Class 10 - Rambling about with Zhuangi
Today’s Reading
Today we’re moving on to the second reading from the Zhuangzi. There’s so much in this reading, which is the whole second chapter of the book. So we’re not going to be doing anything systematic. Instead, we’re going to be doing what Zhuangzi suggests: we’re going to ramble about (逍遥游) through the text, to see what we discover.
We’re going to do this by doing some creative writing! So sharpen your pencils and your minds, and let’s get started.
Discussion
To start with, we’re going to have a chance to talk about the text. We’re going to start with the following questions:
- What did you enjoy about this text? What did you not enjoy?
- What sections particularly stood out for you?
What’s in this Chapter?
In this chapter, there are essentially six sections. 1) Ziqi of the South Wall. 2) A section on discrimination and clarity. 3) A tale about Nie Que and Wang Ni and the futility of debate. 4) The discussion between Ju Que and Zhang Wuzi. 5) The story of Penumbra and Shadow and the problem of Free Will. And 6) The famous Butterfly Dream.
Rambling about…
We don’t have time to cover all this. There are comprehensive notes here ont eh website the scholars among you. But in today’s class we’re going to take it easy. We’re going to ramble about telling stories, exploring what interests us, and then finally focus in on the Butterfly Dream.
Rambling About Part 1
For your first little ramble, I want you to go through the text, and circle any sentences or phrases that you like, or that interest you. Take 10 minutes.
Then reorder the sentences/phrases on the page so that they make a poem. Share your poem in the chat, and we’ll take turns to read.
Rambling About Part 2
For your second ramble, I want you to take a single character from the text. It may be Zhuangzi himself. It may be Penumbra. It may be the butterfly. It may be Ziqi of the South Wall.
Put yourself in their place. Write a short story, poem or dialogue or song from the point of view of this character. Then we’ll go into breakout groups and share our writing, and talk about this writing in relation to the themes in the text.
Text Breakdown
Section 1. Ziqi of the South Wall
The chapter begins with Ziqi of the South Wall, who is apparently spacing out. This section has the famous line 今者吾喪我 (Jīn zhě wú sàng wǒ), or “Now, I (wú) have lost (sàng ) myself (我). The verb for “to lose” or sàng (喪) is said to derive from 哭 (kū) ‘cry over’ + 亡 (wáng) ‘die’ — to lose through death.
This then follows with a discussion of three kinds of ‘piping’ — of human beings, of the earth and of heaven. The leads into a discussion of some of the following:
- Great and little understanding / great and little words
- An aside on moral certainty
- An interesting comment on the emotions: joy, anger, grief, delight, worry, regret, fickleness, inflexibility, modesty, willfulness, candor, insolence…
- A question about the relationship between the body and the self
- The muddle of human life!
- The constancy of change
- Are our words no more than the sounds of baby birds cheeping?
Then there’s an extended passage on the question of right and wrong, true and false. The questions here seem to be question complex. First, Zhuangzi talks about the human creation of distinctions between right and wrong, true and false, and how these distinctions come from partial perspectives. Here’s the Chinese:
雖然，方生方死，方死方生；方可方不可，方不可方可；因是因非，因非因是。 Suīrán, fāng shēng fāng sǐ, fāng sǐ fāng shēng; fāng kě fāng bù kě, fāng bù kě fāng kě; yīn shì yīn fēi, yīn fēi yīn shì.
The translation we have in Watson is this:
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.
And then, he talks about the perspective of the sage (聖人 Shèngrén):
是以聖人不由，而照之于天，亦因是也。 Shì yǐ shèngrén bùyóu, ér zhàozhī yú tiān, yì yīn shì yě.
Or, in translation:
Therefore the sage does not proceed in such a way but illuminates all in the light of Heaven
What’s going on here? For Zhuangzi, this is a position in which “this” is no longer opposed to “that”: in other words, in which we don’t see the world in terms of opposed sides in a debate, or opposing pairs of right/wrong // true/false and so on. Zhuangzi calls this the “hinge” or “pivot” of the way, or dao (道樞 Dào shū). Think of how a door hinge or a pivot can move now this way, now that way…
Next, there’s the famous line:
道行之而成 Dàohéng zhī ér chéng
Or “A road is made by people walking on it.”
What Zhuangzi goes on to say then should make us pause. He says that the person of far-reaching vision should aim to keep the way ahead passable . Here is the passage:
唯達者知通為一，為是不用而寓諸庸。庸也者，用也；用也者，通也；通也者，得也。適得而幾矣。 Wéi dázhě zhī tōng wéi yī, wéi shì bùyòng ér yù zhū yōng. Yōng yě zhě, yòng yě; yòng yě zhě, tōng yě; tōng yě zhě, dé yě. Shì dé ér jǐ yǐ.
Or, in Watson’s translation:
Only the man of far-reaching vision knows how to make them into one. So he has no use [for categories] but relegates all to the constant. The constant is the useful; the useful is the passable; the passable is the successful; and with success, all is accomplished.
Finally in this section, and perhaps as a contrast, we move on to the ancients — both musicians (Zhao Wen, Music Master Kuang) and thinkers (Hui zi) — who despite their mastery managed to somehow get things wrong in their hunger for making distinctions. And in this way, they fell short.
So what is the alternative? What does the sage do? Do they have perfect knowledge? Perhaps not… Zhuangzi says:
是故滑疑之耀，聖人之所圖也。 Shì gù huá yí zhī yào, shèngrén zhī suǒ tú yě.
Watson translates this as:
The torch of chaos and doubt—this is what the sage steers by.
Another translation might be:
therefore, it is the slippery light of doubt that the sage uses to map their way
We don’t navigate well by overcoming doubt, or by perfecting knowledge, but by fully recognising the slipperiness of knowledge…
Section 2. Discrimination
First, there’s an extended argument that seems to be aiming at the idea that our attempt to get clear about things, to discriminate between them more clearly, leads only to greater confusion. There’s a lot happening in this section…
- An opening paragraph about statements and categories
- The puzzling passage about beginnings, being and nonbeing.
- A famous passage about relative size: Mount Tai (a mountain) is small; the tip of a hair is big. What is happening here?
- An argument about what it means to say anything. Does speaking about the world lead to proliferation (of ideas? of words? of things? — it’s not clear…)
- A question about how we divide up the world, by discriminating between things, or drawing boundaries. But does this help our understanding or get in the way of our understanding?
- “If the Way is made clear, it is not the Way” — in other words language is inherently discriminating: it makes clear when the world itself is not clear (see the earlier passage about the “torch of chaos and doubt”). In this way, our search for clarity actually obscures understanding.
Section 3: Nie Que and Wang Ni and the futility of debate
Next, there’s a famous passage about where Nie Que (whose name means “toothless”) and Wang Ni have a debate.
This is more directly about knowledge. Let’s look at the opening question:
Nie Que asked Wang Ni, “Do you know what all things agree in calling right?” “How would I know that?” said Wang Ni. “Do you know that you don’t know it?” “How would I know that?” “Then do things know nothing?” “How would I know that? However, suppose I try say- ing something. What way do I have of knowing that if I say I know something I don’t really not know it? Or what way do I have of knowing that if I say I don’t know something I don’t really in fact know it?
This is a kind of scepticism about knowledge. But it is not quite the same as Socrates’s not knowing. Because for Socrates, we might aspire to knowing that we don’t know. But Zhuangzi seems to be saying that we can’t be clear whether we know or whether we don’t.
Wang Ni then responds by talking about different perspectives: people in the mud have achey backs, but loaches (a kind of fish) love it there; people up trees are scared, monkeys are happy. Think of the hot and cold winds in the Theaetetus. You may think that a movie star like Maoqiang or Lady Li is good-looking; but fish will flee from them. And so on.
This means that all our ways of knowing anything — including ethics — are “hopelessly snarled.” What then remains for us to do?
This passage ends with the idea of the “Perfect Person” or zhi ren 至人 (also translated as “consummate person”). Who is this character? Who knows (after all, we know, or we maybe know, that don’t know if we know or if we don’t know…)?
Section 4: The discussion between Ju Que and Zhang Wuzi
The discussion then turns to Confucius, and to the sages of the past. One interesting line here is that the sage doesn’t try to make sense of the muddle we are in, but instead “leaves the confusion and muddle as it is” (置其滑涽 Zhì qí huá hūn).
Ordinary people struggle to be clever or to make sense of things. The sage doesn’t bother, and just lets everything be what it is.
Then the text moves on to our judgements about things. Life is good (we think) and death is bad. Home is good (we think) and exile is bad. Except, of course, when it isn’t.
There’s a section next on dreams — we’ll come back to that at the end. And then an important section on arguments. Here’s the quote:
Suppose you and I have had an argument. If you have beaten me instead of my beating you, then are you necessarily right, and am I necessarily wrong?
What does this say about our belief that arguments lead to truth? Wouldn’t we be better to “Forget the years; forget distinctions. Leap into the boundless and make it your home”?
Section 5: Penumbra and Shadow and the problem of Free Will
This is a deeply mysterious section! The word “penumbra” translates 罔兩 (wǎng liǎng). This means something like “secondary absence” — it suggests loss, perhaps even deceit, traps, death. The word for shadow here is 景 (Jǐng).
The word “penumbra” is a region at the fuzzy edges of shadow — it is a not-quite shadow, or partial shadow. Whether this is a good translation of wǎng liǎng, who knows…? Anyway, this wǎng liǎng accuses shadow of only following along the thing it is a shadow of. The shadow follows (or “waits for”) the body.
In response, shadow asks an intriguing question. But, says shadow, does the body, in turn, follow along with, or wait for, something else for it to act? Is this action really independent? Is any action?
This connects in to questions of Free Will. What is the source of action? Where do actions arise from? Is there any independent source of action. We might talk about Free Will. But what does it mean to act freely? Does “Free Will” really explain anything? And would we even know if we were acting freely or not?
Section 6: The Butterfly Dream
Finally, there’s the famous dream. Zhuang Zhou dreams he is a butterfly. Then he wakes up and wonders if he is a butterfly he is dreaming he is Zhuang Zhou.
This, he says, is the Transformation of Things. No position is one we can rest on. But we can flit, butterfly-like, from one to the other!
Homework
Next time, we’ve got a quiz on the Zhuangzi and the Theaetetus. We’re also going to have a briefing for the mid-term paper and the first presentation. So there’s no homework. But if you want to, you can go and read the notes on the website to help you think through the Zhuangzi in more detail.