You still have a tangled-up, overgrown mind, don’t you?
Zhuangzi, Books 1-4
Today, we begin our read-along of Zhuangzi. Here’s the schedule for our readings:
The Inner Books
August 11: Books 1 - 4
August 17: Members-Only Zoom Call, 8-9:30 PM Eastern (we’ll discuss all the Inner Books)
August 18: Books 5 - 7
The Outer Books
August 25: Books 8-12
September 1: Books 13 - 16
September 8: Books 17 - 22
September 12: Members-Only Zoom Call, 2-3:30 PM Eastern
The Mixed Books
September 15: Books 23 - 25
September 22: Books 26 - 29
September 28: Members-Only Zoom Call, 8-9:30 PM Eastern
September 29: Books 30 - 33
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Because of the unique structure of the writings of Zhuangzi, these posts will naturally be more scattered than, say, our discussions of Aristotle. The Zhuangzi is divided into books, themselves divided into paragraphs/sections. (Structurally, it is more similar to Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations than it is to Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics.) Writing on Zhuangzi linearly, then, is going to be a little different than what we’ve done before.
I’ve decided that each week I’ll write several ‘mini essays,’ one for each book. Keep in mind that I am no expert in Chinese philosophy, and that I’m working my way through this book with you. I might say some naive, or perhaps even stupid, things over the course of this read-along.
Book 1: Freely Wandering About
Governance and administration are themes throughout Book 1 of the Zhuangzi, and this is interestingly distinct from what I recall of the Tao Te Ching. In the Tao Te Ching, there is an almost anarchic outlook on the world. Thoreau’s maxim, ‘That government is best which governs least,’ could easily fit into the Tao Te Ching. But in the Zhuangzi things seem a little different — whether this is a difference in emphasis, or a development within Taoism, or divergence between Laozi and Zhuangzi, I cannot say. Those more expert in Chinese philosophy may be able to enlighten us in the comments below.
Huìzǐ was a philosopher and a prime minister of the Wei state during the Warring States period. He’ll appear at several other points in the text, but in this early book he comes off as something of a neophyte. He says to Zhuangzi:
‘The king of Wèi gave me the seeds of a big gourd. I planted them, and they grew to produce fruit five bushels in size. Filled with liquid, they weren’t strong enough to stand upright; split to make dippers, they were so wide they couldn’t fit into anything. It’s not that they weren’t colossally big, but I considered them useless and smashed them’.
Huìzǐ has an expectation of how things are, largely dependent on how things have been. He knows what you ought to do with gourds. These exceptionally large gourds are not suitable for these purposes, so he smashes them; they’re useless, after all. Zhuangzi chastises him because he was unable to appreciate the potential of these gourds: ‘You are really clumsy at using big things.’
Throughout Book 1, we see this contrast between the large and the small. The cicada is unable to appreciate Péng (called Roc in the Penguin Classics translation), a mythical bird of enormous proportion. Small knowing doesn’t compare with great knowing; a small lifespan doesn’t compare with a great lifespan. It would be easy to think that small is bad and large is good — and yet, I do not think this is the consistent message of these early books, as small and big are sometimes used to simply describe two ways of life, two levels of description. The great mistake we make, I would put forward, is thinking that a single level of description can apply across the board. The governance of the self and the governance of the state may be strikingly different (as we see again in Book 4), and it would be a mistake to think that one set of rules will universally apply.
Huìzǐ mistake is failing to see things as they are; he mistakenly wants to treat them as something he is already familiar with.
Book 2: Discourse on Evening Things Out
This theme is carried through Book 2. The early contrast between big/small knowing and big/small speech might seem like it has that perjorative connotation:
Big knowing is broad and expansive; small knowing is cramped and confined. Big speech is flashy and fiery, small speech blathers and jabbers.
But if you look at Fraser’s translation notes, which are very useful, puts this to rest.
The implication is less to praise ‘big’ knowing and speech and deprecate ‘small’ knowing and speech than to put them all on a par, as different expressions of human activity. Any interpretation of the four otherwise rare or unknown onomatopoetic adjectives used here is speculative, and a justifiable alternative translation might attempt to mimic them by using only interjections: ‘Big knowing—ooh, ahh! Small knowing—yeah, so. Big speech—whoa, wa! Small speech—um, oh’. Muddled … them:
Both big and small speech are literally incoherent, or at least fail to express anything concrete. The poem at 2.11 seems to hold the key to this book.
The Great Way isn’t declared.
Great distinctions aren’t spoken.
Great benevolence isn’t benevolent.
Great honesty isn’t upright.
Great courage isn’t aggressive.
If the Way is too clear, it fails to guide as a Way.
If speech draws too many distinctions, it fails to cover.
If benevolence is too constant, it can’t be achieved. If honesty is too pure, it can’t be trusted.
If courage is too aggressive, it can’t be carried out.
These five all in place, you’re close enough.
We can make a distinction – I know, I know – between the Way (the Great Way) and various Ways, which we make actual by making distinctions. We assert ‘this’, ‘that,’ and ‘not,’ and this makes the world intelligible to us.
The Way has never had boundaries; speech has never been constant.* Because we deem ‘this’, there are borders.* Let me say something about the borders: there is locating, there is demarcating;* there is sorting out, there is making claims;* there is dividing, there is disputing; there is competing, there is contending. These are called ‘the eight Virtues’* [by which we fix borders].
Later this week, I’m going to write a little bit more about the way logic and philosophy of language are being used through the Zhuangzi. That was my first philosophical love, and I’m interested to see what philosophy of language and logic looked like in Chinese philosophy, and I’m especially interested in how these theoretical considerations are rendered practical in the Zhuangzi.
Book 3: The Crux of Nurturing Life
In Book 3, we encounter one of the most famous images from Zhuangzi — not as famous as Zhuang Zhou’s dream, but still an image with substantial resonance. This is a butcher who has perfected his craft so well that he no longer even sees the ox that he is carving. He has moved beyond sensory knowledge.
A good cook changes knives annually—this is cutting. A poor cook changes knives monthly—this is hacking. Now this knife of mine I’ve used for nineteen years, carving thousands of oxen, and yet the blade is like it’s fresh from the grindstone.
The blade is not blunted because Ding has learned to find the spaces between the joints. There is plenty of room for the blade to wander about free of resistance, and it is resistance that leads to the blunting of a blade. Ding’s skill allows him to carve the ox at its joints.
This same metaphor is invoked by Plato in the Phaedrus, when he speaks of categorizing according to species. There’s no reason to think this is merely biological. Indeed, on one conception of metaphysics, the point is to carve all of reality at its joints. These processes of division and generalization are part of knowledge-formation.
But this may not be what Zhuangzi has in mind. There emphasis in this passage isn’t so much about the proper categorization of things, but of a lack of resistance. The cook is able to proceed in his craft because he finds the space between the joints. This may be the secret to nurturing life.
I say that Zhuangzi might be differing from Plato here in large part because of what I wrote in regard to Book 2. If I’m right in my reading (and there’s a substantial possibility that I am wrong), Zhuangzi is putting forward a view in which distinctions are always in some way artificial. Asserting ‘this’ and ‘that’ and ‘not’ codify a Way, but that is not the Way.
Book 4: The World Among Humanity
Book 4 takes a turn, stylistically. Confucius appears as a character; Fraser posits this may be an attempt to show commonality between the teachings in the text and the Confucian school, also called Ruism.
Yán Hui, Confucius’ best student, is asking his master about how he can be of use in the world. This is particularly relevant to us since we recently read Plato’s Republic, where tyrants and tyranny are contrasted with a philosophical way of living. Yán Huí wants to find a way to serve the state of Wèy, which is ruled by a tyrant. While Plato’s remedy is for philosophers to become kings, the Zhuangzi’s prescription is for us to discover the usefulness of being useless.
As Confucius speaks of serving a ruler, he highlights the need to put him at ease, to preserve inner tranquility, and to accept what you cannot control. The following could have easily been written by Epictetus:
In serving your ruler, the fullest loyalty is to put him at ease regardless of the matter. In serving your own mind, the utmost in Virtue is, without sorrow or joy arising before you in turn, to recognize what you can’t control and be as at ease with it as you are with fate.
And we learn that we need ‘to let your mind wander freely by riding along with things and to nurture what is within you by entrusting yourself to the inevitable—that’s the ultimate.’ This ‘go with the flow,’ finding oneself at peace with the tossing of the world, is characteristic of the advice that you find throughout the text.
But this is the great difficulty, for me at least, in reading the Zhuangzi. It is easy to summarize the text, but I fear I’m missing its complexities — and I’m missing out more of those complexities, perhaps, because my instinct is to compare Zhuangzi to Plato or Epictetus.
“Zhuangzi is putting forward a view in which distinctions are always in some way artificial”
I think this is correct. At one level there’s just a bunch of stuff making up the butcher-ox-knife system. At another level we can identify all these things and give them names (if we like, but that’s not the point here; we still identify them as things even without naming them).
As Zhuangzi says elsewhere:
“'This' is also 'that', 'that' is also 'this'. That there is one 'this' and 'not'; this here is also one 'this' and 'not'. Ultimately, then, are there 'that' and 'this'?! Or ultimately are there no 'that' and 'this'?!”
OK, at this point I thought I was having a stroke, or maybe the onset of a migraine, but reading it literally it does make sense.
There’s a Zen koan that asks what you should call a short staff. If you call it a short staff, you’re ignoring what it actually is. If you don’t call it a short staff, you’re ignoring a fact!
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The story about the gourds reminds me of the practice of developing hacks, in the computer or hardware sense. You’re using the item for what it *is*, not for what everyone thinks it’s supposed to be *for*.
A paper clip might be *for* holding sheets of paper together, but it makes a very effective lock pick (and you can make a decent tension tool with another paper clip!).
Just a couple of general comments.
First, it is crucial that we distinguish between Zhuangzi the thinker and Zhuangzi the collection of texts written by an uncertain number of unidentified authors. While there is no consensus on the matters of textual composition, organization, and authorship, a high level of confidence now exists amongst scholars that the so-called Inner Books (1-7) were written by Zhuangzi himself, whereas the rest, especially the last ten (23-33) so-called Mixed Books, were written by a mix of authors that included Zhuangzi himself; students of his; followers of Laozi, Confucius, and Mencius; and a variety of imitators of Zhuangzi. There are often striking differences in both the content and style between the Inner Books and the others; not to mention inconsistencies or contradictions.
Most scholars believe that a relatively coherent “Zhuangist philosophy” can be found in the 7 Inner Books; one that includes epistemology, ontology, ethics, and ideas about the formation and development of the subject. I share this belief. I would even argue that, if we want to divide the Inner Books further, Books 1-4 can form a useful core unit for our understanding.
Second, in my opinion, the key characteristics of Zhuangism (for lack of a better label)--a thoroughly naturalist monism, a decidedly perspectivist outlook on knowledge and morality, the primacy of transformation and becoming, the equality between the mind and the body, the condemnation of any willful violation of the Way, and the insistence on the essential unspeakability of the Dao–combine to make this outlook on life and the world diametrically opposite to the Platonic tradition. Instead, the two Western philosophers who come to my mind right away who share many of these characteristics are Nietzsche and Heidegger. (I read somewhere that Tao Te Ching, or Dao De Jing, was one of Heidegger’s favorite books.)
Finally, I feel sad that the beauty of Zhuangzi’s writing style (especially in the first 7 books) does not come through in the translations that we have so far. For all Chinese people, Zhuangzi is the ultimate symbol of the free spirit; and the title of the first book (“Freely Wandering About”) is an expression that is deeply entrenched in the Chinese language and culture. The writing style of these essays exudes this free spirit of Zhuangzi’s philosophy and is indispensable for a full appreciation of this important thinker who had fundamentally influenced Chinese culture for over 2,000 years (and other cultures through its reshaping of Buddhism when the latter entered East Asia).