Sorry I've been away from the discussion for so long. (I'm teaching a 3-course load this semester.)
Chris Fraser acknowledges the problems for the anti-metaphysical reading created by ZZ6 and DDJ 25, and says,
>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.
How is this a problem for defenders of a metaphysical intepretation? No one I have ever heard of denies that dao4 also can have its earlier senses of "a way of doing something" and "a linguistic account" in the Zhuangzi. What the passage you are quoting (HY 4/2/33) says is that "a dao is brought to completion by being carried out." I take it that the sort of dao the text refers to here is a performance dao. Where's the problem?
And, by the way, perhaps we should avoid talking as if there were such a thing as "the traditional interpretation." There are Guo Xiang's interpretation, Buddhist interpretations, Neo-Confucian interpretations, etc. etc. But there is no animal called "THE traditional interpretation" of Zhuangzi (or anyone else for that matter).
Chris also asks of the metaphysical reading of DDJ 25,
>1. Are we sure it's an "entity"?
The text says, "There is a THING (WU4)..."
>2. Have you a theory of why the metaphysical concept is introduced in this way only in chapter 25, after the word dao4 has already been used in at least a dozen chapters?
The DDJ is a composite text, formed from a body of oral sayings. The various chapters are not arranged in any particular order, so a passage introducing a key concept can be anywhere in the text. (Is this controversial? I thought not.)
>Moreover, what is the theoretical role of the metaphysical dao4--why introduce it at all? What theoretical work is it
doing?
I've already answered this in a previous posting. Basically, the DDJ (and ZZ for that matter) needs to appeal to some other source of guidance, having rejected the rationalism of the Mohists, the traditionalism of Confucius, and the guidance of the heart-mind suggested by Mencius. The metaphysical DAO plays this role. The metaphysical dao is also what causes society to be well-ordered if we reject both the bureaucratization recommended by the Mohists and the "paternalism" of the Confucians.
>3. How does the metaphysical use of the word relate to the uses in the other chapters? For example, in chapter 1 we're told that the dao4 can be expressed but it's not a constant dao4. Is the dao4 in chapter 25 a constant dao4?
Yes! You're getting it now! Dao's that can adequately be described in words (i.e., in a conventional discourse dao) are never "constant." But the metaphysical dao of ch. 25 is constant. (See how the metaphysical reading gives an overall interpretation of the text?)
Turning to the ZZ, I commented in an earlier posting that Cook Ting seems to explicitly deny that he is concerned merely with a "performance dao," because he says (Watson, p. 46) "What I care about is the Way, which goes beyond skill." Chris commented,
>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."
This alternative reading needs to be filled in a lot more to be plausible. In order for your reading to be a genuine alternative, you have to give a meaning to "mere technical trick" that distinguishes it sharply from "skill." I don't know how to do that in this passage. In what sense might Lord Wen-hui have regarded Cook Ting's actions as a "mere technical trick" as opposed to skill? Is the idea that Lord Wen-hui does not really regard Ting as "skillful," so that Ting must explain that he *is* skillful? Does Lord Wen-hui think that Ting has perfomed a "trick" in the sense of "a magic trick"? Does he not believe the ox was really carved up, or that Cook Ting really did the carving?
Dan Robins, discussing the passage in ZZ 6 that is problematic for the anti-metaphysical reading, wrote,
>Again I think it makes sense to read this as a claim that the categories of sky and ground are socially constructed. And I think that coheres nicely with much of the discussion in "Qiwulun", which might be arguing that the distinctions according to which we act out are lives are constructed.
But the text simply does not say that "the categories of sky and ground" are constructed. It says "sky and ground" are created. This is part of what makes Hansen's interpretation overall so difficult to support. It requires reading Chinese sentences with extra words supplied (e.g., supplying "categories of" here), or taking words in special senses (e.g., JI4 as "mere trick" as opposed to "skill" in HY 3/7/5), or reading passages using a special grammar (e.g., HY 2/4/17, discussed below). The metaphysical reading doesn't have to do any of these things; that is why it is overall a superior interpretation.
Dan also found it implausible that I could give a metaphysical reading to the expression, "You can hand it down but you cannot receive it." Now, the first thing to keep in mind is that, on ANYBODY'S interpretation, this sentence will be paradoxical and will require that we supply an unusual sense to some of the terms in it, because it is clearly paradoxical in the original Chinese. Ordinarily, what can be passed down is precisely what can be received. So, my suggested gloss was, "You can hand down an understanding of the dao, but you cannot receive the dao (in the way that you would receive a kingdom, or a piece of gold, etc.)." Dan's reading, is "what is taught and what is learned don't match up." Taking the one sentence out of context, Dan's reading is as plausible as my own. But that just shows that the metaphysical reading of the passage handles the sentence Dan asked about as well as any other interpretation does. The question, then, is how well it handles other passages. As we have seen, it handles other passages much more easily.
Finally, Dan, defending an anti-metaphysical reading of ZZ6 and DDJ25, wrote,
>I'm going to use "social practice" as a gloss on "dao". Now, if I say "nature is produced through social practice", does that mean I am committed to the belief that "the whole world (including humans) are created by social practice"?
Yes. If you say that social practices create the whole world then you are logically committed to the belief that social practices create humans, because humans are part of the world.
Note also that the ZZ6 passage asserts not only that the dao creates heaven and earth, but it says that the dao existed before Heaven and Earth "firm from ancient times." But "social practice" certainly did not exist "from ancient times" before everything else. AT BEST social practice exists at the same time as humans and the rest of the natural world.
Chris Fraser also says,
>Now it's important to understand the genesis and motivation of Hansen's claim.
And then gives a mini-lecture on hermeneutics. What Chris says about hermeneutics is generally unobjectionable, but I want to warn about what I think is a real problem in the field right now. Talking about hermeneutics is not the same as actually supplying an interpretation of the text. We have to be careful that we do not use disquisitions on meta-issues as an excuse for avoiding supplying interpretations and ignoring the textual evidence. Advanced hermeneutics does not change the fact (indeed, it insists on the fact) that a successful interpretation must MAKE SENSE OF THE TEXT better than all its competitors. What we have seen is that Hansen's interpretation has no way of making sense of several passages in early texts.
Also in an earlier posting, I recommended two alternatives to Hansen's reading:
>>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.
To which, Chris responded,
>Thank you for recommending these sources, but is the argument for the mystical interpretation so complex that you can't summarize it here? ;)
Here is a good illustration of the danger I warned about above: talking about hermeneutics but not applying it. Hermeneutics requires that one give an overall interpretation of a text that makes better sense of it than the alternative interpretations. I have already, in my postings, supplied a sketch of an alternative interpretation of the DDJ and the ZZ. Hence, when asked again for accounts of mystical readings of the Zhuangzi, I supplied references to two more detailed accounts. (I might have added a reference to my own article, "Competing Interpretations of the Inner Chapters" which came out in Philosophy East and West 46:2 (1996).) A general weakness of works such as _A Daoist Theory of Chinese Thought_ is that they seem largely ignorant of most of the work done in the last decade on Chinese philosophy (as well as many of the traditional commentaries). Consequently, I think it is important for people to know the relevant literature and to respond to it.
TOPIC SHIFT: Regarding ZZ HY 4/2/17:
Chris Fraser wrote,
>By the way, I think the most puzzling sentence in the "zhenjun" passage is not the "disputed" sentence quoted above, but the one following it.
The "disputed" sentence and the sentence following it, in Watson's translation, are "It would seem as though there must be some True Lord among them. But whether I succeed in discovering his identity or not, it neither adds to nor detracts from his Truth." I think this second sentence is problematic only for a reading that wants to deny that there is a "true ruler." What the second sentence asserts is very simple on a reading that attributes belief in a "true ruler" to Zhuangzi: Whether I come to understand the "identity" or "true nature" (QING2) of it or not, this will not change the fact that the true ruler is genuine (i.e., not just a social construct).
>Offhand, without doing some research, I don't know whether a YAN1 excludes an interrogative word as well, but I suspect it might. Does anyone know of a sentence in the pre-Qin literature in which YAN1 is followed by an interrogative particle?
YAN1 apparently cannot be immediately followed by an interrogative or prefective particle, but there are a substantial number of examples in which it is followed by two final particles, the second of which is an interrogative particle. E.g., in the Inner Chapters YAN1 can be followed by either a perfective or interrogative particle so long as there is an intervening ZHE3 (e.g., HY 9/4/34 or 20/7/17). And in the Analects, HY 6:14, we find YAN1 followed by ER3 HU1. So, yes the author of the Zhuangzi passage could have used an interrogative particle if he had wished to pose a rhetorical question.
Paul Goldin wrote,
>However, there is
>no structural difference between "qi you zhen jun cun yan" and the phrase "qi you si yan," which appears earlier in the passage; it is significant that at least one commentator (included in Wang Hsien-ch'ien!) glosses THAT qi2 as qi3, as if to say, "[Do you] have a favorite among them?"
The fact that there is no structural difference between the two suggests that we should read them in the same way (i.e., either both questions or both qualified assertions).
By the way, there is an interesting overview of recent work on QI2 in Oracle Bone Inscriptions in David Nivison's response to Takashima's essay in Ivanhoe, ed., _Chinese Language, Thought, and Culture: Nivison and His Critics_. (However, I think this is really about the OBI and not Eastern Zhou Chinese.)
Chris Fraser wonders,
>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?
Zhuangzi has to be tentative in making assertions because, as a mystic, he regards language as inadequate to fully express the truth. And Zhuangzi *does* mention the "true ruler" again, because the true ruler is precisely the dao described in ZZ 6.
Best wishes,
Bryan William Van Norden
Date created: 10/28/96 Last modified: 10/28/96 Questions? Contact: Stephen C. Angle