Introduction

 
It is thought that Zhuāng Zhōu (庄周) whom we now know as Zhuāngzǐ (庄子) lived between about 370-300, and it is also thought that he may have been a minor official in the town of Meng in the state of Song, but that’s about all that we think we might know, and that very uncertainly. The uncertainty of these biographical details is, however, of little importance: we are only interested in him as the character who appears in the book that is claimed to have been written by him, and who thereby became famous (as we saw earlier) as the representative of the third stage of Classical Taoism.

That book, also known as the Zhuangzi, is not only an essential philosophical text but also one of the great literary productions of China and really a very entertaining read. (It was officially recognised as a Classic by the Emperor in 742.) Its literary quality is all the more remarkable in that it has long been recognised that the book is actually a compilation of pieces by many hands rather than the work of a single author. Presumably, we can give significant credit for this to one Guō Xiàng (郭象, d. 312,) an editor and commentator of genius who removed large amounts of what he judged to be repetitive, extraneous, and unworthy material from the ancient original resulting in the book of 33 chapters that we now have. Nevertheless, it is thought that only the first seven of these chapters, known as the ‘Inner’ chapters, are likely to be the work of Zhuang Zhou. The ‘Outer’ chapters (8-22) may be by disciples of the master; and the ‘Miscellaneous’ chapters (23-33) by members of the ‘school’ of Zhuangzi. (Modern scholars claim to have seen other divisions in there too, but that needn’t concern us here.)

In the text of the Zhuangzi our philosopher challenges his contemporaries and criticizes the teachings and methods of the Confucians, Mohists, and others, giving us a fund of contemporary information on those movements. In particular, as the relevant lecture made clear, a great deal of what we know of the ‘School of Names’ comes from the appearance in the Zhuangzi of philosophers of that school such as Hui Shi and Gongsun Long as targets of Zhuangzi’s criticism. Zhuangzi clearly found the claims of the ‘School of Names’ significant – even if he didn’t properly engage with them. It is even said that he was a friend of Hui Shi himself and considered him his philosophical peer and a valuable interlocutor.

Chuang Chou passed Hui Shi’s tomb when in a funeral procession. He turned and said to the man behind him, “The tip of the nose of a man of Ying was smeared with lime to resemble the wings of a fly. They had the artisan Shih cut it away, and he did it with the wind from one blow of his ax. The lime completely disappeared, but the nose was unharmed, and the man of Ying’s looks were no longer marred.
“When Lord Yuan of Sung heard this he summoned the artisan Shih and said to him, ‘Try that on me.’
‘There was a time when I could do that, but the raw material on which I worked has long been dead.’
Since the death of the master. Hui Shi, I, Chuang Chou, have had no raw material. There has been nobody to talk with.[1]

Exploring the Limits

 
Now, although we have called Zhuangzi’s interests and arguments epistemological because they are concerned with the limits to possible knowledge, it needs to be noted that Zhuangzi makes an implicit distinction between two kinds of knowledge and recognises different limits for each. One form of knowledge is what we call propositional knowledge, which is what we have when we ‘know that’ such and such a statement is true, while the other sort of knowledge – let’s call it ‘functional knowledge’ – is what we have when we ‘know how’ to do something. The distinction is pretty clear: knowing that ‘a bike is a two wheeled vehicle’ is a very different thing from knowing how to ride a bike. In the case of Zhuangzi, of course, the fundamental question is whether and how it is possible for one to know how to follow the Dào. We shall see that knowing that some statement about Dào is or is not true just doesn’t enter into it.

Relativism

Many of the theses that his friend Hui Shi proposed seem to be comprehensible as demonstrations that some statements may be true from one point of view and false from another point of view, which suggests that he was arguing, at least partially, for a kind of relativism in propositional knowledge. We can see that Zhuangzi made arguments to the same effect for functional knowledge. A couple of passages will serve for the innumerable others

Now I would ask you this, If a man sleeps in a damp place, he gets lumbago and dies. But how about an eel? And living up in a tree is precarious and trying to the nerves. But how about monkeys? Of the man, the eel, and the monkey, whose habitat is the right one, absolutely? Human beings feed on flesh, deer on grass, centipedes on little snakes, owls and crows on mice. Of these four, whose is the right taste, absolutely? Monkey mates with the dog-headed female ape, the buck with the doe, eels consort with fishes, while men admire Mao Ch'iang and Li Chi, at the sight of whom fishes plunge deep down in the water, birds soar high in the air, and deer hurry away. Yet who shall say which is the correct standard of beauty? In my opinion, the doctrines of humanity and justice and the paths of right and wrong are so confused that it is impossible to know their contentions.[1] 

Formerly a sea-bird alighted in the suburban country of Lu. The marquis went out to meet it, (brought it) to the ancestral temple, and prepared to banquet it there. The Kiu-shâo was performed to afford it music; an ox, a sheep, and a pig were killed to supply the food. The bird, however, looked at everything with dim eyes, and was very sad. It did not venture to eat a single bit of flesh, nor to drink a single cupful; and in three days it died.
'The marquis was trying to nourish the bird with what he used for himself, and not with the nourishment proper for a bird. They who would nourish birds as they ought to be nourished should let them perch in the deep forests, or roam over sandy plains; float on the rivers and lakes; feed on the eels and small fish; wing their flight in regular order and then stop; and be free and at ease in their resting-places. It was a distress to that bird to hear men speak; what did it care for all the noise and hubbub made about it? If the music of the Kiu-shâo or the Hsien-khih were performed in the wild of the Thung-thing lake, birds would fly away, and beasts would run off when they heard it, and fishes would dive down to the bottom of the water; while men, when they hear it, would come all round together, and look on. Fishes live and men die in the water. They are different in constitution, and therefore differ in their likes and dislikes. Hence it was that the ancient sages did not require (from all) the same ability, nor demand the same performances.[2] 

Clearly, there is no proper way that is not proper with respect to the person or thing involved. On the other hand, as you may have noticed from the examples, it doesn’t follow that we can’t know what the proper way is with respect to that thing. Clearly, we’re meant to understand that it is proper for eels to sleep in damp places, monkeys to sleep in trees, and men to sleep in soft beds. By the same token he describes, with no show of hesitation, just how one who knew the ways of birds would treat one properly.

Skepticism

But what sort of knowledge is it that we have when we know the proper ways of eels and monkeys, birds and men? One strand of Zhuangzi’s writing strongly suggests that he doesn’t think that such knowledge is itself propositional knowledge, because there is a doubt that propositional knowledge is even possible.

We are familiar, I suppose, with the general arguments for skepticism about propositional knowledge in the Western tradition, if only from our memories of the Cartesian argument. There are traces of something like that same skeptical procedure in the Zhuangzi, with the notable exception of the very first step in which we are urged to doubt the veracity of our own senses. It cannot have escaped the notice of thinkers at any time that we may be mistaken about the things we believe we see or hear, and yet there is no good evidence that this was felt to be an important epistemological limit by Chinese philosophers before the introduction of Buddhism in the 1^st C AD.[3]

1.                   The Problem of Dreams

Descartes’s second step was to question whether he could distinguish between the fantasies that come as dreams and the experiences that come in waking life:

How often, in the still of the night, I have the familiar conviction that I am here, wearing a cloak, sitting by the fire – when really I am undressed and lying in bed! … When I think more clearly about this, I see so plainly that sleep and waking can never be distinguished by any certain signs, that I am bewildered …[4]

And Zhuangzi made precisely the same point, though more picturesquely:

I, Chuang Chou, once dreamed that I was a butterfly flitting about. I did whatever I wanted! I knew nothing about any Chuang Chou. Then I suddenly awakened as Chuang Chou with all his normal trappings. Now I don’t know whether Chuang Chou dreamed he was a butterfly or a butterfly is dreaming that he is Chuang Chou.[5]

2.                   The Problem of Reason

Descartes recognised, however, that even if we couldn’t be sure that we were not dreaming, still there were things that were true even so. Things like red being a colour, bodies having extension, and so on. Similarly, St Augustine at this point in his own treatment of skepticism declared that we could still not doubt that logical truths were true or that mathematical or geometrical truths still held.[6] 

The Third Cartesian step was to introduce the possibility of a deceptive Demon whose power was such that it could force us to make errors even in acknowledging those facts. If you wonder how that is possible you need to simply ask yourself how it is that you are certain that 1 + 1 = 2: it isn’t by repeated experience of that being the case, because we just don’t think that we get mathematical or logical truths by extrapolating from experience. (If we did, we’d have to find it conceivable that some experience could tell us that 1 + 1 = something other than 2; and we don’t. If no experience can contradict it then it wasn’t experience that told us it was true.) Apparently we just have an intuition of the truth of such matters, and an intuition, being a subjective phenomenon, has no independent guarantee of truth.

Zhuangzi has nothing like the Demon, but he does have an argument that makes the related suggestion that our intuitions about rationality are less than infallible.

Suppose that you and I debated and you bested me, would it mean that you were naturally right and I was naturally wrong? Or even vice versa? Or would one be partially right and the other partially wrong? Or would both be both right and wrong? And if you and I cannot come to a mutual understanding, others assuredly will experience the same difficulty, so who can we get to set things straight? Anybody agreeing with me will only repeat my own arguments, and we shall still be in the dark. Somebody differing with both of us merely offers another point of view, and somebody agreeing with both of us brings us back to the starting point. So, if neither you nor I nor another man can come to a mutual understanding, shall we await a fourth?[7]

And if we cannot rely upon the results of reasoned argument any more than we can rely upon our experience of the world (which may be just a dream,) then it must seem that there is no way to be sure of how things are.

Knowing the Dao

 
But these problems with knowing that do not necessarily mean that there is no knowing how. Zhuangzi suggests that there is a way to know the Dào but it is not by discovering any proposition that is expressible in language – and here we might remind ourselves of the very first words of the Dàodéjīng: that 

                The way that can be spoken of
                Is not the constant way;
                The name that can be named
                Is not the constant name.[1]

1.                   Practice makes Perfect

The Dào is to be discovered only by long practical experience and never by knowing any doctrines. One can no more learn the Dào by learning doctrines than one can learn to ride a bike by reading about how to ride a bike. Consider the butcher Ding. 

[He] was cutting up an ox for the ruler Wän-hui. Whenever he applied his hand, leaned forward with his shoulder, planted his foot, and employed the pressure of his knee, in the audible ripping off of the skin, and slicing operation of the knife, the sounds were all in regular cadence. Movements and sounds proceeded as in the dance of 'the Mulberry Forest' and the blended notes of 'the King Shâu.'
The ruler said,
'Ah! Admirable! That your art should have become so perfect!'
(Having finished his operation), the cook laid down his knife, and replied to the remark,
'What your servant loves is the method of the Tao, something in advance of any art. When I first began to cut up an ox, I saw nothing but the (entire) carcase. After three years I ceased to see it as a whole. Now I deal with it in a spirit-like manner, and do not look at it with my eyes. The use of my senses is discarded, and my spirit acts as it wills.[2]

And the wheelwright Bian also pointed out the inutility of verbal instruction.

Duke Hwan, seated above in his hall, was (once) reading a book, and the wheelwright Phien was making a wheel below it. Laying aside his hammer and chisel, Phien went up the steps, and said,
'I venture to ask your Grace what words you are reading?'
The duke said, 'The words of the sages.'
'Are those sages alive?' Phien continued.
'They are dead,' was the reply.
'Then,' said the other, 'what you, my Ruler, are reading are only the dregs and sediments of those old men.'
The duke said,
'How should you, a wheelwright, have anything to say about the book which I am reading? If you can explain yourself, very well; if you cannot, you shall die!' The wheelwright said,
'Your servant will look at the thing from the point of view of his own art. In making a wheel, if I proceed gently, that is pleasant enough, but the workmanship is not strong; if I proceed violently, that is toilsome and the joinings do not fit. If the movements of my hand are neither (too) gentle nor (too) violent, the idea in my mind is realised. But I cannot tell (how to do this) by word of mouth; there is a knack in it. I cannot teach the knack to my son, nor can my son learn it from me. Thus it is that I am in my seventieth year, and am (still) making wheels in my old age. But these ancients, and what it was not possible for them to convey, are dead and gone: so then what you, my Ruler, are reading is but their dregs and sediments!'[3]

2.                   Practice, But To What End?

There is, however, a problem with the idea that the perfection of ones knowledge of the Dào is like the perfection of ones knowledge of wheelwrighting or of butchery. When one practices cutting up oxen there is always a final goal at which one aims and which one can use as a guiding principle: are the cuts of meat produced correctly cut for the kitchen or not. Similarly with the crafting of a wheel; the guiding criterion by which one may judge the correctness of the performance is the utility of the wheel produced. By comparing the results of ones performance of the task at hand against the appropriate criteria one learns whether the performance is adequate to the task or not and thus comes to learn how to do it properly. But what can play the role of such a criterion for the Dào?

The answer is that there is no such criterion. Suppose that we propose X as the criterion. To take that criterion as a guide to action is to say that the statement ‘X should be our guide’ is true. The Mohist, for example, proposes to take the criterion of success in actions to be ‘the greatest benefit’ and accordingly says that it is true that ‘the greatest benefit should be our guide.’ But we’ve just seen that Zhuangzi does not think that we can know the truth of any proposition (because propositional knowledge is not to be had,) and therefore we cannot know that the criterion X – whatever it may be – is a proper guide to action. But without a sound criterion of judgement how can we come to know the Dào?

All that is left to the seeker after the Dào is to act spontaneously, without reference to a guiding principle – and even this cannot be taken as a principle. The situation is rather like that of the Skeptics (Pyrrhonists) of ancient Greece who could not say that they knew nothing, because that would itself be a claim to knowledge, but only that they would withhold judgement. Those who would follow Zhuangzi could only deny that any principle of action was the way to the Dào. All that is possbible is to provide the image of the sage in action: 

                Within yourself, no fixed positions
                Things as they take shape disclose themselves.
                Moving, be like water,
                Still, be like a mirror,
                Respond like an echo.[4]