Bryan Van Norden replied to Dan Robin's recent post as follows:
>Here's the problem: On Hansen's interpretation, dao's are a product of human invention. Hence, if Hansen's hypothesis were correct, what the Chinese texts SHOULD say, is that humans create dao's. Instead, what the texts DO say is that the DAO4 creates the whole world (which would include humans).
I agree. Interpreting the parts of the texts that appear to say dao4 creates the world is an important problem for Hansen's theory. But defenders of the traditional interpretation have a reciprocal problem, for in some places, the texts DO say things like "humans create daos." I quoted an example in a previous posting: dao4 xing2 zhi1 er2 cheng2, from Zhuangzi Qiwulun. Because of the parallelism with the following remark about yan2, this sentence clearly has a topic-comment structure, with dao4 resumed by zhi1 and the implied subject of the verb being "humans" or "someone."
>No, I do not need the assumption that there was a Taoist school. Hansen claims that DAO4 is NEVER used to refer to a metaphysical entity in pre-Qin thought. He (not I) NEEDS this extreme claim, because once we find one passage in which DAO4 is used in the metaphysical sense, there is no reason not to read other passages from the same period using the metaphysical interpretation. If DAO4 refers to a metaphysical entity in ANY one pre-Qin text, this opens up the possibility that it is being used that way in other texts.
I don't know where or if Chad Hansen says "dao4 is NEVER used to refer to a metaphysical entity in pre-Qin thought." I doubt he says that; if he were to make that general type of claim (and I don't recall that he does), he would probably say something like, "we are never forced to *read* dao4 as such and such." But in fact I think Hansen's theory about Shendao's view of dao4 comes close to the idea of a "cosmic process" that Steve Angle and I have mentioned, and that might be considered a "metaphysical" concept, depending on how we construe "metaphysical."
I think the main point of Hansen's claims about "metaphysical dao" is stated on p. 13 and p. 27 of his _Daoist Theory of Chinese Thought_: he wants to deny that the writers traditionally classified as Taoists "changed the meaning of dao from moral doctrine to metaphysical monistic absolute--the Chinese equivalent of Parminidean being."
Now it's important to understand the genesis and motivation of Hansen's claim. I think (hope) that we can all agree that *whatever* theories the authors of the Laozi and Zhuangzi held about dao4, their theories were all tied up in some way with what they thought about language. The majority of the statements or questions about dao4 in Zhuangzi are immediately followed by parallel statements or questions about language, and language is also a major theme of the Laozi. What Hansen is attempting to do is to offer holistic interpretive theories about these two texts that explain their theory of language, their theory of dao4, and how these two theories might motivate and support each other.
Because of the finite amount of evidence available, as well as theoretical issues such as Quinean indeterminacy of translation, an interpretive theory of the type Hansen is offering cannot be *proven* to be correct. It can only be made increasingly comprehensive, coherent, and intuitively reasonable, in the sense that the views and reasoning processes it attributes the authors of texts we're studying seem to accord with various epistemic norms. We can attempt to show that one such interpretive theory is more comprehensive, coherent, etc., than another, but there are no crucial experiments we can perform to conclusively verify or falsify such theories.
Hence I do not think that the identification of a single passage that supports a "metaphysical" reading is sufficient to refute Hansen's theory, if that is what you are suggesting. Such passages are simply "anomalies" that have to be worked into the theory (or the larger research programme) in some way--by making the theory more comprehensive, modifying certain premises, and so forth. On the other hand, to interpret a certain passage as evidence against Hansen's theory (or any theory) is to apply an interpretive theory of one's own. None of these texts have a theoretically neutral meaning, which we can just read off and use to support or refute various interpretive theories. It's interpretation all the way down.
Pointing out passages that seem inconsistent with Hansen's theory is a good way to challenge that theory and to remind scholars who find it plausible that they have much more work to do. But to rebut the theory in a satisfactory way, we have to present a persuasive alternative theory, with a scope similar to that of Hansen's theory, which explains the relationship between ancient Chinese theories of language and their theories of dao4 better than his does--"better" in the sense of being more consistent, more intuitively reasonable, allowing fewer counterexamples or anomalies, and so forth.
Bryan also offered the following comment:
>Chris Fraser, describing what a metaphysical reading of the Zhuangzi would be like, wrote,
>>Specially trained people (Jedi knights) can somehow tap into it or flow along with its current, and this enables them to perform feats of skill that are beyond the resources of ordinary humans.
>And, indeed, this sounds EXACTLY like a description of Cook Ding in Zhuangzi ch. 3. He cuts up the ox with masterful ease, and when complimented on his "skill," responds, "What I care about is the Way, which goes beyond skill" (Watson, _Basic Writings_, p. 46). In other words, someone suggests that Cook Ding has perfected a "way of acting" (i.e., a "performance dao"), and Cook Ding specifically says that this description of his actions is inadequate: what he "cares about" is something beyond mere skill at performing a task. Nonetheless, what he "cares about" does enable him to have great "skill."
As I said, there is no theory-neutral way of reading the text. May I point out that you are *assuming* the Star Wars theory and then reading it into the text? The cook does not say that there is a mystical dao4 that permeates the cosmos, that he has attained union with this dao4, and that its power helps him to cut up oxen. Using an interpretive theory of classical Chinese that I think we share, I read his words as follows:
"What I like is dao, advance hu1 [directive preposition] skill yi3 [perfective or change-of-state particle]."
This is open to a number of readings. The point of the cook's remark might be something like "What I care about isn't some mere technical trick, it's a comprehensive way of activity that I've cultivated, which advances beyond mere skill." If the author of this text holds the Star Wars theory of skilled action, then I'd have to say that his silence on the matter is deafening. There's no talk about the Great Dao guiding his action, about tapping into its limitless force, and so on. Instead, we have a description of the slow, step-by-step cultivation of a skill, to the point where the ability to carry out a skilled task has become second nature, barely requiring conscious attention. The cook also gives a description of how he handles the hard parts, and here we see that he does have to slow down and prepare himself mentally before acting. Here he does not say anything about the power of the dao4 helping him in his task; rather we have a description similar to what we observe when we watch a skilled athlete, master musician, etc., come to a "hard part." So I find this passage very poor evidence for the "mystical" theory of dao4.
>From this passage, we *might* be able to make a case for Steve Angle's
"physical" interpretation of dao4, though (e.g., the inherent structure of the ox is a small aspect of the physical "way" the cosmos is structured?).
>Chris Fraser also asked for "a clear explanation of just what the 'metaphysical' interpretation of DAO4 is." There are several clear, well-argued, published accounts of Zhuangzi that read him in this way. As a start, I would recommend,
>P.J. Ivanhoe, "Skepticism, Skill and the Ineffable Tao," Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 61:4, pp. 639-54.
>In addition, I strongly recommend Paul Kjellberg's unpublished doctoral thesis, "Zhuangzi and Skepticism," Philososphy, Stanford University, 1993 (available from University Microfilms International, Order No. 9403970). This work critically surveys a variety of different strategies for interpreting the Zhuangzi.
Thank you for recommending these sources, but is the argument for the mystical interpretation so complex that you can't summarize it here? ;)
Christopher Fraser
Date created: 10/28/96 Last modified: 10/28/96 Questions? Contact: Stephen C. Angle