Fragmentations Betokening Full Virtuosity, part I

What does it mean to say that being fragmented betokens—gives evidence for—the virtue of one’s character? How could it be that being broken in some sense is a sign of wholesomeness?

Wholesomeness, wholesome, whole, complete, intact, integrous: this is what is meant in the Zhuangzi when we talk about virtue. We do not mean the western sense of the word, though there is some overlap with the notion of virtue as an ability, trait, or habit which leads to good outcomes and a good life. Instead, what is meant by virtue is something more like oneness or at-onement, to become one with, to fit-in or match like a tally—a section of bamboo split so that the two pieces interlock perfectly at their jagged edges. Understood this way, the chapter title begins to makes sense.

Fragmentation refers to the suffering intrinsic to our condition as limited, finite, and fallible humans. Being embodied creatures with wants and needs, we desire; and to degree to which we do not achieve our desires, we experience physical as well as psychological conflict and pain. To use literary terms, this conflict sets the stage for us, as protagonists of our own stories, to develop, to change—in Jungian terms, to individuate by incorporating our unconscious potential into our conscious understanding of who we are and what our place is in the world.

In other words, we can not be who we are without being in dialectical conflict with the world. This is because being itself produces conflict, which in turn produces fragmentation, a “jagged edge,” which is necessary if we are to “fit-in” to our potential niches as individuals. This is another way of describing living the “Tao way of life.” The Tao is the way in accord with the “Tao source of life,” what in modern secular philosophy we would call the objective universe. To live in accordance with the Tao, then, is to manifest your potential self in accord with—in affirmation of—the way the objective universe really is.

Virtue, then, is being fragmented by the nature of your existence and yet becoming whole again by affirming the very cause of that fragmentation.

From this, we can see how appropriate it is that Zhuangzi use crippled yet life-affirming men to represent the utmost kind of person, even in contrast to such wise sages as Confucius and Lao Tzu. Consider an excerpt from the following story:

There was an ex-con in Lu, whose feet had been mutilated as a punishment, named Toeless of Unk Mountain. He heeled his way over to see Confucius, who said to him, “You were careless in your past behavior and thus have ended up in this condition. Isn’t it a little too late to come to me now?”

Toeless said, “I just didn’t understand where to direct my labors and undervalued my own body, and so I am lacking a foot; but as I come to you now I still have retained something worth more than a foot, which I am trying to keep whole. Heaven covers all things. Earth supports all things. I used to think that you, sir, were just like heaven and earth—I never imagined you would instead you would instead say something like this!”

Confucius said, “It was rude of me. Won’t you please come in and teach me what you’ve learned?”

But Toeless departed . . .

Toeless said to Lao Dan (to Lao Tzu), “Confucius is certainly far from being an Utmost Person, isn’t he? Why does he go around imitating you so subserviently? He must be seeking some bizarre, deceptive, illusory, freakish thing like a good name, not realizing that the Utmost Person views such things as handcuffs and leg chains.”

Lao Dan said, “Why don’t you simply let him see life and death as a single string, acceptable and unacceptable as a single thread, thus releasing him from his fetters? How would that be, do you think?”

Toeless said, “Heaven itself has inflicted this punishment on him—how can he be released?” (Zhuangzi 47-48)

Our cripple, Toeless of Unk Mountain, confronted by the harsh reality and consequences of his previous actions (and, moreover, his attitudes) has realized that there is something within himself worth preserving and nurturing despite, or because of, his broken, fragmented body. His epiphany and awakening brings him to Confucius, for he knows he will need wisdom if he is to preserve the wholeness of this virtue (this affirming attitude) he has discovered. However, the logical and traditional sage makes a misstep. Confucius cannot at first see the virtue already uncovered in the crippled man. The sage thinks something akin to, “The purpose of wisdom is to get the outcomes you want. You’ve already failed to do this, so what use is wisdom to you now?”

The conception of virtue Confucius employs is the typical view, that virtue is one’s ability to transform the external and tangible world to better fit one’s desires. But virtue in Taoism is not power to change the external world. It is instead internal wholeness, the power to shape and transform the self—like Kun and Peng in Chapter One. As previously mentioned, this is individuation in Jungian psychoanalytics, but it is also Self-Overcoming in Nietzsche’s conceptions of the Übermensch and Will to Power. Likewise, it is action through inaction as described by Lao Tzu in the Tao Te Ching.

What we see when we admire the fruits of virtue is only the surface. If we fixate on the externals, on the surface of things, we become unable to see the inner and transformative potential. Like Confucius, our thoughts stagnate, and we make a misstep, an error, a mistake. Toeless asks, how might such a person be released from such stagnation? He himself is already in possession of the answer: to be willing to admit that we are wrong and to be willing to be harmed, maimed, and fragmented that we might soar into the sky like Peng with our elevated consciousnesses, transformed so that we might begin the journey of continual self-transformation.

To do so is no different than to follow the Course.

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