The Zhuangzi: From Where Wang Ni is Coming, and Where Wang Ni is Going
I would wager that
among sensitive and intelligent persons it is perhaps a near universal
experience to have been baffled to notice, at least once in their lives and
more probably too many times than one can count, that any proposition or
statement put forth by whomsoever can be seen ultimately to be a statement more
revelatory about the person talking than about the content referenced. In a
very crude way, the fervent religious believer talks of God being around every
corner, the poet talks of how all things turn toward their source, like the
flower turning toward the sun which is its God and life force, while the
botanist, coming at the flower from within a finer, more exact, and narrow
subcultural value system, remarks that the flower “tracks” the sun so as to, in
turn, attract insects to its warmth for the transpiring of pollination. Each
naturally carries with them a hyper personalized perspective: a narrative of
“what is the case” and from this an account of “what one is to do with
oneself”, so informed from their inherited biological traits mixed with the
range of experiences, memories, passions, and inherited cultural (and subcultural)
values that allow them to interpret and carry on with life. The religious
believer serves what she counts to be God, the poet what she counts to be
beautiful, the scientist or academic what she counts to be verifiable and
peer-reviewed “knowledge”, and you too fall somewhere. And so, in the interior
of the sensitive person, the epistemological questions arise: How is one to
tell “what is genuinely the case” if each is so ensnared, and more vitally, how
is one to get any insight in regard to “what one is suppose to do with oneself”
if ultimately one is viewing everything as framed through some filtering
mechanism, singular to oneself? Is there a way out of this mess?
Zhuangzi was
rather hip to this curious self-referentialness in human discourse, and has
often been assumed to be an epistemological skeptic or perspectivist because of
certain statements of his, which seem to revel in the diversity of the
possibilities of points of view. For instance:
You can’t discuss the ocean with a well frog – he’s
limited by the space he lives in. You can’t discuss ice with a summer insect –
he’s bound to a single season. You can’t discuss the way with a cramped scholar
– he’s shacked by his doctrines” (trans. Watson 97).
Karyn Lai points out in her An
Introduction to Chinese Philosophy that, “Zhuangzi’s epistemological
questions cast doubt on the picture of knowledge as primarily content-based. In
his (Zhuangzi’s) view, ‘knowledge is always a kind of interpretation rather
than a copy or representation’” (Lai 167). She also states that, “One gets a
sense from Zhuangzi’s allegories that each perspective is a ‘lodged’
perspective; in other words, each individual can only understand the world from
within his or her place” (Lai 151). Furthermore, a statement is not simply a
revelation about a person; it is also a revelation about language and the group
of persons utilizing one amongst themselves, the result of which is the
formation of a collective societal culture[1].
This can be glimpsed with pungent flavor when Zhuangzi points out:
What is acceptable we call acceptable; what is
unacceptable we call unacceptable. A road is made by people walking on it;
things are so because they are called so. What makes them so? Making them so
makes them so. Things all must have that which is so; things all must have that
which is acceptable. There is nothing that is not so, nothing that is not
acceptable. (trans. Watson 36)
In other words,
every view is reasonable or acceptable from some particular perspective, and
can even appear more reasonable and acceptable because it is socially
constructed to be so notable. Some roads may look un-navigatable to some –
those who perhaps do not wish to get dirty (and they may have fine reasons for
not getting dirty) – and so it does not appear to be a road. While others find
the road necessary, or even quite suitable, in order to get to where they are
going, and as such they see that it is in fact a road. And from these two
perspectives a road is so, or not so – that is, is a road or is not a road. The
natural question is: How far does this go? Is it turtle shells all the way
down: everything acceptable and equally true, nothing finally able to be
asserted as impartially correct? What is Zhuangzi asserting with such comments?
While most contemporary scientists and philosophers do not take such questions
seriously, finding that it leads to the infinite loops and dead-ends of
nihilism, relativism, and solipsism (and so there must be something mistaken in
the formulation and underlying assumptions inherent in the question), there is
something to be said for the questions if they are asked from a certain place,
and this is what I aim to make evident with the rest of this paper.
Zhuangzi
can be shown to be skeptical of his contemporaries’ intellectual formulations,
of how their terminologies are related to reality when they can be both
simultaneously reasonable yet in opposition fundamentally with one another.
Might this reveal that their methods are inadequate for approximating insight
into the nature of things? He is also concerned with how their conceptions lend
themselves to establishments of codes of constraining and confused,
non-spontaneous societal conduct: “The way I see it, the rules of benevolence
and righteousness and the paths of right (shi) and wrong (fei)
are all hopelessly snarled and jumbled. How could I know anything about such
discriminations?” (trans. Watson 41). And in another section: “When the Way
relies on little accomplishments and words rely on vain show, then we have the
rights and wrongs of the Confucians and Mohists. What one calls right the other
calls wrong; what one calls wrong the other calls right” (trans. Watson 34).
The Confucians and Mohists argued for a particular structure of society based
on their own reasonable criterions, and yet they are rarely in agreement in
even simple matters. Which is one to trust? Karyn Lai points out that “...in
the Confucian programme, especially in Confucius’ theory of names (zhengming)…he
advocated that a person’s commitment and behavior must accord with his title (ming)…”
Yet, Zhuangzi takes it that “such one-to-one correspondence oversimplifies the
diversity of the world,” and, “it can also mask the issue of how these
normative (Confucian) standards might be justified” (Lai 149) – something
Zhuangzi would like to unmask so as to come in contact directly with the Great
Thoroughfare, the Way. Moreover:
Zhuangzi disagrees
with the approach taken by some of the Mingjia that resort to examinations of
terms in order to resolve disagreements. This approach assumes some
combinations of assumptions including that the meanings of names are objective,
that they have a fixed relation with the world, and that a more accurate
understanding of them will settle disagreements. (Lai 149)
Zhuangzi directs our
attention to the great diversity and entrenched-ness of perspectives and
declines to admit that names have any fixed or absolutely certain correlation
to the world. One persons right is another’s wrong. The well-frogs common
environment precludes not only impartial discussion of the sea, but any
comprehension of its vastness. Zhuangzi says he is muddled upon hearing the
intellectuals views (trans. Watson 34), and finds that the disputers (Mohists/
Mingjia) and scholar-officials (Confucians) both “cling to their positions as
though they had sworn before the gods, sure that they are holding on to
victory” (trans. Watson 32). In a particularly significant passage that
follows, Zhuangzi observes that
“Everything has its
‘that,’ everything has its ‘this.’ From the point of view of ‘that’ you cannot
see it, but through understanding you can know it. So I say, ‘that’ comes out
of ‘this’ and ‘this’ depends upon ‘that’ – which is to say that ‘this’ and
‘that’ give birth to each other. But where there is birth there must be death;
where there is death there must be birth. Where there is acceptability there
must be unacceptability; where there is unacceptability there must be
acceptability. Where there is recognition of right there must be recognition of
wrong; where there is recognition of wrong there must be recognition of right”
(trans. Watson 35).
When ‘this’
particular perspective does not see the interior and reasonableness of ‘that’
particular perspective, one counts the other unacceptable and wrong while counting
its own view as acceptable and right. From the other side the same process
holds, too. In effect, it can be asserted that when a boundary becomes evident
and aware – when a consciousness is conscious – between the ‘this’ and ‘that,’
such is the birth of the two sides, together. Zhuangzi says, opposites engender
one another: the Yin gives birth to the Yang, the Yang to the Yin. And in the
Yang we can find the “incipient” Yin, and in the Yin we can find the
“incipient” Yang (Ames/Thompson 17-18). This enables us to “recognize a ‘this’,
but a ‘this’ which is also a ‘that’, a ‘that’ which is also a ‘this’” (trans.
Watson 35). This is undoubtedly a new perspective, a perspective that
recognizes the distinctive features of both interiors, and is able to sincerely
relate to both.
But
where would this lead us? We are apt to avow that this new perspective does not
really tell us much about “what is the case’ and “what is one to do with
oneself.” As far as we can tell it is still the case that “You can’t discuss
the Way with a cramped scholar – he’s shackled by his doctrines” and not to
mention that their “words rely on [a] vain show.” The elite intellects are out
of touch with the way, defending mere perspectives, and jabbering on and on
about terms far removed from experience, about white horses not being white
horses and the like. It’s felt that society has been built on this “out of
touchness” from the top down. That the car is on fire and there is no driver at
the wheel. Not only this, but it has seeped into your interior, has gotten a
hold of you. For instance, you speak the language, walk the so-called ‘roads,’
recognize the interior of the ‘right’, and breath in the mustiness of the
‘well.’ And now it occurs to you that the road is not a road, that it is only
so-called because of the assent of the collective that it is ‘so’. You’ve spent
your life sprinting on and on down that ubiquitous ‘road,’ jumping through
endless hoops, acquiring certificates and materials. And now, in full sprint
down the so-called road, it occurs to you that the Olympic games, the whole
damned thing, houses a broad illusion, even though you can’t quite put your
fingers on exactly why this is so. However, you have had welcome leisure in the
past, experiences of flow or vitalness. You recognize that:
Great understanding
is broad and unhurried; little understanding is cramped and busy. Great words
are clear and limpid; little words are shrill and quarrelsome. In sleep, men’s
spirits go visiting; in waking hours, their bodies hustle. With everything they
meet they become entangled. Day after day they use their minds in strife,
sometimes grandiose, sometimes petty. Their little fears are mean and trembly;
their great fears are stunned and overwhelming. They bound off like an arrow or
a crossbow pellet, certain that they are the arbiters of right and wrong… They
drown in what they do – you cannot make them turn back. They grow dark, as
though sealed with seals – such are the excess of their old age. And when their
minds draw near to death, nothing can restore them to the light (trans. Watson
32-33).
Since it is
recognized that we, ourselves, are out of touch with the Way, and that strife
follows from this “out of touchness,” we must turn away from the so-called road
and its disputes – whatsoever perpetuates the hurry in our being – and become
Way-farers, intent on quiet, deliberate, honest, and direct contact with the
source of “what is the case” and “what is one to do with oneself.”
In
British philosopher Colin Wilson’s second book Religion and the Rebel he
sums up what a Way-farer is in just the sense we are talking about. Wilson
refers to the Way-farer as the Outsider, for reasons that will become more
clear below.
My vision of our
civilization was a vision of cheapness and futility, the degrading of all
intellectual standards. In contrast to this, the Outsider seemed to be the man
who…felt himself lonely in the crowd of the second-rate. As I conceived him, he
could be a maniac carrying a knife in a black bag, taking pride in appearing
harmless and normal to other people; he could be a saint or a visionary, caring
for nothing but one moment in which he seemed to understand the world, and see
into the heart of nature and of God. The more I considered the Outsider, the
more I felt him to be a symptom of our time and age. Essentially, he seemed to
be a rebel; and what he was in rebellion against was the lack of spiritual
tension in a materially prosperous civilization…An individual tends to be
what his environment makes him. If a civilization is spiritually sick, the
individual suffers from the same sickness. If he is healthy enough to put up a
fight, he becomes an Outsider (Wilson 1957: 1-2)
Familiar with the
second-rate, those who merely disputed words, Zhuangzi would have sympathized
with the Outsider, that type of person intent upon razing from within the
sickness of their age, a sickness that has poisoned and contaminated them, and
from here, fighting their way back to resonating with the Dao, if it is really
there. The great bird Peng at the start of the Zhuangzi gets slack from
the more conventional minded little quail when it learn of Peng’s ambitions:
The little quail
laughs at him, saying ‘Where does he think he’s going? I give a great
leap and fly up, but I never get more than ten or twelve yards before I come
down fluttering among the weeds and brambles. And that’s the best kind of
flying anyway! Where does he think he’s going?’
Such is the
difference between the big and little. Therefore a man who has wisdom enough to
fill one office effectively, good conduct enough to impress one community,
virtue enough to please one ruler, or talent enough to be called into service
in one state, has the same kind of self-pride as these little creatures”
(trans. Watson 25-26).
What is obvious is
that it is a lonesome hike, and that is why they are called Outsider’s. The
questions they ask may be well known, clichéd, and perennial but they are not
mere questions. They embody all the energy of the person. When they speak, they
speak wholeheartedly, intensely, and individualistically. For they are coming
from a sense of groundlessness of things, and they have reached a threshold,
marked by the epistemological questions.
Karyn Lai remarks that “Zhuangzi did not engage in speculative
epistemology for its own sake” (Lai 166). Elsewhere, she says, “the aim of
Zhuangzi’s liberation entails freedom not from life in the world but from its
conventions and ideologies” (Lai 161). For Zhuangzi, epistemological questions
are not things to be asked in a philosophy course, and written about to secure
a good grade, for the possibility of a good job, for a stable and good life,
etc., etc, and on an on down that rabbit hole. Like the Outsider he cannot be
truly motivated by such things, because he cannot feel that they are “what one
ought to be doing with oneself,” seeing that their path originates with the
so-called road, and that the so-called road is so because it is heavily trodden
and called so. The question burns within the Outsider: What is really
important? Zhuangzi is an Outsider because he is radically life affirming – he
has glimpsed the curious unsubstantiatedness of the so-called and can no longer
treat it as anything else –and because this is so, the way out of the mess is
spotted: one must get dirty, get off the so-called road, drop the second-hand
conceptions of others, and turn oneself into a compass of the Way with all of
the intensity and concentration at one’s disposal.
A
particularly significant section of the second chapter of the Zhuangzi
features an advanced Outsider named Wang Ni. Wang Ni is asked a question by a
fellow Way-farer named Nie Que: “Do you know what all things agree in calling
right?” Wang Ni say’s “How would I now that?” Nie Que tries again: “Do you know
that you don’t know it?” Wang Ni provides the same response. “Then do things
know nothing?” Wang Ni considers this and then addresses it at length. He asks
his kin skeptically, “How do I know that what I call knowing is not ignorance?
How do I know that what I call ignorance is not knowing?” (trans. Graham 58).
Wang Ni goes on to assert the familiar diversity of perspective and the
difficulty of ascertaining unchanging truth following from recognition of this
diversity. He speaks with first-hand clarity:
If a man sleeps in a
damp place, his back aches and he ends up half paralyzed, but is this true of
the loach? If he lives in a tree he is terrified and shakes with fright, but is
this true of the monkey? Of these three creatures, then, which one knows the
proper place to live? Men eat the flesh of grass-fed animals, deer eat grass,
centipedes find snakes tasty, and hawks and falcons relish mice. Of these four,
which knows how to fix the standard of beauty for the world? (trans. Watson 41)
In different terms,
Wang Ni is asserting that human beings are not merely socially conditioned to
assume that the so-called road is a road. In fact, he speaking from a further
epistemological skepticism: all things and creatures alike believe themselves
to be the observers of truth and the final judges of beauty. He asks in effect,
How are we to tell “what is the case” and “what is one to do with oneself” if
being a human being means that the world is ‘humanified’ upon looking at it
through human eyes? Even though one can tell that others are muddled and
second-rate, that they are trapped in a ‘this’ without having seen that it is a
‘this’, how can one proceed when there is notation that even when one is
attuned to ‘this’ and ‘that’ and has transcended it, that there is even further
and further traps?
Nie
Que hears this and wonders aloud, “If you don’t know what is profitable or
harmful, then does the Perfect Man likewise know nothing of such things?” Wang
Ni’s reply is revelatory:
The Perfect Man is
godlike. Though the great swamps blaze, they cannot burn him; though the great
rivers freeze, they cannot chill him; though swift lightning splits the hills
and howling gales shake the sea, they cannot frighten him. A man like this
rides the clouds and mist straddles the sun and moon, and wanders beyond the
four seas. Even life and death have no effect on him, much less the rules of
profit and loss!” (trans. Watson 41).
This is quite an
affirmation for an epistemological skeptic, for someone who evidently feels the
weight of such a question as “How do I know that what I call knowing is not
ignorance?” And so, what are we to make of this? Wang Ni clearly understands
the perspectival problems, and even asks questions beyond them. He is being
honest about his confusion, claiming that he is not sure if things know
anything. But at the conclusion of this dialogue he declares beyond question
that there is the Perfect Man – who perhaps Wang Ni has encountered or who has
perhaps sometimes been felt smiling in Wang Ni himself – and the Perfect
Man is unshaken by the unaccountable weirdness of being.
Wang
Ni has driven with all his might into the groundlessness of things, and has not
gone insane with fright, nor evidently fallen submissive to some dogma for
comfort. He could affirm a sentence two sections before his in the Zhuangzi:
“The torch of chaos and doubt – this is what the stage steers by” (trans.
Watson 38). Irrespective of how the distance along the path of “far reaching
vision” Wang Ni has trodden, he has at least divested with the so-called road
and overcome resentment toward it, deliberated into himself honestly, and
turned himself into a compass of the way. Otherwise, he would not take the
Perfect Man seriously, still coming from an interior that is trapped in the
epistemological skepticism, that he can be shown to be able to wield. The
Outsider must walk a fine line out there on the edge of the abyss, but it is
ultimately the only thing worth doing.
Right is not right;
so is not so. If right were really right, it would differ so clearly from not
right that there would be no need for argument. If so were really so, it would
differ so clearly from not so that there would be no need for argument. Forget
the years; forget distinctions. Leap into the boundless and make it your home!
(trans. Watson 44).
In the Zhuangzi
we are offered an invitation into the interior of persons who had found
themselves to be muddled in the distant past, and who had, consequently,
resolved to find their way out. The epistemological questions arise no matter
when it is, so long as there is a sensitive consciousness there to be muddled
by the unaccountable weirdness of being alive, and who are willing to drop
everything and carefully take them apart (in spite of the endless frustrations
that comes along with such a task). Karyn Lai remarks that, “Zhuangzi’s
philosophy of ‘perspectivism’ enables people to ‘free themselves from the grip
of tradition and the rational mind’ in order to ‘perceive and accord with an
ethical scheme inherent in the world’”[2]
(Lai 161). One starts as a skeptic, asking the epistemological questions,
carefully discerning what assumptions lie below what assumptions, and it is
easy to forget that the whole point was to find out what is worth trusting,
i.e. What is one to do with oneself? or What is important? As Colin Wilson sums
up in The Outsider, “…the problem for the individual always will be…the
intolerable struggle to expose the sensitive areas of being to what may
possibly hurt them; the attempt to see as a whole, although the instinct of
self-preservation fights against the pain of the internal widening, and all the
impulses of spiritual laziness build waves of sleep with every new effort. The
individual begins that long effort as an Outsider; he may finish it as a saint”
(Wilson 1956: 281).
Works Cited
Ames,
Roger T., and Kirill O. Thompson. "What is the Reason of Failure or
Success? The Fisherman's Song Goes Deep into the River: Fisherman in the
Zhuangzi." Wandering at ease in the Zhuangzi. Albany: State
University of New York Press, 1998. 15-34. Print.
Graham,
A. C., and Zhou Zhuang. Chuang-tzŭ: The inner chapters. London u.a.:
Unwin, 1989. Print.
Kymlicka,
Will. Contemporary political philosophy: an introduction. Oxford
[England: Clarendon Press ;, 1990. Print.
Lai,
Karyn. "Zhuangzi's Philosophy." An introduction to Chinese
philosophy. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2008. 172-195.
Print.
Watson,
Burton. Zhuangzi: basic writings. New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 2003.
Print.
Wilson,
Colin. The outsider. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1956. Print.
Wilson,
Colin. Religion and the rebel. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1957. Print.
[1] “…A
territorially concentrated culture, centered on a shared language which is used
in a wide range of societal institutions, in both public and private life”
(Kymlicka 346).
[2] The inner
quotes being from Phillip Ivanhoes “Zhuangzi on Skepticism, Skill and the
Ineffable Dao”, Journal of the American Academy of Religion, vol. 61,
no. 4: 639-54
