Zhuangzi

ca. 369-286 BCE · Chinese (state of Song, Warring States period) · Daoist Philosophy, Skepticism, Philosophy of Language, Aesthetics, Political Withdrawal

I too will wag my tail in the mud.

During the Warring States period — a century of political catastrophe — Zhuang Zhou held a minor post in the lacquer-tree park of his home state of Song and spent the rest of his life refusing anything more important. When King Wei of Chu offered him the prime ministership, he told the messengers to think of the ox on its way to the altar: he would rather wallow in filth than be controlled by a head of state. His companion and foil was the logician Hui Shi, and when Hui Shi died Zhuangzi mourned he had no one left to talk to.

Topics Zhuangzi addresses

• dao 道 (the Course / the Way)
• wuwei 無為 (non-doing)
• ziran 自然 (self-so / spontaneity)
• qiwulun 齊物論 (equalizing assessments of things)
• hua 化 (transformation)
• the butterfly dream
• xin zhai 心齋 (fasting of the mind)
• zuowang 坐忘 (sitting and forgetting)
• you 遊 (wandering / drift / play)
• de 德 (virtuosity / inborn power)
• the pivot of the Course
• zhenren 真人 (genuine person)
• qi 氣 (vital energy)
• tian 天 (Heaven / the natural)
• the useless tree
• the fish-happiness debate on the Hao River
• the wife's death and singing-on-the-basin
• the goblet-words / spillover-saying (zhi yan)
• the Heavenly Equalizer
• the giant Peng bird and the small birds
• skill mysticism and Cook Ding
• hundun 渾沌 (Chaotic Blob)
• the cool tortoise in the mud
• the wheelwright Pian and unteachable skill

Questions to put to Zhuangzi

Equalizing Assessments and the Pivot of the Course

• What do you mean by equalizing assessments of things?
• How can you defend the skeptical position if it applies to itself?
• What is the pivot of the Course?
• Can you help me understand the butterfly dream?
• How do you distinguish your view from Hui Shi's logical relativism?

Transformation, Death, and the Great Clod

• Why did you sing on the basin after your wife died?
• How should I understand death as transformation rather than loss?
• What makes life and death alternations rather than opposites?
• What do you mean when you say Heaven and Earth are your coffin?
• How can we be open to transformation if we don't know what we're transforming into?

Non-Doing, Uselessness, and Political Withdrawal

• Why did you refuse King Wei's offer to be prime minister?
• What is the use of the useless?
• How does non-doing differ from simply doing nothing?
• What do you mean by fasting of the mind?
• Can a ruler actually govern by not governing?

Skill, Virtuosity, and the Embodied Course

• How does Cook Ding's blade stay sharp for nineteen years?
• What's the difference between skill and knowledge?
• Why can't the wheelwright teach his son the right way of chipping?
• What makes someone a genuine person rather than an ordinary one?
• How do you cultivate virtuosity without trying to cultivate it?

Confucius, the Inborn Nature, and the Schools

• Why do you sometimes have Confucius voice the Way and sometimes mock him?
• How do the Confucian virtues distort the inborn nature?
• What's at stake for you in the critique of moral cultivation?
• How much of the Zhuangzi did you actually write yourself?
• Why did Hui Shi's death matter so much to you?

Converse with Zhuangzi on Simposeum. Replies are grounded in Zhuangzi's own writing, cited to the page.