Like all great anti-rationalists, Chuang-tzŭ has his reasons for not listening to reason. He develops them in the pieces assembled in ‘The sorting which evens things out’, a scattered series of notes which conveys more than anything else in ancient Chinese the sensation of a man thinking aloud. We see from this chapter that Chuang-tzŭ learned more than one might have expected from his rationalist mentor Hui Shih. The philosophy of Hui Shih is known primarily by a sequence of ten theses, unfortunately without their explanations, reported in the last chapter of Chuang-tzŭ, ‘Below in the empire’.16 Most of them seem to be paradoxes designed to prove that one cannot make spatial and temporal divisions without contradiction (‘The South has no limit yet does have a limit’, ‘The sun at noon is simultaneously declining, simultaneously with being alive a thing dies’). The last of the theses is different in nature: ‘Let your love spread to all the myriad things, heaven and earth are one unit.’ This suggests that the point of the whole series is to show that since division leads to self-contradiction everything is one, other persons are the same as oneself, and therefore to be loved equally; it supports the principle of universal love preached by the Mohists. But it is clear that if he is taking this position Hui Shih has come dangerously close to discrediting his own tool, analytic reason. He wishes to discredit only spatial and temporal divisions, but it will take only one more step to observe that all reasoning depends on making distinctions, and to reach the conclusion that we should abandon reason for the immediate experience of an undifferentiated world, transforming ‘All are one’ from a moral into a mystical affirmation. It is in ‘The sorting that evens things out’ that Chuang-tzŭ takes this step.
The themes which other schools describe the sophists as exploring are the ‘dimensionless’ and the ‘limitless’ (paradoxes of space and time), the ‘same’ and the ‘different’ (paradoxes arising from the relativity of similarity and difference), and the ‘hard’ and the ‘white’ (paradoxes resulting from treating the mutually pervasive as distinct, for example the hardness and whiteness of a stone). Chuang-tzŭ himself on occasion touches on the first two themes, but uses ‘hard and white’ only as a contemptuous metonym for chop logic.17 Unfortunately we have no writings of Hui Shih and only two genuine essays of the other major sophist Kung-sun Lung, the White horse and Meanings and things. But we can learn a great deal about current methods of argumentation, and its technical terminology, from the later Mohist manual of disputation, the Canons.18 This document, which contains direct answers to some of Chuang-tzŭ’s criticisms of disputation,19 dates from about 300 BC or a little later. Its theory of naming (the only one in ancient China, as far as our information goes) is strictly nominalistic; a common name such as ‘horse’ is given to a particular object and extended to all similar to it. When we ask what an object is, we are asking what name fits it. ‘Disputation’20 is the arguing out of alternatives, one right and one wrong, such as ‘Is it an ox or not?’; questions in which both alternatives may be right or wrong (‘Is it an ox or a horse?’, ‘Is it a whelp or a dog’?) are excluded from disputation. One party affirms and the other denies that the name fits, by expressions most conveniently translated by ‘That’s it’ and ‘That’s not’.21 Apart from ‘deeming’22 the object to be it, a horse for example, one may deem something to be ‘so’23 of it (that it is white, that one rides it). By disputation one proves that a claim is or is not ‘allowable’,24 ultimately by appealing to the definitions of names. (The Canons start by defining no less than seventy-five logical, ethical and geometrical terms and analysing the ambiguities of twelve more.) Among the logical terms of the Canons one which is especially prominent in Chuang-tzŭ is yin, ‘go by’ (take as a criterion);25 thus to judge whether a man fits the description ‘black man’ you have to decide which part of his body to ‘go by’ (his eyes? his skin?). It may be noticed that the basically demonstrative words ‘it’ and ‘so’ (the latter equivalent to ‘like it’, ‘as it’) attract attention, as such English words as ‘true’ and ‘valid’ do not, to the question whether users of a name are in fact picking out the same thing as it.
It is not clear from the scanty documents at what date Chinese thinkers came to appreciate that names have only a conventional relation to objects. Chuang-tzŭ is the earliest whom we know to have made the point explicitly; and throughout ‘The sorting which evens things out’ one feels the exhilarating shock of the discovery when it was still new, the apparent overthrow of all received ideas when it is first seen that in principle anything might be called anything. What is ‘it’ for me and what is ‘other’ than it depend on my choice of standpoint, and when I say ‘That’s it’ I am merely announcing that the thing in question is the thing to which I have chosen to give the name. There is no need of sophistry to prove Kung-sun Lung’s theses ‘A white horse is not a horse’ and ‘The meaning is not the meaning’; I merely have to name something else ‘horse’ and the objects commonly given the name will not be horses.26
As far as horses are concerned, no doubt we can easily adapt to other usages by taking into account what speakers ‘go by’ in applying the name. But with moral terms more serious consequences arise. For example the basic ethical term for all schools was yi, translatable as ‘duty’. For Confucians it is the conduct traditionally prescribed for the various social relations, for example between father and son or ruler and subject; but the Mohists, who criticised accepted morality on utilitarian grounds, formulated in the Canons the new definition ‘To be “dutiful” is to be beneficial’.27 Moralists however cannot afford simply to agree to differ over the definition of the word, and be forced to admit that there is nothing to choose between the Confucian standpoint from which the three-year period of mourning for parents is it and the Mohist standpoint from which it is not. Each school thinks it knows what does actually constitute duty, and engages in disputation to justify itself. Chuang-tzŭ calls this the ‘ “That’s it” which deems’,28 which judges that something actually is what we call it (in contrast with the ‘ “That’s it” which goes by circumstance’,29 which is relative to a criterion), and denies that any reasoning can support it. The result of disputation is simply that those with the same starting-point agree and those without differ.
Chuang-tzŭ derides all claims that reason can give us certainty. The only assurances we can have or should want is that of organic process and unanalysed knacks and skills, of whatever we confidently do without knowing how we do it. We have to ‘know how to know by depending on that which the wits do not know’, otherwise we are projected into ‘the ultimate uncertainty’.30 His objections to analytic thinking are thrown out casually, as insights formulated without being developed, but they are impressively wide in range. In looking for reasons one is caught in an infinite regress, testing by tests which in the end are themselves untested.31 To call in allies can give only a false confidence, since they agree with us only because they have made the same initial choice of standpoint. If someone shares my standpoint against yours, how can he help me to refute you? Even if he argues from a standpoint shared by both of us, what help is that against others who do not share it?32 If we could find something to start from on which everyone in the world agreed I still would not know it (it would merely be that everyone happens to call the same thing by the same name); I cannot even know what it is I do not know – like Meno in Plato’s dialogue Meno, Chuang-tzŭ thinks that a contradiction – and I am still contradicting myself if I try to find a rock bottom of scepticism in ‘I know that no thing knows anything’.33 Moreover, there is no guarantee that something I happen to feel sure of is more likely to be true than something I doubt; ‘if you use the undoubted to unravel the doubted and transfer it to the undoubted, this is to give an undeserved importance to the undoubted’.34 Even the greatest thinkers frequently change their minds; how do I know there is anything I now believe which I shall not reject in the future?35 Chuang-tzŭ is also sceptical about the organ with which we think, which, it may be worth repeating, is not the brain but the heart. Why do we continue to trust its thoughts even in old age when it has decayed with the rest of the body? In any case all men have hearts, and if each of them, wise or foolish, takes his own as the final authority, how can they agree?36 Does the heart reign over the body at all? Isn’t it rather that the body is a system within which the organs take turns as ruler and subject? The body does indeed have a ‘genuine ruler’ which articulates its members, but that is the Way itself, the mysterious order which runs through all things, which we follow spontaneously as soon as we cease to use the heart to analyse alternatives.37
Chuang-tzŭ also shares that common and elusive feeling that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, that analysis always leaves something out, that neither side of a dichotomy is wholly true. He more than once tries to pin it down in intricate, elliptical arguments which direct attention to the moment of transformation from X into Y. According to one of Hui Shih’s theses, at the moment of birth or death a thing is both alive and dead;38 even the later Mohists, who had no taste for sophisms, seem to have taken the position that at the moment when it begins and ends an ox is both ox and non-ox.39 Does it not follow then that every statement at the moment when it becomes allowable is also unallowable?40 Moreover, what of the moment when the totality of existing things began? Disputation assumes that if you add non-oxen to oxen nothing is left out. But you leave out what preceded the moment when there began to be oxen and non-oxen; and if you try to include it you are caught up in the contradiction of both crediting it with and denying it existence.41
Does Chuang-tzŭ’s rejection of disputation amount to a total dismissal of reason? In the first place, spontaneous behaviour as he conceives it is not ‘thoughtless’ in the sense of ‘heedless’, on the contrary it follows close attention to the situation. Nor is it implied that every relevant facet is perceived immediately in a moment of insight; when for example Cook Ting carving an ox arrives at an especially intricate knot of bone and sinew he pauses, concentrates until everything is clear to him, then slices through with a single deft stroke. Although Chuang-tzŭ rejects pien, ‘disputation’, the posing and arguing out of alternatives, he always speaks favourably of lun, ‘sorting, grading’, thought and discourse which orders things in their proper relations. In common usage this word tended to imply grading in terms of relative value, but Chuang-tzŭ’s kind of lun is, to quote the title attached to his second chapter, the ‘sorting which evens things out’.42 It would cover all common-sense thinking about objective facts in order to arrive at a coherent picture of the conditions before responding. It seems that Chuang-tzŭ does not forbid me to think about my situation. What he does forbid is thinking about what I or others ought to do about it, instead of simply answering with the spontaneous act or spontaneous approval or disapproval. The sage, we are told, ‘sorts’ everything within the cosmos but does not ‘assess’ it, he ‘assesses’ the actions of the great men of history but does not engage in disputation about them; and as for what is outside the cosmos – that remainder left over from the total of oxen and non-oxen – he ‘locates’ it but does not sort it.43
How does Chuang-tzŭ reconcile in practice the rejection of all prudential and moral rules with the need to live in a highly regulated society? The sage as he conceives him is both selfless and amoral, and refuses to distinguish and judge between either benefit and harm or right and wrong. However, the carpenter or angler is at his most dexterous in spontaneous rather than deliberated moves, and similarly it is the act without either selfish or altruistic premeditation which he believes to be both in one’s own best interests (‘You can protect your body, keep life whole, nurture your parents, last out your years’)44 and in the best interests of all (‘The benefits of his bounty extend to a myriad ages, but he is not deemed to love mankind’45). As for social conventions, Chuang-tzŭ is alert to the dangers of colliding with them, but sees them as deserving only an outward conformity. But in ‘Worldly business among men’ one notices with some surprise that Chuang-tzŭ does accept two kinds of convention without reserve.46 One is the service of parents, which is rooted in a love ‘which cannot be dispelled from the heart’, and is therefore to be accepted as part of our destiny. Here, unlikely as it may seem in the twentieth century, there is a perfect accord between social custom and the informed spontaneous impulse. The other is the service of minister to ruler. The minister has to accept his duties as belonging to the ‘inevitable’, to the unalterable facts of his situation, and learn to ‘roam free inside the cage’.47 He can try to improve his ruler, but not like a Confucian by prating to him about moral principles; he must identify the growing point of Power in the ruler and deftly guide him towards the Way. But even in ‘Worldly business among men’ Chuang-tzŭ seems to be looking on from outside at unfortunates trapped in office or rash idealists venturing into court in the hope of reforming the ruler. As far as he is concerned, the sensible man stays as far away as he can from official life and its duties.
A point which seems to me of some theoretical interest in moral philosophy48 is the unfamiliar manner in which Chuang-tzŭ jumps the gap between fact and value. He everywhere assumes that to know how to act I have only to contemplate the objective situation and let myself respond. Is he not overlooking what is nowadays a commonplace, that one can know all the facts about a situation without knowing how to act in it? The fallacy of leaping from ‘is’ to ‘ought’ has been recognised ever since Hume. Surely then Chuang-tzŭ is trying to bind us by a concealed imperative which we are at liberty to reject as soon as we uncover it? We might formulate it as: ‘Follow the Way, which is the direction in which you tend if you mirror the concrete situation clearly and react to it spontaneously.’ But the attempted formulation at once reveals that we are playing into Chuang-tzŭ’s hands. There is indeed an implicit imperative behind his talk about the Way, but it is simply ‘Mirror the concrete situation clearly before you let yourself respond.’ Granted that one cannot infer from ‘is’ to ‘ought’, from statements of fact to imperatives, there is no problem about inferring from an imperative of this sort, cognate with ‘Face facts’ or ‘Know thyself’, to imperatives to prefer reactions in awareness to reactions in ignorance of the situation as it objectively is. But in that case the imperative which Chuang-tzŭ has covertly introduced is one which it would be madness to reject. One notices too that Chuang-tzŭ does not owe us a demonstration of the value of spontaneity. If he has succeeded in his endeavour to discredit all principles of choice, there will remain only this single implicit imperative, and nothing to apply it to except spontaneous reactions. Part of the interest of Taoism is that it demonstrates the possibility of deriving a whole philosophy of life from a single imperative to deal with things as they objectively are, not as one would like them to be.
Chuang-tzŭ of course is unaware of the problem of ‘is’ and ‘ought’. Nothing could be further from his intentions than to establish rational foundations for an ethical theory; it is simply that in pursuing his sceptical critique he arrives at an unexpectedly firm rock bottom. The nearest he comes to formulating his implicit principle is a dictum right at the end of the Inner chapters: ‘The utmost man uses the heart like a mirror; he does not escort things as they go or welcome them as they come, he responds but does not store.’49 The mirror metaphor is developed farthest in the Syncretist essay Way of Heaven.50 ‘In the case of the sage’s stillness, it is not that he is still because he says “It is good to be still”; there is nothing among the myriad things which is sufficient to disturb his heart, that is why he is still.’ He is like quiescent water which ‘shows up plainly the beard and eyebrows’; he is ‘the mirror of heaven and earth’. We should expect a Westerner who wrote anything like that to draw nihilistic conclusions. But the Syncretist is describing his ideal mode of action; ‘in stillness he is moved, and when he moves he succeeds’. Is there still room to object that he assumes the value of success, which presupposes standards for judging that the sage’s ends are good? No, the sage’s fluid and temporarily emerging goals are the ones to which he spontaneously tends when he mirrors heaven and earth with perfect clarity, and that is sufficient reason for preferring them to any goals to which he might incline in ignorance.
One may add the further point that, in spite of the Taoist refusal to pose alternatives, the imperative ‘Mirror clearly’ does distinguish a wrong kind of spontaneity, the surrender to passions which distort awareness, from the right kind, responsiveness in the impersonal calm when vision is most lucid. This is precisely the point of divergence between Taoism and the superficially similar cult of spontaneity in our own tradition of Romanticism, which values passion by its intensity however much it distorts reality.