| T. Rev ( @ 2005-12-08 00:39:00 |
Narrow Technical Matters of No Interest
This looks like a fascinating article on the philosophy of Zhuangzi that brings together a number of intellectual currents of great interest to me: skepticism, relativism, liberalism and anarchism. From the conclusion:
This looks like a fascinating article on the philosophy of Zhuangzi that brings together a number of intellectual currents of great interest to me: skepticism, relativism, liberalism and anarchism. From the conclusion:
The problem with a full extrapolation of this modern theory of justice context to the Zhuangzi is that, along with 'sentences' and 'truth', it is clearly hard to find any neat counterpart of 'justice' in ancient Chinese political theory. The paradigm political theories, Confucianism, Mohism and Legalism, typically address nothing resembling constitutional structure at any deeper level than Mozi's Hobbes-like justification of the wise ruling-elder. The chief task of political theory, as the community delivered it to Zhuangzi, is how to identify the wise leader who can correctly choose to impose a single way of life on all.
Clearly, then the contextual point of the Zhuangzi's skepticism is precisely that we should not attempt to do any such thing. No such person exists and we should give up acting as if he/she does. There are no sages in the Confucian or Mohist sense. Skepticism about ways of life in the context of ancient Chinese political theory is skepticism of government--an argument for anarchy. The delivered conception of government in ancient China is intrinsically hostile to liberal neutrality and intolerant of diversity of ways of life. If the purpose of government is to pick and impose a dao on the whole society, then, Zhuangzi correctly concludes, government has no value—I will drag my tail in the mud.