'deformities.' As the Commander of the Right says in chapter 3, "When tian (nature) gave me life, it saw to it that I would exist ane footed." These and so are people whose natural capacity (de) has been twisted somehow, redirected, and then that information technology gives them a potency (de) that is beyond the normal human range. At whatever rate, this out of the ordinary appearance, this extraordinary concrete course, is a sign of something deeper: a authorization and a power (de) that connects them more closely to the ancestral source. These are the sages that Zhuangzi admires: those whose virtue (de) is across the ordinary, and whose signs of virtue signal that they have gone across.

Merely what goes beyond is likewise the source of life. To hold fast to that which is beyond both living and dying, is perhaps besides to concur fast to something more primordial that is beyond human and inhuman. To place with and nurture this source is to nurture that which is at the root of our humanity. If so, and so one does not necessarily go inhuman. Indeed, one might contend that this creates the possibility of deepening ane's most 18-carat humanity, insofar as this is a deeper nature still.

f. Chapter 6: Da Zong Shi (The Vast Bequeathed Teacher)

The first part of this chapter is devoted to a word of the zhenren: the "genuine person," or "genuine humanity," (or in older translations, "True Human being"). It begins by asking about the relation between tian and ren, the natural/sky and the human, and suggests that the greatest wisdom lies in the ability to understand both. Thus, to be forced to cull between being natural or beingness human is a mistake. A genuinely flourishing human life cannot be separated from the natural, just nor can it on that business relationship deny its own humanity. Genuine humanity is natural humanity.

At that place are several sections devoted to explicating this 18-carat humanity. We find that the genuinely human person, the zhen ren, is in tune with the cycles of nature, and is not upset by the vicissitudes of life. The zhenren like Laozi's sage is somehow simultaneously unified with things, and however not tied down by them. The zhenren is in tune with the cycles of nature, and with the cycles of yin yang, and is non disturbed or harmed by them. In fact, the zhenren is not harmed past them either in what appears to united states to be their negative phases, nor are their well-nigh farthermost phases able to upset the residuum of the zhenren. This is sometimes expressed with what I have to be the hyperbole that the sage or zhenren tin never exist drowned by the sea, nor burned by burn.

In the 2nd part of the chapter, Zhuangzi hints at the process by which we are to cultivate our genuine and natural humanity. These are meditative practices and psycho-physical disciplines—"yogas" perhaps—by which we acquire how to attend the ancestral root of life that is within the states. We learn how to identify with that heart which functions as an axis of stability around which the cycles of emotional turbulence flow. By maintaining ourselves as a shifting and responding center of gravity we are able to maintain an self-possession without giving upward our feelings birthday. Nosotros enjoy riding the dragon without being thrown around by information technology. Ordinarily, we are buffeted around like flotsam in a tempest, and withal, by holding fast to our ancestral nature, and by following the nature of the environment—by "matching nature with nature"—we free ourselves from the mercy of random circumstances.

In this affiliate we see a mature development of the ideas of life and death broached in the first 3 chapters. Zhuangzi continues musing on the significance of our existential predicament equally existence inextricably tied into interweaving cycles of darkness and light, sadness and joy, living and dying. In chapter two, it was the predicament itself that Zhuangzi described, and he tried to focus on the inseparability and indistinguishability of the two aspects of this single process of transformation. In this affiliate, Zhuangzi tries to delve deeper to accomplish the middle of balance, the 'axis of the way,' that allows one to undergo these changes with tranquility, and even to take them with a kind of 'joy.' Not an ecstatic affirmation, to be sure, just a tranquil appreciation of the richness, beauty, and "inevitability" of whatever experiences we eventually will undergo. Again, non that we must feel whatever is 'blighted' for us, or that we ought not to minimize harm and suffering where we tin can do and so, merely only that we should acknowledge and accept our situatedness, our thrownness into our situation, as the 'raw materials' that we take to deal with.

There are mystical practices hinted at that enable the sage to identify with the datong, the greater menstruation, not with the particular arisings of these particular emotions, or this detail body, but with what lies within (and below and above) as their bequeathed root. These meditative and yogic practices are hinted at in this chapter, and also in chapter 7, but nothing in the text reveals what they are. Information technology is not unreasonable to believe that similar techniques have been handed downward by the practitioners of religious Daoism. It is clear, nonetheless, that function of the modify is a change in cocky-understanding, self-identification. Nosotros somehow learn to expand, to wander beyond, our boundaries until they include the entire catholic process. This entire process is seen as like a potter'due south wheel, and simultaneously as a whetstone and as a grindstone, on which things are formed, and arise, sharpened, and are ground back down simply to be fabricated into new forms. With each 'birth' (sheng) some 'thing' (wu) new arises, flourishes, develops through its natural (tian) tendencies (xing), and and then still post-obit its natural tendencies, responding to those of its natural environment, it winds down: enters (ru) back into the undifferentiated (wu) from which it emerged (chu). The truest friendship arises when members of a customs identify with this unknown undifferentiated process in which they are embedded, "forgotten" differences between cocky and other, and spontaneously follows the natural developments of which they are inseparable "parts."

yard. Chapter 7: Ying Di Wang (Responding to Emperors and Kings)

The last of the Inner Chapters does non introduce annihilation new, just closes by returning to a recurring theme from chapters one, iii, five, and half dozen: that of withdrawing from club. This 'withdrawal' has 2 functions: the outset is to preserve one'due south 'life'; the second is to allow society to function naturally, and thus to bring itself to a harmonious completion. Rather than interfering with social interactions, one should permit them to follow their natural class, which, Zhuangzi believes, will exist both imaginative and harmonious.

These themes resonate with those of the Anarchist capacity in the Outer (and Miscellaneous) chapters: 8 to 11a and 28 to 32. These encourage a life closer to nature in which one lets go of deliberate control and instead learns how to sense the tendencies of things, allowing them to manifest and flourish, while also calculation one's weight to redirect their momentum away from harm and danger. Or, if harm and danger are unavoidable, and so one learns how to minimize them, and how to have whatever one does have to suffer with self-possession.

4. Key Interpreters of Zhuangzi

The earliest of the interpreters of Zhuangzi's philosophy are of class his followers, whose commentaries and interpretations have been preserved in the text itself, in the chapters that Liu Xiaogan ascribes to the "Shu Zhuang Pai," capacity 17 to 27. Most of these chapters constitute holistic developments of the ideas of the Inner Chapters, but some of them concentrate on particular issues raised in particular chapters. For example, the writer of Chapter 17, the Fall Floods, elaborates on the philosophy of perspective and overcoming boundaries that is discussed in the start chapter, Xiao Yao Y'all. This affiliate develops the ideas in several divergent directions: relativism, skepticism, pragmatism, and even a kind of absolutism. Which of these, if any, is the overall philosophical perspective is not easy to discern. The author of chapter xix, Da Sheng, Mastering Life, takes up the theme of the tillage of the wisdom of embodied skill that is introduced in chapter iii, Yang Sheng Zhu, The Principle of Nurturing Life. The author of affiliate eighteen, Zhi Le, Utmost Happiness, and affiliate 22, Zhi Bei You, Noesis Wanders North, continues the meditations on life and decease, and the cultivation of meditative practice, that are explored in affiliate vi, Da Zong Shi, The Vast Ancestral Teacher.

The adjacent grouping of interpreters have also become incorporated into the extant version of the text. They are the school of philosophers inclined towards anarchist utopias, that Graham identifies as a "Primitivist" and a school of "Yangists," capacity 8 to 11, and 28 to 31. These thinkers announced to accept been profoundly influenced by the Laozi, and likewise past the idea of the offset and concluding of the Inner Chapters: "Wandering Beyond," and "Responding to Emperors and Kings." In that location are also possible signs of influence from Yang Zhu, whose concern was to protect and cultivate i's inner life-source. These chapters combine the anarchistic ethics of a uncomplicated life shut to nature that can be institute in the Laozi with the practices that lead to the cultivation and nurturing of life. The practice of the nurturing of life in affiliate 3, that leads to the "lasting out of 1'southward natural years," becomes an emphasis on maintaining and protecting xing ming zhi qing "the essentials of nature and life's command" in these afterwards chapters.

The third main group, whose interpretation has been preserved in the text itself, is the Syncretist schoolhouse, an eclectic schoolhouse whose aim to is promote an ideal of mystical rulership, influenced past the major philosophical schools of the fourth dimension, especially those that recommend a tillage of inner potency. They may or may not exist exemplary of the and then-called 'Huang-Lao' school. They scoured the earlier philosophers in order to extract what was valuable in their philosophies, the chemical element of the dao that is to exist constitute in each philosophical claim. In particular, they sought to combine the more than 'mystically' inclined philosophies with the more practical ones to create a more consummate dao. The final chapter, Tian Xia, The World, considers several philosophical schools, and comments on what is worthwhile in each of them. Zhuangzi's philosophy is here characterized as "vast," "vague," "outrageous," "extravagant," and "reckless"; he is also recognized for his encompassing modes of thought, his lack of partisanship, and his recklessness is best-selling to exist harmless. Nevertheless, it is stated that he did non succeed in getting it all.

Perhaps the most important of the pre-Qin thinkers to comment on Zhuangzi is Xunzi. In his "Dispelling Obsessions" chapter, anticipating the eclecticism of the Huang-Lao commentators of affiliate 33, he considers several philosophical schools, mentions the corner of 'truth' that each has recognized, and so goes on to criticize them for failing to sympathise the larger picture. Xunzi mentions Zhuangzi by name, describes him as a philosopher who recognizes the value of nature and of following the tendencies of nature, merely who thereby fails to recognize the value of the human being 'ren'. Indeed, Zhuangzi seems to be aware of this kind of objection, and fifty-fifty delights in it. He revels in knowing that he is one who wanders off into the distance, far from human concerns, one who is not bound past the guidelines. Perhaps in doing so he corroborates Xunzi's fears.

Another text that reveals what might be a development of Zhuangzi's philosophy is the Liezi. This is a philosophical treatise that clearly stands in the same tradition as the Zhuangzi, dealing with many of the same issues, and on occasion with almost identical stories and discussions. Although the Daoist adept, Liezi, to whom the text is attributed is said to have lived before Zhuangzi, the text clearly dates from a later period, perhaps compiled as late equally the Eastern Han, though in terms of linguistic way the material appears to date from around the same menses as Zhuangzi. The Liezi continues the line of philosophical thinking of the Xiao Yao Y'all, and the Qiu Shui, taking up the themes of transcending boundaries, and even cosmic realms, by spirit journey. The leaving backside and overturning of human values is a theme that is repeated in this text, though again not without a sure paradoxical tension: after all, the purpose of such journey and overturning of values is ultimately to enable us in some sense to live 'meliorate' lives. While Zhuangzi'due south own philosophy exerted a pregnant influence on the estimation of Buddhism in Cathay, theLiezi appears to provide a possible antipodal case of Mahayana Buddhist influence on the evolution of the ideas of Zhuangzi.

The Jin dynasty scholar, Guo Xiang, is i of the most influential of the early interpreters. His "relativistic" reading of the text has become the received interpretation, and his own distinctive manner of philosophical thinking has in this manner become virtually inseparable from that of Zhuangzi. The chore of interpreting Zhuangzi independently of Guo Xiang's reading is not easy to accomplish. His contribution and interpretation have already been discussed in the torso of the entry (Come across sections above: The Zhuangzitext, and Chapter 2: Qi Wu Lun (Give-and-take on Smoothing Things Out) ). The Sui dynasty scholar, Lu Deming, produced an invaluable glossary and philological commentary on the text, enabling later generations to do good from his vast linguistic expertise. The Ming dynasty Buddhist poet and scholar, Han Shan, wrote a commentary on the Zhuangzi from a Chan Buddhist perspective. In a similar vein, the Qing dynasty scholar, Zhang Taiyan, synthetic a masterful interpretation of the Zhuangzi in the lite of Chinese Buddhist Idealism, or Weishilun. Guo Qingfan, a late Qing, early twentieth century scholar, collected and synthesized the work of previous generations of commentators. The scholarly work of Takeushi Yoshio in Nihon has too been of considerable influence. Qian Mu is a twentieth century scholar who has exerted considerable efforts with regard to historical scholarship. Currently, in Taiwan, Chen Guying is the leading scholar and interpreter of Zhuangzi, and he uses his noesis of western philosophy, particularly western epistemology, cosmology, and metaphysics, to throw new low-cal on this ancient text.

In the westward, probably the nigh important and influential scholar was A. C. Graham, whose pioneering work on this text, and on the later Mohist Canon, has laid the background and set an extraordinarily loftier standard for future western philosophical scholarship. Graham, post-obit the reading of Guo Xiang, develops a relativistic reading based on a theory of the conventional nature of language. Republic of chad Hansen is a current interpreter who sees the Daoists every bit largely theorists of language, and he interprets Zhuangzi's own contribution as a form of "linguistic skepticism." Recently, at that place has been a growth of interest in the aspects of Zhuangzi'due south philosophy that resonate with the Hellenistic schoolhouse of Skepticism. This was proposed by Paul Kjellberg, and has been pursued by other scholars such equally Lisa Raphals.

five. References and Further Reading

  • Ames, Roger, ed.Wandering at Ease in the Zhuangzi. Albany: Land Academy of New York Press, 1998.
  • Ames, Roger, and Takahiro Nakajima. Zhuangzi and the Happy Fish. Honolulu: University of Hawai`i Press, 2015.
  • Chai, David. Early Zhuangzi Commentaries: On the Sounds and Meanings of the Inner Capacity. Sarrbrucken: VDM Publishing, 2008.
  • Chuang Tzu.Basic Writings. Translated by Burton Watson. New York: Columbia University Printing, 1964.
  • Chuang Tzu.The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu. Translated by Burton Watson. New York: Columbia University Press, 1968.
  • Chuang Tzu.Chuang-Tzu The Inner Chapters: A Classic of Tao. Translated past A. C. Graham. London: Mandala, 1991.
  • Chuang Tzu.Chuang tzu. Translated by James Legge, Sacred Books of the East, volumes 39, 40. Oxford: Oxford Academy Press, 1891.
  • Melt, Scott.Hiding the World Within the Earth: Ten Uneven Discourses on Zhuangzi. Albany: Land University of New York Printing, 2003.
  • Coutinho, Steve. An Introduction to Daoist Philosophies. New York: Columbia University Printing, 2014.
  • Coutinho, Steve. "Conceptual Analyses of the Zhuangzi". Dao Companion to Daoist Philosophy. Springer, 2014.
  • Coutinho, Steve. "Zhuangzi". Berkshire Dictionary of Chinese Biography, pp. 149-162. 2014.
  • Coutinho, Steve.Zhuangzi and Early Chinese Philosophy: Vagueness, Transformation, and Paradox. London: Ashgate Press, forthcoming, December, 2004.
  • Fung, Yu-Lan.Chuang-Tzu: A New Selected Translation with an Exposition of the Philosophy of Kuo Hsiang. 2nd ed. New York: Paragon Book Reprint Corporation, 1964.
  • Graham, Angus Charles. Afterward Mohist Logic, Ideals and Science. London: School of Oriental and African Studies, 1978.
  • Graham, Angus Charles.Disputers of the Tao: Philosophical Argument in Ancient People's republic of china. La Salle: Open Court, 1989.
  • Graham, A. C. "Chuang-tzu'due south Essay on Seeing things equally Equal."History of Religions nine (1969/1970), pp. 137—159. Reproduced in Roth, 2003.
  • Graham, A. C. "Chuang-tzu: Textual Notes to a Partial Translation." London: School of Oriental and African Studies, 1982. Reproduced in Roth, 2003.
  • Hansen, Chad.A Daoist Theory of Chinese Thought: A Philosophical Estimation. New York, Oxford University Printing, 1992.
  • Ivanhoe, P. J. & Paul Kjellberg, ed.Essays on Skepticism, Relativism, and Ethics in the Zhuangzi. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996.
  • Kaltenmark, Max.Lao Tzu and Taoism. Translated by Roger Greaves. Stanford: Stanford Academy Press, 1969.
  • Kjellberg, Paul.Zhuangzi and Skepticism. PhD dissertation, Department of Philosophy, Stanford University, 1993.
  • Klein, Esther. (2010). Were there "Inner Chapters" in the Warring States? A new examination of show about the Zhuangzi. T'oung Pao, four/5, pp. 299–369.
  • Kohn, Livia. Zhuangzi: Text and Context. Three Pines Printing, 2014.
  • Kohn, Livia. New Visions of the Zhuangzi. Three Pines Press, 2015.
  • Lawton, Thomas, ed.New Perspectives on Chu Culture During the Eastern Zhou Period. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1991.
  • Li, Xueqin.Eastern Zhou and Qin Civilizations. Translated by Kwang-chih Chang. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985.
  • Liu, Xiaogan.Classifying the Zhuangzi Chapters. Translated past Donald Munro. Michigan Monographs in Chinese Studies, no. 65. Ann Arbor, Michigan: The University of Michigan, 1994.
  • Mair, Victor H., ed.Experimental Essays on Chuang-tzu. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Printing, 1983.
  • Mair, Victor. ed.Chuang-tzu: Composition and Interpretation. Symposium problems, Journal of Chinese Religions eleven, 1983.
  • Mair, Victor.Wandering on the Way: Early Taoist Tales and Parables of Chuang Tzu. New York: Bantam Books, 1994.
  • Maspero, Henri.Le Taoïsme. Vol. II, Mélanges Posthumes sur les Religions et 50'histoire de la Chine. Paris: Civilisations du Sud S.A.East.P., 1950.
  • McCraw, David. Stratifying Zhuangzi: Rhyme and other quantitative evidence. Language and Linguistics Monograph Series, 41. Taipei, Taiwan: Found of Linguistics, Academia Sinica, 2010.
  • Roth, Harold. "Who Compiled the Chuang-tzu?" inChinese Texts and Philosophical Contexts. edited past Henry Rosemont. La Salle: Open Court, 1991.
  • Roth, Harold.A Companion to A. C. Graham'southward Chuang Tzu: The Inner Chapters. Honolulu: Academy of Hawai'i Press, 2003.
  • Wang, Bo. Thinking Through the Inner Capacity. Three Pines Press, 2014.
  • Wu, Kuang-ming.The Butterfly as Companion: Meditations on the Get-go 3 Capacity of the Chuang Tzu. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990.
  • Ziporyn, Brook. Zhuangzi: The Essential Writings: With Selections from Traditional Comentaries. Hackett, 2009.

Writer Information

Steve Coutinho
E-mail: coutinho@muhlenberg.edu
Muhlenberg College
U. S. A.