Listening Ridiculously and the Oddity of the Zhuangzi

This is going to be a ridiculous post. Try to also read it ridiculously.

I have always had a hard time understanding the Zhuangzi.  In addition to this being due to my Confucian sensibilities (perhaps), it’s also due to the sheer strangeness of the Zhuangzi.  Both from a stylistic and a philosophical standpoint, the Zhuangzi is radically different from other philosophical texts of its day (assuming it’s a primarily Warring States text).  Strange stories and cryptic sayings blend (almost seamlessly) with more formal arguments and discussions.  Jokes and wisecracks are interspersed with apparently serious exhortations and analyses.  This, as many who have tried to interpret the Zhuangzi can attest, makes for difficult interpretation.  It is never quite clear whether a certain passage is meant in jest or as something we’re supposed to take seriously, and sometimes we simply have to resort to what amounts to interpretive guesswork to decide one way or the other. Continue reading →

Confucianism, Charlie Sheen, and Satire

Is Confucianism alive and well in China — to such a degree that it’s a source of moralizing criticism of Charlie Sheen? So it appears from a recent op-ed in the English-language web newspaper Global Times, at least until one starts to read between the lines. The satirical opinion piece by one “Hao Leifeng” is quite hilarious, and seems actually to be aimed at excesses of contemporary Chinese society. This earlier essay by the same author is equally biting (and amusing). (Jeremy Breningstall’s blog has a bit of analysis.)

A Certain Butcher?

The butcher Ding cuts up an ox with the grace of a ritual performer and in the process shows us how to take care of life—or so suggests Book 3 of the Zhuangzi. A fair number of scholars have taken this to be the text’s intended solution to the worries of Book 2. We may not be able to tell right from wrong in some ultimate sense, but we can achieve a kind of local certainty by taking care of life in the course of skilled activity.

But as with sagely gestures elsewhere in the Zhuangzi, there are reasons to hesitate. Foremost among them is the fact that in Book 2 itself we find comments about three skilled masters that seem to take up essentially the same worries that the butcher’s skilled activity supposedly solves. Continue reading →

Teaching Chinese Philosophy as a Way of Life

Next Fall I am planning on teaching a first-year seminar–the first time I’ll ever have taught a course just for first-year students–called “Philosophy as a Way of Life.” The title comes from Pierre Hadot’s wonderful book, which we’ll read some of, and the idea comes in part from past classes I have taught about the “sagehood” ideal. I want to offer comparative perspectives on what it might mean to take seriously some sort of “philosophical life,” partly as a way of myself thinking more about whether philosophy in our day and age can be anything more than a classroom activity. Continue reading →

Journal of Buddhist Ethics

FYI I just added a link to the Journals list for the Journal of Buddhist Ethics, the “first academic journal dedicated entirely to Buddhist ethics.” Access to the journal is FREE and online.

[Note: Navigation on the site is not entirely obvious; you have to go to the ‘Select Category’ drop-down menu under the ‘Archives’ heading to access all volumes — vol. 1 thru 18, from 1994 to present.]

Your Xing and What You Do

This post sketches part of the argument in my paper “The Warring States Concept of Xing,” which is just out in Dao 10.1 (Spring 2011). “Xing” is commonly translated as “nature,” though “spontaneous character” would be better.

There’s this idea that (in Warring States terms) it can be your xing 性 to do something even though you have no tendency to actually do it. This idea is badly wrong. And no one would take it seriously if they weren’t misreading the Mencius.

The big problem is that the Mencius seems to say that it is our xing to be good, and that people who study the Mencius are mostly trained to think that that claim somehow stands for or summarises everything else the collection has to say about human nature. And trying to interpret the claim so that it does stand for all that leads to some major interpretive troubles. Continue reading →