WANDERING FAR AND UNFETTERED, PART III

Let us bring our “Wandering Far and Unfettered” to a close here in this third Meditation of the Zhuangzi’s opening chapter. We’ll end by analyzing a parable—a conversation between logician Huizi and a fictionalize version of Zhuangzi himself:

Huizi said to Zhuangzi, “The King of Wei gave me the seed of a great gourd. I planted it, and when it matured it weighed over a hundred pounds. I filled it with liquid, but it was not firm enough to lift. I cut it in half to make a dipper, bit it was too wide to scoop into anything. It was big and all, but because it was so useless I finally just smashed it to pieces.”

Zhuangzi said, “You are certainly stupid when it comes to using big things. . . . The difference is all in how the thing is used. You . . . had a gourd of over a hundred pounds. How is it you never thought of making it into an enormous vessel for yourself and floating through the lakes and rivers in it? Instead, you worried that it was too wide to scoop into anything, which I guess means the mind of our greatly esteemed master here is still clogged up, occupied with its bushes and branches!” (Zhuangzi 7-8)

Here we see Zhuangzi make explicit that which hitherto he spoke of only implicitly—the significance of the phoenix, Peng, and the difference between the great and the small. He accomplishes this through something reminiscent of a Socratic Dialogue. One might also describe this as engaging in Socratic Dialectical thought. That’s what it means to construct for oneself a fictional intellectual opponent with which to spar. And if one makes his opponent from steel rather than straw, giving said opposition the most convincing and charitable positions possible, then he might learn something as a product of the conflict between his own preconceived notions and those notions in disagreement.

Ironic, then, that our representative of logic, logician Huizi, is not capable of such creativity. He is trapped within the boundaries of his own preconceptions. Huizi believes his knowledge is sufficiently complete as to be capable of using rational deduction to come to only correct answers. This is what I call the “presupposition of correctness.” In discourse with others, or even with yourself, you will see it more often than not. Once a conclusion has been reached, the presupposer in question rejects all evidence which contradicts his premises. He does this because he ”knows” his logic to be valid—that is to say, he “knows” that his premises and conclusions follow. And often, they do. However, what he does not realize is that he cannot assume that his premises are right, that each point is itself necessarily true. Yet he commits this very sin, and all because he feels he reached a valid conclusion. “Where’s the problem?” you might be wondering. You tell me, what is the problem with the following syllogism?

“My premises and conclusion follow from each other; therefore, my conclusion is logically valid. Because my conclusion follows logically, my premises must also be correct; therefore, evidence which contradicts my premises must be false; therefore my premises must be true; and therefore my conclusion also must be correct.”

Must? Must? Our hypothetical logician has forgotten that for an argument to be sound the premises must be true and they must follow to the conclusion. These are two requisites together, and one being so does not make the other.

This is exactly what is occurring in the mind of Huizi. He believes he knows what a gourd is capable of and useful for; and therefore, he believes that his conclusion about his “great gourd” is correct; therefore, he believes that his trials (filling it, cutting it into a dipper, etc.) are sufficiently exhaustive to make his conclusion sound. He really has convinced himself that his knowledge and mode of thinking is complete! Why else would he deem the gourd worthy of destruction? To smash it into pieces is to say, “This thing is just a waste of space and a frustration for me. There can be no value in it. In fact, there is more value in destroying it than keeping it around.” Now imagine we were discussing an idea, say, a potential solution to a problem. What a habit, to obliterate possibility and potential in the mind out of bitterness and arrogance.

It is at this juncture which we return to Zhuangzi’s answer, to Kun skyward transformation into Peng, and to the scoldquail’s ignorance of Peng’s necessity to soar so high for so far a journey.

The great man rises high into the air, that is, he raises his consciousness—he becomes aware even of those things which scare and disgust him, even about himself (especially about himself). This is the necessary humility for one to overcome his arrogance. It is the acknowledgement of his ignorance which give him a reason to better himself—because he knows just how far he is from who he could become. He sees his potential and is motivated as if by a guiding star upon which a wish might be fulfilled. And like Zhuangzi’s creative innovation, turning a gourd into a boat, the greater, higher man recreates what is possible for himself. He makes possible travel across great bodies of water—the Jungian symbolic unknown and unconscious—thereby, he is able to go places and do things priorly inaccessible.

Contrast the greater man with the lesser. He lives an unexamined life and is thereby ignorant of his own ignorance. This engenders in him an arrogance which in turn leads him to believe that that which makes sense to him is necessarily correct. He presupposes the correctness of his own logic, and when the world shows him that he is incorrect, say through his failure to actualize some potential, he takes this as evidence that the world is incorrect. His logic must be correct, as proven by its consistency with itself; therefore, he feels justified in taking vengeance—in mocking, destroying, demolishing, and abolishing all those things which make him too keenly aware of the conflict. What he doesn’t realize is that it is his own potential which he is smashing. He is sabotaging the very tools he might have used to explore his unconscious self and discover something useful.

This is the dialectical nature of the universe we discussed in the previous analysis, a nature that runs to the bottom of existence itself. It amounts to life-affirmation or to life-denial—to acceptance or to rejection. There is no neutral fence on which to sit, but neither is there land immune to the shifting sands of the constantly changing universe. Each moment, the opportunity to switch between Huizi and Zhuangzi presents itself. And between one individual and another, and another, each will be in some ways Huizi, and in other ways Zhuang Zhou. That is to say, we each contain this same oppositional force within and among us. But more on that when we return to discuss the “Equalizing Assessment of Things” in chapter two.

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