Bryan Van Norden asked Christoph Harbsmeier, an authority on classical Chinese syntax, for his views concerning the semantics of the disputed sentence. Harbsmeier wrote
>>The disputed sentence must mean something like THERE MUST BE A GENUINE RULER IN THIS PLACE. There is no subjectivity of seeming in qi2, I think, but there is the modal force of tentativeness of assertion.
By "no subjectivity of seeming," I assume Harbsmeier is indicating that he disagrees with Watson's translation of the sentence as "It would seem as though there must be some true lord among them" (Watson, p. 38). In other words, Harbsmeier thinks the sentence shouldn't be read "It seems (to me) that such and such." But he does think that the qi2 expresses tentativeness. If this is true, then the sentence should not be translated with the modal auxiliary "must," which doesn't express tentativeness at all, but rather with the auxiliaries "could" or "may." (Had the author of the passage meant to say "must," he might've written "bi4 you3 zhen1 jun1" or something like that.)
So according to Harbsmeier's suggestions, the sentence ought to be interpreted "There could be a genuine lord among them."
Harbsmeier also thinks that the broader context is relevant to the interpretation:
>>The question-nature of the proposition would have to emerge from the context in the broadest sense of that word.
I fully agree on the importance of context, so let me present a description of the context in which this sentence appears (I've included a few questions we might dispute in parentheses; also I'm applying a bit of my favored theory about "qing," but I don't think that affects the points I want to make). Zhuangzi mentions feelings/sensations and says that they occur day and night, but we don't know whence/how they sprout. He says we don't know who these feelings/sensations are "working for": it's *as if* there were a genuine ruler, but we don't have a sign of this ruler. (So far, this sounds like David Hume.) Something (the genuine ruler? we?) can act, but we can't see its (the genuine ruler's) form. There are feelings/sensations (of the ruler's existence? or our own feelings/sensations of the world, mentioned just a few lines earlier), but no physical form. Then we have a list of various parts of the body, followed by a series of questions and statements (translated in light of Harbsmeier's suggestions about qi2):
"Which should I/we take as kin? Are you pleased with them all? There could be a favorite among them. If this is the case, then does the favorite have all the others as subordinates? Could the subordinates be inadequate to rule each other? Could they take turns as ruler and subordinate? There could be a genuine lord among them. If we seek a feeling/sensation of the genuine lord and don't get any, that doesn't add to or detract from its genuineness."
In my opinion, an interpretation of any one of these sentences taken in isolation from the others carries no argumentative weight at all. The passage has to be approached as a whole (and preferably in light of the content of the Qiwulun as a whole), and *whatever* is going on in this passage, it is not an unambiguous assertion of the existence of a genuine lord. The modal force of the qi2 alone ensures that, even if the penultimate sentence isn't a question, and the overall tone of the passage strongly suggests an agnostic attitude toward the presence of the genuine lord. Offhand, if forced to choose an interpretation of this passage, I'd go with agnosticism. Zhuangzi doesn't explicitly deny that there's a genuine lord; he raises questions that cast doubt on the dogmatic Mencian assertion that there is one, and he suggests that IF there were one, we'd be unable to identify it or its commands with any certainty (and perhaps it's not in charge all the time anyway--it may rest sometimes and let the subordinates take over). Hence--and here I am applying my favored interpretive theory and going beyond what the text says explicitly--Zhuangzi is suggesting that the "genuine lord" can provide us with no reliable moral (or other) guidance.
Moreover, if Zhuangzi does think there's a genuine lord there, and if this genuine lord plays any role at all in Zhuangzi's philosophy, why would he (1) raise doubts about the genuine lord, then (2) assert dogmatically that it exists, and then (3) never mention it again, nor explain its relationship to what he says in the remainder of the Qiwulun?
4. I'm still curious about whether anyone knows of a sentence in the classical literature that ends in a yan1 followed by another particle, such as an interrogative particle. This point has some bearing on our interpretation of the disputed sentence, but aside from that it's just an interesting question in itself. Did Bryan Van Norden ask Harbsmeier about this? And if possible, can someone ask another authority, such as Edwin Pulleyblank?
Christopher Fraser
Date created: 10/28/96 Last modified: 10/28/96 Questions? Contact: Stephen C. Angle