MEDITATIONS: ZHUANGZI, CHAPTER ELEVEN

Being There and Giving Room

It is the curse of the philosopher to will that the world and other people adhere to morality, logic, rationality, or whatever other set or system that might prescribe predictable, productive, and consistent procedures or results. I call it a curse because it is a desire out of accord with the nature of reality. “I have never heard of anyone actually governing other people, ordering them” (Zhuangzi 89), so says the author of the eleventh chapter, “Being There and Giving Room.” I fear I must agree with him. Even the master of a master-slave dialectical relationship cannot command without the slave’s consent—though he may attempt, to terrible consequence:

That’s when everyone gets caught up in high-handed self-discipline or nitpicking blame or ostentatious independence or fierce aggressions. . . . People get so good that even the whole world is insufficient to reward their goodness, or so bad that even the whole world is inadequate to punish their evil. Even the vastness of the whole world is no longer enough for their punishment or their reward! (Zhuangzi 89-90)

What, then, ought to be done with the impulse which birthed such notions as Plato’s philosopher kings? Are we “wise” and “sagacious” types just to stand by and watch the herd blunder headfirst into disaster after disaster until their minds have become addled by the Spirit of Revenge? Anyone with his wits about him and who has sat in likeminded company, pondering the “world’s” problems and proffering solutions, should already have caught on to what I’m about to suggest.

Such an impulse is born from arrogance, and that arrogance is born from a form of self-deception. That is the true nature of the philosopher’s curse: he mistakes his moral and intellectual prejudices for the Great Course. In other words, he mistakes his subjective preferences for objective reality. As Nietzsche might say, he, the philosopher, assumes what is good for him (granting him that he is correct about that—as unlikely as that is!) is likewise good for others. Moreover, he thinks he knows what “good” is to begin with, and more, he believes he knows the way to achieve said “good.”

But one does not need to dig very far before uncovering a super-abundance of presuppositions, most of them completely false, the others partially so.

What, then? What are we saying?

Let us not steep to suggesting that there is no difference between the high and the low. We have already discussed the vastness of that divide in regard to Peng. But if we are not leveling the hierarchy between master and slave, what are we saying? The Zhuangzi suggests that the problem is one of individual acceptance:

If everyone were to rest content in the dispositions of their own inborn nature and allotment in life, it would be quite alright to preserve all eight of these delights (e.g. vision, hearing, humankindness, responsible conduct, ritual, music, sagacity, and wisdom), or equally all right to let them go. But when no one rests content in the dispositions of his own inborn nature and allotment of life, people start getting all chopped up and bound down and back up and tied in by them, and it is thus that the world becomes disordered. (Zhuangzi 90)

What is lacking is an attendance, respect, and development of the instincts. In the philosopher’s case, he overestimates both himself and society. He isn’t happy with his own ability and proclivities toward wisdom and intellectual pursuits. He rejects his limitations as a human being, desiring for himself the lofty position of godhood from which he might remake the world in his own image. Thus, he can find no contentment with his lot in life.

Likewise, the vulgar, common man becomes resentful or despairing when made to conform to standards which his intrinsic virtues are ill-equipped to bring about. He cannot affirm his position in life because it has been made lowly by comparison to those above him. The delights of life become his poisons. Those he possesses he imbibes to excess, and those outside his grasp become mockeries of his existence.

The truth is that we cannot remake one another. We cannot really even reinvent ourselves so much as we can bring about more fully what is already there. It is for this reason that, through the voice of Lao-Tzu, the Zhuangzi warns us:

Lao Dan said, “Be careful not to meddle with the human heart! The human heart is something that springs up when pushed down, sometimes ascending and sometimes descending, sometimes the prisoner and sometimes the executioner. How soft and restrained and pliable it is, yet how firmly and roughly and sharply and severely it chisels and cuts. So hot it smolders to fire, so cold it freezes to ice, so swift that in the interval between glancing up and glancing down it has already twice touched points beyond the four seas. It dwells like an abyss, it moves like the overhanging heavens—stampeding and haughty, allowing nothing to tie it down. Such is the human heart!” (Zhuangzi 91)

If the message above was not clear enough for you, it is a warning against trying to remake human nature to fit some rational or religious prescription. Though malleable and plastic to some degree, each individual is under possession of his hereditary and biological predispositions. Furthermore, each individual becomes shaped by the unique interplay between those dispositions and his upbringing. Time, place, status, among other things make the foundations of each person. These foundations cannot be unmade, for they are rooted in the very reality which constitutes the individual in question.

Which brings us back to the problem at hand. What is the philosopher to do with the impulse which currently manifests as pathological will toward deception, arrogance, and life-denial. He is instead to become a Great man of the Great Course itself:

The teaching that comes from a truly Great Man is like a shadow cast by a body or an echo raised by a sound. When questioned, he responds, thus getting to the bottom of the questioner’s concern, a perfect match with each person in the world. . . .

Thus the sages contemplate the Heavenly but do not try to assist it, find completion in intrinsic virtuosity but tie nothing to it, go forth along their Course but make no plans. They associate with others through humankindness but do not rely on it, cleave closely to responsible conduct but do not accumulate it, respond with ritual but observe no taboos. They take on tasks without declining them, equalize all before the law without disordering their relations, rely on people without making light of them, follow the lead of all things without discarding them. (Zhuangzi 96)

Zhuangzi. Zhuangzi; The Complete Writings, translated by Brook Ziporyn, Hackett Publishing Company Inc., 2020