Zhuangzi, Deconstruction, Language, and Logic

Reading "Understanding the Tao" #5

Zhuangzi in front of waterfalls

In a previous post, I offered to start reading the book Comprendre le Tao (Understanding the Tao) by the French scholar Isabelle Robinet. Isabelle Robinet was an internationally renowned French Sinologist. While some of her work has been translated into English, this book is not. However, you can take a look at her book, Taoism: Growth of a Religion, published by Stanford University Press in 1997.

I did not start reading this book without a specific idea in mind. I am currently running a series of collaborative seminars with a specialist in French philosophy and a specialist in phenomenology with a comparative background. In May, the seminar will cover some parts of the Taoist scriptures.

I have already published several posts about this book by Robinet. You can read or reread them here: Taoism.

In this new post, I would like to continue my reading.

Who was Zhuangzi?

Robinet begins her explanation by emphasizing that although the existence of Zhuangzi (莊子) is more certain than that of Laozi, we still know little about this second important figure of Taoism. In particular, we know that:

• His name was Zhuang Zhou (莊周).

• He lived around the 4th century BCE.

• He worked as an official.

• He was a friend of Hui Shi (惠施), a famous representative of the School of Names.

• He gave his name to a famous book, the Zhuangzi (荘子).

What the Zhuangzi is about?

The Zhangzi is thought to have been composed in several stages, from the 4th century BC to the 3rd century BC. The text that exists today is an edited (and recomposed) version by Guo Xiang (郭象), a commentator who lived in the 3rd century CE.

Robinet says that the text is composed of several small sequences and narratives that aim not to say with words but to illustrate through “metaphors, images, comparisons, or parables” (p. 39). Sometimes the discourse seems to zigzag, presenting elements that seem unrelated, but not without meaning.

According to Robinet, there are two possible attitudes toward this specificity:

• That it is the consequence of the composite nature of the text itself.

• That it is intended to disturb the reader and force him to change his thinking habits.

Robinet’s commentary is based on the second attitude and refers to this text as an early attempt at “deconstruction.”

The Zhuangzi as deconstruction

According to Robinet, Zhuangzi is engaged in a campaign of deconstruction. This deconstruction, like any philosophical deconstruction, is ultimately intended to reconstruct. Robinet devotes an entire subchapter to explaining what this deconstruction (and reconstruction) is all about. She writes:

Of all the Chinese thinkers, Zhuangzi is the one who can be said to have thought the most and conducted philosophical research as this concerns the possibility or not of establishing a truth and possibly persevering in this research. He questions the basic codes of language and knowledge, showing that they are unconscious and tainted with arbitrariness. It calls into question the mental structures that are necessarily common to a social grouping for communication to take place, not by rejecting them, because he uses them to express himself, but by claiming for the mind the freedom to break free of them in an activity of inexhaustible and almost informal dynamic production. (p. 40)

She adds that if Laozi concludes with a silence that is a greeting without taking a position, a thesis that leaves room for and embraces its antithesis, Zhuangzi does the same, but adds that the thesis is not absolutely different from the antithesis. She continues:

He is not the philosopher of wisdom, with his gaze turned towards unambiguous truths. He refuses to choose between the contradictory metaphysical or ethical postulates that oppose the various schools, because any choice leads to an a priori exclusion of a part of the experience of reality which lies outside the field of knowledge, without it being clear how this exclusion is justified or beneficial. (pp. 41–42)

As Robinet explains, Zhuangzi denounces the conventional dimension of language; a language that is not about facts but about propositions (that is to say that language is a set of propositions and not a set of facts). On the other hand, thinking is about concepts and values, but it says nothing about the real; it does not add to the “profound knowledge” we may have or want to have of reality. Zhuangzi sees language as the “artisan of a construction of ourselves and our reality” (p. 43).

Reality is indivisible; yet knowledge divides. The incommensurability of the world exceeds our capacity for knowledge and organization, and the “that by which” these exist is unknowable. (p. 44)

The Zhuangzi as paraconsistent logic

Robinet reminds us that for Aristotle a thing cannot be its contradiction (what is A cannot also be non-A) — yet Aristotle adds at the same time and under the same relation. She thinks that without such a principle all differences would disappear and all things would be one unique thing.

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It seems here that the way Robinet understands Aristotle’s logic is a bit misleading, and would be more accurate as a description of a kind of Aristotelianism (but not Aristotle himself). The Stagirite certainly had a strong opinion about logic, but it was a more balanced tool than people usually think. For example, contradiction does not mean difference or opposition (which are weaker degrees of distinction), and Aristotle does not consider turning one’s gaze to an object to lead to a contradiction. But let us leave these issues aside and continue with her explanation of Zhuangzi’s views.

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She explains:

It therefore denies this principle, because reality itself is contradictory and the logical non-contradiction is only a construction of our thought adapted to the demands of short-term action and to the control of reality in its most superficial and apparent layers. But this negation does not lead to a purely negative negative; it points towards the Whole. It is not a question of substituting non-being for being, or the negation of everything for affirmation, nor even of preserving both. But there is a place where things are indifferent, indeed, undecidable, where the principle of the excluded middle (A and A or non-A, there is no other alternative) does not apply, where one can neither be right nor mistaken. (p. 45)

Zhuangzi emphasizes multidimensionality, which encompasses inexhaustible possibilities. Moreover, he invites us to overcome infinite or unanswerable questions. For him, the willingness to explain everything leads nowhere. Taking one position just erases some other positions, some other possibilities. Robinet writes in a conclusive paragraph:

No subject, no master, no origin, no foundation. No root cause anywhere present or in any form that would be out of play. No criterion, no measure that allows anything to be fixed or grasped, or to say what things are. (…) The answer is a game just like the question. (p. 52)

Nicely said. Yet for me, who devoted part of my Ph.D. to similar questions in the philosophy of Yamauchi Tokuryū, this part about logic is deceptive, but that is another charm of reading!

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I will stop this reading here and continue in another post this reading of Robinet’s presentation of Zhuangzi, especially as it relates to the human world.