Ironies of Oneness and Difference by Ziporyn Brook

Author:Ziporyn, Brook [Ziporyn]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781438442907
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Published: 2012-09-18T04:00:00+00:00

ZHUANGZI'S WILD CARD: THING AS PERSPECTIVE

The Zhuangzi was traditionally regarded as the work of Zhuang Zhou (fourth century BCE), but is now generally regarded as the work of many hands, reflecting many distinguishable strains of Daoist thinking.31 The part of the text thought to come from Zhuang Zhou himself (the “Inner Chapters,” or the first seven of the thirty-three chapters of the traditional Guo Xiang version of the text) takes a further step in extending the earlier Daoist preoccupation with the spontaneous bodily life over purposive cultural aims, moving to a critique of the fixed valuation of even the concept of “life” itself, as part of the general critique of valuation and conceptualization in general. This is achieved by means of an intricate epistemological and linguistic agnosticism and perspectivism, rooted in insights into the indexically dependent nature of evaluative knowledge and of language on perspective, and the unceasing transformation of these perspectives. Let us examine the development of this line of thinking in detail.

Zhuangzi's work begins with the striking story of an inconceivably vast fish named Kun, who transforms into an equally enormous bird named Peng. Peng, we are told, must fly high in the air to get enough wind underneath him to support his enormous wings. This makes him seem both uselessly grandiose and incomprehensibly bizarre to the smaller birds watching him from the earth, and we are treated to their ridicule of his outlandish extravagance.

This story may be regarded as Zhuangzi's dramatic entrance, his self-introduction to the reader. For Peng is the first of Zhuangzi's many masks, serving as a cutting but good-natured rejoinder to his friend Huizi's taunts about the uselessness of Zhuangzi's big talk, presented in the final two dialogues of the first chapter.32 The story introduces us to three intertwined themes that are at the heart of Zhuangzi's project:

transformation;

dependence; and

the limitations of perspectival knowledge.

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