Approaching the Dao: From Lao Zi to Zhuang Zi (original) (raw)
Related papers
Classical Daoism – Is There Really Such a Thing? Part 1 Daojia 道家 and Huang-Lao 黃老
Classical Daoism, Philosophical Daoism, Early Daoism: these terms are increasingly being seen as obsolescent by scholars in the last couple of decades. The general public – those who have heard of Daoism or have read a little bit of it – are largely unaware, despite the fact that for quite awhile writers have admitted that there were no “Daoists” in pre-Han China and that the two most famous “Daoists,” Laozi and Zhuangzi, surely never thought of themselves as Daoists. The more recent interest in what was once called “religious Daoism (Daojiao 道教),” as opposed to “philosophical Daoism (Daojia 道家),” has seen a shift towards using “Daoism” to refer only to the former. In this series of blog posts I am going to explore this matter. First, I will look at the oldest evidence for a “Daoist school” in the Historical Records (Shiji 史記) and the Han Documents (Hanshu 漢書). Next I will look into both the text and the legendary man Laozi 老子, followed by Zhuangzi 莊子. Texts that will be mentioned along the way will include: the Laozi 老子, Zhuangzi 莊子, Hanfeizi 韓非子 (esp. Jie Lao 解老, Yu Lao 喻老), Lüshi Chunqiu 春秋左傳, Mengzi 孟子, Xunzi 荀子, Guanzi 管子 (esp. Neiye 內業), Huainanzi 淮南子, Heguanzi 鶡冠子, and the Huangdi Sijing 黃帝四經. I will also survey various scholars’ views on early Chinese “schools of thought.”
Religions
This paper proposes examining the central notion of Oneness (一 yi) in Daoist thought by offering an analysis of its uses in the early writings of the Daoist tradition, beginning with the Laozi 老子 and the Zhuangzi 莊子 before moving on to Huang-Lao 黃老 texts. While Oneness in the Laozi primarily appears as another “name” for Dao, it was used in discussions of cosmogony and cosmology, political governance, and personal cultivation. These multiple aspects of Oneness in the Laozi were later developed along two different paths in Daoist thought. The first, exhibited in the Zhuangzi, the Baopuzi 抱樸子, and other similar documents, treated Oneness as the ultimate source of all things and extended its meaning in the context of personal cultivation. In resonance with this path, their central teachings concerned “maintaining Oneness” (守一 shou yi). In the second path, expressed in the Huang-Lao tradition’s understanding and interpretation of the Laozi, Oneness acquired a certain concreteness and wa...
The Disparate Realisms of Laozi and Zhuangzi: A Synthesis of Interpretations
Although the Daodejing and the Zhuangzi share much in common, multiple scholars have noted differences in their ontological and epistemological positions—differences that go to the very heart of the relationship between inner truth and outer circumstances. This paper, which was presented at the 12th International Conference on Daoist Studies at Beijing Normal University (June 2018), examines the writings of JeeLoo Liu and Chad Hansen, observing how their respective interpretations provide insights regarding how and why these seminal texts diverge. Following Liu, the Laozian view of reality is likened to metaphysical realism, while the Zhuangzian view is closer to internal realism (i.e., metaphysical realism combined with semantic relativism). This difference, however, is not simply an expansion of Laozian thought, as Liu claims; instead, as Hansen argues, it is more convincingly seen as a response to the arguments of bianshi (辩士) like Hui Shi (惠施). Thus, by going back and forth between Liu’s and Hansen’s interpretations, accounting for their strengths and weaknesses in light of textual and contextual factors, a synthesis can be achieved, shedding more light on the intersection of ontology and epistemology in these seminal Daoist texts.