Philosophy of change and the deconstruction of self in the Zhuangzi

Journal of Chinese Philosophy

Volumn 27, Issue 3, 2000, Pages 345-360

  Wang, Youru ^a  

^a ROWAN UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 61049236274     PISSN: 03018121     EISSN: 15406253     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/0301-8121.00021     Document Type: Article

References (91)

1. My discussion of Zhuangzi's deconstruction will be different from some precursory works. It will not be confined to drawing parallels between Zhuangzi and Derrida, nor to Zhuangzi's undoing of conceptual-linguistic hierarchies. For precursory works on Zhuangzi's deconstruction, see, for example, Michelle Yeh, "The Deconstructive Way: A Comparative Study of Derrida and Chuang Tzu," Journal of Chinese Philosophy 10, no. 2 (1983)
2. Chi-Hui Chien, " 'Theft's Way': A Comparative Study of Chuang Tzu's Tao and Derridean Trace," Journal of Chinese Philosophy 17,no. 1 (1990)
3. Wayne D. Ownes,"Tao and Differance: The Existential Implications," Journal of Chinese Philosophy 20, no. 2 (1993).
4. See Xu Fuguan, Zhongguo renxinglun shi - xian Qin pian (Taibei: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1969), p. 364
5. Tang Junyi, Zhongguo zhexue yuanlun: yuan dao pian (Taibei: Xuesheng shuju, 1986), 1:287.
6. The two recent studies of the Zhuangzi by Chinese scholars from mainland China, however, take a more systematic approach to Zhuangzi's philosophy of change, despite the Marxist framework of their interpretation. See Cui Dahua, Zhuangxue yanjiu (Beijing: Renmin chubanshe, 1992), p. 110
7. Wang Guodong, Zhuangzi pingzhuan (Nanning: Guangxi jiaoyu chubanshe, 1996), p. 84. I think that it is really the right time to recover Zhuangzi's philosophy of change when contemporary philosophers have been increasingly paying more attention to the problem of contingency and flux.
8. Fung Yu-lan, A History of Chinese Philosophy, trans. Derk Bodde (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1952), 1:225-226.
9. See Fung Yu-lan's appendices to his Chuang-tzu: A New Selected Translation (Beijing: Foreign Language Press, 1989), p. 122.
10. Chad Hansen, "A Tao of Tao in Chuang-tzu," in Experimental Essays on Chuang-tzu, edited by Victor H. Mair (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1983), p. 50.
11. Chad Hansen, A Daoist Theory of Chinese Thought (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), p. 50.
12. For Heraclitus, see entry "Heraclitus" in A Dictionary of Philosophy, edited by Thomas Mautner (Oxford, UK: Blackwell, 1996), p. 186
13. and G. S. Kirk, J. E. Raven, and M. Schofield, The Presocratic Philosophers, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1983), p. 187.
14. Hansen, "A Tao of Tao in Chuang-tzu," Experimental Essays on Chuang-tzu, p. 50.
15. See A Daoist Theory of Chinese Thought, pp. 50-51.
16. I think that Mou Zongsan is fair to Zhuangzi when he understands Zhuangzi's concern as "soteriological practice. " See Mou Zongsan, Zhongguo zhexue shijiu jiang (Taibei: Xuesheng shuju, 1983), p. 115.
17. 4/13-14. Unless otherwise indicated, the original Chinese text of the Zhuangzi used for this study is presented in A Concordance to Chuang Tzu, Harvard-Yenching Institute Sinological Index Series, Supplement No. 20 (Taibei: Chinese Materials and Research Aids Service Center, 1966).
18. The numbers indicated above are numbers of pages (on the left) and lines (on the right) of the text. For the English translation see Wandering on the Way: Early Taoist Tales and Parables of Chuang Tzu (hereafter WW), trans. Victor H. Mair (New York: Bantam Books, 1994), p. 13.
19. I have made minor changes. Also see The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu (hereafter CWC), trans. Burton Watson (New York: Columbia University Press, 1968), pp. 37-38.
20. 44/45-47. Watson, CWC, p. 182.
21. 55/34, 16/27. My translation. Cf. Mair, WW, pp. 203, 55.
22. 37/17-19. Cf. Watson, CWC, pp. 156-157.
23. 44/45. Watson, CWC, p. 182.
24. 42/15. My translation. Cf. Watson, CWC, p. 177
25. Mair, WW, p. 154.
26. 73/78-79. Watson, CWC, p. 293.
27. My use of the term temporization here is close to Derrida's use in his paper "Differance," namely, temporization as differing and deferring in virtue of time (see Jacques Derrida, Margins of Philosophy, trans. Alan Bass [Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1982], p. 18). However, I use this term strictly within the contextual limit of Zhuangzi's philosophy.
28. 4/14-17. This translation is benefited by Chad Hansen's rendering of the passage included in his essay "A Tao of Tao in Chuang-tzu," pp. 41 -42.
29. Hansen's related analysis
30. that essay is beneficial to our understanding of this passage as well. Also ef. Mair, WW, pp. 13-14. "
31. 18/78. Watson, CWC, p. 88.
32. 44/47. My translation. Cf. Watson, CWC, p. 182
33. Mair, WW, p. 158.
34. 28/53-54, 56. Watson, CWC, p. 122. I have made a minor change.
35. 4/27-29. Watson, CWC, pp. 39-40.
36. 4/27. Watson, CWC, p. 39.
37. 5/57. Cf. Mair, WW, p. 19.
38. 4/27. I paraphrase Zhuangzi's original sentence here. My paraphrasing does not deviate from the spirit of Zhuangzi's sentence, however. Cf. Wayne E. Alt's translation in his "Logic and Language in the Chuang Tzu," Asian Philosophy, 1, no. 1 (1991): p. 68.
39. 4/29. See Watson, CWC, p. 40.
40. 4/36-5/37. Cf. Mair, WW, p. 16
41. and Chuang-tzu: The Seven Inner Chapters (hereafter CSC), trans. A. C. Graham (London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd. , 1981), p. 54.
42. 18/78-79. Watson, CWC, p. 88.
43. A similar question also occurs in contemporary Western philosophy. Western thinkers and scholars have debated the relation between Derrida's deconstruction and his philosophical thesis, or between deconstruction and philosophy in general. In the following answer to this question, I intend to show, through the example of Zhuangzi, that deconstruction and philosophy can be cooperative. In other words, deconstruction, in the hands of a thinker such as Zhuangzi, can have a positive relation with a constructive thesis. For the related debate of Western philosophers, see John D. Caputo, "On Not Circumventing the Quasi-Transcendental: The Case of Rorty and Derrida," in Working through Derrida, edited by Gary B. Madison (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1993), pp. 156-157
44. David Wood, "Deconstruction and Criticism," in Philosophy at the Limit (London: Unwin Hyman, 1990), p. 49
45. Joseph Margolis, "Philosophical Extravagance in Merleau-Ponty and Derrida," in Ecart and Differance: Merleau-Ponty and Derrida on Seeing and Writing, edited by M. C. Dillon (New Jersey: Humanities Press, 1997), p. 116.
46. See Pseudo-Dionysius, The Mystical Theology, in Pseudo-Dionysius: The Complete Works, trans. Colm Luibheid (New York: Paulist Press, 1987), p. 133.
47. 4/30-31. Mair, WW, p. 15.
48. 2/21-22. Cf. Watson, CWC, p. 32.
49. Zhuangzi uses sang qi ou and wu sang wo to describe the state of "no-self": 3/1, 3/3.
50. For the meaning of these terms, see Wang Shumin, Zhuangzi jiaoquan (Taipei: Zhongyang yanjiuyuan lishi yuyan yanjiusuo, 1988), 1:41
51. Guo Qingfan, Zhuangzi jishi (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1964), p. 44.
52. 18/80. Watson, CWC, p. 88.
53. 16/27. Watson, CWC, p. 81.
54. 46/17-18. Mair, WW, p. 169.
55. 60/81-61/83. Watson, CWC, p. 247. I have made a minor change.
56. In this regard, Zhuangzi does not attempt to affirm the self of feelings who is competent to contemplate life and nature, the so-called aesthetic self. Lao Siguang's description of Zhuangzi's position as the affirmation of the self of feelings, as opposed to the affirmation of the physical self and cognitive self, is obviously untenable. See Lao Siguang, Xinbian Zhongguo zhexueshi (Taibei: Sanmin shuju, 1991), 1:225.
57. feibiwuwo feiwowusuoqu: 4/14-15.
58. See Chad Hansen's translation of this sentence in his paper "A Tao of Tao in Chuang-tzu," p. 41.
59. 6/83,18/81.
60. 5/58.
61. 5/44-45. Cf. Mair, WW, pp. 17-18.
62. 4/26. Watson, CWC, p. 39.
63. 92/45.
64. 92/51. Cf. Watson, CWC, p. 371
65. Mair, WW, p. 340.
66. 92/54. Cf. Watson, CWC, p. 371.
67. Sigmund Freud, The Psychopathology of Everyday Life, in The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud (London: The Hogarth Press, 1960), 6:239.
68. Mark Taylor, Tears (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990), p. 224.
69. Cf. Antonio S. Cua, "Forgetting Morality: Reflections on a Theme in Chuang Tzu," Journal of Chinese Philosophy, 4, no. 4 (1977): 306.
70. See wang shifei, 50/63
71. wang renyi, 19/90
72. wang hu wu, 30/45
73. wang ren, 64/77
74. wai sheng, 17/40
75. wai tianxia, 17/39
76. wang hu dan, 30/45.
77. The Chinese word wai also means forgetting; see Guo Qingfan, Zhuangzi jishi, p. 253.
78. Zhuangzi says, "To forget things and to forget heaven is called forgetting the self" (30/45
79. Mair, WW, p. 109. )
80. See Guo Qingfan, Zhuangzi jishi, p. 45.
81. 19/92. Cf. Watson, CWC, p. 90. Here "sitting down and forgetting" is not only a philosophical notion but also a meditational practice. Zhuangzi's notion of forgetting self therefore is closely related to his practice and experience of meditation as self-therapy. However, for the limitation of the present topic, I will not analyze "forgetting self" from the perspective of meditational practice, but treat it within the limits of a philosophical and ideological notion while acknowledging its connection with Daoist meditational practice.
82. 50/63. Cf. Mair, WW, p. 184.
83. liang wang er hua qi dao: 16/23-24.
84. Cf. Watson, CWC, p. 80.
85. The socio-ethical implication of Zhuangzi's discourse of no-self is a topic that deserves many more specific studies. Here T only mention in passing some of its implications. For an insightful study of Zhuangzi's teaching of no-self and its unique soteriological meaning, see Judith Berling, "Self and Whole in Chuang Tzu," Individualism and Holism: Studies in Confucian and Taoist Values, edited by Donald Munro (Ann Arbor, MI: The University of Michigan Center for Chinese Studies, 1985), pp. 101-119.
86. 20/11,74/37.
87. 11/58-59. Mair, WW, p. 36.
88. 11/59.
89. 20/11. The translation here assimilates something respectively from Watson's translation and Mair's. Cf. Watson, CWC, p. 94
90. Mair, WW, p. 68.
91. 7/92.