Abstract
Focusing specifically on the philosophy of Guo Xiang’s Zhuangzi Commentary, this chapter will explore and critically evaluate how Guo’s metaphysics of Dao motivates and supports his ethical and political views. Guo Xiang depicts Dao as immanent in the patterns of “self-transformation” of the myriad things that constitute the cosmos, each of which enjoys a “role” or “allotment” corresponding to its “nature” and “fate.” This metaphysical stance underwrites his ethics of non-intervention, his understanding of the responsive, non-self-initiated structure of appropriate action, his ideal of being at peace with one’s allotment, and his paradigm of sagely rule. The chapter will consider the strengths and weaknesses of Guo’s metaphysics, the extent to which it legitimately supports his practical views, and potential tensions between his notion of the interrelated self-transformation of things and his emphasis on eliminating the agent’s “heart-intent” as a spring of action.
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Notes
- 1.
Historical sources mention works by Guo on the Daodejing and the Confucian Analects, but these are no longer extant. Throughout this chapter, I assume, for the sake of discussion, that Guo’s commentary forms a coherent body of writing that aims to present a consistent philosophical stance.
- 2.
See the Guo commentary (indicated by the heading “注”) to book 1 in Guo Qingfan 1961: 1. References to Guo Xiang’s commentary cite page numbers in Guo Qingfan’s edited text. All translations of Guo’s commentary are my own. Throughout the chapter, I interpret xing as the inherent, dispositional character of a thing at any one time, avoiding the common translation of xing as “nature” in order to distinguish it from tian 天, which I render as “nature” or “natural.”
- 3.
Because the word xin 心 also refers to the physical heart and the concept of xin covers cognitive, affective, and conative functions, it is often interpreted as “heart-mind.” For brevity, I will refer to it as “mind,” with the proviso that “mind” covers all three areas of psychological activity.
- 4.
See Paul D’Ambrosio’s chapter in this Companion for more.
- 5.
See Eric Nelson’s chapter in this Companion for more.
- 6.
- 7.
- 8.
Guo’s younger contemporary Pei Wei 裴頠 (267–300 CE) similarly argued that utter non-existence lacks any means by which it could generate anything. Hence what originates generation must self-generate, and in doing so it must have existence as its basis. See Mou Zongsan 1997: 368, and Tang Yijie 2000: 57. Tai Lianchang argues that Pei’s conception of self-generation is distinct from Guo’s, as Pei holds that things rely on resources outside themselves for their generation. See Tai 1995: 51–55; see also Alan Chan’s chapter in this Companion.
- 9.
Duhua is sometimes interpreted as “lone transformation,” but the connotation of “lone” may be misleading, since duhua often involves interaction with other things. See Yuet Keung Lo’s chapter in this Companion.
- 10.
Brook Ziporyn aptly remarks that “what Guo means by ‘self-so’ [is] not done by me, nor by anyone or anything else.” See Ziporyn 2015: 404.
- 11.
As Brook Ziporyn says, ming in this sense is “a word for the unknowability of how things create themselves.” Ziporyn 2003: 35.
- 12.
That is, there is no thing outside of things that makes them the things they are; rather, things simply arise in-and-of-themselves as the things they are.
- 13.
Here my reading diverges from Brook Ziporyn’s, on which Guo denies that interaction between things is a matter of causality. See Ziporyn 2003: 103, 105. I also differ from Tang Yijie, who sees Guo as denying that things have any power to affect each other and indeed rendering the existence of things unintelligible. See Tang 2000: 267, 278. Like Tai Lianchang 1995: 60–61, I suggest that the doctrine of independent transformation is compatible with ordinary talk about causal relations. Guo Xiang can coherently claim that things are autogenerated while also holding that, through autogenerated reactions, their current status is partly a result of causal interaction with other things. (On this complex issue, see also the chapter by Yuet Keung Lo in this Companion.)
- 14.
Wang Deyou makes this point well, calling xing, for example “the various specifications that things possess.” See Wang 1987: 32. Brook Ziporyn accordingly interprets xing as “determinacy,” with the understanding that what is determinate for any one thing will change from moment to moment. See Ziporyn 2003: 89. Tai Lianchang points out that for Guo xing is in effect a thing’s natural endowment and thus what is self-so for it, requiring no action. See Tai 1995: 52.
- 15.
Guo Xiang’s point is not that tracks are mere appearances, not reality. The distinction between tracks and actuality does not correlate with that between appearance and reality. For example, the tracks of the sages are real and indeed record the sages’ path at some time in the past. The problem is that static, fixed tracks and names do not embody the sages’ dynamic, autogenerative activity (see, for instance, Guo 1961: 344). They thus cannot serve as guides to emulate in following dao.
- 16.
To cite just a few of the many examples of such uses of ming, see Guo 1961: 99, 129, 185, 195, 269, and 754. Wang Deyou emphasizes this aspect of ming, marshaling persuasive textual support for interpreting it as a “harmonious joining” with things. See Wang 1987: 33–34. Tai Lianchang also calls attention to this aspect, while clarifying that it is but one part of Guo’s complex conception of ming. See Tai 1995: 62–68. As Brook Ziporyn stresses, the connotation of being dark, obscure, and hence unknowable is also crucial. See Ziporyn 2003: 66.
- 17.
Zhu Hanmin helpfully explores this aspect of ming and its links to non-mindedness in Zhu 2011: 91–94.
- 18.
Since I interpret ming here as a mode of engagement with things that ultimately grounds a distinctive conception of agency (see section 6), I have reservations about Ziporyn’s construal of ming as “vanishing (into) things.” See Ziporyn 2003: 66–67. To be sure, the agent who attains ming with things forgets any reflectively self-conscious sense of self. Still, the agent remains a discrete entity undergoing independent transformation, whose activity arises self-so from inherent character (xing). As I will explain in section 6, for Guo agency is inherently relational, issuing from interaction between the agent’s inherent character and things. But this relation seems better characterized as a matter of engaging, joining, or merging than of vanishing. In a later essay, Ziporyn revises this label to “vanishing merging,” referring to a “pre-reflexive coming-together” or “comfortably uncognized encounter,” two descriptions that largely converge with my own. See Ziporyn 2015: 412.
- 19.
Tai Lianchang emphasizes this aspect of ming, depicting it as a practice (gongfu 工夫) of attaining “non-minded unmediated responsiveness,” through which we forget ourselves and follow the self-so patterns of our inherent character, thus merging with dao and allowing independent transformation to proceed. See Tai 1995: 59, 67.
- 20.
This hypothesis dovetails with Tai Lianchang’s suggestion that for Guo Xiang non-mindedness lies in setting aside preferences, biases, and explicit judgments of right or wrong and good or bad. See Tai 1995: 68.
- 21.
See, for instance, Guo 1961: 631, 666.
- 22.
For a discussion, see Gallagher and Zahavi 2005: section 3. In this context, “reflective” refers to the property of certain higher-order, self-conscious states of taking our own lower-order self-conscious states as their objects.
- 23.
- 24.
Taking action or “having a mind” to do something may, but need not, also involve reflectively self-conscious monitoring and direction of one’s activity. Minimally, however, it entails the second-order attitude of adopting some first-order end or course of action.
- 25.
For this reason, I resist Brook Ziporyn’s characterization of Guo Xiang as presenting a “polemic against cognition in general” (Ziporyn 2003: 19) or as repudiating “consciousness, valuation, and volition” (Ziporyn 2003: 149). In my view, Ziporyn is on firmer ground when he speaks of Guo’s rejecting “reflective consciousness” and “reflective awareness” while allowing that there could be “deliberate volition” that is nonetheless spontaneous. See Ziporyn 2003: 38–40. Action that springs immediately and spontaneously from one’s inherent character can be purposive, conscious, and deliberate or intentional. What it cannot be, according to Guo Xiang, is grounded in or directed by explicit, reflectively self-aware attitudes.
- 26.
Brook Ziporyn aptly depicts ming as a label for how the adept agent interacts with things, in contrast to interacting with them on the basis of determinate, self-conscious “knowing.” See Ziporyn 2003: 65.
- 27.
For the criticism that Guo Xiang advocates passively accepting existing conditions and one’s fixed role in life, see Wang 2007: 160, 168–169. For a detailed rebuttal of this interpretation, see Chen 2014: 358–360, 362–364. See, too, Brook Ziporyn’s discussion of charges of fatalism against Guo in Ziporyn 2003: 145; 2015: 413.
- 28.
On this point, see Ziporyn 2003: 59, 143; 2015: 410–411, and Chen 2014: 363. On the controversy over whether Guo Xiang posits a fixed nature of things, see Ziporyn 2015: 407. Despite the textual evidence to the contrary, Tang Yijie, for instance, states that for Guo xing cannot be changed. See Tang 2000: 230.
- 29.
Brook Ziporyn expresses this point with Daoist flair: “real value … resides precisely in non-awareness: the fitting comfortableness of the traceless self-forgetting self-so.” Ziporyn 2015: 404.
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Fraser, C. (2020). Metaphysics and Agency in Guo Xiang’s Commentary on the Zhuangzi. In: Chai, D. (eds) Dao Companion to Xuanxue 玄學 (Neo-Daoism). Dao Companions to Chinese Philosophy, vol 14. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-49228-1_18
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