Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

New Research on the ZHUANGZI

2016; Wiley; Volume: 42; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1111/rsr.12273

1748-0922

Barbara Hendrischke,

Environmental and Cultural Studies in Latin America and Beyond

Zhuangzi: Thinking Through the Inner Chapters By Bo Wang Translated by Livia Kohn Contemporary Chinese Scholarship in Daoist Studies St. Petersburg, FL: Three Pines Press, 2014 Pp. x + 221. Paper, $34.95. Zhuangzi: Text And Context By Livia Kohn St. Petersburg, FL: Three Pines Press, 2014. Pp. vi + 330. Paper, $35.95. Zhuangzi And The Happy Fish Edited by Roger T. Ames and Takahiro Nakajima University of Hawai'i Press, 2015. Pp. vi + 303. Hardcover, $29.00. NEW VISIONS OF THE ZHUANGZI Edited by Livia Kohn St. Petersburg, FL: Three Pines Press, 2015. Pp. x + 218. Paper, $34.95. The Zhuangzi is one of ancient China's most attractive texts. This holds true for East Asia as well as for the West. One of its attractions is that it is a Great Book without being canonical. It is not well suited to be placed at the centre of a religious, social or political movement. Instead, in content and language it is characterized by a persisting otherness that continues to present a challenge to interpretative attempts. This may have been so since its origin. Few traces of the text have been found in the collections of written materials that archaeologists have discovered in the last decades. This, however, cannot isolate Zhuangzi studies from the study of other fields of early philosophy. With the large amount of newly excavated materials, perceptions of early intellectual history are in flux. So an important and large set of early materials like the Zhuangzi needs to be relocated in a newly understood intellectual environment. This starts with the need to rethink textual issues. The study of excavated materials has shown that the distance between a text that we have received from Chinese antiquity and its original state proves to be wider than scholars had imagined. For some texts, for instance the Laozi, recently discovered materials allow glimpses into the slow process of their creation. For the Zhuangzi this is not the case, but the problems of its origin need to be re-addressed, as Ames and Nakajima point out in the introduction to Zhuangzi and the Happy Fish (hereafter Happy Fish). In an authoritative study, Liu Xiaogan (2014a) lists the main positions on this issue and in the end maintains the traditional opinions in slightly modified form: by the outgoing third century BCE the text was in the main finalized, the next major editorial impact coming from Liu Xiang (77–6 BCE), who was an official in charge of collecting and editing texts, or from the commentator Guo Xiang (252?–312); the tripartite division into Inner (Chapters 1–7), Outer (Chapters 8–22) and Miscellaneous (Chapters 23–33) chapters was established before Guo Xiang; and Zhuangzi (c. 370–301 BCE) himself was author of the Inner chapters that comprise the philosophical axis of the received text. Klein (2011) documents how hard it is to maintain this position, if it can be put forward at all. She argues that textual evidence from the third and second centuries BCE agrees largely with the historian Sima Qian's (145–86 BCE) biographical account of Zhuangzi and that the historian's focus is not the Inner chapters but other sections of the received text. Liu (2014a, 131) retorts with good reason that the lack of archaeological evidence or roughly contemporary references to a text does not prove its nonexistence. However, it seems difficult to exempt the Inner chapters from Fraser's (1997, 157) general statement: “Since in ancient China an anthology like the Zhuangzi consisted of a collection of scrolls to which new components could be added at any time, we need not assume the existence of a finished ‘book’,” or at least not in pre-Han dynasty times, before the second century BCE. Klein takes her argument one step further and suggests that the scholars assembled at the court of Liu An (197–122) in Huainan may have worked on the Zhuangzi and in particular the Inner chapters, since the received text of the Huainanzi that stems from this court shares vocabulary and interests with the received text of the Zhuangzi. Considering the striking contrast in philosophical methodology and worldview (Puett 2000) between the two texts, this suggestion is daring. At the present stage of research it is safer to admit that our knowledge of the text's authors and the process of its composition is necessarily meager. So what are we to rely on when reading the Zhuangzi? Here Klein refers to Foucault's concept of “author-function,” according to which envisaging an author is nothing but a projection of our way of handling a text. This is useful when reading the Zhuangzi and similar texts, since “almost everything we know about Master Zhuang comes from the Zhuangzi text” (Klein 2011, 307). Zhuangzi and Hui Shi in their carefree ramblings found themselves on the bridge over the river Hao. Zhuangzi observed, “The fish swim out and about and ‘ramble’ as carefree as they please—this is fish happiness.” Huizi replied, “You're not a fish—how do you know fish happiness?” Zhuangzi returned, “You're not me—how do you know that I don't know fish happiness?” Huizi said, “I am not you and certainly don't know what you know. But you are certainly not a fish. The argument that you do not know fish happiness is thus made QED.” Zhuangzi said, “Let's get back to your original question. When you said ‘How (and whence) do you know fish happiness?’ you asked me because you already knew that I know fish happiness. I know it here, on the bridge, over the river Hao.” An ideal response to the challenge posed by this passage comes from the physicist and Nobel laureate Hideki Yukawa. His comments pay homage to the text's timeless charms: “The exchange between Zhuangzi and Huizi can be seen as an indirect comment on the question of rationalism and empiricism in science” (quoted in Happy Fish, 28; originally published in 1983). Yukawa sees Huizi as his colleague but admits that his sympathies lie with Zhuangzi. Chad Hansen (quoted in Happy Fish, 149; the paper was originally published in 2003) observes that “this passage is one of a small cluster of examples of reasoning in ancient Chinese texts that Sinologists recognize as having a surface resemblance to Western philosophy more than to the manifest image of Chinese thought.” In the footsteps of A. C. Graham (1981), he reads the short dialogue as a logical debate on epistemological issues, with a stress on perspectivism. He argues that Huizi's position is contradictory: “Hui Shi [is] trapped by his persistent tendency of slipping from relativistic premises to absolutist conclusions that conflict with his relativism” (Happy Fish, 63). Hansen proposes that Zhuangzi in his final statement follows a pragmatic line when he argues that “what is appropriate to say depends on a perspective” (Happy Fish, 68). Other contributors to Happy Fish pursue similar lines of interpretation. Norman Teng shows in detail how the two dialogue partners stick to logical rules that were established in the Mohist canon (Graham 1978). Han Xiaoqiang reminds readers of the playful and ironic mood of the scene that has often been of great interest to interpreters. In the tradition of Taiwanese scholarship, Sham Yat Shing persists with the question of which of the two thinkers has won the argument (see also Hoffmann in Happy Fish, 36). Roger Ames's public interest in the dialogue reaches back to the 1990s (published in Ames 1998) when he and Hansen, as if in mimicry of the two ancient thinkers, were frequently invited to conduct controversial discussions on “happy fish” in front of an interested audience. In the volume at hand Ames reads the short dialogue from the perspective of the wider Zhuangzi and the framework of argument of the late Warring States period of the fourth and third centuries BCE. His preparatory sketch of what he terms a “Daoist cosmology” contains striking insights into the terminological and conceptual characteristics of the Chinese discourse. The paper is entitled “‘Knowing’ as the ‘Realizing of Happiness’. Here on the Bridge, over the River Hao.” Ames reminds us that the use of written characters for “knowing” “collaps[es] any severe distinction among who knows, what is known and the use of what is known efficaciously in acting wisely” and that definition is “through association” (Happy Fish, 273). Both points are essential for reading the dialogue. Ames proceeds to point out that “Daoist texts give us a situational rather than a causal cosmology, seeking to understand the whole range of relevant conditions and the relations that obtain among them as they come to sponsor any given occurrence” (Happy Fish, 280). As opposed to this, later Mohist realists argued for the independent certainty of knowledge (Hansen 2012). Ames concludes: “The philosophical issues that Zhuangzi and Huizi are engaging at this level fit this dialectical framework as a debate over the Mohist claim for the possibility of certain, universal knowledge, which is unconditioned in the sense that it need not take account of context” (Happy Fish, 284; compare Teng's contribution, as above). So for Zhuangzi “knowing belongs to a world of shared experience, in which the knower and the known are both implicated.” At face value, the short dialogue depicts two of ancient China's foremost logicians discussing the sentiments of fish. So the dialogue can be read as pointing to difficulties in “communication across perspectives or worlds,” with Hui Shi seeming to affirm a position of incommensurability and Zhuangzi relying on his understanding of “rambling,” enhanced by the obvious similarity between the characters for you “wandering” and you “swimming” (Perkins in Happy Fish, 195). This may be seen as hinting at the topic of species difference, which has repercussions in many sections of the Zhuangzi. Franklin Perkins (Happy Fish, 185) argues that “the Zhuangzi is one of the earliest and most thorough attempts to think through human beings as just another of the ten thousand things,” This attempt ends in an emergence of human uniqueness that is far from flattering: “For Zhuangzi, what makes human beings exceptional is that we can recognize that our knowledge and ethics have no more validity than those of any other species” (Happy Fish, 199). Other contributors (Takahiro Nakajima; Kuwako Toshio) contrast the Zhuangzi's position with that of Thomas Nagel and with Peter Singer, who takes an active interest in animal rights. Eske Møllgaard takes up the concept of “rambling” or “wandering” (you). He argues that the Zhuangzi makes a crucial distinction between human life and the life of heaven, or “transcendental life” as Møllgaard puts it. “In the moment of ‘wandering’ we experience ourselves as generated by transcendental life” and Zhuangzi's expression of joy “is not a reference to something in the outer world but to the ‘self-so’ (ziran) of life itself as it affects our being” (Happy Fish, 94 and 97). Møllgaard refers to Isabel Robinet for his reading of the Zhuangzi and takes a stand against François Jullien's argument that there is no ontological difference in Chinese thought. Most of the contributors approach the dialogue equipped with the tools that have opened to them an academic career in fields of philosophy and its history. So when Nakajima and, in particular, Peng Feng discuss the issue of personal experience as the basis of knowing (how does the dialogue's Zhuangzi know?), Buddhist terms as well as Derrida lurk in the background. Hans-Georg Moeller quotes Wittgenstein in order to throw light on Zhuangzi's “rambling without destination.” Zhang Longxi takes the problems with knowing that both dialogue partners seem to share as the starting point for an excursion into the depth of problems in the dialogue between “East and West” and quotes Richard Bernstein and Peter Winch. Ames quotes Dewey and Whitehead. Thereby scholars let a wide spectrum of contemporary and traditional philosophy surround the Zhuangzi passage as if giving it a halo. The more pedestrian question of how to handle the relationship between the brief passage under discussion and the text as a whole, and in particular the Inner chapters to which the passage does not belong, remains in the shadows, and rightfully so, in line with the volume's broad hermeneutic aim. What also remain in the background, for very good reasons, are attempts to equip the text's philosophical orientations with well-defined labels (Coutinho 2014). Livia Kohn's edited volume New Visions of the Zhuangzi contains some work that concurs with Happy Fish and centers on methods of thinking and expressing thought. Robert Allinson's paper on the Zhuangzi's frequent reliance on cripples as the conveyors of truth belongs here. Returning to previous work (1989) he touches on the text's never-ending magic: “Zhuangzi's use of metaphor possesses cognitive significance, dual significance. The unlikely messenger, the message bearer, breaks down our automatic negative response through humour, eccentricity, improbability, and a rhythmic succession of literary images, whose brilliance has awakened our aesthetic sensibilities” (New Visions of the Zhuangzi [hereafter New Visions], 115). Jung Lee deals with rhetorical strategies that he sees at play in the Zhuangzi's dialogues and considers important philosophical and literary tools. He distinguishes contextual authority or “weighted words,” as Zhuangzi puts it, that rely on the personal authority of the speaker, “Socratic influence” that leads the dialogue partner to contradict himself and “epiphanic pointing” as documented in the monkey keeper's performance (Chapter 2). Roy Porat also returns to the well-researched field of “language” (see, e.g., Kjellberg and Ivanhoe 1996; Hansen 1983, 120). It is hardly, as Porat argues, an “understated characteristic of the Zhuangzi that it is … a hard text from which to extract clear-cut descriptive statements” (New Visions, 117). His focus, however, is not on the Zhuangzi's use of language but on its analysis of language use. As he puts it: “The author of the ‘Qiwulun’ [Chapter 2] … maintained that language is not merely a tool to convey the true essence of reality, but one to conceptualize it. In other words, language constitutes part of the reason why we cannot perceive reality as it is” (New Visions, 129). In the main, New Visions deals with social and moral philosophy. Here Chris Fraser's concept of the “heterogeneity of value” provides a point of orientation. Fraser's sources stem from conflicting parts of the text and he is careful to speak of “authors” rather than of “Zhuangzi.” He shows how they argue against an action-guiding distinction between right and wrong. Instead, they propose that life is characterized by contingency. Fraser draws a practical lesson: “The Zhuangist approach helps to highlight the limitations of systematic normative theory and the central role of practical discretion in ethical life” (New Visions, 55). In the Zhuangzi, skepticism in regard to opposite-based thinking extends to the opposition between life and death. Remarks on this topic have since antiquity attracted readers' attention. Agne Budriunaite's paper, “Joys of the Empty Skull: The Tension between Nature and Death,” takes this up and contrasts passages on the wise man's equanimity towards death with those that hint at his power to transcend life and death: “By not creating a rational and universal theory, or even any theory at all, Zhuangzi teaches a major existential lesson for people of all centuries. Life lies in death and death lies in life when seen from the empty center of the transformation process” (New Visions, 37). She argues that from a relativistic approach, or from a “non-perspective” or “zero-perspective,” Zhuangzi maintains the option to react spontaneously. In lieu of a conclusion, Budriunaite proposes that “the essential nature of everything … lie[s] in constant, spontaneous and self-so transformation,” thus transcending the dichotomy between life and death (New Visions, 35). This leaves room for practical attempts to achieve immortality and for the concept of “nourishing life” that agrees with passages in the Laozi and has, since the second century CE, had an impact on Daoist religious movements. It is the main topic of a paper by Thomas Michael, who collects the Zhuangzi's stories about hermits who retire to faraway landscapes where they lead a carefree life and practice meditation. Much of the Zhuangzi's enduring popularity rests on the depiction of these hermits. The concept of meditative “mind-fasting” belongs here. Alan Fox shows how this practice is set up as the condition for an “action in non-action” (weiwuwei) way of knowing that sees through the abstraction that separates things and causes dichotomies. “To see through dichotomy is to see subtlety” (New Visions, 64). Based on William James's observation that “if we look at the situation pragmatically, ostensible gaps between things are filled with intermediate grades of influence,” Fox calls the Zhuangzi's epistemology “completely concrete” (New Visions, 63). The attempt to gain “fullness of power (de),” or as Hans-Georg Moeller puts it “fullness of health,” also involves meditative practice. Moeller proposes that in this respect “the Zhuangzi provides a philosophical foundation for the engagement in an internal alchemy (neidan) aimed at enhancing one's powers and potency” (New Visions, 75). The practice of neidan became an important element in the growth and enduring nature of the Daoist religion. When the authors of these papers speak of heterogeneity or perspectualism they represent this as Zhuangzi's philosophical conviction and provide many good reasons for the need to do so. However, the text also contains contrasting statements that are better explained by its history than by an author's position. From the perspective of a non-specialist, as is this reviewer, it would be tempting to return to the juxtaposition of topically related but contrasting parts and passages of the long text in the attempt to identify and clarify strategies of argument and philosophical positions. Liu Xiaogan's “Three Groups of the Outer and Miscellaneous Chapters” (Liu with Yama 2014) goes in this direction. It might now be undertaken with more confidence, since archaeological findings have provided more information on the way ancient texts were written. In the materials at hand, Mercedes Valmisa attempts such a juxtaposition between passages of Zhuangzi chapter 6 and the Guodian text Qiongda yishi (Failure and Success Are a Matter of Timing, my translation; Cook 2012, 453–64) that present contrasting approaches to fate. The Zhuangzi suggests adaptation and Failure and Success suggests “returning to oneself” (Cook 2012, 464). Valmisa also presents sketches of additional and conflicting positions on this topic that are put forth in other parts of the Zhuangzi. Her conclusion is well known but rarely taken as the basis of research: “A heterogeneous compilation, the Zhuangzi thus contains materials holding different and even opposing intellectual and philosophical positions” (New Visions, 18). The main aim of New Visions is to relate the Zhuangzi's way of seeing things to a range of present-day issues and thereby make it relevant to the world of today. Lucia Tang recognizes traces of the Zhuangzi in a fashion show of the Japanese label Comme des Garçons that in 1997 used artificially deformed and “crippled” models as presenters. Livia Kohn points to the neurophysiological use of meditation to induce a dropping of conceptions. Erin Cline proposes that glimpses at the ideal world of the Zhuangzi help with analyzing the real world of small children. Eske Møllgaard proclaims a global need to create a community where, informed by Zhuangzi's philosophy of language, we “follow the actual existential situation in which we find ourselves” (New Visions, 210). Livia Kohn's massive monograph Zhuangzi: Text and Context (hereafter Text and Context) is without doubt a useful contribution to the field of Zhuangzi studies. It is, as she puts it, more an overview of what has been done than an excursion into new fields: “I have kept myself largely in the background, summarizing the readings of previous scholars” (vi). The book is meant for an audience with some knowledge and proven interest in the field of ancient Chinese and Daoist thought but not for the academic specialist and not for someone who is completely new to the Zhuangzi. Half of its chapters focus on interpretations of what is said in the text itself; the other half deals with the text's history. There is, for instance, the chapter “Language and Metaphors” that in solid elementary fashion prepares some of the ground for entering this complex field of Zhuangzi studies. Kohn lists and explains the text's favorite narrative forms and metaphors and, importantly, quotes a crucial piece of information provided by the text's authors: “Zhuang Zhou expounds [his views] using absurd expressions, extravagant words, unbordered phrases and irregular and paradoxical expressions” (Text and Context, 171; Zhuangzi Chapter 33). Another interpretative chapter is entitled “Perfect Happiness” and includes a section on “Free and Easy Wandering”: “Happiness … is the intrinsic quality of the ongoing process of wandering (you) in an attitude of nonaction (wuwei)” (Text and Context, 18). Quoting Billeter (2010) she continues: “This means to align with the heavenly rather than the human, the cosmic rather than the social, to adequately respond to … the great world process as a whole rather than … the narrow orb of my desires and repulsions.” Chapters on the text's history and the history of its impact deal with, for instance, the commentator Guo Xiang, religious Daoism, poetry and art, “the Buddhist connection” and “Western thought.” It must be assumed that the reader would often be better served if the author had stepped into the foreground. These chapters amass a lot of material on stages of intellectual history but more could have been done to identify and evaluate links to the Zhuangzi. We are, for example, told what is known of Guo Xiang's philosophical views. They differ from those of the Zhuangzi (see also Zyporin 2014, 417–19), while Guo Xiang's commentary is by far the most competent and important there is. This situation seems to entail problems for reading the Zhuangzi. In any case, it demands discussion. So certain questions remain unresolved but Kohn's materials allow the history of how and by whom the text was read to be sketched. This helps to characterize the text and also throws some light on the culture it was part of. The text's history makes it quite clear that to read it demanded a high level of education. Therefore, Daoist religious ritual and doctrine had hardly any use for it, at least not during the religion's formative stages. Its first appearance in the religion is more geared to the person of Zhuangzi figuring as an immortal than to details of the text. When the text comes to the fore, religious interest lies in the methods and ends of meditation practice. As opposed to this, Zhuangist ideas and concepts had a formative effect on Chinese and East Asian Buddhism, as was the case for Chinese and East Asian art and poetry. This reviewer found the chapter on “Western thought” hard to read. The motives behind suggested parallelisms remain unclear and Kohn does not discuss matters. The figures to be compared to Zhuangzi are Meister Eckhart, Desiderius Erasmus, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Immanuel Kant, and Friedrich Nietzsche. The monograph is accompanied by a very extensive bibliography of mainly English-language secondary materials. Bo Wang's monograph, Zhuangzi: Thinking Through the Inner Chapters (hereafter Inner Chapters), come to life in Kohn's relaxed but accurate English rendering, is perhaps one of the most readable scholarly accounts of the Zhuangzi. Jointly, author and translator create the picture of a fourth-century Chinese thinker who uses immense intellectual and artistic skills to propagate a lifestyle of “inner emigration” (205) and does so in a surprisingly original and attractive fashion. Wang decidedly avoids the hurdles that scholarly discussions have seemingly put in the way of appreciating the Zhuangzi: “I decided to place my main emphasis on the man rather than the book” (161). His account of the man is based on the Inner chapters, which have traditionally been ascribed to Zhuangzi, and he sees in the titles, in their content and in their number—it is seven—a systematic mind at work. He extensively quotes Chinese scholars from the seventh to the eighteenth centuries in support of this view. He also turns to such voices and to outstanding literary figures on other occasions as if to strengthen his own suggestions by presenting them with an echo. He thereby provides the Western reader with a welcome chance to take part in the Chinese tradition of reading the Zhuangzi. Judging from Wang's own interest, this tradition was and remains eminently practical. He writes: “Once we have given up on saving the world [which was Confucius’ aim] our focus shifts toward questions of how best to live in it, on the process of nourishing life” (49). In Wang's reading nourishing life involves a lot of cutting off: feelings, analytical knowledge, the world of things. In a contribution to Text and Context (77), the author calls the result “transcendence”: “Zhuangzi stands firmly in the realm of cosmic change and looks at the world from the perspective of Heaven” (Text and Context, 121). Zhuangzi's “firm stand” may surprise some readers of the text. It is also doubtful whether Zhuangzi really “exhibits a clear contrast to ordinary people” (Text and Context, 141) and if for any of the text's authors “to pursue spirit means to live the life of the mind while letting go of the animal aspects of human nature and abandoning the body” (Text and Context, 142). A useful overview of well chosen key concepts sums it up. In Wang's reading the Zhuangzi becomes a reservoir of easily applicable wisdom that deprives it of some of its philosophical vitality. It is thereby tied to only two of the three dimensions that Liu (2014b) sees in the text, with methodological insights being the third. The works here reviewed, useful and inspiring as they are, all share a certain restraint. They do not propose to be the last word on the Zhuangzi and the text does indeed contain more dialogues and other passages that deserve the close scrutiny that results from scholarly cooperation.