tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post6989269269385335632..comments2024-03-18T10:05:26.015-07:00Comments on The Splintered Mind: Zhuangzi: Big and Useless -- and Not So Good at Catching RatsEric Schwitzgebelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11541402189204286449noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-18057447680761811222009-03-24T17:55:00.000-07:002009-03-24T17:55:00.000-07:00Ah, but Zhuangzi is one of my favorite philosopher...Ah, but Zhuangzi is one of my favorite philosophers! If you want to take me to task for vapid prejudice, you might find better fuel in my posts on Laozi.Eric Schwitzgebelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11541402189204286449noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-26335796051631720472009-03-23T15:28:00.000-07:002009-03-23T15:28:00.000-07:00The way you unterstand zhuangzi's text is just lik...The way you unterstand zhuangzi's text is just like how majority western people think of the wastern philosophies, they find those ideas are useless when approach to daily life. I personally find Zhuangzi's text is useful because it provide me another "way" of looking at this world. You think its not useful only because you can not find a way to use it -- that is one of the central idea in the text. Please see thinks beyond the prejudice.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-44250830132785995292008-12-22T13:17:00.000-08:002008-12-22T13:17:00.000-08:00Thanks for the detailed comment, Stephen! See my ...Thanks for the detailed comment, Stephen! See my reply over at Manyul's blog.Eric Schwitzgebelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11541402189204286449noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-7034108497815459372008-12-20T08:49:00.000-08:002008-12-20T08:49:00.000-08:00Some “working notes”:1. It’s not required that we ...Some “working notes”:<BR/><BR/>1. It’s not required that we posit any particular core vision for any of these texts, given not only (a) the likelihood of multiple authorship but also (b) their genre conventions which amount to, in Zhuangzi’s case, a rather extreme degree of “stylistic particularism”. On (a), some posters here (I hope they’ll chime in) have advanced the view that the Inner Chapters are not as unified as is customarily thought, the implication I pick up being that if there is a core vision or impulse to “Zhuangzi’s” writing it must be sought more diffusely throughout the entire work. This task is immeasurably more time-consuming than focusing on just the easy seven chapters, and I have a slight suspicion that this is a big reason the orthodoxy has been so ready to confine itself to the Neipian and breathe a sigh of relief. On (b), even if we posit “unified authorial intent” of some kind in the Neipian, there’s nothing to prevent any author from exploring different views without himself settling on a synthesis. The ZZ text already preserves more evidence of such an intellectual practice than any other pre-Han text, as it in several notable instances toys with ideas before rejecting them.<BR/><BR/>2. There is a difference between activity we could characterize as “skillful” and the execution of particular skill-sets. Cook Ding is the only “virtuoso menial” in the Neipian, but it is hard to characterize the human ideal advanced throughout those chapters as anything but a “skillful” ideal. I’m sure this point could bear some debating. I think virtuoso menials in ZZ serve the purpose of illustrating not only a plausible model of what skillful action might be like, but also a plea for the intrinsic dignity (or at least immunity from denigration) of lowly and despised people and occupations–the sewer-cleaner could be a sage! etc. Here I’d ask the assembled whether they share my intuition that a butcher or craftsman is low enough in the social hierarchy of early China that singling him out as an exemplar of the highest excellences represents a bold if not shocking rhetorical move. In which case virtuoso menials join the ranks of puzzlingly charismatic ugly men and carefree amputees.<BR/><BR/>3. One idea that’s been simmering in my research lately is that there’s a long-standing and very strong tradition of reading PRACTICE into early Daoist texts, and that this reading is generally unjustified. It seems to me that there has been a certain anxiety over the silence of such texts as Zhuangzi and Laozi on concrete practical details of positive action, and of course religious instincts expect texts of sacred wisdom to advance some kind of repeatable, teachable program for the cultivation of virtue. It may be (hunch?) that no other body of “sacred/religious” writings has so consistently little to say about how to structure one’s living patterns, precisely because (thesis statement) *the* guiding impulse of those texts is to resist any such effort. I have become more and more friendly to the idea that if there is an “oceanic push” driving the Zhuangzi, Laozi etc. corpora, it is resistance to the very idea of a moral or otherwise aretaic training regimen. It seems to me that there is no position so broadly shared throughout these corpora than that “training yourself up” is the wrong thing to do with your life.<BR/><BR/>Now, to the extent that this resistance to “training yourself up” results in lassitude, stupidity, and irresponsibility, objections arise immediately. Defenders of the texts (which includes their own authors) must scramble to explain that their proposals don’t result in such dismal character flaws. And maybe they don’t…that’s exactly what keeps the debate alive. Suffice it to say that I’m more sympathetic than ever to Xunzi’s brief criticism of Zhuangzi as inadequately attentive to the specifically human; not only do many of the stories in the Neipian advocate things grossly immoral by conventional standards, but the authors recognize this, and part of the issue of “shared vocabulary” (empty, unified, still, etc.) between Zhuang and Xun involves their dispute over the best way to characterize “real” impartiality and “real” responsiveness. It seems to me that there has been inadequate attention to the possibility that the Zhuangzi is *not* a wise text, since admiration for the Neipian has become such a touchstone (since Graham and especially since Hansen) of the modern self-identity of Chinese philosophy experts.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com