Questioning Dao: Skepticism, Mysticism, and Ethics in the Zhuangzi

Abstract

Few things seem less appropriate to the multiple transitional perspectives of the Zhuangzi than their reduction to one philosophical or religious standpoint. Nonetheless, two prevailing readings do this: One suspends the proto-Daoist religious context of the Zhuangzi and discovers a linguistically oriented skepticism; the other interprets the Zhuangzi's critical strategies as a means subordinated to the ultimate soteriological purpose of becoming a Daoist sage through mystical union with an absolute called "the Dao." Although both interpretations have plausibility, they are inadequate to the Zhuangzi's ethical and existential character. Since this text cannot be appropriately interpreted according to any one discourse, including skepticism and mysticism, the Zhuangzi's destructuring and poetic strategies are not simply techniques serving an ulterior philosophical or religious purpose. Oriented by the immanent cultivation of the self (zhenren), linguistic and biospiritual practices performatively enact a critical, fluid, and responsive comportment or disposition in relation to the myriad things.