Category Archives: Chinese philosophy – 中國哲學 – 中国哲学

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 →

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 →

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 →

Loving Brothers and Handsome Men

Anybody want to talk about ai 愛? It seems like this might be the day for it.

The natural topic (for me, anyway) is the Mohist doctrine of jian ai 兼愛, or inclusive care. But, awkwardly enough, it’s perfectly clear that this doctrine isn’t about love, much less romantic love. So that won’t do.

But what about the statement in the “Lesser Selection 小取” that though Huo does ai her younger brother, who is a handsome man, she does not ai a handsome man. That second ai maybe looks a bit Valentine-y. Does anyone think they know what’s going on? Continue reading →

What Is Shun's Awful Family Doing in the Mencius?

I’m interested in hearing what, if anything, people think the crazy stories about the sage king Shun and his awful family are doing in the Mencius. I’m thinking especially about sections 5A/2 and 5A/3, which tell us how Shun responded to his family’s attempts to murder him, but 5A/1, 4A/26, and 7A/35 are also on-topic, and maybe 4A/28 and 5A/4 (and others?) as well.

One reason I bring this up is that I know that Manyul, Steve, and I have very different ideas about this, and maybe others do too. So it should be fun to talk about. Continue reading →

Is Chinese Philosophical Thought "Alternative" For Us?

I’ve heard a number of times over the years, from various sources both within and outside of the world of Chinese philosophy, that Chinese philosophical thought represents an “alternative” philosophical tradition, very different from “our own”, and that we are conceptually barred from coming to a full understanding of this tradition, that we will always be looking through the misconceptions, in some sense or another, of the western tradition.  Roger Ames and David Hall endorsed something like this view, on the basis of cultural difference (while admittedly still maintaining that understanding the Chinese tradition at some level is possible).  At the extreme there is Alasdair MacIntyre’s problem of incommensurability that threatens to undermine the possibility of understanding alternative traditions at all.   What all of these views seem to assume, however, is that western scholars are in the position of having to translate Chinese philosophical concepts into concepts we more readily understand, concepts from western thinkers. Continue reading →