Zhuangzi: Closet Confucian?
| Author | Michael Nylan |
| Published date | 01 October 2017 |
| Date | 01 October 2017 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/1474885117702793 |
| Subject Matter | Special Issue Articles |
European Journal of Political Theory
2017, Vol. 16(4) 411–429
!The Author(s) 2017
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DOI: 10.1177/1474885117702793
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Article
Zhuangzi: Closet Confucian?
Michael Nylan
University of California at Berkeley, USA
Abstract
Confucius (aka Kongzi) and Zhuangzi are the two most famous thinkers in all of Chinese
history, aside from Laozi, the Old Master. They occupy positions in the history of
Chinese thinking roughly comparable to those held by Plato and Epicurus in the
Western narrative of civilisation, in that they offer visions of the engaged political life
and the engaged social self to which later political theorists and ethicists invariably
return. For the last century or so, if not longer, Sinologists and comparative philoso-
phers have been apt to name Confucius the ‘founder’ of a Confucian ‘school’, and
Zhuangzi, one of two ‘founders’ of a rival Daoist ‘school’, despite the lack of evidence
for sectarian factions in early China. What is at stake in this essay is nothing less than a
recasting of the entire early history of Chinese thinking in ways both bracing and
potentially troubling to modern academics.
Keywords
Confucius, Zhuangzi, Confucian, Daoist, classical learning
Confucius (aka Kongzi) and Zhuangzi are the two most famous thinkers in all of
Chinese history, aside from Laozi, the Old Master. They occupy positions in the
history of Chinese thinking roughly comparable to those held by Plato and
Epicurus in the Western narrative of civilisation, in that they offer visions of the
engaged political life and the engaged social self to which later political theorists
and ethicists invariably return.
1
As a modern formula puts it, scholar-officials were
‘Confucian in office, and Daoist [meaning, Zhuangzi’s followers among them] out
of office’. For the last century or so, if not longer, Sinologists and comparative
philosophers have been apt to name Confucius the ‘founder’ of a Confucian
‘school’, and Zhuangzi, along with Laozi, the founder of a rival Daoist ‘school’,
even if both factoids are incorrect, with the ‘school’ denomination an artefact of
late imperial China, which took bitter sectarian rivalries for granted.
2
Today,
too many scholars – out of laziness, possibly, or poor command of classical
Chinese – continue to read into the distant past a bitter contest between the two
Corresponding author:
Michael Nylan, University of California at Berkeley, 3212 Dwinelle Hall, Berkeley, CA 94720-2550, USA.
Email: mnylan@berkeley.edu
masters, their adherents, and their teachings.
3
Therefore, the title for this essay,
‘Zhuangzi: Closet Confucian?’ is designed to provoke and disrupt stale categories,
while mimicking the occasionally joking tone of the Analects and Zhuangzi com-
pilations themselves (Harbsmeier, 1990). For to posit clean lines between rival
sectarian groups named ‘Confucian’ and ‘Daoist’ obscures the most interesting
features of Han and pre-Han thought, where borrowings from acknowledged mas-
ters (zi ) and distinguished experts (jia ) were so prevalent that the terms for
fine compositional styles indicated the ‘composite nature’ of the early manuscripts
(Boltz, 2005; Nylan, 2014; Nylan and Csikszentmihalyi, 2003). What is at stake
here, then, is nothing less than a recasting of the entire early history of Chinese
thinking in ways both bracing and potentially troubling to modern academics.
In the received version of the multi-vocal Zhuangzi, the Zhuangzi persona expli-
citly plays with the figure of Kongzi the Master (aka Confucius), in roughly
38 episodes that can be sorted into three main groups (see Appendix 1). The
Zhuangzi sometimes speaks through the Kongzi persona in a measured voice,
offering key insights that must belong to the author of the passage.
4
Alternatively, the Zhuangzi gently mocks Kongzi for being somewhat ‘less
advanced’ in the way than those impossible models of perfection dubbed the
Genuine People (zhen ren), even as it concedes that Kongzi is a better model
than most others when it comes to clear thinking and constructive conduct. In a
few episodes, Kongzi admittedly comes in for harsh criticism, in narratives meriting
further exploration below. My general conclusion based on my review is that the
Zhuangzi persona appears to be by far the subtlest of Confucius’s many critics,
with his critiques shot through with admiration and even affection (cf. Nylan and
Wilson, 2010). At the same time, the Zhuangzi insists repeatedly that any masters,
including Zhuangzi’s own masters, who gather huge numbers of disciples are sus-
pect. In line with this, the Zhuangzi levels harsh criticisms against the self-styled
classicists (Ru ) who stake their careers and reputations on their abilities to
‘order rituals’ (zhi li ) following antique routines. This essay selects a couple
of prime examples for each of these standard variations, while turning attention to
lesser known parts of the Zhuangzi outside the Inner Chapters (cf. Klein, 2001), so
that readers may better appreciate the complexity of the rhetorical strategies
employed in the early masterwork.
Part I. Kongzi as the voice of Zhuangzi
In many Zhuangzi passages (14 by my count), Kongzi speaks as thoughtful readers
would expect Zhuangzi to do, setting forth important precepts. Two examples may
suffice to give readers some idea of what I mean. In the first, Kongzi articulates a
significant aspect of the human condition: that no person in office can get free of
ties and obligations owed to family or to court.
412 European Journal of Political Theory 16(4)
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