We know very little about the life of Chuang Chou (commonly called Chuang-tzŭ), who wrote the nucleus of what Arthur Waley described as ‘one of the most entertaining as well as one of the profoundest books in the world’.1 The book is the longest of the classics of Taoism, the philosophy which expresses the side of Chinese civilisation which is spontaneous, intuitive, private, unconventional, the rival of Confucianism, which represents the moralistic, the official, the respectable. The Historical records of Ssŭ-ma Ch’ien (c. 145–c. 89 BC), in a brief biographical note, date Chuang-tzŭ in the reigns of King Hui of Liang or Wei (370–319 BC) and King Hsüan of Ch’i (319–301 BC). They say that he came from the district of Meng in the present province of Honan, and held a minor post there in Ch’i-yüan (‘Lacquer Garden’, perhaps an actual grove of lacquer trees) which he abandoned for private life. For further information we have only the stories in the book which carries his name, a collection of writings of the fourth, third and second centuries BC of which at least the seven Inner chapters are generally recognised as his work.
Whether we take the stories about Chuang-tzŭ as history or as legend, they define him very distinctly as an individual. In this he is unique among Taoist heroes, of whom even Lao-tzŭ, the supposed founder of the school, never in anecdote displays any features but those of the Taoist ideal of a sage. Most of the tales about Chuang-tzŭ fall into three types: we find him mocking logic (always in debate with the sophist Hui Shih), or scorning office and wealth, or ecstatically contemplating death as part of the universal process of nature. Only the second of these themes belongs to conventional Taoist story-telling, and even here he strikes a distinctive note, at once humorous and deep. Whatever the historical worth of the stories, in reading the Inner chapters one has the impression of meeting the same very unusual man. It is not simply that he is a remarkable thinker and writer; he is someone with an absolutely fearless eye like the William Blake of The marriage of heaven and hell, he gives that slightly hair-raising sensation of the man so much himself that, rather than rebelling against conventional modes of thinking, he seems free of them by birthright. In the landscape which he shows us, things somehow do not have the relative importance which we are accustomed to assign to them. It is as though he finds in animals and trees as much significance as in people; within the human sphere, beggars, cripples and freaks are seen quite without pity and with as much interest and respect as princes and sages, and death with the same equanimity as life. This sense of a truly original vision is not diminished by familiarity with other ancient Chinese literature, even that in which his influence is deepest. Though both men were firmly grounded in their own place and time, there was never another Englishman like Blake or another Chinese like Chuang-tzŭ.
The more closely one reads the disconnected stories and fragmentary jottings in the Inner chapters, the more aware one becomes of the intricacy of its texture of contrasting yet reconciled strands, irreverent humour and awe at the mystery and holiness of everything, intuitiveness and subtle, elliptical flights of intellect, human warmth and inhuman impersonality, folkiness and sophistication, fantastic unworldly raptures and down-to-earth observation, a vitality at its highest intensity in the rhythms of the language which celebrates death, an effortless mastery of words and a contempt for the inadequacy of words, an invulnerable confidence and a bottomless scepticism. One can read him primarily as a literary artist, as Confucians have done in China. However, one cannot get far in exploring his sensibility as a writer without finding one’s bearings in his philosophy.
The great creative period of Chinese philosophy lasted from the time of Confucius (551–479 BC) to the reunification of the empire by the Ch’in dynasty in 221 BC. Political disunity and rapid social and technological change, at a pace never afterwards equalled in Chinese history until the nineteenth century, had undermined the religion, moral code and political institutions of the declining Chou dynasty, and thrown open the question ‘What is the Way?’ – the way that the empire should be ordered and individuals should conduct their lives. Confucius was a conservative who set out to restore the moral and cultural heritage of the Chou, himself unaware of the originality of his own reinterpretations of the tradition which he was refining and clarifying. Late in the fifth century BC his earliest rival Mo Ti (Mo-tzŭ) was the first to propose new foundations; he laid down the principle of universal love, and submitted traditional rules and institutions to the test of whether in practice they benefit men or harm them, or benefit everyone or some at the expense of the rest. The rivalry between Confucians and Mohists continued until the end of the age of the philosophers. For Chuang-tzŭ, it only confirmed that moralists arguing from different standpoints can never reach agreement, and encouraged him in his uncompromising moral relativism.
In the nearer background of Chuang-tzŭ’s thought are philosophers of the fourth century BC, whose writings do not survive. A minor one is Sung Hsing (also called Sung Jung), who in spite of his moralism is respected by Chuang-tzŭ for his thesis that ‘To be insulted is not disgraceful’, implying that a man’s worth has nothing to do with the approval or disapproval of others.2 More important is the ‘Nurture of life’ school led by Yang Chu (c. 350 BC), whom the moralistic schools condemned as an egoist. In a world in which members of the upper class were expected to pursue a public career, Yang Chu was the first spokesman of those who preferred the tranquillity of private life to the cares and dangers of office. His philosophy, although it contributed to Taoism, had nothing mystical about it. Just as much as the Mohists, the Yangists judged conduct by the test of practical benefit and harm, but drew a different conclusion – that life is more important than the things which sustain it, and that to pursue riches and power may be dangerous to health and survival. Four chapters of Chuang-tzŭ, which we call the ‘Yangist miscellany’, seem to be late writings of this school, and there is even some evidence, which we shall consider in introducing the stories about Chuang-tzŭ,3 that at one time he belonged to it himself. Certainly he agreed with Yang Chu in preferring health and peace of mind to worldly success, but he was looking for a philosophy – and this is perhaps the deepest impulse behind his thinking – which instead of imprisoning him in the self and its worries about survival would reconcile him to the mutability of fortune and the certainty of death.
As the rival schools multiplied, debate became progressively more rational, until late in the fourth century BC sophists appeared who studied logical puzzles for their own sake. Chuang-tzu was a younger acquaintance, perhaps at some time a disciple, of the greatest of the sophists, Hui Shih. But he turned away from him, towards the cult of intuitiveness and spontaneity in both political and private action which was to become characteristic of Taoism. Unlike the Confucians and the Mohists, the early Taoists did not form an organised school; the name was applied to them retrospectively, and is first attested in the classification of ‘Six Schools’ by Ssŭ-ma T’an (died 110 BC). As far as our information goes, Chuang-tzŭ himself may have been the very first of them. The great Taoist classic Lao-tzŭ is traditionally ascribed to Lao Tan (‘Old Tan’), supposed contemporary of Confucius and founder of the school, but is not attested until late in the third century BC, and there is no trace of its influence in the Inner chapters. In taking the side of spontaneity against Hui Shih’s logic Chuang-tzŭ helped to tip the scale at that critical moment when the Chinese glimpsed the rationalist path which unknown to them was already being followed by the Greeks, but did not take it.