Daoism and Environmental Philosophy: Nourishing Life [1 ed.] 0367025140, 9780367025144

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Daoism and Environmental Philosophy

Daoism and Environmental Philosophy explores ethics and the philosophy of nature in the Daodejing, the Zhuangzi, and related texts to elucidate their potential significance in our contemporary environmental crisis. This book traces early Daoist depictions of practices of embodied emptying and forgetting and communicative strategies of undoing the fixations of words, things, and the embodied self. These are aspects of an ethics of embracing plainness and simplicity, nourishing the asymmetrically differentiated yet shared elemental body of life of the myriad things, and being responsively attuned in encountering and responding to things. These critical and transformative dimensions of early Daoism provide exemplary models and insights for cultivating a more expansive ecological ethos, environmental culture of nature, and progressive political ecology. This work will be of interest to students and scholars interested in philosophy, environmental ethics and philosophy, religious studies, and intellectual history. Eric S. Nelson is Professor of Humanities at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. He works on Chinese, German, and Jewish philosophy. He is the author of Levinas, Adorno, and the Ethics of the Material Other (SUNY Press, 2020) and Chinese and Buddhist Philosophy in Early ­Twentieth-Century German Thought (Bloomsbury, 2017). He has published over 75 articles and book chapters and is the editor of Interpreting Dilthey: Critical Essays (Cambridge University Press, 2019). He co-edited with François Raffoul the Bloomsbury Companion to Heidegger (Bloomsbury, expanded paperback edition 2016) and Rethinking Facticity (SUNY Press, 2008); with John ­Drabinski, Between Levinas and Heidegger (SUNY Press, 2014); with Giuseppe D’Anna and Helmut Johach, Anthropologie und Geschichte: Studien zu Wilhelm Dilthey aus Anlass seines 100. Todestages (Königshausen & Neumann, 2013); and with Antje Kapust and Kent Still, Addressing Levinas (Northwestern University Press, 2005).

Routledge Explorations in Environmental Studies

Romantic Anti-capitalism and Nature The Enchanted Garden Robert Sayre and Michael Löwy Liberty and the Ecological Crisis Freedom on a Finite Planet Edited by Christopher J. Orr, Kaitlin Kish, and Bruce Jennings Environmental Justice and Oil Pollution Laws Comparing Enforcement in the United States and Nigeria Eloamaka Carol Okonkwo The Environmental Impact of Overpopulation The Ethics of Procreation Trevor Hedberg Riverlands of the Anthropocene Walking Our Waterways as Places of Becoming Margaret Somerville An Environmental History of Australian Rainforests until 1939 Fire, Rain, Settlers and Conservation Warwick Frost Daoism and Environmental Philosophy Nourishing Life Eric S. Nelson www.routledge.com/Routledge-Explorations-in-Environmental-Studies/book-series/​ REES

Daoism and Environmental Philosophy Nourishing Life

Eric S. Nelson

First published 2021 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2021 Eric S. Nelson The right of Eric S. Nelson to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Nelson, Eric Sean, author. Title: Daoism and environmental philosophy : nourishing life / Eric S. Nelson. Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2020. | Series: Routledge explorations in environmental studies | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Identifiers: LCCN 2020015092 (print) | LCCN 2020015093 (ebook) | ISBN 9780367025144 (hardback) | ISBN 9780429399145 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Taoism. | Nature–Religious aspects–Taoism. | Environmental ethics–Religious aspects. | Taoist ethics. Classification: LCC BL1923 .N38 2020 (print) | LCC BL1923 (ebook) | DDC 179/.1–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020015092 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020015093 ISBN: 978-0-367-02514-4 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-429-39914-5 (ebk) Typeset in Times New Roman by Wearset Ltd, Boldon, Tyne and Wear

To The Wu 吳 Family

Contents



Acknowledgments

1 Introduction: early Daoist ethics and the philosophy of nature

viii

1

2 Nourishing life, cultivating nature, and environmental philosophy

24

3 Wuwei, responsive attunement, and generative nature

49

4 Emptying ecology: nothingness, language, and encountering things

73

5 Early Daoist biopolitics and a new Daoist political ecology

100

6 Epilogue: emptying ecology and Chan Buddhism

119



Afterword Index

139 142

Acknowledgments

Any work is a result of the intersection of too many events and influences to be recounted in a list of acknowledgments. That being said, I will try to express my heartfelt gratitude for the support and encouragement of a number of individuals and institutions who have helped to make the current book possible. The suggestions of David Chai, Mark Cabural, Dennis Prooi, and Tung Tin Wong that helped me to improve the manuscript are especially appreciated. I am also grateful to those who have encouraged and stimulated my thinking about Chinese philosophy and the current project, in particular Roger Ames, Steven Burik, Shirley Chan, Chung-ying Cheng, CY Cheung, Kim-chong Chong, Carine Defoort, Siby George, Matthias Fritsch, Tze-ki Hon, Chenyang Li, Livia Kohn, Sai Hang Kwok, Dan Lusthaus, Thomas Michael, On-cho Ng, Franklin Perkins, Jana Rošker, Martin Schönfeld, James Sellman, Kirill Thompson, Robin Wang, Youru Wang, Mario Wenning, and Ann Pang-White. Special thanks are owed to Dongming Zhao who introduced me to the Zhuangzi nearly two decades ago in Memphis. I appreciate the fellowship and support of my colleagues at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology: Kellee Tsai, James Lee, Christian Daniels, Billy So, Charles Chan, Simon Wong, Kamming Yip, and Jianmei Liu. I would like to thank the audiences of my lectures at the World Congress of Philosophy in Beijing (2018), Sun-Yat Sen University Zhuhai (2019), and the University of Guam (2019) where earlier versions of some ideas contained in this work were presented and discussed. The research in this book was supported by the Research Grants Council (RGC) of Hong Kong General Research Fund (GRF: 16631916), and (through research stays) the East West Center at the University of Hawaii at Manoa and the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay. In this ongoing ecological crisis, and at this moment a world-wide pandemic as I write these words, one can only hope that more nurturing relations with life and our environment can be fostered. In these ecologically and social-­politically troubled times, I am also thankful to my friends and family for their nurturing of life, particularly Lydia Nelson, Rick Nelson, Sheng Pingping, Wu Guangsong, and Wu Shengqing.

1 Introduction Early Daoist ethics and the philosophy of nature

What is Daoism? An Initial Overview “Dao” and “Daoism” According to chapter 16 of the Daodejing 道德經, attributed to the mysterious quasi-​­mythical “old master” (Laozi 老子), all things arise from and return to the dao 道 (fuwu yunyun, ge fugui qigen 夫物芸芸, 各復歸其根).1 What is this dao? Most ancient and classical Chinese forms of discourse employed this word. It is an ordinary Chinese expression still in use today signifying path, road, and way. Already in antiquity, the word had a variety of specialized meanings: it could name a specific teaching or method (such as the dao of Confucius 孔子 or Mozi 墨子) or could designate the ultimate reality and truth of things and the cosmos: the whole or the one beyond human discourse and understanding. The dao, according to the cosmological account in the “Originating in Dao” (yuandao 原道) chapter of the Huainanzi 淮南子 that heavily relies on the Daodejing, is the generative that shelters and opens, envelops and bestows, empties and fills.2 According to deep ecologist Arne Næss, Daoism is a motivational ecosophy of environmental wisdom for our times.3 But what is “Daoism”?4 Of course, every “-​­ism” is a formulaic conventional expression inadequate to what it would designate. There is again no single univocal answer to this question, and the expression is at risk of being excessively inclusive or overly exclusive. On the one hand, the expression “Daoism” is a contested multivocal term that incorporates a diverse array of ideas, practices, and texts, and reducing them to a common “-​­ism” inadequately reflects the historical record. On the other hand, modern scholarly and popular conceptions of Daoism have been formed through complex relations with indigenous sources and voices, and recourse to historical and existing Daoist sources, transmissions, and practices is necessary both to contest and develop alternatives to anachronistic and ideological interpretations that impose their own constructions onto Chinese materials. The present work will repeatedly face difficulties of what a new or reimagined teaching of dao would look like under current crisis conditions, generated by human economic and social organization, and how to indirectly translate and revise early Daoist perspectives and strategies

2   Introduction in the context of contemporary environmentalism, in particular given its investment in prescriptive, normative, and activist ways of thinking and speaking that the teaching of dao in the Daodejing and the Zhuangzi 莊子 appears to subvert for the sake of fatalistic quietude. Early Chinese sources are characterized by intertextual and interdiscursive references to competing teachings (such as those of Confucius and Mozi) and record arguments between their proponents. These early accounts form the basis of the subsequent classification of various schools or families of teachings (jia 家) during the rule of Emperor Wu of Han 漢武帝 (who reigned from 141­–​­87 bce) in the early Han dynasty by Sima Tan 司馬談 (c.165­–​­110 bce) and his son the historian Sima Qian 司馬遷 (c.145­–​­c.86 bce).5 In the Historical Record (Shiji 史記), also called the Records of the Grand Historian (­Taishigong shu 太史公書), Sima Qian retrospectively recast (further developing his father’s classification of six schools) the diverse discursive forms of the Spring and Autumn (Chunqiu shidai 春秋時代) and Warring States (Zhanguo shidai 戰國時代) periods (sixth century to 221 bce) as the “hundred schools of thought” (zhuzi baijia 諸子百家).6 The expression daojia 道家 (the lineage or family of the dao) addressed by the elder and younger Sima is not found in the Laozi, the Zhuangzi, or extant pre-​­Han sources.7 It was used to designate the politically-​­oriented form of Daoism called (combining the names of the Yellow Emperor [Huangdi 黃帝] and Laozi) Huanglao 黃老, a prevailing discourse in the early Han dynasty, and, in particular, the teaching of Laozi that remained one of its primary reference points that encompassed apparently related figures such as Zhuangzi. The enigmatic figure of Laozi, who appears to be an amalgamation of personages, was already associated with visions of the functioning of the cosmos, personal self-​ ­cultivation, and the art of political rule in the Daodejing that would be taken up in Huanglao documents. Daoism, as transmissions of the way bearing overlapping yet distinctive family resemblances, does not only designate early texts linked with the names of early great masters such as Laozi, Zhuangzi, and Liezi 列子 (Lie Yukou 列禦寇, c. fifth century bce), who are unlikely to be the “authors” of the works traditionally attributed to them and may not have existed. Sima Qian included Laozi in the same chapter (Laozi Hanfei liezhuan 老子韓非列 傳) as the “Legalist” (fajia 法家) Hanfeizi 韓非子 (third-​­century bce).8 This association is not coincidental, as the text attributed to Hanfei includes the earliest surviving commentaries on the Daodejing.9 There are close connections (as well as crucial differences as discussed later) between the text ascribed to Laozi, Huanglao Daoism, and the Legalist (the teaching that identifies dao with law) discourses that focused on means of power and administrative methods.10 Significant sources for interpreting “early” (or what some would rather classify as “proto-​­”) Daoism include eclectic excavated texts unearthed in Mawangdui 馬王堆 and anthologies that fused Daoist, Legalist, and also Confucian strategies of argumentation and interpretation such as the Huainanzi and the Guanzi 管子.11

Introduction   3 Transmissions of the dao between Religion and Philosophy In addition to these early works composed and revised through the early Han period, lineages and transmissions of the dao can also encompass subsequent cultural, literary, philosophical, and religious movements linked to varying degrees with these sources, such as the eclectic literati of “mysterious learning” (xuanxue 玄學) active in the third and fourth centuries ce, which is controversially called “Neo-​­Daoism,” and so-​­called “religious Daoism” that combined these early sources with new revelations in the formation of its canon.12 The Daodejing commentary of the “mysterious learning” thinker Wang Bi 王弼 (226­–​­249) elucidated an eclectic hybrid yet still in key respects (as his Ruist critics recurrently noted) fundamentally Laozian philosophy of “nature” and “nothingness” (in their early Chinese senses of ziran and wu) with a practical ethical-​­political intent.13 The Warring State text “Inward Training” (Neiye 內業) chapter of the Guanzi anthology and the Daodejing commentary ascribed to the “riverside elder” Heshang Gong 河上公 in the first century ce stressed the dao as informing a biospiritual model for practices of meditation and self-​­cultivation as well as a biopolitical model for governing and transforming society.14 To give preliminary definitions: “biospiritual” means in this context techniques, practices, and models of cultivating the embodied heart-​­mind and the mindful body; “biopolitics” signifies deploying bodily, biological, and medical language and models for governing and ordering society. Another indication of this tendency in the later Han dynasty can be found in the Laozi Inscription (Laozi ming 老子銘), ascribed to Bian Shao 邊 韶 and dated 24 ­September, ce 165, in which Laozi appears as a scholar and sagely teacher, a spiritualized person who has become a numinous “immortal” or (in a non-​­Western onto-​­theological sense) “transcendent” (xian 仙, a character meaning person in the mountain) to the mundane world through bio­ spiritual (practices of the experiential body), self-​­cultivation techniques, and as a cosmic deity embodying dao.15 The Scripture on Great Peace (Taiping Jing 太平經), a late Han period text linked with peasant rebellions and the beginnings of organized religious Daoism, and the Xiang’er Commentary (Laozi Xiang’er zhu 老子想爾注), a product of the late and post-​­Han organized theopolitical movement called the “Way of the Celestial Masters” (tianshi dao 天 師道), identified Laozi as an incarnation of the most supreme Lord Lao (­Taishang Laojun 太上老君).16 The vocabulary of “immortality” or “transcendence,” of becoming a spirit (shen 神) that is sometimes described as becoming a god or “divinization” (granting the differences between shen and Western conceptions of god/divinity), and the embodiment and personification of the dao in late and post-​­Han Daoist religious movements need to be interpreted in their early Chinese senses and contexts instead of according to how they might be conceived in Western metaphysics and onto-​­theology. In this context, the dao is personified in the god-​­like figure of Lord Lao who manifests the way and reveals the path to becoming a spiritually realized being (xian), popularly attributed with supernatural capacities, through

4   Introduction techniques of biospiritual transformation and arts of inward alchemy (neidan shu 內丹術).17 These late and post-​­Han period developments saw the establishment of religious Daoist societies and institutions that continue to exist to this day. It would be overly narrow and misleading to regard Daoist masters and adepts (daoshi 道士) practicing dao (weidao 為道) as degenerate inheritors of a higher classical Daoism. Various critiques of “religious Daoism” reflect the concerns of the critics. Some aspects already emerged in Han dynasty and mysterious learning disputes over the possibility of immortality (e.g., Ji Kang 嵇康 and Xiang Xiu 向秀) and in Buddhist and Confucian discourses during the medieval period.18 The Buddhist monk Daoan 道安 (312­–​­385) in his “Essay on the Two Teachings” (Erjiao lun 二教論) and the Daoist convert to Buddhism Zhen Luan 甄鸞 (535­–​­566) in his “Laughing at Daoism” (Xiaodao Lun 笑道論) polemically distinguished lineages of the “way of immortals” (xiandao 仙道) and “way of spirits” (shendao 神道) from the higher wisdom of Laozi and Zhuangzi, which was still deemed inferior to the Buddhist dharma.19 More recently, their emphasis on “external” devotional rituals and inward alchemical and biospiritual meditative techniques led generations of Western scholars, particularly those with philosophical, Protestant, and secular disenchanting sensibilities, to drastically separate an earlier purer “contemplative” “philosophical” Daoism in Laozi and Zhuangzi from subsequent impure forms of “purposive” “religious” Daoism.20 Is the division between religious and philosophical directions tenable? No, inasmuch as both concern dao even as they express it in different ways. The trick is to be able to make distinctions without fixating them into binary contraries. There are continuities, differences, and at times conflicting interpretations between the various discourses and practices called Daoist. First, the so-​­called philosophical and religious teachings have historical continuities and can be complementary rather than opposed. For instance, the Scripture of the Inner Explanations of the Three Heavens (santian neijie jing 三天內解經), a later fifth-​­century Liu-​­Song (劉宋) era Celestial Master text, continues to depict how the dao corresponds to nothingness (wu 無) and generatively self-​­actualizes itself in nothingness while portraying the “divinized” Laozi as the form of that actualization.21 Second, there are also diverging and directly conflicting interpretations of the teaching of dao. For example, the Eastern Jin Dynasty scholar Ge Hong 葛洪 (c. ce 283­–​­364) linked Laozi and Zhuangzi together in his Master Who Embraces Simplicity (Baopuzi 抱朴子) and adopted interpretive strategies and vocabulary (such as “embracing simplicity” from DDJ 19) from both sources while also criticizing them. One can retrospectively speak of a Lao-​­Zhuang 老莊 teachings from the perspective of its critics, who (like Ge Hong who repeatedly used this expression) challenged the inadequate (from their perspective) discourses of inward alchemy and becoming a biospiritually realized xian (immortal or transcendent) in the Zhuangzi and in “mysterious learning.”22 The division thesis that was once academic orthodoxy is inadequate in its rigorous form and needs more nuance: in traditional Chinese texts, the teaching/ instruction of dao (daojiao 道教) was not distinguished from the school or

Introduction   5 lineage of dao (daojia) and the two expressions were commonly interchangeable in pre-​­modern Chinese sources.23 Daojiao and daojia were retrospectively construed in modern scholarship to indicate a fundamental difference between a later religiously oriented movement, with its own institutions and practices, and earlier (Laozi, Zhuangzi) and later (“dark learning”) literati discourses consisting of individually oriented reflections concerning the philosophy of nature and the cosmos. Contemporary scholarship has increasingly demonstrated how problematic this distinction is if it is fixated as an absolute difference that posits one as philosophical wisdom and the other as—relying on modern Protestant and secular assumptions—religious irrationality, occultism, and superstition.24 This distinction is inadequate to the “philosophical” as well as the “religious” texts if it supposes that the most ancient “philosophical” texts are naturalistic without their own religious dimensions and the later “religious” movements are concerned with the personification of dao and the supernatural and are therefore either unrelated or a decadent form fallen from earlier heights. The very distinction between philosophy (as rational and naturalistic) and religion (as anti-​­rational, mystical, and supernatural) is overly simplistic and anachronistic in pre-​­modern Chinese speaking worlds. The application of this Western conception to traditional Chinese discourses has resulted in distortions and unhelpful disputes between proponents of “philosophical” contemplative and “religious” biospiritual forms of Daoism given the complex intertextual referentiality and interdiscursive mediation between these discourses and practices.25 First, “Daoist” sources are intertextually mediated composites, intersecting with and differing from themselves (as a text is formed from a variety of sources), one another, and the texts linked with other schools (jia). Second, the forms of Daoism categorized as contemplative and philosophical have their own religious and purposive contexts. Third, the discourses associated with the names Laozi and Zhuangzi describe and rely on “religious” practices and sensibilities and celebrate the counter-​­purposive and useless in ways that challenge conventional understandings of self-​­cultivation and political leadership, due to (as discussed below) their own practical orientations as a way to be enacted in embodied, generative, and vital life (sheng 生, signifying birth and growth) and (what can be described as) images of the good (shan 善, signifying the good as well as being good at and good for).26 The good in Daoism is “natural” in the sense of immanent, intraworldly, and operative within and between things themselves.

Daoism as philosophy Philosophy as an examined way of life Exploring “early” (“proto-​­” in some accounts) Daoist sources as philosophical, instead of a doctrinal notion of “philosophical Daoism,” the present work rejects the bifurcation of contemplative/purposive and philosophical/religious. Nor is it an attempt to reduce the variety of transmissions of the way to the

6   Introduction categories of modern Western philosophy or religious studies. It offers instead a philosophically­-oriented ​­ interpretation of the natural and practical philosophies (with their cosmological, ethical, political, personal, and religious aspects) of the Laozi and the Zhuangzi, along with other related sources such as chapters of the Liezi, the Huainanzi and the Guanzi, to “reimagine”—to adopt an interpretive strategy from Donna J. Haraway’s works in the context of prospects for a contemporary intercultural reiteration of early Daoist discourses—their environmental dimensions and implications.27 What do I mean (in an initial way) by “new Daoism”? This “new Daoist” reimagining is committed to its historical sources, and more significantly the myriad things and dao that these tried to address, while rethinking them in our own hermeneutical situation under existing material, intellectual, and intercultural conditions. It is not modern or anti-​­modern, but potentially—as the book will illustrate—critically diagnostic and therapeutic in regard to modernity and the contemporary ecological crisis-​­situation. There are not only disagreements about the proper definition of Daoism, but also philosophy that has been frequently interpreted as a uniquely Western discourse that assumes a universalistic theoretical form in modernity.28 To what extent can proto-​­or early Daoism be understood as philosophical at all? First, philosophy in the Hellenistic milieu was not merely a way of life. Michel Foucault has depicted philosophy as a technique or training of the self and Pierre Hadot has argued that it is a way of life understood as forms of spiritual exercise.29 Philosophy distinguished itself from ordinary life, common opinions, and worldviews insofar as they are unreflective. Philosophy meant rather to reflectively encounter, engage, and question the circumstances and conditions of one’s life and engage in the art or technique of living.30 Early Chinese literati engaged in conflicts of argumentation, interpretation, and rhetoric. They reflectively addressed problems of life, possibilities of living well, the flowing, plural, and relational nature of what is, and the achievement of wisdom in their own terms in myriad ways that would be retrospectively classified as the “hundred schools.”31 Early Chinese philosophies likewise concerned techniques of the cultivation of or—more critically expressed—the unfixing and dismantling of constructs concerning embodied generative life (sheng) that are referred to through expressions such as the heart-​­mind (xin 心), integral core nature (xing 性), emotional disposition (qing 情), and virtuosity or virtue (de 德).32 Second, the Laozi and the Zhuangzi texts are said not to be philosophical insofar as they do not offer a systematic logical or theoretical analysis of reality and language. Although they do not take on the same forms as existing academic theoretical discourses, both texts do in fact deeply confront questions of the conditions of language and reality. Such texts also echo an older meaning of philosophy that was, at one time, first and foremost loving wisdom (φιλέω σοφία), examining questions of how best to live one’s life that Socrates and Plato identified with the radically transcendent form of the good (ἡ τοῦ ἀγαθοῦ ἰδέα): a good that subsists as a form beyond nature and being.33 Philosophy in its early Socratic sense is not only a systematic theorizing about an objectively available content; it is practical in concerning the good that poses a question and makes a

Introduction   7 difference to the life of those who pursue it: “the unexamined life is not worth living.”34 Based on the vocation of philosophy ordained by the god’s oracle in Delphi depicted in Plato’s Apology, one could ask: is there a way of examined life (perhaps of a profoundly different kind), involving specific forms of reflection and dialogue on self, community, and world, aiming at the good in early teachings of dao? A preliminary indication is found in the Daodejing, chapter eight, where the highest good is not described as a form or an idea: it is like water (shangshan ruo shui 上善若水) in that it benefits (nourishes) the myriad things without contention (shui shanli wanwu er buzheng 水善利萬物而不爭).35 The Chu bamboo-​­slip text “The Great One Births Water” (Taiyi sheng shui 太一生水) discloses the generative fecundity of water in which the great one that engenders it is concealed and sheltered (dayi cang yushui 大一藏於水), hiding itself in the world in which it is manifested.36 The “Water and Earth” (Shuidi 水地) chapter of the Guanzi states that water is the root of all things and the source of all life.37 The “Originating in Dao” (Yuandao) chapter of the Huainanzi portrays how water is an image of the highest virtue and potency (de) in flowing inexhaustibly, undoing fixations and limitations, and nourishing neither from partiality nor for the sake of receiving any recompense.38 Genuinely good persons are impartial in asymmetrically not expecting reciprocity or profit. In the Analects (Lunyu 論語), which stresses morally based discrimination and partiality, Confucius is reported to have stated that one must only treat virtue with virtue and treat injury with justice.39 Instead of favoring some and refusing others, and discriminating according to conventional attitudes and moralistic measures concerning goodness and badness, highness and lowliness, the sage brings about parity by regarding both the good and the not good from the equalizing perspective of the good that replies to injury with virtuosity (baoyuan yi de 報怨以德).40 In this vision of the good attributed to Laozi, one works with the myriad things and turns none away (weier bushi 為而不恃), and, without needing to do so or coercing them, supports the functioning of their own nature or that which is as it is (wanwu zhi ziran 萬物之自然).41 As is evident in this preliminary sketch of the nature-​­oriented and anti-​ ­moralistic language of the good in the Daodejing, the attempt to answer the Socratic question by turning to Daoist sources—interpreted in their own terms and conditions as well as in the context of intercultural philosophy and the ongoing environmental crisis—could potentially, as articulated in the present work, (1) lead to an alternative understanding of the natural world and practice than the ones articulated in dominant Western philosophical discourses and (2) indicate exemplars and models that could address problems arising from our precarious ecological situation and the intensifying contemporary environmental crisis-​­tendencies—generated by human social-​­economic activities—of catastrophic climate-​­chaos, the relentless overuse and destruction of entire habitats and species, and the detrimental effects of massive quantities and deadlier forms of pollution.

8   Introduction Daoist exemplars, models, and transformative strategies The view of philosophy as a purely conceptual rational discourse (an assessment that is inadequate to the history and practice of “Western” philosophy) presents another problem. Western philosophical discourse focuses on argumentative strategies only partly evident in classical Chinese discourses that often proceed through cases, examples, and models drawing on the critical and imaginative capacities of interpreters to enact and practice their teachings. The practical philosophy expressed in the Daodejing and the Zhuangzi (both of which are not stable and univocal but intertextually stratified and multivocal texts) relies on argumentative and interpretive strategies that aim at a transformative effect, and examples that generate models that guide—frequently in a negative form through their negation—embodied self-​­reflection, biospiritual cultivation, and practice as a whole. Early Daoist discourses encompass argumentation in, for instance, the dialogues between Zhuangzi and Hui Shi 惠施 (c. 370­–​­310 bce). One finds a multiplicity of linguistic or (more accurately given the Chinese context that does not radically separate language and the body) communicative strategies (to adopt Youru Wang’s phrase) such as skeptical and speculative forms of reasoning; poetic reflection and philosophizing; stories of the extraordinary and unusual; allegories, parables, and metaphors; contradictions and paradoxes; the reversing and overturning of conventional expectations and patterns of thinking about what is good and bad, high and low, useful and useless, big and small, and so on; the open ended posing of questions and of the “mystery within mystery” (xuanxuan 玄玄).42 The personalities and figures occurring in early Daoist indirect forms of communication are not only the personages of Laozi or Zhuangzi.43 In particular, to mention examples from the Zhuangzi, a text that can confound the conventional philosopher, they range across animals and natural phenomena such as water and trees; Confucius and Confucians as befuddled or as teachers of the dao; criminals, the deformed, and the insane; eccentric literati, hermits, and shamans; shadows, skulls, and uncanny phenomena; and Liezi riding the winds (Liezi yufeng 列子御風) and the extraordinary figures of immortals (without yet using the word xian in the earlier strata of the text) inhaling the wind and drinking the dew, soaring with clouds and mists, and wandering beyond the boundaries of the four seas.44 The Daodejing concerns sages and sage-​­kings (shengren 聖人; it does not use the term shengwang 聖王) who are indicative, exemplary, aspirational models for human praxis. The text addresses the sage-​­king, yet has been taken by its readers and practitioners as addressing them. The Zhuangzi speaks of the shenren 神人 (the spirit-​­like or spiritualized person), zhiren 至人 (the arrived or perfected person), as well as the shengren (the sagely person).45 These expressions point toward more perfected conditions arrived at through biospiritual techniques and practices that are elucidated in an early form in the “Inward Training” (Neiye) that conveys techniques of breathing and the circulation of vital

Introduction   9 energies (qi). As exemplary indicative types, they also speak to human life in the midst of its imperfections, and can be understood as communicative strategies offering exemplary illustrations and models to transformatively guide and be enacted in an examined way of life that contests the limits of conceptual and verbal categories as well as—in its more radical forms—of artificial, conventional, and prejudicial fixations, constructs, and attitudes. 46

Daoism, environmental philosophy, and political ecology Daoist models and their ecological significance Early Daoist texts are not written by one author or group of writers but are highly stratified, originating from multiple sources. They suggest multiple models of how best to live if thought of in reply to Socrates’ question. Sources from the Han dynasty and later periods adopt, forget, and transform these earlier models while forming unique ones of their own. A preliminary sketch of Daoist sources indicates three focal points for the present work: (1) the cosmological event and self-​­ordering of “nature” (a word that we should consider continuing to deploy precisely because of its multivocal and ambiguous character that is open to a multiplicity of possibilities in contrast to the ideological fixations of “anti-​­nature” discourses); (2) techniques of biospiritual cultivation of one’s nature and models of attunement and action; and (3) the art of governing and administrating society.47 These three guiding concerns lead to a critique, diagnosis, and therapeutics of dysfunctional and pathological systems of life for the sake of nourishing life ( yangsheng 養生) that can be renewed in the current environmental predicament as a Daoist (or Daoist-​­inspired) therapeutic ecology. “Nature” and the environing world Contemporary discourses have critiqued the idea of “nature” as romantic and ideological, calling for a renewed ecological thinking “after nature” and the “end of nature.” The expression “nature,” like any other expression, is used both ideologically and critically. Experiences and ideas of nature can reify it; yet, at the same time, they are interwoven with that which is other than and resists the reduction of things to anthropocentric concern, instrumental usefulness, and social construction that presuppose the denial and domination of nature.48 Consequently, banning the word does not necessarily resolve genuine problems of the ongoing ecological crisis and might undermine the critical potential indicated in the word along with its ideological functions. A more troublesome question concerns whether “nature” meaningfully translates anything at all from early Chinese discourses. Western discussions primarily have identified Daoism with mysticism and naturalism, and often with both as a variety of nature-​­mysticism.49 Due to the sayings of its nature-​­oriented hermits, poets, and philosophers, it is a popularized idea that Daoism is ecological because

10   Introduction it advocates living according to or—as expressed in the Yuandao— following the “natural direction” of the continually transforming myriad things.50 Philosophers have likewise defined Daoism as a form of naturalism even though early Daoist “naturalism” is radically different from the scientific and pragmatic conceptions of naturalism articulated in—now globalized—modern Western scientific and philosophical discourses. Therefore, to avoid misidentification and conflation, it is necessary to recognize the extent to which modern Western ideological, metaphysical, and scientific ideas of nature are not the same as classical Chinese understandings of the environing world. The English word “nature” arises from the Latin word natura that is derived from nasci (“to be born”). Sheng (life), as discussed above, is linked with birth, growth, and generation. Daoist “nature” (insofar as this English expression can be used to discuss early Daoist conceptions at all, a risk that we cannot avoid here) is primarily a spontaneous self-​ ­generative and self-​­organizing autopoietic relational “natural” reality (ziran 自然) that is interpreted between the poles of a fluid anarchic chaos and a hierarchically fixed and structured order.51 The word “nature” should be read first and foremost in the flowing transformative (although not completely chaotic) sense of ziran, the happening that even dao follows and accords with, throughout this work. There are several Chinese expressions that intersect with aspects of the multivocal concept of nature: (1) Ziran is often translated as nature, naturalness, and spontaneity, which are inadequate if these concepts are understood in their conventional meanings. Its two Chinese characters denote self-​­so-​­ness or as-​­is-​­ness, signifying the self-​­occurring of things and the world. Ziran means that the world and things happen according to their own self-​­functioning. (2) Wanwu 萬物 refers to the myriad things (non-​­human as well as human) in their specificity (the thing, wu 物), equality and parity, and interconnectedness in an interthingly (in contrast to an exclusively intersubjective as interhuman) relational whole.52 Wanwu is sometimes translated as the “myriad creatures,” that refers to human and other animal organisms as well as things. The devotion to the thing indicated in (1) and (2), as it is for instance depicted in the swimmer’s loyalty (zhong 忠) to the water in the “Explaining Conjunctions” (shuofu 說符) chapter of the Liezi, entails the priority of the thing and its order—without contending with it—has noteworthy ecological implications.53 The priority of the thing is evident in Daoist depictions of according with things, of following their own nature rather than our calculations and projections concerning them, and letting things be themselves. This ethos of dao (an ethos with extensive permutations across different sources) is not the spontaneity of ordinary self-​­concerned thoughtlessness; it requires the nurturing of a non-​ ­indifferent recognition and (to employ a term adopted from A. C. Graham) “responsiveness”—which is more originary than moralistic conceptions of responsibility—in relation to things as they are in and for themselves in contrast to fatalistic indifference or the coercion of instrumental manipulation mesmerized by the limiting perspective of usefulness.54 (3) Tiande 天德 is the dynamic order of heaven and earth that embraces humanity as the middle between the two (tian ren di 天人地). The word heaven (tian 天) is frequently used in early

Introduction   11 Daoist sources such as the Zhuangzi to distinguish the non-​­human (as that which is naturally occurring and given in the self-ordering of things) from the human (as that which is produced through artifice, calculation, and convention).55 There are also ideas concerning the cosmological-​­political order. It is the king rather than humanity that mediates between heaven and earth and the world is construed as “all under heaven” (tianxia 天下) in a hierarchical cosmological-​ ­political order centering around China and the Emperor.56 There are, as a path is made by walking it, multiple potential models of a dao (as articulated—to adopt two Greek words more familiar to Western ears—in an ethos and praxis) of natural ordering of significance for a contemporary Daoist-​ ­influenced environmental philosophy and political ecology. Environmental philosophy interrogates the conditions, reasons, and motivations of discourses and practices as to how they impact the natural world and diverse human and non-​ ­human animals within it. Political ecology addresses the relations between the reproduction of human systems and structures and their environing world. Daoist conceptions of the rhythmic transformational functioning of the great unity of the cosmos inform and are in turn shaped by patterns of biospiritual self-​­cultivation and biopolitical order that can be potentially reimagined without losing the critical function of their otherness with regard to the present. Attunement and cultivation Techniques, practices and arts of biospiritual cultivation, one illustration of which is the Inward Training, focus on techniques of breathing, the circulation of vital energies (qi 氣), internal power and virtuosity, and the body and heart-​ ­mind. They aim at bodily and mental health and longevity, but also at a more realized xian numinous state or an immanent sort of wandering freedom and ease (xiaoyao you 逍遙遊) in the midst of the world that echo earlier shamanistic practices and poetic depictions of far-​­wandering (yuanyou 遠遊) recorded in the Songs of Chu (Chuci 楚辭) as well as later poetry of hermits and immortals far-​­roaming in spiritual freedom (youxian shi 遊仙詩).57 Biospiritual arts are schema of attunement or how to interact with the natural and spiritual worlds. Three models of relating practice and the environing world of particular significance to developing an environmental philosophy (as an intellectual discourse and as reflective life-​­praxis) are nourishing life, attuned action, and emptying and stilling to, as in DDJ 19, a comportment of manifesting plainness (su 素) and embracing simplicity ( pu 樸). (1) Tending to, nurturing, and nourishing life (yangsheng) has multiple meanings in Chinese traditions, and it is important to recognize the difference between early Chinese senses of “life” (sheng) in contrast to Western or modern Chinese conceptions of life. It can concern the art of promoting individual health, longevity, and well-​­being, a position attributed to the bodily oriented “egoist” Yang Zhu 楊朱 (c. 440­–c.360  ​­ bce); the art of being transformed into a higher embodiment of biospiritual being (xian); and the

12   Introduction art of nourishing the life of others and the world as is evident in passages in the Laozi and the Zhuangzi. Chapter 2 of the present work will consider to what extent a Daoist-​­inspired environmental philosophy of emptying nature of fixations and nourishing life (given the generative nature of life) can be articulated from these alternatives. (2) Wuwei 無爲 in ordinary Chinese means non-​­action or non-​­doing, yet its significance in early Daoism is more closely approximated by the English expression “responsive attunement” that is frequently deployed throughout this work. Wuwei has been construed to imply worldly indifference and neutrality, detachment and separation, or a minimalistic relation to the happenings of the world. These analyses have their sources in classical Daoist and Legalist texts, and capture specific strategies; yet wuwei is more appropriately interpreted—in the early Daoist context and in relation to the last discussed relational sense of nourishing life—as non-​­calculative, non-​ ­coercive or non-​­dominating, responsive action or—more precisely—non-​ ­indifferent attunement. Such responsivity (transpiring prior to responsibility that is often linked with its loss) is articulated in images of the echo, the mirror, and the shadow in Daoist texts. In the interpretation of this book, wuwei is primarily an attunement and disposition in the midst of and in relation to the myriad things.58 The third chapter of this book will elucidate the significance of resonance (address) and attunement (response) for environmental philosophy. (3) The Laozi, the Zhuangzi, and related texts unfold a philosophical encounter with nothingness wu 無 as fundamentally generative and constitutive of reality.59 In agreement with its conception of generative nothingness, texts from the Daodejing to the commentaries attributed to Heshang Gong and Wang Bi illuminate practices of stilling, emptying, and becoming empty (xu  虛; more rarely kong  空, which was used to translate śūnyatā in Sinicized Buddhism, and which is addressed further in Chapter 6).60 Daoist expressions of nothingness and emptiness indicate that which is originary as opposed to a logically derivative or secondary negation of being. Daoist destructuring strategies aim at undoing one-​­sided and limiting hypostatization and reification (that is, becoming “thing-​­like” in the reduced sense of the thing treated as a fixed object detached from its interthingly context) in life as well as in discourse. The enactment of emptiness undoes fixations and correlates with the openness, fullness, and generativity of nothingness. Chapter 4 will consequently clarify how practices of undoing fixations and emptying nature (in relation to nurturing life and attuned action) offer a “critical model” (an expression adopted from Theodor Adorno) for encountering the roots, in contrast to only the branches, of the human economically and socially generated environmental crisis-​­tendencies that characterize the contemporary epoch of the “Anthropocene” and its illusion of the human mastery of nature. Donna J.  Haraway and others have argued that the present age would be better described as the “Capitalocene” given that the forces and relations of production

Introduction   13 in modern capitalist societies thoroughly determine relations between humans, other animals, and nature with devastating ecological effects.61 The frequently deployed concept of the Anthropocene should be used accordingly in a differentiated and nuanced way given unequal participation and responsibility in it, and in which various human economies, cultures, and societies are implicated to differing degrees. Although human cultures and societies occur within nature as modifications of natural conditions and contexts, they can be more or less ecologically (that is, aesthetically, ethically, scientifically, and social-​­politically) responsively attuned with the myriad things and their environing worlds. Society and politics Early Chinese philosophies are highly invested in issues of ethical and political philosophy. Daoist and related discourses are likewise concerned with how best to govern and administer society and the same text (such as the Zhuangzi) provides multiple diverging and apparently contradictory answers: anarchic and individualistic, communal and egalitarian, and weaker and stronger versions of authoritarianism. First, to what degree did Daoism, as H. G. Creel stated, “push individualism to the point of espousing anarchy”?62 A chapter on Yang Zhu was incorporated as chapter seven in the existing text of the Liezi, which is a later fourth century ce text composed—according to its translator A. C. Graham—in the spirit of the Daodejing and the Zhuangzi. He is described as refusing political participation.63 Yang Zhu is presented here as advocating following one’s own heart-​ ­mind and the nature of things, and “nurturing life” as ridding oneself of restraints and restrictions.64 Efforts to order and organize life result in disorder and harm to individuals and society. Without such hegemony, individuals following the self-​­ordering of their own nature could be extended “until the way of ruler and ruled is ended.”65 The skull tells Zhuangzi in their conversation in the “Perfect Enjoyment” (zhile 至樂) outer chapter that all are equal before death such that there is neither lord above nor subject below (wujun yushang, wuchen yuxia 無君於上,無臣於下). The Daoist inspired anti-​­governmental theme of needing neither lord nor subject (wujun wuchen 無君無臣) is articulated in the Treatise on Not Having Rulers (Wujun lun 無君論) attributed to the fourth-​ ­century figure Bao Jingyan 鮑敬言. Bao maintained that in antiquity there was neither lord nor servant and people found their own self-​­contentment (zide 自得) free and at ease with their natural environment. Ge Hong identified his anti-​ ­political thinking with Lao-​­Zhuang and criticized it as like abandoning one’s amour to save oneself from the sword in the “Condemning Bao” (jiebao 詰鮑) outer chapter of the Baopuzi. The portraits of Yang Zhu’s teaching in the Liezi and Bao’s thinking in the Baopuzi overlaps with the individualistic “Yangist” passages found in the Zhuangzi that likewise question the sacrifice of individual nature for an external collective order.66 Yang Zhu was criticized by other literati such as Mencius (Mengzi 孟子) as an egoist and hedonist, whose art of nourishing life is preserving

14   Introduction one’s own body as a whole and rejecting any social responsibility such that one refuses to sacrifice only a single strand of hair to save the empire.67 If the Yangist is right that each ought to nourish their own life and preserve its integrity, then the sacrificial economy of the social-​­political order is no longer necessary or justifiable. Another form of the rejection of the political, strongly linked with Daoist traditions, is the complexly mediated image of the hermit’s withdrawal from society into the natural world to perfect their biospiritual nature independently of the disruptive forces of society.68 Such images can lead to reifying Orientalistic fantasies of being one with nature and spiritual escapism into the mystical circulated by the culture industry. But they have other dimensions such as the critique of the political. Whether construed along Yangist, spiritual Daoistic, or other lines, one family of Daoistic political models centers on the refusal of the political as an adequate way of ordering life and relating with others. Such refusals of and withdrawals from the political have been (anachronistically insofar as these are modern political concepts) depicted as anarchistic, individualistic, or libertarian.69Accordingly, an eco-​­anarchistic reimagining of Daoist philosophy under the conditions of late modernity is a political option explored in Chapter 5. Second, to what extent is Daoism communal and egalitarian? Another so-​ ­called “primitivist” model of Daoist politics found in passages of the Zhuangzi (Graham identifies chapters 8­–​­10, and parts of chapter 11) is the rejection of complex hierarchical societies governed by artifice and convention for the sake of a more “primitive” agrarian, autarkic, and egalitarian form of life.70 Both (1)  and (2) emphasize the self-​­generating and self-​­organizing character of individual life or of the community. Such elements in the Daodejing are not expressed in the anti-​­political language of the Zhuangzi but in light of the mission of the genuine sage-​­king who can bring about such a genuine community. An egalitarian community living in simplicity could well be an ecological utopian idea, yet it is an outstanding question how this could best be approximated under the conditions of contemporary capitalism and consumerist societies with sizeable populations. Third, Daoist sources beginning with the Daodejing offer instruction to rulers. What sort of ruler is being addressed? Passages in the Daodejing such as chapter three, which advises returning the people to plain simplicity without (artificial and excessive) knowledge and desire (wuzhi wuyu 無知無欲) by emptying the heart-​­mind (xu qi xin 虛其心) and lessening the will (ruo qi zhi 弱其志), strike some interpreters as anarchistic and others as totalitarian.71 The sage governs through nourishing life (yangsheng), acts through responsive attunement (wuwei), and thinks and feels through emptying (xu). Chapter three has been interpreted as aiming at the realization of a less calculative and coerced, more balanced self-​­organizing way of living or, in light of Huanglao syncretism or Hanfei’s Legalism, as constitutive of the power of the ruler who is all the more coercive in operating in hiddenness behind the scenes of administration.

Introduction   15 Early Chinese philosophical sources are syncretic, overlapping, and intertextual to varying degrees. Given that proviso, a preliminary contrast between the dao-​­oriented and the law-​­oriented ruler, with variations in between, can be delimited according to their understanding of the dao and their social-​­political aims. While early teachings of the way elucidate the generative, nourishing, and almost anarchic characteristics of the dao that can take on political (Laozi) and anti-​­political (Zhuangzi) forms, syncretic Huanglao and Legalist discourses (we will bracket issues of their historical origins and development in the present work) tend to accentuate to differing degrees—as Hanfei does in the opening passage of “The Sovereign’s Way” (zhudao 主道)—how the dao produces standards and measures, forms and names, to be applied by the sovereign power reposed in emptiness (xujing 虛靜).72 In the milder depiction of the ideal model of the sage-​­ruler presented in multiple passages of the Daodejing, the genuine sage-​­king rules for the sake of nourishing the life of the people and the myriad things, bringing benefit without contending and without seeking acknowledgement such that people to the maximal degree possible govern themselves. In stronger authoritarian Huanglao Daoist and Legalist versions of administration, the king employs laws, methods, and techniques to retain and maximize positional power and authority (shi  勢): the enlightened ruler (mingjun  明君), according to Hanfei in “The Sovereign’s Way” chapter, rewards like a timely rain (shiyu 時雨) and punishes like the thunderstorm (leiting 雷霆).73 The biopolitics of Yangist, Daoist, and Legalist discourses share overlapping registers, strategies, and concerns, and their own specificity, that point toward alternative routes for reflecting on and engaging with the environment. Proceeding from these divergent interpretations of nourishing life, non-​­doing, and emptiness in the contemporary hermeneutical situation, it is possible to revision political ecologies of nourishing life through: (1) the rejection of the political for the sake of cultivating one’s individual nature that may—following anarchistic and libertarian readings—have emancipatory results; (2) the promotion of the life of others, modeled on the dao’s spontaneous and autopoietic self-​ ­generating nourishing and sheltering of the myriad beings, reconceived through an ecologically-​­oriented democratic social and political structures and processes of collective will-​­formation; and (3) an eco-​­authoritarian political order in which the hidden ruler, active in repose, follows dao as correct method, deploying the state apparatus and benefits and punishments to motivate a more effectively ecological society. Daoistic and interdiscursively related forms of individuality, equality, and the art of the genuine ruler are three directions for reconsidering ecological politics in the contemporary world.74 The problem of an appropriate political ecology is a crucial issue insofar as the existing social-​­political order has failed to adequately respond to contemporary ecological crises, and perhaps constitutively prevents it. To what extent can individuals, communities, statespersons, and social-​­political movements nourish life through responsive attunement and emptiness? Chapter 5 will be concerned with the possibility of a Daoist political ecology on two fronts: the ethos of the individual and the art of the ruler in a

16   Introduction modern democratic and progressive context that calls for maximizing while balancing the demands of equality, liberty, and solidarity. Toward a critical therapeutic ecology Despite the popularized impression that Daoism tells us to embrace nature and is intrinsically ecological, a fair amount of the vast literature on the topic is skeptical of the relevance of an ancient form of Chinese wisdom for a modern problematic.75 An objection to the interpretation articulated in the present work might be that Daoism has nothing to do with modern environmentalism and, according to an interpretation contested in this work, its implications might be anti-​­ecological. First, it might be thought that the desperately needed ecological transformation requires scientific research, not philosophy; activism, not passivity; democratic politics, not sages. Ecological research, direct engagement, and participatory politics are undeniably fundamental to addressing current environmental crisis-​ ­tendencies. However, such ideas are overly restrictive insofar as scientific inquiry informs but cannot replace reflective and dialogical self-​­examination and direct activism and participation call for an ecologically-​­oriented path in which plainness and simplicity, stillness and emptiness do not entail a fatalistic indifferent dormancy but the responsive recognition of and attunement with the myriad things and the conditions, patterns, and situation of life while at the same time being reposed in the midst of affairs. Second, one could well pose additional questions concerning the appropriateness of Daoism as an individual and social ethos: doesn’t Daoism advocate acceptance of and resignation before reality (including all of its injustices) first and foremost? Does accepting the whole mean that one embraces the piece of plastic—which has replaced the leaf—drifting down the river into a great mass of plastics (much of which is invisible to the naked eye) gathering in the swirling ocean? Is the pollution poured into the lake by a factory equal to the rain-​­waters running into it after a downpour? Should we accept the death of endangered species and wildernesses just as we should accept the natural death of individuals as outside of the practice of nourishing life? Interpretations of Daoism that accentuate practices of detached biospiritual self-​­formation and fatalistic indifference might suggest so. If everything is left to its own nature (in the sense of the happening of ziran), things inevitably return to their allotted patterns without the need for artificial and coercive interventions. Still, one can give the latter claim a less fatalistic reading in that leaving things to their own nature signifies a therapeutic critique of existing states of affairs. If yangsheng is interpreted in the context of Zhuangzian freedom, early Daoist sources are “critical” in calling for a transformative turn within the crisis toward different, less distorted ways of living that tend to nourishing in preference to hindering life.76 While acknowledging the perils of conflating ancient teachings of dao and modern environmentalism, Daoist sources have much to say—directly and more

Introduction   17 often indirectly and in need of renewed conceptualizations—about the issues posed to us by current crises of ecology, climate, and animal life: they offer understandings of the intrinsic nature and value of things (particularly living and non-​­living beings) and dynamic patterns of nature (interconnected climates, ecosystems, and environments).77 They advise therapies of the embodied self in relation to other beings and the environing world. Even as early Daoism rejects overly assertive and coercive fixated action (wei 爲) that does violence to things and prioritizes minimalism, non-​­coercion or non-​­domination, and allowing self-​ ­ordering things and systems to flourish on their own in its experiences of nature (as tiande and ziran) and the highest forms of attuned action as wuwei, this does not entail an indifference or neutrality to the interruption and devastation of ecosystems, environments, and forms of life. The exemplary sages of old worked with things and were neither transfixed by nor indifferent to them. Daoist strategies are often critical, deconstructive, and skeptical. Yet they are more than and in excess of these moments: its comportment or ethos of nourishing life, which is misinterpreted if taken as being either only cruelty or compassion, calls for responsively recognizing and cherishing things in their singular life and letting them go in their death. The sense of an appropriate reverence in life and releasement in death is disclosed in the contentious straw  dog passage of chapter five of the Daodejing, Zhuangzi’s celebration after mourning his wife’s death, or the response of Yanzi (晏子) to Duke Jing of Qi’s wish for immortality described in the “Endeavor and Destiny” (liming 力命) chapter of the Liezi.78 In Yanzi’s reply that the death of the duke’s ancestors made his place and power possible, the valuing and letting go of one’s own and the other’s life does not signify indifference. It is the recognition of intergenerational justice of letting each take its turn in the temporality of its own seasonality (shi 时) that has implications for ecological justice.79 We will consider the extent to which early transmissions of the way have critical and diagnostic features that entail therapeutic and restorative interventions for the sake of tending to and respecting diverse forms of life in the “Anthropocene” (a commonly employed expression that raises a number of problems) by restoring and reviving the broken, interrupted, and pathological patterns of an ecologically devastated earth and damaged life.80

Notes   1 Daodejing (= DDJ) 16. Note that the primary source of the Chinese text is Laozi daode jing 老子道德經, annotated by Wang Bi 王弼 (Taipei: Wenshizhe chubanshe, 1990) and Lou Yulie 樓宇烈, Wang Bi ji jiaoshi 王弼集校釋 [Collection of Wang Bi’s Works: Critical Edition with Annotations] (Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju, 1980). A number of translations have been consulted that I have silently modified in a number of places: Roger Ames, David Hall, trans., Daodejing: Making this Life Significant (New York: Ballantine Books, 2003); P. J. Ivanhoe, trans., The Daodejing of Laozi (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2002); D. C. Lau, trans., Tao Te Ching (Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press, 1996); Richard J. Lynn, The Classic of the Way and Virtue: A New Translation of the Tao-​­te ching of Laozi as interpreted by Wang Bi (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004); Hans-​­Georg Moeller, Daodejing

18   Introduction   2

  3   4

  5   6

  7   8   9

10

11 12

13

14 15

(Laozi): A Complete Translation and Commentary (Chicago: Open Court, 2007); Edmund Ryden, trans., Daodejing (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008). Roger T. Ames, D. C. Lau, trans., Yuan Dao: Tracing Dao to its Source (New York: Ballantine Books, 1998), 61; John S. Major, Sarah A. Queen, Andrew S. Meyer, and Harold D. Roth, trans., The Huainanzi (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010), 48. Arne Næss, The Selected Works of Arne Naess (Dordrecht: Springer, 2005), 50. For an overview of “Daoism,” see Livia Kohn, Daoism Handbook (Leiden: Brill, 2000); Fabrizio Pregadio, The Encyclopedia of Taoism, two volumes (Oxon: Routledge, 2008); Kristofer Marinus Schipper, Franciscus Verellen, The Taoist Canon: A Historical Companion to the Daozang, three volumes (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004). On the modern European reception of Daoism, see J. J. Clarke, The Tao of the West: Western Transformations of Taoist Thought (London: Taylor and Francis, 2002). See Kidder Smith, “Sima Tan and the Invention of Daoism, ‘Legalism,’ et cetera.” The Journal of Asian Studies 62.1 (2003): 129­–156. ​­ Sima Qian 司馬遷, Shiji 史記, ten volumes (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1959). On Sima Qian, see Grant Hardy, Worlds of Bronze and Bamboo: Sima Qian’s Conquest of History (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999); Esther S. Klein, Reading Sima Qian from Han to Song: The Father of History in Pre-​­Modern China (Leiden: Brill, 2019). Guo Qingfan 郭慶藩, Zhuangzi jishi 莊子集釋 (Taipei: Muduo chubanshe, 1983). Sima Qian, “Laozi, Han Fei, liezhuan 老子韓非列傳,” Shiji, juan 63, vol. 7: 2139­–​­2156. See Chen Qiyou 陳奇猷, Hanfeizi xin jiaozhu 韓非子新校注 (Shanghai: Guji. 2000), chapters 20­–​­21; Tae Hyun Kim, “Other Laozi Parallels in the Hanfeizi: An alternative approach to the textual history of the Laozi and early Chinese thought.” Sino-​­Platonic Papers 199 (March 2010): 1­–​­76; Sarah A. Queen, “Han Feizi and the Old Master: A Comparative Analysis and Translation of Han Feizi Chapter 20, ‘Jie Lao,’ and Chapter 21, ‘Yu Lao,’ ” in Paul R. Goldin, ed., Dao Companion to the Philosophy of Han Fei (Dordrecht: Springer, 2013), 197­–​­256. On Huanglao, see Feng Cao, Daoism in Early China: Huang-​­Lao Thought in Light of Excavated Texts (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017); Randall Peerenboom, Law and Morality in Ancient China: The Silk Manuscripts of Huang-​­Lao (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993). W. Allyn Rickett, trans., Guanzi: Political, Economic, and Philosophical Essays from Early China, two volumes (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998/2001). On “mysterious learning,” see the comprehensive volume by David Chai, ed., Dao Companion to Xuanxue (Neo-​­Daoism) (Dordrecht: Springer, 2020); on Daoism, religion, and Daoistic religious movements, see Henri Maspero, Le taoisme et les religions chinoises (Paris: Gallimard, 1971); Isabelle Robinet, Taoism: Growth of a Religion (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997). On xuanxue, Daoism, and Wang Bi, see Alan K. L. Chan, Two Visions of the Way: A Study of the Wang Pi and the Ho-​­shang Kung Commentaries on the Lao-​­tzu (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991); Richard J. Lynn, “Wang Bi and Xuanxue,” in Xiaogan Liu, ed., Dao Companion to Daoist Philosophy (Dordrecht: Springer, 2015), 369­–​­396; Eric S. Nelson, “Language and Nothingness in Wang Bi,” in Chai, Dao Companion to Xuanxue; Rudolf G. Wagner, A Chinese Reading of the Daodejing: Wang Bi’s Commentary on the Laozi with Critical Text and Translation (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003). For an overview of early Daodejing commentaries, see Alan K. L. Chan, “The ­Daodejing and Its Tradition,” in Kohn, Daoism Handbook, 1­–29; ​­ Pregadio, Encyclopedia of Taoism, vol. 1, 611­–​­624. On Bian Shao’s Laozi Inscription (Laozi ming 老子銘), see Pregadio, Encyclopedia of Taoism, vol. 1, 621­–​­662; and (for an English translation) Mark Csikszentmihalyi, Readings in Han Chinese Thought (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2006), 105­–​­112. On the

Introduction   19

16

17

18

19

20

21 22

23 24 25

26

27

process of Laozi’s deification during the Han period, see Anna Seidel, La Divinisation de Lao-​­ tseu dans le Taoism des Han (Paris: Ecole Francaise d’Extreme-​­Orient, 1969); on deification, see Michael J. Puett, To Become a God: Cosmology, Sacrifice, and Self-​­Divinization in Early China (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002). On embodiment and personification of dao, see Kristofer Schipper, The Taoist Body (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993). See Barbara Hendrischke, The Scripture on Great Peace: The Taiping Jing and the Beginnings of Daoism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006); and the Xiang’er Commentary in Stephen R. Bokenkamp, Early Daoist Scriptures (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 29­–​­148. Terry F. Kleeman, Celestial Masters: History and Ritual in Early Daoist Communities (Cambridge: Harvard University Asia Center, 2016); Gil Raz, The Emergence of Daoism: Creation of Tradition (Abingdon: Routledge, 2012); Pregadio, Encyclopedia of Taoism, vol. 1, 622­–​­623. On the former, see David Chai, “Ji Kang on Nourishing Life.” Frontiers of Philosophy in China 12.1 (2017): 38­–​­53; Robert G. Henricks, trans., Philosophy and Argumentation in Third-​­Century China: The Essays of Hsi K’ang (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014), 21­–​­70. See Christine Mollier, Buddhism and Taoism Face to Face: Scripture, Ritual, and Iconographic Exchange in Medieval China (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2008], 12; Shiyi Yu, Reading the Chuang-​­tzu in the T’ang Dynasty: The Commentary of Ch’eng Hsüan-​­ying (New York: Peter Lang, 2000), 125­–​­130. These distinctions can be found in Herrlee Glessner Creel, What Is Taoism?: And Other Studies in Chinese Cultural History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970); A. C. Graham, Disputers of the Tao: Philosophical Argument in Ancient China (New York: Open Court, 2015), 172. See the account of these forms of Daoism in Robinet, Taoism: Growth of a Religion, 34­–​­35. Bokenkamp, Early Daoist Scriptures, 217; Kohn, Daoism Handbook, 261. See Creel, What is Taoism, 22; Jay Sailey, Master Who Embraces Simplicity: A Study of the Philosopher Ko Hung (San Francisco: Chinese Materials Center, 1978), 77, 187, 220; and the description of Ge Hong’s ambivalence toward Zhuangzi in Robert Ford Campany, To Live as Long as Heaven and Earth (Berkeley: University of ­California Press, 2002), 84­–​­85. On the image and notion of immortal/transcendent, also see Thomas Michael, “Ge Hong’s Xian: Private Hermits and Public Alchemists.” Journal of Daoist Studies 8 (2015): 24­–​­51. On problems with the very expression “Daoism” with regard to Ge Hong, see Nathan Sivin, “On the Word ‘Daoist’ as a Source of Perplexity.” History of Religions 17 (1978): 303­–​­330. Schipper and Verellen, The Taoist Canon, vol. 1, 6. See Russell Kirkland, Taoism: The Enduring Tradition (London: Routledge, 2004); Robinet, Taoism: Growth of a Religion. “Intertextual” in this context diverges from its pure structuralist definition, referring here to the mutual referentiality of texts and discourses without denying a role for authors and intersubjectivity in their production. See my argument in Eric S. Nelson, Chinese and Buddhist Philosophy in Early Twentieth-​­ Century German Thought (London: Bloomsbury, 2017), 3. On the Daodejing as expressing a practical philosophy prioritizing the good, see Eric S. Nelson, “Martin Buber’s Phenomenological Interpretation of the Daodejing,” in David Chai, ed., Daoist Encounters with Phenomenology: Thinking Interculturally about Human Existence (London: Bloomsbury, 2020), 105­–​­120. On goodness in Daoism, also see Mary I. Bockover, “Daoism, Ethics, and Faith: The Invisible ‘­Goodness’ of Life.” Journal of Daoist Studies 4. 4 (2011): 139­–​­153. Strategies of reimagining and reconfiguring are deployed in works such as Donna J. Haraway, Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene (Durham: Duke University Press, 2016). The idea of an intercultural new Daoism is a consequence of

20   Introduction

28 29

30

31

32

33

34 35 36

37 38 39 40 41

Daoism having a plurality of historical forms that are polycultural, and not purely Chinese in an essentialist sense, and that can be rethought and reconfigured in relation to the conditions and processes of modernity such as—to name only a few—­ capitalism, democracy, globalization, industrialization, modernization, and the development of the sciences and new technologies. “New” is more appropriate than “modern” insofar as it must not only recognize and accept but also engage in a critique modernity when needed. In recognizing a proliferation of forms (such as traditional and non-​­traditional, Chinese and non-​­Chinese, religious and philosophical) of Daoism, it is distinct from the idea of “Eurodaoism” articulated in Peter Sloterdijk, Eurotaoismus: Zur Kritik der politischen Kinetik (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1989). I examine the issue of Eurocentric and intercultural definitions of philosophy in Nelson, Chinese and Buddhist Philosophy. See Michel Foucault, About the Beginning of the Hermeneutics of the Self: Lectures at Dartmouth College (1980) (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2016); Pierre Hadot, Philosophy as a Way of Life: Spiritual Exercises from Socrates to Foucault (Malden: Wiley-​­Blackwell, 1995). On philosophy as self-​­reflection (Selbstbesinnung) on life arising in diverse human milieus, see Georg Misch, Der Weg in die Philosophie (Leipzig: Teubner, 1926); and the substantially altered and revised English translation; The Dawn of Philosophy: A Philosophical Primer (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1951); and Nelson, Chinese and Buddhist Philosophy, 131­–​­157. There are affinities between the emergence of reflective interrogative discourses in China, Greece, and India during this period. But these affinities need not entail the strong theory of an “axial age” (Achsenzeit) as introduced by Karl Jaspers, The Origin and Goal of History (London: Routledge, 2014). For a further discussion of Jaspers, Asian philosophy, and Daoism, see Mario Wenning, “The Dao of Existence: Jaspers and Laozi,” in Chai, Daoist Encounters with Phenomenology, 135­–​­158. See Curie Virág, The Emotions in Early Chinese Philosophy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017), 102­–104. ​­ On the problem of identifying early Chinese forms of thought with philosophy, see Carine Defoort, “Is There Such a Thing as Chinese Philosophy? Arguments of an Implicit Debate.” Philosophy East and West 51.3 (2001): 393­–​­413. On the question of the status of the good in Plato’s dialogues, see Hans-​­Georg Gadamer, The Idea of the Good in Platonic-​­Aristotelian Philosophy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986). On the question of “the good beyond being,” see Sarah Allen, The Philosophical Sense of Transcendence: Levinas and Plato on Loving Beyond Being (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 2009); Matthias Baltes, “Is the Idea of the Good in Plato’s Republic beyond Being?” in Mark Joyal, ed., Studies in Plato and the Platonic Tradition (London: Routledge, 2017), 21­–​­42; Tanja Staehler, Plato and Lévinas: The ambiguous out-​­side of Ethics (London: Routledge, 2009). Plato, Apology (38a5­–​­6), in Thomas West and Grace West, trans., Four Texts on Socrates (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998), 92. DDJ 8; Lau, Tao Te Ching, 10­–​­11. See Sarah Allan, “The Great One, Water, and the Laozi: New Light from Guodian.” T’oung Pao, Second Series, 89, 4/5 (2003): 237­–​­285. On water in early Chinese discourses, see Sarah Allan, The Way of Water and Sprouts of Virtue (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997). Rickett, Guanzi, vol. 2, 100. Yuandao, 102­–​­105; Huainanzi, 63. Analects 14.34; Edward Slingerland, trans., Analects: With Selections from Traditional Commentaries (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2003), 167­–168. ​­ DDJ 49; Lau, Tao Te Ching, 70­–​­71: 善者，吾善之；不善者，吾亦善之；德善; DDJ 63; Lau, Tao Te Ching, 92­–​­93. DDJ 2 and 64; Lau, Tao Te Ching, 4­–​­5, 92­–​­95.

Introduction   21 42 The notion of “linguistic strategy” is adopted from Youru Wang, Linguistic Strategies in Daoist Zhuangzi and Chan Buddhism: The Other Way of Speaking (London: Routledge, 2013). 43 On the non-​­duality and inseparability of the body and language in early Chinese thought, see Jane Geaney, Language as Bodily Practice in Early China: A Chinese Grammatology (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2018). On indirect communication as a means of philosophizing, see Julian Baggini and Peter S. Fosl, The Philosopher’s Toolkit: A Compendium of Philosophical Concepts and Methods (Chichester: Wiley-​­Blackwell, 2011), 256. Concerning Daoist indirect communication, see Wang, Linguistic Strategies in Daoist Zhuangzi and Chan Buddhism. 44 On the development of notions of self-​­divination and the immortal/transcendent, see Michael, “Ge Hong’s Xian,” 24­–​­51; Puett, To Become a God; Seidel, La divinisation de Lao-​­tseu. 45 Zhuangzi, chapter 2 (qiwulun 齊物論); references are to the Zhuangzi 莊子, annotated by Guo Xiang 郭象 (Taipei: Yiwen yinshuguan, 1990). See Thomas Michael, In the Shadows of the Dao: Laozi, the Sage, and the Daodejing (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2015), 121. 46 The text is incorporated in the Guanzi as chapter 49. See Harold D. Roth, Original Tao: Inward Training (Nei-​­ yeh) and the Foundations of Taoist Mysticism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999). 47 There are other important arts and practices (such as those of astronomy, medicine, and military strategy) that this work will not have the space and time to discuss at length. 48 On the exclusion and domination of nature, see Theodor W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment (London: Verso, 1979); William Leiss, Domination of Nature (Montreal: McGill-​­Queen’s Press, 1994); Arne Johan Vetlesen, The Denial of Nature: Environmental Philosophy in the Era of Global Capitalism (London: Routledge, 2015). This problematic with respect to Adorno and Levinas is unfolded more comprehensively in part one of Eric S. Nelson, Levinas, Adorno, and the Ethics of the Material Other (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2020). 49 I argue that the Western categories of mysticism and naturalism both reify and distort early Daoist philosophies in Eric S. Nelson, “Questioning Dao: Skepticism, Mysticism, and Ethics in the Zhuangzi.” International Journal of the Asian Philosophical Association 1.1 (2008): 5­–​­19. 50 Yuandao, 72­–​­73: Huainanzi, 53: “其自然而推之, 萬物之變”; on the distinctness of “following nature” in early Chinese philosophy, see Franklin Perkins, “Following Nature with Mengzi or Zhuangzi.” International Philosophical Quarterly 45.3 (2005): 327­–​­340. 51 See David Chai, “Rethinking the Daoist Concept of Nature.” Journal of Chinese Philosophy 43.3­–​­4 (2016): 259­–​­274. On “acosmotic” autopoiesis in the context of early Daoism, see Hans-​­Georg Moeller, Daoism Explained: From the Dream of the Butterfly to the Fishnet Allegory (Chicago: Open Court, 2004), 40­–​­41. 52 On the Daoist concept of the thing, see David Chai, “Meontological Generativity: A Daoist Reading of the Thing.” Philosophy East and West (2014): 303­–​­318; Sai Hang Kwok, “Zhuangzi’s Philosophy of Thing.” Asian Philosophy 26.4 (2016): 294­–​­310. On the “interthingly,” see A. A. Pang-​­White, “Nature, Interthing Intersubjectivity, and the Environment: A Comparative Analysis of Kant and Daoism.” Dao 8.1 (2009): 61­–​­78. 53 Liezi jishi 列子集釋, annotated by Yang Bojun 楊伯峻 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1979); A. C. Graham, trans., The Book of Lieh-​­Tzu: A Classic of the Tao (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990), 166. 54 On responsiveness in Daoism, see A. C. Graham, trans., Chuang-​­tzŭ: The Inner Chapters (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2001), 13­–​­14; in contemporary Western philosophy, see Donna J. Haraway, When Species Meet (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007), 71.

22   Introduction 55 See my discussion of this usage and its implications in Eric S. Nelson, “The Human and the Inhuman: Ethics and Religion in the Zhuangzi.” Journal of Chinese Philosophy 41.S1 (2014): 723­–​­739. 56 See DDJ 25; Lau, Tao Te Ching, 36­–​­39. See Lynn, Classic of the Way, 96; Chan, Two Visions of the Way 60. On the development of the discourse of tianxia, see Junping Liu, “The Evolution of Tianxia Cosmology and its Philosophical Implications.” ­Frontiers of Philosophy in China 1.4 (2006): 517­–​­538. 57 See Gopal Sukhu, The Songs of Chu (New York: Columbia University Press, 2017), 142­–​­151; on the Chuci and the poetic forms it inspired, see Paul W. Kroll, “On ‘Far Roaming.’ ” Journal of the American Oriental Society, 116.4 (1996): 653­–​­669; Fusheng Wu, “From Protest to Eulogy: Poems of Saunters in Sylphdom from Pre-​­Qin to the Late Six Dynasties.” BIBLID 18:2 (2000): 397­–​­426. On the shamanic background of classical Chinese thought, see Li Zehou 李澤厚, You wu dao li, shi li gui ren 由巫到禮釋禮歸仁 [From Shamanism to Ritual Propriety: Returning to ­Benevolence]. Beijing: Sanlian shudian, 2015. 58 Concerning the interpretation of wuwei, which is a concept also used in non-​­Daoist discourses such as Confucian and Legalist ones, see the helpful discussion in Edward Slingerland, Effortless Action: Wu-​­wei as Conceptual Metaphor and Spiritual Ideal in Early China (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003). 59 For a systematic account of generative nothingness, see David Chai, Zhuangzi and the Becoming of Nothingness (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2019). 60 On the Heshang Gong and Wang Bi commentaries, see Chan, Two Visions of the Way. 61 For an analysis of the concept of the Anthropocene and its potential and pitfalls, see Erle C. Ellis, Anthropocene: A Very Short Introduction (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018); Haraway, Staying with the Trouble, 30­–​­57; Jason W. Moore, ed., Anthropocene or Capitalocene? Nature, History, and the Crisis of Capitalism (Oakland: PM Press, 2016). 62 Creel, What Is Taoism, 69. 63 Graham, Disputers of the Tao, 172. 64 Graham, Lieh-​­Tzu, 140, 142. 65 Graham, Lieh-​­Tzu, 145­–​­146. 66 See Graham, Chuang-​­tzŭ, part five, 224­–​­258. For an alternative classification of the chapters and intellectual tendencies in the Zhuangzi, see Xiaogan Liu, Classifying the Zhuangzi Chapters (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003). 67 Mencius 7A26; Irene Bloom, trans., Mencius (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009), 150. 68 On hermits in classical Daoism, see Thomas Michael, “Hermits, Mountains, and Yangsheng in Early Daoism: Perspectives from the Zhuangzi,” in Livia Kohn, ed., New Visions of the Zhuangzi (St. Petersburg: Three Pines Press, 2015), 149­–​­164. 69 For interpretations of Daoism and anarchism, see Chapter 5 below and Roger T. Ames, “Is Political Taoism Anarchism?” Journal of Chinese Philosophy 10.1 (1983): 27­–​­47; John A. Rapp, Daoism and Anarchism: Critiques of State Autonomy in Ancient and Modern China (London: Continuum, 2012); Aleksandar Stamatov, “The Laozi and Anarchism.” Asian Philosophy 24.3 (2014): 260­–​­278. 70 See Graham, Chuang-​­tzŭ, part four, 200­–​­223. 71 For an account of the Daodejing as heartless totalitarianism, without any space for compassion or responsiveness, see Jordan Paper, “‘Daoism’ and ‘Deep Ecology:’ Fantasy and Potentiality,” in N. J. Girardot; Xiaogan Liu; James Miller, eds, Daoism and Ecology: Ways within a Cosmic Landscape (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001), 3­–​­21. On the significance of nourishing compassion/care (ci 慈) in the Daodejing, see Ann Pang-White, “Daoist Ci 慈, Feminist Ethics of Care, and the Dilemma of Nature.” Journal of Chinese Philosophy 43.3­–​­4 (2016): 275­–​­294. 72 Hanfeizi, “The Sovereign’s Way” (zhudao 主道), chapter 5.1; Wen Kwei Liao, trans., The Complete Works of Han Fei Tzu (London: Probsthain, 1939), 30.

Introduction   23 73 Hanfeizi, chapter 5.3; Liao, Complete Works of Han Fei Tzu, 34­–​­35. 74 On Daoism and contemporary ecological politics, with reference to the current Chinese situation, see Martin Schönfeld and Xia Chen, “Daoism and the Project of an Ecological Civilization or Shengtai Wenming 生态文明.” Religions 10.11 (2019): 630­–​­645. 75 For an overview of issues of Daoism and the environment, see the essays gathered in Daoism and Ecology as well as James Miller, China’s Green Religion: Daoism and the Quest for a Sustainable Future (New York: Columbia University Press, 2017). For analyses of the relevance problem, see Paul D’Ambrosio, “Rethinking Environmental Issues in a Daoist Context: Why Daoism is and is not Environmentalism.” Environmental Ethics 35.4 (2013): 407­–​­417; Paul R. Goldin, “Why Daoism is not Environmentalism.” Journal of Chinese Philosophy 32.1 (2005): 75­–87; ​­ Karyn Lai, “Conceptual Foundations for Environmental Ethics: A Daoist Perspective.” Environmental Ethics 25. 3 (2003): 247­–​­266; Eric S. Nelson, “Responding with Dao: Early Daoist Ethics and the Environment.” Philosophy East and West 59.3 (2009): 294­–​­316. 76 Concerning the critical potential of Daoism, see Mario Wenning, “Daoism as Critical Theory.” Comparative Philosophy 2.2 (2011): 50­–​­71. 77 For valuable accounts of the climate crisis in relation to Daoism, see Chen Xia and Martin Schönfeld, “A Daoist Response to Climate Change.” Journal of Global Ethics 7.2 (2011): 195­–​­203; Martin Schönfeld, “Grounding Phenomenology in the Daodejing: The Anthropocene, the Fourfold, and the Sage,” in Chai, Daoist Encounters with Phenomenology, 275­–​­308. 78 DDJ 5; Lau, Tao Te Ching, 8­–​­9; Zhuangzi, chapter 18 (zhile 至樂); Graham, Lieh-​ ­Tzu, 133. 79 On the ecological justice of “taking turns,” see Matthias Fritsch, Taking Turns with the Earth: Phenomenology, Deconstruction, and Intergenerational Justice (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2018). 80 Donna J. Haraway introduces “becoming with” as an alternative to the notion of becoming. This resonates with the interpretation of ziran as the transforming with of things in their interthingly and interspecies relations in the present work. As is clear in this book, “thing” (wu 物) encompasses any being, entity, or self-ordering relational system. Things are differentiated by observing and tracing their ways of changing (yi 易) and transforming (hua 化). On the becoming with between species and living in devastated ruinated environments, see Haraway, Staying with the Trouble, 4, 12, 38. “Damaged life” is an expression adopted from Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia: Reflections on a Damaged Life (London: Verso, 2005). On its ecological and ethical significance, see part one of Nelson, Ethics of the Material Other.

2 Nourishing life, cultivating nature, and environmental philosophy

Damaged life and nourishing life The problem of nourishing life: an overview How can we nourish life in the midst of the existing usability and disposability of life? According to the present work, a key task of an appropriate environmental philosophy is to articulate the significance of nourishing the life with which we are intertwined, cultivate a more adequately attuned and responsive ethos and culture of nature (which would offer an alternative to the ideological distortion and instrumental reduction of nature), and foster a political ecology for the present socially produced ecological crisis.1 As shown previously in the first chapter, early Daoist discourses reveal a number of hints and strategies for engaging in this undertaking if reconsidered under contemporary conditions. The environmental implications of early Daoist sources have been a contested and controversial topic with multiple arguments denying an ecological significance to the Daodejing 道德經 and the Zhuangzi 莊子. Much of this literature focuses on the questionability of generating an adequate sense of environmental responsiveness and responsibility from “non-​­action” (wuwei 無 爲), construed as a bare minimum of activity or even a fatalistic and indifferent attitude. These interpretations maintain that nothing that occurs is bad, pathological, or to be changed, as the sage indifferently allows the world to run its course no matter how destructive that course might appear to be.2 However, the conclusion that anything goes and everything should be tolerated in a mood of detached indifference does not seem right to either life or the textual sources given that they emphasize non-​­harm. non-​­domination, and responsiveness (a more adequate description of wuwei in Daoism than the overly literal “non-​ ­action”) in conjunction with nourishing care of the shared elemental body of life that asymmetrically shapes human lives rather than these selves colonialistically expanding into it (as in conceptions of the world as an “expanded self” rather than the world constituting selves). This is the shared elemental body, and likewise its ecological conditions if translated into a contemporary milieu, from which all individuals, groups, and species “live from” and “steal from” life and its most elemental aspects. Whereas Chapter 3 proposes an alternative interpretation of wuwei as relational and—by extension—environmental

Nourishing life   25 attunement and responsiveness made possible by contextualizing it in relation to another key Daoist notion, the thematic of the current chapter, which has been frequently more neglected in the philosophical literature concerning Daoism, is: nourishing, nurturing, or tending to life (yangsheng 養生). Nourishing life is an interpretively contested and historically multivocal concept. There are three angles to keep in mind as we begin to focus on the second one. First, this expression was used in early classical and rujia 儒家 (“Confucian”) sources to mean taking care of oneself, one’s parents, and the living. In the Book of Rites (Liji 禮記), for instance, in the “Conveyance of Rites” (liyun 禮運) 28 and 32, nourishing the living is one task maintained by a proper ritual system along with burying the dead (songsi 送死) and serving the spirits (guishen 鬼神). In the work attributed to Mencius (Mengzi 孟子; c. fourth-​ ­century bce), the first step of the way of governing (wangdao 王道) is the establishment of conditions in which people can nourish the living and mourn the dead without regret (yangsheng sangsi wuhan 養生喪死無憾). In Xunzi 荀子 (c. third-​­century bce), the model of ritual ordering is applied to social-​­political conditions of flourishing bodily and mental practices (or “corporeal technologies”) of nourishing life.3 Second, in Daoist contexts, according to Mou Zongsan, “nourishing life” discourses have two primary forms that aim at either becoming a genuine person (zhenren 真人) or a numinous spiritually realized being.4 That is to say, differences concerning one’s comportment and the direction of transformation inform two distinctive strategies for reading the Daodejing and formulations of what it means to accord with dao. Third, a distinctive idea of bodily yangsheng appears in second-​­century bce medical discourses to which its uses in the Zhuangzi are responding.5 The Daoist discourses are interlinked with the formation of medicinal, dietetic, physiognomic, and other corporeal arts. The expression has been popularized in this regard in Chinese cultural spheres, resulting in its current meaning of more or less artfully attending to and extending one’s personal physical and biospiritual health. Given such interpretive and historical shifts of meaning, what are the senses of yangsheng in early contexts? Should nourishing the living and the conditions and relations that make living possible become an ecological ethical-​­political and therapeutic task in recognition of and response to contemporary forms of restrictive damaged life? Controversies over nourishing and augmenting life The American Sinologist H. G. Creel argued that there are two forms of Daoism: contemplative and purposive. While this distinction is problematic in a number of ways, it refers to actual differences in the Daoistic family of discourses that encompass an array of biospiritual, ethical, natural-​­cosmological, and social-​­political hermeneutical strategies. There has been a long-​­lasting interpretive conflict over the appropriate way to nourish life, traces of which can be found in the earliest known Daoist sources and in subsequent reactions to them.

26   Nourishing life We can initially distinguish two intersecting yet distinctive tendencies: nourishing life by (1) living responsively in accord with and echoing natural tendencies (the priority of things and natural patterns) and (2) augmenting and extending life through artful means, exercises, and techniques to the point of achieving either prolonged bodily life (changsheng 長生) and longevity (shou 壽) or a realized xian biospiritual state.6 These models have intriguing consequences for how to regard one’s own life in relation to the natural world and articulating a more adequate culture of nature that would cultivate our capacities to encounter, recognize, and be receptive to natural phenomena. A dao of nourishing life and vital energies (qi) is contrasted in the Daodejing, the Zhuangzi, and later texts that rely on them (the Liezi 列子, the Wenzi 文子) with methods of artificially endeavoring to add to, benefit, and extend life ( yisheng 益生) and coercively dominate and direct the flow of vital energies.7 Wang Bi and Heshang Gong Yi 益 is typically a positively inflected word signifying increase and that which is beneficial, useful, and auspicious. Hexagram 42 in the Classic of Changes (Yijing 易經), refers to “increase” (yi) and follows hexagram 41 on diminishment (sun 損). It states that increase brings advantage and profit (li 利).8 However, the meaning of this term is more complex than pure benefit. Wang Bi 王弼 (third century ce) noted in his Yijing commentary that it is to be welcomed as beneficial and as a warning “as diminution for those above and increase for those below,” as challenging persons to shift away from their own desires toward the good, to “bring about growth and opulence while avoiding any contrivance in doing so,” and also cautioning that those who bring increase to no one else will meet with misfortune.9 Increase/augmentation is beneficial as enhancing others, and enhancing life, in contrast to the increase that becomes its opposite in being self-​­serving, excessive, contrived, and destructive. In Wang Bi’s commentary on the phrase “augmenting life is auspicious” (the literal translation of yisheng yue xiang 益生曰祥) in Daodejing, chapter 55, Wang construes the phrase—given its context in the passage—oppositely as a warning: “augmenting life is inauspicious.” The endeavor to increase one’s life through contrived means indulges desires and leads to disaster: “Life must not be extended, for if one tries to extend it, one will suffer an early death.”10 Wang Bi glossed the next passage as rejecting “forcing strength” by endeavoring to control vital force, because growing old, reaching one’s limit, and death cannot be escaped as aspects of the dao. Wang Bi’s edition and analysis of the Daodejing eventually became the dominant version, influencing literati readings and modern Sinological and philosophical readings of the text. Religious transmissions relied on the earlier version attributed to Heshang Gong 河上公 (first century ce) that interprets the yangsheng passages of chapter 55 in a contradictory way to Wang Bi. In the Heshang Gong Commentary, augmenting life is certainly auspicious: auspicious means reaching longevity (chang 長), augmenting life is to extend it, focusing

Nourishing life   27 body, mind, and vital generative energy (qi) leads to fluidity and flourishing (life), as aging and drying out (death) occur by not attaining the dao.11 It would be one-​­sided to conclude that Wang Bi offered a purely contemplative or speculative naturalistic interpretation and Heshang Gong a purposive ­biospiritually-​­oriented account. Wang Bi is also concerned with practice as a practice of the good, and cultivation as a cultivation that echoes and responds to the natural tendencies in things. The Heshang Gong, on the other side, has its own philosophical and cosmological vision in how it reads the Daodejing as a work guiding biospiritual practice. Zhuangzi and Ge Hong The difference concerning augmenting life, and potentially our bodies and environments, most strikingly arises in contrasting Zhuangzi’s embrace of naturalness and his critics’ advocacy of augmentation. In the Zhuangzi, chapter five (“Signs of Complete Virtuosity”; de chong fu 德充符), Zhuangzi is described as clarifying to Huizi 惠子—his frequent philosophical interlocutor and friend— how one should “not augment life” (bu yisheng 不益生). It is nature that selects one’s bodily form (tianxuan zi zhi xing 天選子之形), and seeking to augment life ends up damaging and undermining life inasmuch as it does not adhere to what is in and of itself (chang yin ziran 常因自然).12 We will examine the significance of this argument for prioritizing nature over augmenting one’s own life below. Efforts at augmenting and extending life are linked by Wang Bi and Zhuangzi with self-​­interested contrivances that depart from the dao, consisting of the dynamic processes of the natural world (which is distinct from contemporary conceptions). In contrast to the suspicion of damaging life by forcing it and the flow of vital energies, other teachings and transmissions of the way have advocated an extension-​­based approach to one’s life. In the Heshang Gong, yisheng is growth understood as biospiritual growth that encompasses a variety of meditative practices. More radically, Ge Hong advocated transformative biospiritual arts and techniques of inward alchemy (neidan shu 內丹術). Purposive methods (fangshi 方士) are superior to merely relying on natural flow. Longevity, he remarked, is due to formatively “obtaining the way” rather than the functioning of nature.13 In contrast to the equalizing of life and death in Zhuangzi and mysterious learning, Ge Hong insisted that one is motivated by the fear of death to biospiritually transform life. While adopting ideas and strategies from these earlier sources, he repeatedly critiqued them for political and philosophical reasons. In the “Employing Punishment” (yongxing 用刑) outer chapter of the Baopuzi, he rejected how people praise the absurd wild political talk of Laozi and Zhuangzi (jia laozhuang zhi dantan 嘉老莊之誕談) and condemn the Legalist political realism of Shen Buhai and Hanfei (bo shenhan zhi shishi 薄申韓之實事). In addition to Lao-​­Zhuang teachings, he criticized Guo Tai 郭太 (ce 128­–​­169) and the “pure conversation” (qingtan 清談) discourses, associated with mysterious learning (xuanxue 玄學) in the third century

28   Nourishing life ce,

as overly abstract and speculative, maintaining the necessity of practices of extending and augmenting oneself (yiji 益己) to achieve greater longevity and spiritual transformation.14 This initial sketch of Daoist discourses concerning the acceptance and augmentation of life raises questions that will frame and be addressed in the subsequent sections of this chapter: (1) if one needs to avoid damaging oneself as well as the myriad things, including the use of artful means that were intended to improve them, what then is the appropriate relation with the life and nature that one is? (2) Is Ge Hong correct that nourishing life should be conceived primarily as a means of transforming this life rather than accepting its apparently natural conditions? That is to say, should one discover Zhuangzian freedom in nature or actively transform one’s own nature according to its biospiritual potential through active intervention and augmentation? (3) Going beyond Ge Hong, since he elucidated bodily as biospiritual longevity, what are the implications of these different forms of nourishing life for contemporary bodies, species, and environments devastated by industry, technology, and unlimited human expansion, given the contemporary realities of damaged (that is, harmed and non-​ ­flourishing) life, which appear to demand in this situation artful means and even artificial augmentation for the sake of survival? (4) If the nature in which humans dwell can no longer sustain and nourish human life, can we recognize and be responsively attuned to that nature or might we imagine an alchemical-​ synthetic cyborg realizing its dao by adapting to post-​­ ­ apocalyptic desolate wastes?

Early Daoist models of nourishing life Historical and philosophical considerations We have considered in the previous sections how the Daodejing offers a model of nourishing life that has been interpreted as either discarding as inauspicious (in Wang Bi) or as practicing (in the Heshang Gong) the extension and augmentation of longevity. Both conceptions, according with natural tendencies and augmenting life for the sake of health and longevity (excluding the issue of spiritual realization), could potentially generate a culture of nature with more suitable ways of responding to contemporary environmental crisis conditions. In classical Daoist sources, natural phenomena serve as guides and models for humans. This sensibility—so evident in premodern East Asian poetry, painting, and philosophy—need not presuppose a magically enchanted world in which distinctions between the natural and supernatural cannot be made. This nature-​­oriented sensibility and aesthetic seeks to learn from natural phenomena as they present themselves and is a way of acknowledging the priority of the object in the life of things that—as articulated in the Liezi—entails their own and thus our flourishing.15 One can respond, mirror, and echo the meandering flow of the river, the clarity of the sky on a summer day, the clouded heights of the mountain, or the hidden depths of the pool.

Nourishing life   29 The Huainanzi chapter Yuandao stated, using common exemplars for learning from things, that the ancient sage-​­king Yu 禹 took water to be his mentor while Shennong 神農 took seedlings as models of instruction.16 Such responsive attunement to the myriad phenomena and taking phenomena such as heaven, earth, water, air, or fire as environmental ideas raises numerous questions.17 Are natural phenomena to be imitated, and how is this possible? Mimesis is a key element of adaptation and learning that continues to operate in more complex formations of conceptualization and discourse as well as in responsive attunement. To this extent, imitation should not be denigrated, as it is inexorably interconnected with the creativity and originality that wishes not merely to imitate but to be new and different. At the same time, as the examples of real and imaginary animals in the Zhuangzi reveal, mimesis must be freely enacted in shifting response to things without fixating them or being ensnared by them (as  addressed in Chapter 4).18 The Zhuangzi illustrates working with things themselves in narratives of the tiger-​­keeper and the wood-​­artisan who are respectively attuned with the tiger and the tree. The language of learning from and modeling oneself according to the dao, heaven and earth, and the myriad creatures and things can be interpreted in different ways. Perhaps a minimalistic interpretation obeying the confines of modern Western scientific naturalism can find a motivating environmental aesthetic for a renewed culture of nature in such a discourse. In addition to this, it also indicates a dao, as manifested in an ethos and praxis or path walking of a life, for a culture that needs to be more responsive to its own relational interthingly being: that is, to things and their natural conditions, contexts, and environing world.19 The Daodejing teaches nourishing life through abandoning the self-​ ­interested and self-​­concerned nourishing of life that some early texts associate with Yang Zhu 楊朱. According to the egoistic hedonist account, which is questionable in numerous ways, a Yangist might be ecological based on the primary concern of preserving their own bodily life. If sacrificing one hair did not mean saving the empire (the external sociopolitical sphere) but the conditions of the environing world, and hence the capacity to preserve their life, would the Yangist (as presented in chapter seven of the Liezi) abandon some forms of bodily self-​­regard in order to preserve embodied life? A. C. Graham would no doubt deny this since momentary intense enjoyment is preferable to “health, safety, or morality.”20 The image of an extreme hedonist of the moment would always sacrifice future well-​­being for present pleasures. Nourishing life is more complex in this portrait of Yang Zhu’s thought in which ordinary arts of preserving the body are treated dismissively.21 It does not signify miserably surviving into the future at any cost, but rather following the heart and nature of things, regardless of status or reputation, and freely living without restraint and restriction.22 Yang Zhu is linked here with a vision of free and easy wandering and nurturing or becoming genuine (zhen).23 If all pursued this path, the very rationale of subject and sovereign would be undermined.24 Thus, we see that the other side of the Yangist discourse is non-​­domination. A number of passages suggest a non-​­domination regarding things as well as persons, indicating a

30   Nourishing life more ecologically attuned alternative to the current culture and social-​­political apparatus aimed at the domination of nature. These issues will be taken up again below in relation to the Zhuangzi as well as in Chapter 5 on ecopolitics. Answering this question of the self-​­interested preservation of bodily life in practical life might not satisfy the Yangist. But it is a necessary task insofar as an ecological culture and politics must motivate self-​­interested individuals to act and comport themselves in ecological ways. Given that self-​­interest and the existing system of relations has not yet formed an adequately environmentally concerned culture and politics, it is necessary to address and motivate the self-​ ­interested yet insufficient for a therapeutic ecologically oriented transformation. That being said, individual motivations and behaviors are only one element alongside the cultural, economic, and political systems in relation to which the damaging exploitation and domination of things and environments primarily occurs. The ecological ethos of nourishing life in the Daodejing In the Daodejing, a sequence of chapters address themes of preservation, longevity, and endurance while challenging the conception (linked with early purposive methods) that they are of primary importance in life. These chapters indicate what a praxis and ethos of nurturing life—understood in the temporalizing of its seasonality—could signify for a more appropriate culture of nature. Daodejing 7 begins with the statement that heaven and earth are long-​­lasting (tianchang dijiu 天長地久) by not preserving or sustaining themselves (bu zisheng 不自生). By not nourishing themselves but things, they nourish themselves. The Heshang Gong explicitly noted that heaven and earth instruct people by analogy (yu jiao ren 喻教人). The Xiang’er Commentary remarks that they are enduring because they model themselves on the dao with the implication that humans should model themselves on them. The exemplary function (that is extended more broadly to the notion of “critical model” expressed in this work) of heaven and earth in this passage becomes clear in the second half of chapter seven that addresses the person, or more literally the bodily being (shen 身), of the sage (shengren 聖人) who in abandoning the body preserves the body. Wang Bi accordingly remarks: Put aside one’s body and one’s body will be preserved. Preservation of one’s body cannot be done by trying to preserve one’s body. 外其身而身存, 身存非存身之所為也。25 Numerous translations have construed “embodied being” (shen) as person or self, without adequately addressing the specificity of this sense of person and self and without considering its bodily character.26 Wang Bi commented that they endure because they do not endeavor to endure for themselves (wusi 無私),

Nourishing life   31 responsively act without calculating the action (wuwei 無為), and are fulfilled (nengcheng qi si 能成其私) in not seeking to be fulfilled.27 The greatness and long-​­lastingness of heaven and earth is referenced in DDJ 25 in which the modeling of each upon the other is presented in reverse order: humans take their model from earth (ren fa di 人法地), earth from heaven (di fa tian 地法天), heaven from dao (tian fa dao 天法道) and dao from natural self-​ ­occurring (dao fa ziran 道法自然). As reciprocally yet asymmetrically interwoven, dao (as the mother and womb of all things), heaven, earth, and humanity—or, in Wang Bi, the mediating king—are enduring. This is one of the passages deployed in favor of a naturalistic interpretation of early Daoism, which is problematic if nature is understood in a purely modern way. In the current crisis conditions, it appears that humans need every motivating ecology available whether it be light or dark green, anthro-​­ or bio-​­centric, shallow or deep. All of these contending discourses are equalized in a Daoist ecology of shifting perspectives and ways of speaking.28 A benefit of dao-​­centric models—that as inflections of the “way” encompass and extend beyond notions of “bios” (specific life) and “zōē” (life in general)—is that they contest the binary oppositions and stratified hierarchies that have dominated recent Western environmental discourses: anthropocentrism/biocentrism, and humanism/­ posthumanism (although the latter finds biocentrism still too anthropocentric in positing the very distinction between them).29 Paul W. Taylor defined anthropocentric as human-​­centered and prioritizing obligations to humans; biocentrism is life or nature-​­centered, prioritizing how organisms and/or organic relational wholes can be harmed and benefited by human actions even if there is no direct sentience of the effects humans have on them.30 Each life form has an intrinsic “good of its own.” While also emphasizing the acknowledgment of self-​ ­organizing autopoietic biological organisms and ecological systems, Daoism (or the form of it interpreted in the present work) prioritizes things without the essentialism of the concept of “intrinsic value.” It is more radical in emptying fixations—including Taylor’s distinction between organic/teleological life and inorganic/non-​­teleological things—and not allowing them to settle into being regulative ideals and norms (practices of unfixing and emptying will be addressed further in Chapters 4 and 6). Humans occur within and can model themselves upon the possibilities and potentialities of nature such that humanity and nature are not fixated into two opposing categories. Human interests and priorities (whether strong or weak versions of anthropocentrism and humanism) can accord with nature (whether strong or weak biocentrism and posthumanism) to varying degrees.31 Early and contemporary Daoism does not sufficiently differentiate the human and inhuman for anthropocentrism/biocentrism to be the real issue, since humans are to be cherished as natural things regardless of their maladaptive behaviors and social-​ ­economic systems that reproduce themselves through injury and devastation. That is, humans can live in better or worse ways in relation to the nature that they are and the environing nature with which they persistently interact. Accordingly, in DDJ 27, sages—those who are not indifferent in realizing the good in

32   Nourishing life emulating and modeling themselves according to dao—are good at (shan  善) preserving (jiu 救) both people and things without abandoning or discarding (qi 棄) either.32 This point contrasts with the views that discard one for the sake of promoting the other, repeating the pathologies of a damaged and damaging configuration of life. Chapters 7, 25, and 27 of the Daodejing offer indications for an environmental ethos and culture of modeling humanity upon and according to natural tendencies without reifying, fixating, or essentializing nature as critics contend against biocentrism, deep ecology, and posthumanism to the extent that they inadequately address the interthingly and intraworldly positionality and role of the human recognized in the Daodejing and Zhuangzi.33 DDJ 10 captures in its conclusion the nourishing generative functioning of the dao emulated in varying degrees by the sages and myriad beings: dao generates and nourishes (shengzhi xuzhi 生之畜之) without possessing (buyou 不有), acts and cultivates without controlling and dominating (buzai 不宰). The nourishing operations of the dao (articulated further in DDJ 34 and 51) are contrasted with possession, manipulation, and domination (zai interestingly means governing and slaughtering). Wang Bi glosses this statement as meaning that the genuine ruler nurtures the people without blocking and restricting their nature and existence.34 This responsive rulership is distinct from the anti-​­political or anarchic politics found in passages some interpretations link with the names of Yang Zhu, Zhuangzi, and Bao Jingyan. Here the ruler best approximates and helps generate the conditions of the self-​­ordering of peoples and the world to allow them to flourish in their own terms. In contrast bad rulers produce social and natural calamities by contending with and undermining the tendencies and dispositions of persons and things. If an ecological lesson can be drawn here it is that natural worlds are in need of counter-​­interventions against pathological forms of order and domination that would allow them to flourish in their own manner of being. DDJ 13 underscores the significance of revering and caring for bodily being (shen occurs six times in it) rather than an abstract notion of personhood or selfhood.35 It states (in one interpretation) that: (1) one suffers calamities due to being bound to one’s bodily being and (2) all can be given to one’s care because one cherishes one’s own bodily being. It is the vulnerable embodied being who recognizes the significance of bodily life and is capable of loving the embodied world (ai yi shen wei tianxia 愛以身為天下). Wang Bi’s commentary states that when one is no longer bound to one’s own bodily being one reverts to the natural happening of ziran and when one cherishes one’s own body as much as the world, one can care for all.36 One nourishes one’s own bodily life in nourishing the life of things, a life that is distinct from animism understood as positing spirits in things. Loving embodied life is loving the world. This attunement of care for things and natural relational processes as a whole, without being swept away by them, is cultivated in being exposed to, encountering, and responsiveness toward others, things, and oneself. This ethos can be contrasted with the restrictive hedonist perspective that separates and fixates the bodily self from the world and the myriad things. A further contrast

Nourishing life   33 between attitudes toward bodily life is marked in the Xiang’er Commentary on Daodejing chapter 13. It states that dao aspires to be without bodily form and is a model for people.37 It distinguishes between naturally preserving the body (baoshen 保身) and artificially loving the body (aishen 愛身) such that one should not love one’s embodied being to embrace the world.38 The difference between love in Wang Bi and the Xiang’er is that the former embraces an all-​ ­embracing nourishing love of the body of self and world and the latter rejects a limiting self-​­concerned and partial love. To briefly sketch other discussions of bodily being, DDJ 16 concludes with the dialectic of liberating the body through freeing oneself from self-​­concern for the body to the extent that not being concerned with the body frees it from danger.39 Daoist literature is replete with examples of those not fearing for their body who attune the body to its environing situation, like the effortlessly flexible and responsive infant in DDJ 55, and not being threatened in the most menacing situations of ferocious animals, swirling waters, and blazing fire.40 In DDJ 44, the dangers of reputation and wealth endanger that which is greater—bodily life (shen).41 In DDJ 52, the loss of the mother and the feminine (that is, the dao) is linked with the loss of bodily breath and life. In DDJ 54, the observation and formation of the body by the body is extended to embracing the family, the village, and the world, indicating the cultivation of a sense of the common interthingly embodied being in which each of us partakes.42 The Daodejing’s discourse of the shen-​­body in these chapters discloses how abandoning anxiety and fear concerning the bodily self allows one to embrace the body of the world and achieve a greater life of the body. To reimagine the Daodejing’s shen-​­model in a preliminary way under contemporary ecological-​ ­crisis conditions would mean that a more appropriate culture of nature would not demand ascetic self-​­sacrifice or the domination of an ecological regularity state in eco-​­legalism. One might imagine a modern hidden sage-​­king maximizing benefits and minimizing costs, without anxiety from the pivot of dao, arriving at an optimal level of pollution and health for their subjects.43 Individuals, and not only Yangists, might defy moralistic norms and legalistic commands for their own pleasure, self-​­interest, or sense of freedom. Another possibility for them is to recognize the common body of things as their point of departure in order to autopoietically and self-​­generatively regulate themselves and lovingly embrace life of their own accord. In DDJ 81, it is described how heaven’s way (tian zhi dao 天之道) is to benefit (that is, nourish) without harming (li er bu hai 利而不害) and the sage’s way (shengren zhi dao 聖人之道) is to act without struggling and contending (wei er buzheng 爲而不爭). The skeptic asks and it remains an open question for the time-​­being: would people love life enough to embrace the shared and asymmetrically formed elemental body of things and environing world in which they are born, nourished, and perish? Is it better to embrace life or give away? In the Zhuangzi, it is noted that the ancient genuine person (zhenren), or the ones who have cultivated genuineness, “loved to receive anything” (shou er xizhi 受而喜之) that was given while “also forgetting what was received and giving it away” (wang er fuzhi 忘而復之).44

34   Nourishing life In the ecological decline and degradation of the “Anthropocene,” insofar as it is characterized by the domination and instrumentalization of nature, should we not accept what is received and forgetfully give it away to others? Embracing the world is insufficient if it is embraced and held on to as a possession to the detriment of others to come. The myriad creatures are born, live, and perish according to their appropriate season. Embracing dao signifies embracing death as well as life that can be understood as an intergenerational justice to make place for others to have their turn under the sun and partaking of the earth: to withdraw after one’s work and body are done (gongsui shentui 功遂身退) is the way of nature (tian zhi dao 天之道).45 The paradox of nourishing life in the Zhuangzi The Zhuangzi is a stratified multivocal composite text that records philosophical conversations as well as depictions of bodily, natural, and also dreamlike transformations (hua 化) in which a fish becomes a bird (chapter 1), a human dreams of being a fluttering butterfly (chapter 2), a butcher teaches how to nourish life (chapter 3), life and death are interchangeable (chapter 6), and the masculine finds its way only in the feminine (chapter 7). Humans are confronted with biospiritually realized beings who freely wander the winds and the mists, transforming with things, and all the myriad things are revealed as having their own specificity, equality, and parity. The early Ruist Xunzi remarked in the “Undoing Fixations” (jiebi 解蔽) chapter on dispelling one-​­sided obsessions that “Zhuangzi was transfixed by nature and oblivious to humans” (zhuangzi bi yu tian er bu zhiren 莊子蔽於天 而不知人).46 Zhuangzi, whose attributed work deconstructively undoes fixations of both bodily form (xing  形) and speaking (yan  言), himself is said to fixate nature to the detriment of the human. As is evident in the seventeenth chapter “Discourse on Nature” (tianlun 天論) in the work attributed to him, Xunzi is an advocate of deliberate action and ritually ordered human control over and manipulation of inner and outer nature for the purposes of maintaining and reproducing human life.47 In a contemporary context, we might reimagine a Confucian ethos in which a ritualized order is deployed to regulate nature for the sake of protecting and reproducing sustainable natural conditions of life such that humans can continue to flourish. Traces of a Ruist ethics of nature are revealed in a milder form in the Mencius and a stronger form in the Xunzi.48 Xunzi and the Daoist Ge Hong roughly six centuries later both express suspicions concerning how Zhuangzi leaves nature to itself and its own self-​­occurring happening (ziran). Such criticisms pose a question to us: is the Zhuangzi committed to the priority of the natural flowing in its own course without adequate regard for humans and their efforts when it states in chapter six not to use the human to assist the natural (bu yi ren zhutian 不以人助天)?49 Readings of the Zhuangzi as articulating a model of detached and neutral indifference suggest that it teaches flowing along with things without worry, concern, or anxiety and without possibilities of intervention in the affairs and conditions of the world.

Nourishing life   35 However, to look ahead for a moment, if the Zhuangzi concerns responsive attunement and adaptation to things (as will be argued further in Chapter 3 on wuwei) achieved through practices of emptying (Chapter 4), then a different path than escaping from the world is indicated—a path of escaping into the world. In this case, even the anti-​­political and “anarchic” threads of the Zhuangzi (which perhaps Ge Hong had in mind when he dismissed the absurd political talk of Lao-​­Zhuang) point to alternatives for politics rather than its mere negation (Chapter 5). These Zhuangzian strategies continue to resonate in a form of medieval Sinicized Buddhism that shares overlapping issues of having an antinomian ethics (see Chapter 6). Given the recourse to the upsurge and temporal arising and returning of natural happening, which resonates with yet is not identical with what the early Greek Pre-​­Socratic philosopher Heraclitus called physis, what then of nourishing life in the context of the Zhuangzi and what is it nurturing? The Zhuangzi incorporates discussions of two expressions: yangsheng, most notably in the third chapter “Mastery of Nourishing Life” (yangsheng zhu 養生主), and a more rarely used expression “nourishing bodily form” (yangxing 養形) that does not appear in the Daodejing or the Zhuangzi’s inner chapters.50 Both of these expressions are well worth examining. The Zhuangzi contains descriptions that appear to be for and others opposed to nourishing life that appear to follow along similar lines to those analyzed previously of naturally nourishing life in contrast to artificially reworking and extending it. Nonetheless, a prominent passage in the third chapter of the Zhuangzi concerning nourishing life deconstructs the very distinction for the sake of a more fundamental insight into how to nourish life. The opening passage of the third chapter, on mastering how to nourish life, concerns the boundaries of life and knowledge: our life has a limit but knowing is limitless. Using the limited to attain the unlimited brings peril and pursuing knowledge, even while knowing this danger, brings greater peril. One should avoid the doing of good or evil that brings fame or punishment. Follow what is central and preserve your body (baoshen 保身, recall the use of this in the Xiang’er Commentary), sustain your life (quansheng 全生), nourish your family (yangqin 養親), and live out your years (jinnian 盡年). One way of elucidating this passage is to conclude that skepticism concerning knowledge is good for your well-​­being. That is partly true. However, more precisely, it concerns unbounded knowledge in relation to that which is bounded such that a specific form of knowing is being questioned here: knowledge of nourishing life as an endless attempt to know life so as to extend and prolong its duration. Nourishing life as a set of techniques shaped by the quest for discursive knowledge endangers rather than nurtures life. The more one desires to know regarding these arts, the more one endangers and misses out on life. The way to nourish and sustain bodily life is to act in accord and be attuned with the natural course of things, living one’s allotted time in the midst of ordinary life of family and friends.51 Nourishing life is achieved not by seeking to artfully nurture it

36   Nourishing life through knowledge and technique, but instead by letting it happen and according with its happening. What are the environmental implications of abandoning the quest for artificial longevity and perfection (mastery) and living in tune with ordinary natural life (non-​­mastery)? This might be an appropriate goal for an environmental ethos and politics, but doesn’t it require intervention and technique to be maintained under contemporary ecological crisis conditions in which living out one’s years in ordinary life might itself become a fantastic dream? The ensuing section of the Zhuangzi’s third chapter on cutting the ox and nurturing life clarifies the culmination of skillfulness and complicates the picture just presented. Butcher of the kitchen Ding (Paoding 庖丁) is portrayed as an exemplar of nourishing life (yangsheng) through the flawless slicing of the ox in a spiritual encounter (shenyu 神遇) that occurs through more than merely looking with the eyes.52 His cutting is a seamless accordance in the flow between his own bodily movement, the knife that is never dulled in being used, and the body of the ox that separates apart without resistance.53 Of course, this story does not depict the perfection of knowledge rejected in the previous passage; it concerns a perfection of skillfulness that is no longer a mere skill or technique insofar as he simply observes and follows the rhythms in encountering the animal body. Ding’s observing and responding in the spiritual encounter is simultaneously a bodily attunement to the thing. Although dreams and reveries occur frequently in the Zhuangzi, this is not the spiritual encountering of dreams described in the Liezi in which spiritual encounter and bodily reception are differentiated: the spirit encounters dreams (shenyu weimeng 神遇為夢) while bodily form receives things (xingjie weishi 形接為事).54 Mencius reportedly remarked that the exemplary or noble person should avoid the kitchen (junzi yuan paochu 君子遠庖廚).55 In the Mencius, dealing with animals who one has seen both alive and dead morally desensitizes the person. The Zhuangzi employs the paradoxical image of a butcher undertaking a lowly ignoble task in the kitchen as teaching the powerful how to nurture life. Nourishing life is not revealed in the butcher’s skill but in his being attuned with the object in opening himself to it, encountering it, and according with it in its own specificity. This encounter transpires of its own accord, once one has practiced and cultivated the skill of letting it occur, which transpires beyond skill and the most passive activity of the subject. Should one accord with the natural flow of ordinary life or immerse oneself in the thing? Emphasizing their difference would entail two distinct models of ecological dwelling. Yet one need not see them as alternatives: the example of Ding complicates but does not undermine the previous lesson of accepting ordinary living, as nourishing life is here presented as a cultivated and practiced process in which nature can come to be itself. This is not so much a narrative of second nature becoming first nature through skill and proficiency, much less one about an external imposition that forms a new nature. The butcher’s cutting is an exemplar of the actualization, the becoming genuine, of a potential in the nature of things. The reimagining of a Zhuangzian inspired ethos would not entail an

Nourishing life   37 escapist withdrawal from and refusal of the world and ordinary life: it would cultivate and practice a responsive attunement with things in encountering them. The potential for becoming genuine is already extant in the midst of everyday life yet lies obscured and hindered by an inability to recognize and respond to things. In ziran Daoism, such non-responsiveness cannot be corrected through the accumulation of knowledge and technique that Zhuangzi’s Confucian (Xunzi) and later Daoist (Ge Hong) critics advocate in different forms. Nourishing bodily form Other examples of apprehending nourishing life as a deliberate purposive task, which restricts and limits the freedom of nature, are described in the fifteenth “Engraved Meaning” (keyi 刻意) and nineteenth “Attaining Life” (dasheng 達生) outer chapters (waipian 外篇) that are attributed to Zhuangzi’s transmitters or school.56 In Zhuangzi chapter 15, engraved meanings and constructed fixations of the way (which are not “ingrained” as some translations have it) are described and found lacking. This passage includes those (to modify Watson’s translation) who pant, puff, hail, sip, spit out the old breath and draw in the new one, practicing stretching techniques, intentionally acting for longevity (weishou 為壽)— such is the dao favored by scholars who practice therapeutic movements (daoyin 道引), who nourish bodily form (yangxing), and study longevity (shoukao 壽考) to live as long as Pengzu 彭祖, a legendary figure who is reputed to have lived for over 800 years.57 Such physiological and biospiritual paths seek to deliberately carve and coercively reshape (ke 刻) bodily being, in contrast to Butcher Ding’s unforced carving in tune with the ox.58 The coercive reshaping of embodied life (and by extension ecological life) brings peril and death according to Zhuangzi chapter three and as shown by the fate inflicted on chaos (Hundun 渾沌) by his overly helpful and good-​­willed friends in chapter seven.59 The Zhuangzi accordingly warns against using the heart-​­mind and the human measure of things to attempt to assist life and nature insofar as good-​­willed and moralistic fixations and interventions harm rather than nourish, bringing about disaster and death. Practices of life that bring about fixation easily become practices of death. This is one reason why, to engage in a contemporary Zhuangzian reflection, environmental planning and intervention would need to follow the priority of the life of the object (which is often hidden by preconceptions about usefulness and value) and nurture the fluid self-​ ­ordering patterns of life without coercive intervening in them for the sake of a better improved nature that might not only never arrive but bring desolation in its wake. The Zhuangzian-​­inspired authors of Zhuangzi chapter 15 indicate an alternative path from which the contemporary ecologist might learn. There is a path of cultivation or formation (xiu 修) that does not fixate and impose meaning (bu keyi 不刻意) through bodily and biospiritual therapeutics, moralizing ethics, strategizing politics, or limiting ideas of leisure. The way of heaven and earth is

38   Nourishing life to live long (shou 壽) without techniques (bu daoyin 不道引), receiving ( you 有) things in forgetting (wang 忘) them, in an unforced disposition of calmness and ease, silence, emptiness, and attuned action (tiandan jimo xuwu wuwei 恬淡寂寞，虛無無為).60 Rather than consuming and exhausting bodily form and natural vitality (jing 精) in toil and anxiety, the sage “nourishes spirit” ( yangshen 養神). In nourishing one’s disposition, and responding to (ying 應) and moving with (dong 動) the movement of things, one’s life accords with the workings of nature and one’s death with the transformation of things.61 Such a responsiveness without possessing (ying er bucang 應而不藏) and working with things without harming them (shengwu er bushang 勝物而不傷), so suggestive for a transformed ecological ethos, is used to clarify non-​­forced or attuned acting (wuwei) in chapter seven of the Zhuangzi, entitled the responsiveness of emperors (ying diwang 應帝王), which will be considered in greater detail in the next chapter: the heart-​­mind is like a mirror (ruojing 若鏡), not using nor welcoming (bujiang buying 不將不迎); responding without storing (ying er bucang 應而不藏), and working with things (shengwu 勝物) without injuring them (bushang 不傷).62 The focus on nourishing one’s own life and bodily form is not a responsive attunement to things insofar as such projects strive to possess and store and thereby harm the shared (mutual yet asymmetrical) elemental body of things. That is, a more genuine nourishing of life attained through cultivating nature is intertwined with (as disclosed in Daoist encountering) the myriad lives of things, calling for a condition of unforced free and easy accordance.63 What is this boundless common elemental body of things? The excavated text “All things are flowing in form” (Fan Wu Liu Xing 凡物流形) posed the question: how are things (wu) embodied (ti) if all is flowing (liu) in form (xing)?64 In the setting of the Zhuangzi, which is concerned with undoing fixations of the body and language, Deborah Sommer has distinguished four expressions for the body: (1) “a sanctimonious ritualized body” (gong 躬); (2) “a site of familial and social personhood” (shen 身); (3) “an elemental form that experiences mutations and mutilations” (xing 形); (4) “a complex, multilayered corpus whose center can be anywhere but whose boundaries are nowhere” (ti 體).65 Of these four, the second and third are the only ones that occur in the Daodejing. In the Zhuangzi, the overlapping shifting and boundless elemental ti-​­body undoes fixed ideas, hierarchically posited values, and discriminatory preferences. This multifaceted body suggests a model of mutual interthingly recognition and responsiveness in nature in nurturing of the boundless interwoven shared body of life as well as— to modify Ames and Hall language—its singularizing foci in each specific thing and in its correlational field.66 This interpretation is confirmed in another striking set of passages in Zhuangzi chapter 19 that depict attaining or mastering life in forgetting and releasing it. It begins by describing how understanding life’s situation involves not pursuing what is useless to it. Of course, what appears and what is useful are two different matters. Nourishing bodily form (yangxing) requires turning towards things in their priority: “the one who wants to nourish bodily form must

Nourishing life   39 first turn toward things.” Still, nourishing a bodily form is insufficient for preserving life.68 One must abandon seeking to deliberately shape bodily form (yumian weixing 欲免為形) and entanglements in the affairs in the world as the priority of things and the way of nature are the conditions of nurturing bodily life. One receives vitality not by forcing life but in forgetting it and according with the changing workings of nature (heaven and earth): 67

Abandon the affairs of the world, and your body will not toil. Forget life, and vitality is unimpaired. With body and vitality made whole, being one with nature. Heaven and earth are the father and mother of the myriad things joining to become a body and separating to become a beginning. When the body and vitality are not deficient, this is being able to transform. Vitality upon vitality, revolving and corresponding with nature’s transformations.69 Zhuangzi chapter 28, a miscellaneous chapter entitled “Abandoning the Throne” (rangwang 讓王), returns to this topic: one who nourishes aspiration (yangzhi 養 志) forgets bodily form (wangxing 忘形), one who nourishes bodily form forgets benefit (yangxing zhe wangli 養形者忘利), and the one who is voyaging on the dao forgets the heart-​­mind (zhidao zhe wangxin 致道者忘心).70 Cultivation proceeds through the enactment of fasting the heart-​­mind (xinzhai 心齋) and forgetting as practices of clearing and emptying as described in the fourth chapter (renjian shi 人間世) of the Zhuangzi. As illustrated in Zhuangzi chapter two, emptying dismantles the fixations of this versus that (shibi 是彼), right versus wrong (shifei 是非), life and death, and the constructed boundaries of the self (whether self-​­interested or moralistic), leading to an exemplary ecological model inspired by the Zhuangzian vision of the fluid transformative functioning of interthingly interbodily life in which genuine freedom (non-​­domination that undoes the fixation and interconnected domination of self and thing, internal human nature and external inhuman nature) is revealed.71 This is a theme further addressed at length in Chapter 4.

Reimagining a new Daoist ecological ethos Nourishing life and acknowledging death What conclusions can be drawn from the discourse of nourishing life in the Daodejing, the Zhuangzi, and other sources that share family resemblances? First, working with and attending to things and the patterns of the natural world might imply either a more or less complete non-​­interference allowing them to be themselves and operate of their own accord or non-​­interference in the sense of intervening for the sake of nourishing and not damaging them. The former might be considered more ideal, according to one model of following the way, insofar as self-​­sustaining systems should be allowed to reproduce themselves without human hindrance or help. However, it is less ideal in situations of ecological degradation that demand policies and practices of either (1) environmental sustainability and

40   Nourishing life green growth (which is typically conceived as maximizing economic value while minimizing destructive environmental impact) or, as is increasingly necessary giving declining conditions, (2) more radical degrowth and environmental restoration (which would require contesting existing presuppositions concerning usefulness, disposability, and economic value).72 In the crisis conditions that are faced today, radical yet appropriate environmental involvement is called for that works with the natural tendencies of things and tends to repairing the self-​­reproducing fabric of life and, first of all, does no further injury and harm. A responsive participation in the natural world is evident in a different model of Daoism, as non-​­indifference rather than obsessive indifference, as is evident in parts of the Daodejing and the Zhuangzi that were discussed in the present chapter. This model guides humans toward emulating heaven and earth in partaking in rather than harming the myriad creatures in their plurality and the processes of nourishing life and by implication, at least in a contemporary reinterpretation, maintaining biodiversity (such that animal individuals and species are not-​­injured and cherished in their specific moment of life) and sustainable self-​­reproducing environmental systems. It was noted above how the generative nourishing of life is depicted as greatness itself in Daodejing chapter seven as heaven and earth are long-​­lasting in selflessly (wusi zhe 無私者) living for others rather than for themselves.73 Heaven and earth follow and fulfill the dao, its generative nourishing function, by nurturing and caring for the myriad things without either self-​­limiting self-​­concern or indifference. Their generosity and nurturing care are discernible in non-​­coercive, non-​ ­dominating, and non-​­restrictive responsive action. The point of this is an exemplary ethos and culture of non-​­harming and nourishing things that each (and this is the ostensive individualistic side of Daoism embraced by the eclectic mysterious learning literati) can enact in their own manner in the conditions and rhythms of their own daily life. Second, one does not accord with the rotations of life and death for the sake of generational justice in the context of the Zhuangzi. It is noteworthy that this is one of its consequences: accepting the altering conditions of life in sharing them with others and accepting death and allowing others to flourish. This is one way in which the Zhuangzian analysis of nourishing life can inform a more adequate and responsively attuned environmental ethos and practice. Another way is in how these chapters of the Zhuangzi enact a sort of immanent critique of fixated notions of nourishing life and their limitations, pushing us from our own life to the shared elemental bodily life of nature, and disclosing how cultivating life and making it genuine needs to be conceived in relation to the happening of nature and an appropriate attunement with it. This latter topic and its import as an ecological model will be further discussed in the next chapter. Daoism as ecological ethos and praxis Life and nature transpire according to their own interrelated tendencies. This raises issues of how we should interact with this occurrence and the functioning

Nourishing life   41 of our own life. What are the consequences of manifesting dao in an ethos and praxis of nourishing life? The current chapter has delineated examples, models, and strategies of nurturing life and cultivating nature in early Daoist texts with the intention of elucidating their ecological implications for an environmentally attuned culture of nature.74 What are possible environmental implications of such models and examples of nourishing life and the body of life: of nurturing and “restoring” the asymmetrically shared ecological body of life? The interpretive strategies traced in this chapter indicate how a dao-​­oriented ethos, reimagined and reconfigured from early Daoist sources, can potentially be an orientation for nourishing the common elemental interthingly body of life as a whole rather than interpreted purely in terms of neutral indifference or as expressions of skepticism, mysticism, or metaphysics insofar as: (1) these two distinct yet ethically overlapping texts attributed to Laozi and Zhuangzi concern how one attunes and comports oneself in dwelling and wandering in the world and (2) ethics means “the art of existing” and the enactment and individuation of the dao (as way in the verbal sense of wayfaring and waymaking) in virtuosity (de). Ethics as an originary ethos and praxis, or more precisely a way of living according with dao, contrasts with the definition of ethics as a universal formula or a set of determinate commands, prescriptions, or rules, which overly limits what counts as ethical and prevents recognizing the ethical character of non-​ ­prescriptive ethical works inside and outside of the Western philosophical canon. Normatively based ethics is problematically restrictive of the scope and force of the good that occurs immanently within the relational thick of things and the deconstruction of conventional reified morality is itself a highly ethical pursuit. A Daoist reversal of conventional stratified and philosophically fixated (whether classical Confucian and Mohist, or contemporary deontological and consequentialist) moralities, and its challenging of dualistic categories of good and evil, are not merely skeptical insofar as they are aspects of a way of existing or an ethos of dwelling and walking a path between heaven and earth tending to the cultivation of nature in its altering movements. Although the early Daoist ethos in its various permutations is closer in significant ways to virtue and role ethics than it is to rule based ethics such as deontology and consequentialism, it is not those either as it shifts to assume and then undo virtues and roles.75 Its ethos is one of encounter and response (ying), which presupposes artfully cultivating nature inside and outside oneself (without duality) in spontaneity and responsive attunement. The cultivation of the non-​­cultivated— that is, of ziran (natural and spontaneous self-​­generating self-​­so-​­ness) through wuwei (as attuned, effortless, non-​­calculative, unforced ­responsiveness)—is both a paradoxical demand and ethically suggestive of how one ought to live interactively in the midst of things. Aretaic and perfectionist virtue ethical models would be inappropriate for Daoist ethics, and also by implication for a more appropriate and responsively attuned environmental ethics, to the extent that: (1) moral practices and virtues

42   Nourishing life are a part of yet do not exhaust the way that exceeds them; (2) habits, customs, and traditions motivate but are neither the goal nor a final court of appeal; and (3) aretaic ethics is complicit with inter-​­human social domination and the human domination of nature through the hierarchy and elitism of ethical perfectionism that the Daodejing and the Zhuangzi deeply place into question. In contrast to the perfectionist models of attaining mastery through self-​­power, Daoist ethics would be more fittingly characterized as an ethics of encounter between beings that prioritizes non-​­coercive responsiveness and nurturing care rather than the virtue ethical and perfectionist self-​­concerned care of the self and the forced imposition of its own paradigmatic ideal of perfection onto the world. Without reified and coercive moralistic norms of ideal perfection, “perfection” is only disclosed in the living imperfection of things (such as what is conventionally perceived to be useless, disfigured, and damaged in the Zhuangzi) and genuineness (which concerns a worldly comportment rather than a belief or existential state of mind) in ordinary common life and the environing world.76 The classical Daoist ethos is not environmentalism or ecology per se (in as much as these are shaped by modern forms of science and activism) as it enacts emptying, fasting, and forgetting to arrive at a responsive accord with the way. That being said, early Chinese philosophies have their own natural conditions of life and ecological sensibilities about nature and things in nature.77 Moreover, early Daoism has notable implications for a contemporary way of responding— inspired by and modeled in particular on the Daodejing and the Zhuangzi—to contemporary environmental concerns in how it addresses nourishing and cultivating the interthingly relationality and shared body of oneself and others and their ecological conditions. These early texts indirectly speak to—in ways that can be reimagined in an intercultural new Daoist variation that responds to our own current ­circumstances—​ environmental ethics, including an ethos of sustainability and restoration through reversal and return that characterize the very movement of the way ( fanzhe dao zhi dong 反者道之動) in DDJ 40, through the question of how one encounters and responds to natural worldly phenomena from a perspective (that is neither anthropocentric nor biocentric, humanistic nor post-​­humanistic) capable of recognizing itself as collaborating within a greater dynamic context of nature’s naturalizing that offers possibilities for cultivating genuineness (zhen) and freedom (xiaoyao you) neither of which can be reduced to an existential decision or state of mind. The happening of nature to which we can attune ourselves is distinct from the prominent conception of naturalism as the imposition of scientific and pragmatic naturalism conceived on the basis of method and calculation. Daoist sources acknowledge the priority of natural life while recognizing the diverse human roles within it. This indicates a way to contest anthropocentric and humanistic self-​­absorption as well as holistic ideologies that repress natural individuality and variety as limiting fixating perspectives that systematically confine and harm the thought and practice of the human species as embodied beings in the midst of a shared environing interbodily and interthingly world.

Nourishing life   43 The shared body of life in Neo-​­Confucianism It should be noted how significant the shared body of the world becomes in Chinese cultural and intellectual traditions. Early Daoist tendencies left their mark on later Chinese philosophies, including Neo-​­Confucian discourses that adopted the theme of the shared elemental body from sources such as the Zhuangzi to extend and universalize Confucian ethics and cosmology in response to its Buddhist critics. Giving Ruism a less anthropocentric interpretation, a number of Song-​­Ming thinkers elucidated a shared boundless elemental embodied form (yiti). Zhang Zai 張載 (1020­–​­1077) noted in his “Western Inscription” (Ximing 西銘) that the body is coextensive with heaven and earth, what directs the functions of heaven and earth directs one’s own nature, all people are siblings, and all things companions (民吾同胞, 物吾與也).78 In his “Questions about the Great Learning” (Daxue wen 大學問), Wang Yangming 王陽明 (1472­–​­1529) unfolded a noteworthy philosophy of the shared elemental body of life in the language of Ruist benevolence and of Mencius’ heart-​­mind responding to animal suffering (Mencius 2A.6) that resonates with earlier Daoist discourses of nurturing care and the shared elemental body of the Zhuangzi and reveals ecological implications in depicting how humans interact with creatures and the transforming with of their shared body: The great person considers heaven and earth and the myriad things as one body, seeing all under heaven as one family and the middle kingdom as one person … The great person does not intentionally perceive heaven, earth, and the myriad things as one body, but finds the original benevolence of the mind to be like this … On hearing the cries of distressed birds or seeing trembling animals about to be killed, the great person cannot bear their suffering and thus does his benevolence form one body with birds and animals. Birds and beasts also perceive. Seeing the plants and trees cut and broken to pieces, this heart-​­mind always feels sorrow and pity for them. Thus does this benevolence embrace plants and trees as one body … From rulers, ministers, husbands, wives, and friends down to mountains, rivers, ghosts and spirits, birds and animals, and plants and trees none should not be truly held dear in realizing this benevolence that forms one body with them. 大人者，以天地萬物爲一體者也。其視天下猶一家，中國猶一人焉... 大人之能以天地萬物爲一體也，非意之也，其心之仁本若是... 見鳥 獸之哀鳴觳觫,而必有不忍之心,是其仁之與鳥獸而為一體也。鳥獸猶 有知覺者也,見草木之摧折而必有憫恤之心焉,是其仁之與草木而為一 體也... 君臣也,夫婦也,朋友也,以至於山川鬼神鳥獸草木也,莫不實 有以親之,以達吾一體之仁...79

Conclusion Although later forms of Daoism, Confucianism, and Buddhism adopt elements of Daoist teachings, they have a radicalism that is their virtue. The deployment

44   Nourishing life of the language of paradoxes and aporias, of shifting transitions and transformations, calls for a corresponding shift in and widening of the perspective of practitioners and interpreters. The alternative is not the fixation on an impersonal, indifferent, neutral disposition, which some readings identify as the core teaching of the dao, but instead a balanced impartiality and equanimity toward one’s own (ecologically) embodied situated life that recognizes the equal parity and unique difference of beings and nurtures them. The ecological cultivation of a shared elemental body, which encompasses the non-​­human and the human, could be interpreted in this respect as the nurturing and tending of the shared body of life and its environmental conditions. This understanding suggests practicing and restoring sustainability modeled on self-​ ­reproducing self-​­patterning natural systems. These patterns have been disturbed and damaged through the extreme human activities and interventions that characterize the current era of the “Anthropocene” in which human hopes and dreams of the domination and mastery of nature have become nightmares.80 The discourses of the Daodejing and the Zhuangzi (which we interpret through later figures such as Wang Bi and Guo Xiang 郭象) do not entail an absorption in an anonymous collective whole that critics have perceived to be at work in anti-​­anthropocentric biocentric, holistic, and romantic ecophilosophies. It is not a monism that eliminates the myriad differences of things. It stresses partaking and sharing in a common elemental body in relation to the cultivation and individuation of the genuine through the freedom of being attuned with environmental conditions. This freedom is the natural attunement and ease of a non-​­absorbed and non-​­coerced participation and wandering in the multifaceted happening of the whole. This non-​­reductive pluralistic relational whole, which calls for transversing myriad perspectives as it cannot be grasped by fixating and limiting words and concepts, is designated dao.

Notes   1 On the possibility of and need for an environmental culture of nature, see Thomas Heyd, Encountering Nature: Toward an Environmental Culture (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007); Val Plumwood, Environmental Culture: The Ecological Crisis of Reason (London: Routledge, 2002).   2 Girardot, Miller, and Liu, Daoism and Ecology includes a number of essays critical of the possibility of a Daoist oriented environmentalism such as Jordan Paper’s critique of romantic fantasies about Daoism (“Daoism and Deep Ecology,” 3­–​­21).   3 See the helpful account in Ori Tavor, “Xunzi’s Theory of Ritual Revisited: Reading Ritual as Corporal Technology.” Dao 12.3 (2013): 313­–​­330.   4 Mou Zongsan, Nineteen Lectures on Chinese Philosophy: A Brief Outline of Chinese Philosophy and the Issues It Entails (San Jose: Foundation for the Study of Chinese Philosophy and Culture, 2015), 252.   5 See Lisa Raphals, “Daoism and Science,” in Xiaogan Liu, ed., Dao Companion to Daoist Philosophy (Dordrecht: Springer, 2015), 542.   6 See Creel, What Is Taoism, 1­–​­24; Michael, In the Shadows of the Dao, 90­–​­91.   7 See, for instance, DDJ 55; Zhuangzi, chapter 5 (de chong fu 德充符); Peng Yushang 彭裕商, Wenzi jiaozhu 文子校注 (Chengdu: Bashu shushe, 2006), chapter 7 (xia de 下德); Wang Bi in Lynn, Classic of the Way, 156.

Nourishing life   45   8 Lou, Wang Bi ji jiaoshi, 427­–​­430; Richard John Lynn, trans., The Classic of Changes: A New Translation of the I Ching as Interpreted by Wang Bi (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010), 396­–​­403. On the problem of profit in early Chinese thought, see Carine Defoort, “The Profit That Does Not Profit: Paradoxes with ‘Li’ in Early Chinese Texts.” Asia Major 21.1 (2008): 153­–​­181.   9 Lou, Wang Bi ji jiaoshi, 427­–​­430; Lynn, Classic of Changes, 396­–​­403. 10 “生不可益, 益之則夭也”: Lou, Wang Bi ji jiaoshi, 146­–​­147; Lynn, Classic of the Way, 156. 11 See Eduard Erkes, trans., “Ho-​­Shang-​­Kung’s Commentary on Lao-​­Tse. II (Continued).” Artibus Asiae 9.1/3 (1946): 214; Dan G. Reid, trans., The Heshang Gong Commentary on Lao Zi’s Dao De Jing (Montreal: Center Ring Publishing, 2019), 151. 12 See Michael, In the Shadows of the Dao, 206­–​­207; Kim-​­chong Chong, Zhuangzi’s Critique of the Confucians: Blinded by the Human (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2016), 90. 13 For instance, in the third “Rejoinders to Popular Conceptions” (duisu 對俗) chapter of the Baopuzi neipian jiaoshi 抱樸子內篇校釋 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1985), 46, Ge Hong contended that longevity is due to intentionally cultivating dao, not to mere naturalness (ziran) (長者, 由於得道, 非自然也). 14 See Creel, What Is Taoism, 22; Sailey, Master Who Embraces Simplicity, 77, 187, 220; Campany, To Live as Long as Heaven and Earth, 84­–​­85. 15 See Graham, Lieh-​­Tzu, 33, 44, 54, 90­–​­91. 16 Yuandao, 80­–​­81. 17 For a compelling discussion of this topic, see David Macauley, Elemental Philosophy: Earth, Air, Fire, and Water as Environmental Ideas (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2010). 18 On the figures of animals in the Zhuangzi and its commentorial tradition, see Richard John Lynn, “Birds and Beasts in the Zhuangzi: Fables Interpreted by Guo Xiang and Cheng Xuanying.” Religions 10 (2019): 445­–​­457. 19 On the interthing, see Pang-​­White, “Nature, Interthing Intersubjectivity, and the Environment,” 61­–​­78. 20 Graham, Lieh-​­Tzu, 137. 21 Graham, Lieh-​­Tzu, 147, 153. 22 Graham, Lieh-​­Tzu, 140­–​­143. 23 On zhen as “perfecting” in the sense of the self-​­cultivation of life or reality, see ­Kirkland, Taoism, chapter 5. Kirkland differentiates two ways of emptying oneself of thought and desire: (1) self-​­cultivation and (2) guarding and preserving one’s life-​ ­forces as articulated in sources like the Taipingjing (太平經) and Ge Hong. On the development and uses of “zhen” in different forms of early and later Daoism, see Poul Andersen, The Paradox of Being: Truth, Identity, and Images in Daoism (­Cambridge: Harvard University Asia Center, 2019), 67­–​­114. On the uses of zhenren in the Zhuangzi, in contrast to later Daoism, also note Daniel Coyle, “On the Zhenren,” in Roger Ames, ed., Wandering at Ease in the Zhuangzi (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998), 197­–​­210. 24 Graham, Lieh-​­Tzu, 146. 25 Lou, Wang Bi ji jiaoshi, 19; Lynn, Classic of the Way, 41. 26 Lau, Tao Te Ching, 10­–​­11; Ivanhoe, Daodejing, 27. 27 Lou, Wang Bi ji jiaoshi,19; Lynn, Classic of the Way, 63. 28 This strategy resonates in part with Buddhist informed strategies of employing skillful means to advocate ecological pluralism, as in William Edelglass, “Moral Pluralism, Skillful Means, and Environmental Ethics.” Environmental Philosophy 3. 2 (2006): 8­–​­16. 29 On post-​­humanism and Daoism, see Nathan E. Dickman, “A Zhuangzian Tangle: Corroborating (Orientalism in?) Posthumanist Approaches to Subjectivities and Flourishings.” Religions 10.6 (2019): 382­–​­390; Mario Wenning, “Heidegger and

46   Nourishing life

30 31 32 33

34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48

49 50

51

Zhuangzi on the Nonhuman: Towards a Transcultural Critique of (post) humanism,” In Neil Dalal and Cloe Taylor, eds, Asian Perspectives on Animal Ethics: Rethinking the Nonhuman (New York: Routledge, 2014), 93­–​­111. Paul W. Taylor, Respect for Nature: A Theory of Environmental Ethics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986), 60­–​­72. On the notion of strong and weak versions, see Bryan G. Norton, “Environmental Ethics and Weak Anthropocentrism.” Environmental Ethics 6. 2 (1984): 131­–​­148; Eugene C. Hargrove, “Weak Anthropocentric Intrinsic Value.” The Monist 75. 2 (1992): 183­–​­207. Lou, Wang Bi ji jiaoshi,19; Lynn, Classic of the Way, 63. On problems of holistic ecologies, and potentially for ecologies unable to adequately distinguish the human and non-​­human, see Tom Regan, “Ethical Vegetarianism and Commercial Animal Farming,” in R. A. Wasserstrom, ed., Today’s Moral Problems, 3rd Edition (New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1985); Richard A. Watson, “A Critique of anti-​­anthropocentric Biocentrism.” Environmental Ethics 5. 3 (1983): 245­–​­256; Michael E. Zimmerman, Contesting Earth’s Future: Radical Ecology and Postmodernity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994). Lou, Wang Bi ji jiaoshi, 24; Lynn, Classic of the Way, 67. Ivanhoe’s translation nicely emphasizes the body in this passage in his Daodejing of Laozi, 13. Lou, Wang Bi ji jiaoshi, 29; Lynn, Classic of the Way, 71­–​­72. Bokenkamp, Early Daoist Scriptures, 94. Bokenkamp, Early Daoist Scriptures, 95. Lau, Tao Te Ching, 22­–​­25. Lau, Tao Te Ching, 78­–​­81; Lynn, Classic of the Way, 77. Lau, Tao Te Ching, 64­–​­67. See Pang-​­White, “Nature, Interthing Intersubjectivity, and the Environment,” 61­–​­78. On optimal pollution from a human-​­centered calculative perspective, see the paradigmatic account in William F. Baxter, People or Penguins: The Case for Optimal Pollution (New York; Columbia University Press, 1974). Zhuangzi, chapter 6: “受而喜之，忘而復之”; Palmer, 1996, 48. DDJ 9; Lau, Tao Te Ching, 12­–​­13. See Fritsch, Taking Turns with the Earth. Xunzi, 21.4/5; John Knoblock, trans., Xunzi: A Translation and Study of the Complete Works, 3 volumes (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988­–​­1994), vol. 3: 102. Xunzi, 17.10; vol. 3: 20­–​­21. For approaches to Confucianism and the environment, see Mary E. Tucker and John H. Berthrong, eds, Confucianism and Ecology: The Interrelation of Heaven, Earth, and Humans (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998); Nicholas S. Brasovan, Neo-​­Confucian Ecological Humanism: An Interpretive Engagement with Wang Fuzhi (1619­–​­1692) (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2017). I discuss this issue at length from a somewhat different perspective in Nelson, “The Human and the Inhuman,” 723­–​­739. Yangxing is rarely used in early literature, appearing in the outer chapters, twice in the Huainanzi, and once in the opening passage of the ninth “Inferior Virtue” (xiade 下德) chapter of the Wenzi where its use is attributed to Laozi. On the stratification of the Zhuangzi chapters, Graham, Chuang-​­tzŭ; Esther Klein, “Were there ‘Inner Chapters’ in the Warring States? A New Examination of Evidence about the Zhuangzi.” T’oung Pao 96.4 (2010): 299­–​­369; Liu, Classifying the Zhuangzi Chapters. On sustaining life (quansheng 全生), note the remark attributed to Zihuazi (子華子) in the “Cherishing Life” (guisheng 貴生, zhongchun ji 仲春紀) section of Master Lü’s Spring and Autumn Annals (Lüshi chunqiu 吕氏春秋) that clarifies respecting life by making it significant: “全生為上，虧生次之，死次之，迫生為下。故所謂 尊生者，全生之謂. 所謂全生者，六欲皆得其宜也。” On this text, see James D.  Sellmann, Timing and Rulership in Master Lü’s Spring and Autumn Annals (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002).

Nourishing life   47 52 Brook Zyporyn, trans., Zhuangzi: The Essential Writings (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2009), 22­–​­23. 53 On the image of flow, see James Sellmann, “Butcher Ding: A Meditation in Flow,” in Karyn Lai, Wai Wai Chiu, eds, Skill and Mastery: Philosophical Stories from the Zhuangzi (London: Rowman & Littlefield, 2019), 111­–​­127. 54 Liezi 3.3; Graham, Lieh-​­Tzu, 67. 55 Mencius 1A7; Bloom, Mencius, 8. 56 On the classification of chapters, see Graham, Chuang-​­tzŭ; Klein, “Were there ‘Inner Chapters’ in the Warring States,” 299­–​­369; Liu, Classifying the Zhuangzi Chapters. 57 Burton Watson, trans., The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu (New York: Columbia University Press, 1968), 119. 58 Zyporyn, Zhuangzi, 21­–​­23. 59 Zyporyn, Zhuangzi, 21­–​­23, 54. 60 On yangsheng in this passage, note Michael, “Hermits, Mountains, and Yangsheng in Early Daoism,” 146. 61 “聖人之生也天行, 其死也物化”; Watson, Chuang Tzu, 120­–​­121. 62 Watson, Chuang Tzu, 97; Zyporyn, Zhuangzi, 54. 63 See Livia Kohn, Early Chinese Mysticism: Philosophy and Soteriology in the Taoist Tradition (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), 79. 64 Shirley Chan, “Oneness: Reading the ‘All things are flowing in form’ (Fan Wu Liu Xing 凡物流形).” International Communication of Chinese Culture 2.3 (2015): 288. 65 Deborah Sommer, “Concepts of the Body in the Zhuangzi,” in Victor H. Mair, ed., Experimental Essays on Zhuangzi, second edition (Dunedin: Three Pines Press, 2010), 223­–​­224. 66 Ames and Hall, Daodejing, 11­–​­13. 67 “養形必先之以物, 物有餘而形不養者有之矣”; Watson, Chuang Tzu, 145. 68 “而養形果不足以存生”; Watson, Chuang Tzu, 145. 69 “棄事則形不勞，遺生則精不虧。夫形全精复，與天為一。天地者，萬物之父 母也。合則成體，散則成始。” See Watson’s translation in Chuang Tzu, 145­–​­146. 70 Watson, Chuang Tzu, 246. 71 Watson, Chuang Tzu, 25; Zyporyn, Zhuangzi, 26­–​­27. 72 On this problematic, see Maria Sandberg, Kristian Klockars, and Kristoffer Wilén, “Green Growth or Degrowth? Assessing the Normative Justifications for Environmental Sustainability and Economic Growth through Critical Social Theory.” Journal of Cleaner Production 206 (2019): 133­–​­141. On Daoism and sustainability, note ­Jonathan Chan, “Ecosystem Sustainability: A Daoist Perspective,” in King-​­Tak Ip, ed., Environmental Ethics: Intercultural Perspectives (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2009), 133­–​­145. 73 Lou, Wang Bi ji jiaoshi, 19; Lynn, Classic of the Way, 63. 74 For a detailed portrayal of the idea of environmental culture and cultures of nature, see Heyd, Encountering Nature; Plumwood, Environmental Culture. 75 On virtue and role ethics in early Chinese contexts, see Roger T. Ames, Confucian Role Ethics: A Vocabulary (Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 2010); Eric L. Hutton, “On the ‘Virtue Turn’ and the Problem of categorizing Chinese Thought.” Dao 14. 3 (2015): 331­–​­353; Christine Swanton, “A Virtue Ethical Theory of Role Ethics.” Journal of Value Inquiry 50. 4 (2016): 687­–​­702. 76 On the differences between genuineness and existential authenticity, see Paul J.  D’Ambrosio, “Authenticity in the Zhuangzi? Contemporary Misreadings of Zhen 真 and an Alternative to Existentialism.” Frontiers of Philosophy in China 10.3 (2015): 353­–​­379. 77 See Nicholas S. Brasovan, “Ecological Self-​­Understanding in Early Chinese Philosophies.” International Communication of Chinese Culture 3. 2 (2016): 293­–​­303.

48   Nourishing life 78 See John A. Tucker, “Dreams, Nightmares, and Green Reflections on Kurosawa and Confucian Humanism.” UTCP-​­Uehiro Booklet 3 (2013): 47­–​­92; Mary Evelyn Tucker, “The Relevance of Chinese Neo-​­Confucianism for the Reverence of Nature.” Environmental History Review 15. 2 (1991): 55­–69; ​­ Tu Weiming, “The Ecological Turn in New Confucian Humanism: Implications for China and the World.” Daedalus 130.4 (2001): 243­–​­264. 79 Wang Yangming 王陽明, “Daxue wen” 大學問, in Wang Yangming quanji 王陽明 全集 (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1992), 967. Also compare the description of grand clarity (taiqing 太清), tranquil in repose and moving when stirred (安則止, 激則行), as being one whole body with heaven and earth (tongti yu tiandi 通體於天 地) in Huainanzi, 268. 80 Note again Adorno and Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment; Leiss, Domination of Nature; Nelson, Ethics of the Material Other; Vetlesen, The Denial of Nature.

3 Wuwei, responsive attunement, and generative nature

Figuring out how not to act Introduction Proto-​­ or early Daoist sources are replete with uses of not-​­ or non-​­ (wu 無) in expressions such as not acting, not desiring, not knowing, not intending, not using, and so on. The use of non-​­ or not-​­ might appear to entail that these expressions are derivative and ancillary to that which they are negating: the denied presence or positivity of acting, knowing, and using.1 However, the conjunction of two characters in these wu-​­ phrases is not merely a secondary negation of a primary term by the not. The “negating” aspect is not so much denial as it is an emptying made possible by a more originary nothingness and interrelated emptiness (in the Daoist sense of xu 虚). Consequently, Daoist discourses can evoke and praise nothingness as a non-​­derivative primordial generative matrix of things. Generative nothingness engenders and nourishes the myriad things. In the Yuandao, enacting and cultivating emptiness is the condition of fullness and allows one to respond and be attuned to this functioning of the nothing in things, as will be further considered in Chapter 4.2 The most well-​­recognized wu-​­expression is wuwei 無爲, which can mean not to act, a special kind of flexible, receptive, or minimal action, a way of comporting oneself or being attuned, or the functioning (wei) of nothingness (wu). In ancient sources, and in its ordinary Chinese meaning, wuwei is used to describe ordinary cases of not acting in contrast to acting. In several passages of this kind, wu operates unremarkably in the conventional sense of negation. For instance, Confucius reportedly told Zixia 子夏 in the Analects (Lunyu 論語) to “not act” like a petty scholar (wuwei xiaoren ru 無為小人儒).3 How then does not doing something become a recommendation for something else? There is a sense of wisdom in knowing when to act and knowing when not to act in early sources. This wisdom is connected with a sense of the movements of nature and a sense of aptly timed administrative, political, and military strategies. With respect to the world, one can resort to and rely on the seasons, rotations, and transformations of things rather than seek to impose upon them and disrupt them. In human affairs, there is an insight that one can accomplish more through a minimal amount of effort by allowing

50   Wuwei others to do the difficult work, without directly intervening, or that one can succeed best by remaining composed and not trying too hard or too much, allowing others to make mistakes or exhaust and defeat themselves. Different connotations of wuwei appear in the so-​­called early “schools” that are inadequately called rujia 儒家 (Confucianism), fajia 法家 (Legalism), and daojia 道家 (Daoism). The expression wuwei appears in Ruist sources, as a form of composure, while being employed most frequently—and with varying ­significance—in Lao-​­Zhuang ziranist thought as well as in Legalist, Huanglao, and syncretic political discourses in which, in the words of the opening of the recovered Mawangdui manuscript Canon of Law (Jingfa 經法): “dao generates law” (dao sheng fa 道生法).4 The same statement (dao sheng fa) is used in a different context with an emphasis on the illumination of the sage when utilized in the “Military Policy” (Bingzheng 兵政) chapter of the Pheasant Cap Master (Heguanzi 鶡冠子) (third-​­century bce).5 In the Hanfeizi, the way is designated “the beginning of the myriad things, providing the standard of right and wrong.”6 In contrast to Daoist criticisms of the reification of a normative standard, Legalist and syncretic perspectives emphasized how the way is established as law and as the normative standard by which to measure affairs and their rights and wrongs. Ruist conceptions of “non-​­action” Wuwei, as previously noted, is an expression with a range of meanings from the absence of any action at all to an attuned and responsive comportment. In some texts, it correlates with dao in the sense of a fundamental comportment or an ethos; in others, it is a dao in the sense of law or a strategic method; and there are numerous Huanglao and syncretic texts that encompass both ranges of meaning. What does wuwei mean in non-​­Daoist contexts? First, let’s consider Ruist (Confucian) discourses. It is striking that wuwei, and the allied concept of wushi 無事 (often translated as non-​­engagement or noninterference in affairs) that is important in Legalist discourses, are rarely mentioned and typically not in a philosophical way in the books attributed to the three great Ruist masters: Confucius, Mencius, and Xunzi. There is one notable exception: according to the received text of the Analects, Confucius remarked that the sagely Emperor Shun (shundi 舜帝) ruled through non-​­action (wuwei er zhi zhe 無為而治者) by staying composed and reverentially looking toward the south.7 In the Ruist setting this is taken to mean that one need not employ any effort except for perfecting virtue, allowing the world to emulate its example. The Book of Rites (Liji 禮記), a Ruist classic constructed from a variety of sources, encompasses a number of revealing statements. It states along similar lines to the Analects that the king centers his heart-​­mind and does nothing (wang zhongxin wuwei 王中心無為), thereby guarding what is right (shou zhizheng 守至正).8 It is the moral quality of the heart-​­mind that allows its non-​­doing to be efficacious. In “Questions of Duke Ai” (Aigong Wen 哀公問), there is a passage

Wuwei   51 concerning heaven bringing all things to completion through wuwei.9 The cosmological natural function of wuwei is exemplary for its moral function with the genuine ruler. The “Doctrine of the Mean” (Zhongyong 中庸) deepens the account of wuwei as a moral disposition by identifying it with sincerity (cheng 誠) through which one matches heaven and earth, generating changes without movement and accomplishing without acting.10 The ethos of wuwei is primarily a moralistic and cosmological one in Ruist discourses, in which nature and humanity cooperate to engender a harmoniously balanced and hierarchically organized state of affairs.11 Non-​­action and non-​­engagement as Legalist biopolitical strategies The connotations of non-​­ action (wuwei) and the related notion of non-​ ­engagement (wushi) are distinctive in the texts linked with the names of the retrospectively named “Legalists” Shen Buhai 申不害 (fourth century bce), Shen Dao 慎到 (c. 350­–​­275 bce), and Hanfei 韓非 (third century bce) and subsequent syncretic texts Guanzi and Huainanzi that accentuate the non-​­doing and non-​ ­engagement as a strategic method of the ruler that—as in early Daoist and Huanglao sources—correlates in Legalist biopolitics with the natural patterning and process of things. Early Legalist and Daoist thought share an overlapping conception of nature and human action, and there are later interpretations of early teachings of the way that are more Legalist than Daoist if they can even be adequately distinguished. Let’s ponder at this point the earliest of these sources that survive in fragments. Its model informs later Legalist and syncretist discourses and reveals multiple points of overlap with Daoist trends that it perhaps preceded—if one accepts the controversial argument popular among Western Sinologists that the Daodejing is a product of the Warring States period. In the “great principle” (dati 大體) fragments, Shen Buhai described governing in a language shared with early Daoism: the ruler who is skilled or good at action (shanwei 善為) relies on foolishness, stands on the unbeneficial, establishes without daring, hides in non-​­interference (cang yu wushi 藏於無事), escapes into the hidden, and shows the world non-​­action (shi tianxia wuwei 示 天下無為).12 The successful prince either does not appear or appears in the guise of foolishness, ordering affairs while not appearing to do so. Non-​­action is the face shown to the world rather than being the reality of the ruler. This strategy is biopolitically correlated with an understanding of natural and human affairs, one echoed in early Daoist sources, in which they are best managed through a minimum of direct interference. A number of images are deployed to illustrate the ruler’s disposition. The ruler is a “mirror” reflecting the light, doing nothing (wuwei) itself, and thereby allowing beauty and ugliness to manifest themselves. The ruler is also compared to a “balancing scale,” doing nothing (wuwei), and thereby allowing lightness

52   Wuwei and heaviness to disclose themselves. The more the prince steps back, the more things balance themselves. Because of this method (dao), the ruler does not publicly engage in affairs (shen yu gong wushi 身與公無事) and through non-​ ­engagement (wushi) allows the world to come to order.13 In another fragment, Shen Buhai is said to describe ruling or regulating as being cold in the winter and warm in the summer, responding to conditions, and encountering the world through non-​­knowledge and non-​­action.14 In the fragments attributed to Shen Dao, which do not use the expression wuwei but wushi, it is stated that there is non-​­involvement in affairs where there is law (shangxia wushi, wei fa suozai 上下無事, 唯法所在) and one sleeps tranquilly without dreams if one has no affairs (troubles) during the day (zhou wushi zhe, ye bumeng 晝無事者, 夜不夢).15 In another passage with affinities to DDJ 5 discussed at length in the next section, sages (shengren) are depicted as not getting involved in affairs and not worrying or anxiously caring (buyou 不憂). They partake in an impartiality modeled on that of heaven and earth, as nature nourishes people without being concerned for them, letting people find and do things for themselves.16 The prince follows law, not merely self-​­interested favoritism, partiality, or power, and the people follow their natural tendencies and interests. Rather than resulting in a condition of libertarianism or anarchism, as in some modern Western interpretations of Daoist non-​­action, the purportedly laissez faire-​­like (although they don’t emphasize individual contention, conflict, and competition) practices of non-​­action and non-​­engagement are integral to efficacious ruler and to the administrative system in Legalist biopolitical models whether they lay emphasis on law or technique. In the style of order-​­oriented Legalism ascribed to Shen Buhai, Shen Dao, or later Hanfei, as well as to the early Daoism of the Daodejing, appropriate strategies are those that mirror, match with, and respond to the world without inappropriate types of coercion, domination, or self-​­concerned involvement. Given their proximity, and their conjunction in Huanglao and syncretist political theorizing, can this form of Legalism and Daoism be effectively differentiated? For instance, would it be fair to conclude that what Legalism would apply only externally to others for the sake of reproducing power and law, Daoism applies to themselves for the sake of the dao? Are there distinguishing marks between them insomuch as the former aims at fulfilling strategic purposes and usefulness while the latter more radically places these very categories into question as reifications? These questions are more complex than might be expected. Shen Buhai reportedly stated that the way of nature is constantly correct (changzheng 常正) because it is selfless (tiandao wusi 天道無私).17 Shen valued a form of non-​ ­engagement taken as a neutral state of amoral impartiality in relation to affairs that resonates with a number of prevalent readings of Daoism that likewise accentuate affective and moral indifference and neutrality. Might there then be no marks that could adequately distinguish their respective images of the sage-​­king and forms of governing? Granting that overly static distinctions between the heavily overlapping Warring States Legalist and Daoist discourses cannot be straightforwardly maintained, and Western accounts of

Wuwei   53 Daoism often underemphasize their proximity, differences do appear to be operative that are relevant for how we should conceive an ecological ethos or culture of nature and corresponding praxis or array of practices, polices, and institutions. To provide a preliminary outline of these two historically and philosophically interconnected discourses, we could say the following. Early Legalist texts center on the prince impartially relying on and employing law, method, and strategy. The ruler remains unmoved by and disengaged in affairs, a condition achieved through enacting emptiness, while mirroring and responding to conditions and circumstances. This externally imitates the Daoist ethos while not grasping its core teachings that deconstruct strategic and pragmatic fixations. In the Daodejing, the sage-​­king does not rely on law but the dao that can reorient law, and not on names but the nameless. Those who emulate the models of dao, heaven and earth, and the sages are to be responsively attuned to and by things themselves, their patterns, and the relational nexus of reality in which they partake through the encounter with and enactment of emptiness (a topic in the next chapter).

Encountering nature and caring for the myriad things Dao follows ziran Chinese and environmental philosophical discourses appear simultaneously near to and distant from each other. Confucian, Legalist, and other early Chinese philosophies trace ways of according with and answering to nature. Contemporary environmental philosophy critically examines and constructs reasons for how humans should relate to creatures and environing worlds, and appropriate models for doing so. They both concern “nature” in a general sense while presupposing distinct understandings of what nature is and how humans should comport themselves in relation to it such that it is difficult to directly translate early Daoism into contemporary environmentalism, particularly in its prescriptive or normative forms. The only measure or norm (yidu 一度), according to the Yuandao, is abiding by the course (xun gui 循軌) of things themselves.18 Legalist and Daoist texts express a shared distrust of moralistic or moralizing ethical prescriptions and norms that signal that the good is already in disarray. Still more radically, this criticism was applied to the concept of law itself in DDJ 57 that asserts that where law is promulgated (faling zizhang 法令滋彰), the numbers of criminals multiply (daozei duoyou 盜賊多有).19 DDJ 25 does not reject creating laws because it produces offenders who break them, but (following Wang Bi’s elucidation) refers human laws to the natural world, stating that humanity models law from the example of the earth, earth from heaven, heaven from dao, and dao from the self-​­occurring of nature (人法地, 地法天, 天法道, 道法自然).20

54   Wuwei The Daodejing’s critique of law suggests that human laws are to be conceived in relation to the self-​­arising of things, the rhythms of heaven and earth, and the self-​­generation of what is as it is (ziran). This deferral from the human to the world is not complete anarchy (particularly if understood as merely subjective or individualistic in a bounded sense) in comparison with Legalist order; yet it does point toward the priority of the object in the self-​­happening of what it is in contrast to the contentions and constructs of the subject, and an ethos and culture of nature in which human laws are not overly relied upon to create more law-​­breakers and formulated in relation to the self-​­ordering of things. In another example of the prioritization of ziran in DDJ 64, instead of daring to act on their own (bugan wei 不敢為), the exemplary sages are portrayed as assisting or complementing (fu 輔) the self-​­occurring of things (wanwu zhi ziran 萬物之自然).21 This Daoist model of coordinating with things in their self-​­so naturalness is not one of neutral reaction much less indifference; it is a model of responsive participation with the self-​­generation and self-​­occurrence of things that correlates with nourishing life analyzed in the last chapter. The expression ziran is characteristic of Daoist sources until the later Warring States period when it begins to be adopted more broadly. It is present in the oldest recovered Guodian 郭店 and Mawangdui excavated Daodejing manuscripts. It is not documented in Confucian sources until Xunzi and is popularized in Han dynasty Confucianism. Ziran is barely mentioned in the surviving early Legalist sources until the text of Hanfei that is influenced at multiple levels by the Daodejing which it legalistically appropriates and reinterprets.22 In its ancient Daoist field of meanings, ziran indicates a significant way in which the Daodejing articulates a sense of “naturalness” that has a significant ecological resonance that can be reimagined as an intercultural Daoist reply to modern ecological predicaments. One dispute in environmental philosophy concerns extrinsic value (that which is externally attributed value) and instrumental value (that which has value through use and exchange) in contrast with intrinsic value (that which has value in and of itself).23 Early and a present-​­day reimagined Daoism appear closer to the “intrinsic value” side but would problematize this discourse as a moralistic way of speaking that has already lost the dao of things. It is not that things, or “nature” as the most comprehensive relational whole, “have” intrinsic value as a normatively constructed or imposed property (or set thereof) calling forth moral prescriptions. It is also not the case that things should be defined as “valuable” by humans assigning values and interests to things that have no possibility of self-​­value and self-​­interest in humanly defined terms. The short-​ ­lasting (flowers, insects, and sea creatures), the long-​­abiding (rivers, mountains, and forests), and the seemingly permanent (heaven and earth) are to be encountered, recognized, and valued as intrinsically being themselves in their own self-​ ­formation and their own duration of life and then allowed to depart in their passing.24 That which is intrinsic is not so much a value as it is that which immanently belongs to the self-​­so-​­ness of their moment of happening. That is to say, they are to be cherished in their specific life and released in their death.

Wuwei   55 This point entails that the very distinction between instrumental and intrinsic value is to be overcome. Nature, understood in its ziran, is not merely a question of humanly created value but of recognizing the non-​­instrumental intrinsic character of things themselves, their usefulness to themselves (a good of their own) despite human categorizations of usefulness and uselessness (good as being “good for”). The range of things includes of course non-​­human entities and self-​ ­reproducing relational systems such as environmental and ecosystems whose moments of life, that which is as it is, call for nurturing and cherishing. Contemporary environmental discourse should encourage capacities to encounter, follow, embrace, and respond to things in their own course and ways of being. Following things in their own course (shun wu ziran 順物自然 in Zhuangzi chapter seven), because of their own self-​­occurring (yin ziran 因自然 in Zhuangzi chapter five), and recognizing the perspectives of self-​­generative realities (whether non-​­human or human) are basic distinctive themes of early Daoist sources—and later discourses inspired by them such as Wang Bi, Guo Xiang, and “mysterious learning” in the post-​­Han Period—that are profoundly ecological in their implications.25 Non-​­purposive Daoism contests fixating and limiting perspectives and thus does not establish one law, method, or norm by which all things and perspectives can be measured and judged. It would accordingly not offer grounds for calling for either a purely anthropocentric or biocentric ethics that calculates benefits and losses for humans or for ecosystems or some other dimension of the natural world. Daoist multi-​­perspectivalism entails a praxis of embracing difference and is neither humanist nor anti-​­humanist in encompassing both of these and other yet to be imagined possibilities.26 Its contesting and shifting of fixated and reified perspectives is a question of encountering, perceiving, and interacting with things in their own terms and from their own perspectives rather than from a limiting human perspective—a challenge that has more radical incarnations in interrupting the perpetuation of conventional prejudices and in the reversals of perspectives in the Zhuangzi. Daoist ziran as a contemporary ecological example and model One might be tempted to categorize early Daoism as a variety of naturalism.27 This should be resisted given the hegemonic understanding of naturalism. In addition to involving a different way of encountering and experiencing nature through its instrumentalization and oblivion, modern Western naturalism signifies the priority of nature as understood through method and technique: namely, those associated with the natural sciences. Naturalism imposes a construct of what nature must be according to a human sensibility of what counts as useful and knowable and is deeply complicit with the domination of nature. It is not itself naturalistic in the Daoist sense of attuning itself to the self-​­generative naturalness of things. Early conceptions of ziran were not developed in the context of or to respond to the current phase of ecological crisis-​­tendencies or contemporary environmental

56   Wuwei philosophy. Equating these radically distinctive discourses would be an anachronistic conflation that should be avoided. Still, this encounter with and experience of what is as it is (ziran) continues to teach lessons and inspire exemplary models that can inform and potentially transform contemporary reflection on ecology and the environment. In a new Daoist reconfigured ziran (that is, the pure anarchic un-​ ­modeled happening that even dao models itself upon) inspired model, policies and practices of ecological sustainability and restoration are encouraged. Daoism is suggestive for an animal ethics as well as environmental ethos.28 Animal and organic life are assisted and nurtured by cultivating their own self-​­so tendencies and patterns that flourish on their own if they are not overly used, exploited, dominated, and degraded. In its critical confrontation with the prevailing forms of conventional and Confucian ethics in ancient China, early Daoism contests three features of oppressive ideological systems—as described in Karen J. Warren’s delineation of ecofeminism—non-​­hierarchy, non-​­duality, and non-​­domination in order to not harm, release, and assist the myriad things.29 Also in resonance with contemporary ecofeminism, ancient Daoist texts sense the complicity between the domination of nature and domination of women, emphasizing the emancipatory import of the feminine, even as it did not essentialize and reify it, and embracing what was systematically and ideologically lowered and subordinated. Contemporary environmental philosophy, policy, and practice could enact a newly reimagined and interculturally renewed new Daoist ecological model by working with the natural tendencies in things toward restoring sustainable, functional, self-​­reproducing relational systems that constitute the asymmetrically shared body of life. The new ecological sagehood transformationally not harming and “working with things” for the sake of ecological flourishing must also encompass human beings, in all of the complexity of their self-​­perceived individual and social self-​­interests and motivations, insofar as these (1) resist purely moralistic appeals and legal penalties and have to be guided through their own sense of life, (2) have been constructed and reified through the ideological image of the separate self-​­contained possessive individual that relentlessly pursues its desires in the struggle for existence, and yet, through the formation of self-​­perceived desires and motivations, are not purely illusory and potentially cannot be fully emptied or deconstructed. Human individual and collective activities have had a decimating effect on the world that reveals the imperative for a different way of acting and dwelling in relation to the world they inhabit: one that responsively attunes itself and can be in accord with the self-​­generative capacities of things and their interthingly relational wholes. This ecological ethos and imperative to take care of the natural tendencies of things and their relations that provide their own model of flourishing is highly ethical, if not in the instrumental or moralistic senses of calculation and rule-​­following, as it calls for mimetically and adoptively learning and relearning to emulate, imitate, and intervene in without harming self-​­sustaining relational forms of life and environmental systems. We learn ecologically from exemplary sages who learn from nature to “nourish

Wuwei   57 life” just as natural phenomena (heaven and earth, the waters and living things) nourish us. The Yuandao stated that the natural forms and ways of things and the conditions according to which they live and flourish should not be altered, as life is nourished through non-​­coercive action and receptive stillness.30 Can ancient teachings about preserving the life of things teach us today how to ecologically sustain life? Let’s return to the indifferent neutrality objection. One critique of the potential environmental significance of Daoism is that its way of relating to nature entails a variety of indifferent fatalism that demands accepting whatever is happening as natural. Is it the case that Daoism is disinterested in and neutral to the world in this way or does it call for a more fundamental attunement in which one responds to and fosters the life of things while acknowledging their transience and mortality? On the indifference and cruelty of nature So far this book has articulated archetypal Daoist conceptions of nourishing life and according with things in their own ways of being with an eye toward their contemporary environmental implications. What then of the indifference and the brutalities of life and nature that are expressed not only in modern scientific accounts of nature but also in classic Chinese philosophical sources? In Daoist, Legalist, and syncretic sources, the sages reject the conventional excellences and virtues promoted in Confucian and Mohist teachings. They do not model themselves according to benevolence or humaneness but model themselves on nature, freeing themselves of the anxiety and worry of affairs, and cultivating their virtue (de). In a passage attributed to Shen Dao, we find the following: Heaven is bright and does not worry about people’s darkness; earth is fruitful and does not worry about people’s poverty; the sage is virtuous and does not worry about the dangers afflicting people. 天有明, 不憂人之暗也；地有財，不憂人之貧也；聖人有德，不憂人 之危也。31 That is to say, nature and the sages do not worriedly concern themselves with others, and they do not directly engage in arranging affairs (wushi). Nonetheless, according to their own natures, heaven provides the light that humans can access to illuminate themselves, earth offers the generative conditions that humans can employ to nourish themselves, and the sage-​­kings practice non-​­maleficence in doing no harm (wuhai 無害) while providing for the conditions according to which people can eliminate the harm they do to one another and find peace. A controversial and disputed chapter of the Daodejing, often paired with the Legalist sounding elements in DDJ 3 and with Shen Dao’s praise of the impartiality of nature and the sage-​­kings, appears to accentuate the indifference and neutrality, as well as the non-​­benevolence of the natural world:

58   Wuwei Heaven and earth are not benevolent, treating the myriad things as straw dogs. The sage is not benevolent, treating the people as straw dogs. The space between heaven and earth is like a bellows: As emptiness increases, they inhale less and less; as they press together, they expel more and more. Too much talk is merely chatter; it cannot match retaining emptiness. 天地不仁, 以萬物為芻狗; 聖人不仁, 以百姓為芻狗。 天地之間, 其猶橐 籥乎? 虛而不屈, 動而愈出。多言數窮, 不如守中。32 Does this passage not only discard conventional morality, such as in the sense of moralizing about benevolence, that many readers notice, but also even an ethos of encountering and responding to the myriad things and the world? Early Daoist sources, above all the Zhuangzi, have been more broadly and forcefully interpreted as skeptical of ethical conceptions and as fundamentally amoral.33 A number of commentaries have construed this passage in this spirit as an endorsement of impartiality without either love or hatred of things and persons. It is indeed a form of impartiality in the sense of not being biased by preferential love and hatred. Nonetheless, this does not mean that it is without love and nurturing care. Wang Bi’s interpretation of DDJ 5 accords with the passage cited from the fragments of Shen Dao. Heaven and earth allow the myriad things to manage themselves according to their natural tendencies and each thing has what is appropriate to its use. Established and institutionalized benevolence loses its originary authenticity and sincerity. It is not that natural kindness is bad, much less that things and people are worthless, but they are to be treated in an impartial manner that allows them to live and perish on their own terms.34 The Xiang’er Commentary moralistically glosses these statements as meaning they are not benevolent to the bad while being benevolent to the good: even kings are straw dogs when they fail to govern properly.35 The Heshang Gong states that heaven and earth nourish the myriad things and the sages nourish people according to their own natural tendencies (ziran) without moralistic or calculative expectations of reciprocation. The sages care and respond to things without calculation, expectation, or worried concern.36 The rejection of benevolence concerns a narrow moral vision in contrast to the cosmic ethos of dao. Building on interpretations that indicate how an ethos is involved in DDJ 5, another reading is conceivable given early Daoist interpretations of life and death and of responsiveness discussed throughout the present book. As is clarified in the fourteenth tianyun 天運 chapter of the Zhuangzi, the straw dog (chugou 芻狗) is a ceremonial ritual object that received reverential recognition during the ritual and is afterwards discarded.37 The straw dog image indicates that rites and the sensibility of ritual propriety are not to be reified. In Zhuangzi chapter fourteen, Laozi is portrayed as convincing Confucius of the need to release and forget the ancients and the dead, as one transforms responding to the living and the changing course of things while letting go of the dead and releasing the past. This aspect of Daoism can be seen as advising

Wuwei   59 a strategy of environmental intergenerational justice and ecological sustainability (and not mere indifference) insofar as return to the past condition (as it was) is impossible. Daoism has been critiqued as indifferent to the emotions, as examined elsewhere in the present work. Tim Jensen has argued in a recent work for the importance of feelings of guilt and grief in motivating ecological change, describing how grief is an expression of care and love.38 Critical social theory has recognized how forms of nostalgia, mourning, melancholy, and grief are not merely reactionary but can have transformative import insofar as they resist the complete instrumentalization and domination of nature and life. Daoism does not exclude all grief and mourning, as Zhuangzi initially mourned for his wife and the Daodejing chapters 30, 31, and 69 call for a mournful and reluctant attitude when compelled to engage in force or war due to the lives lost. At the same time, early Daoism teaches forgetting and letting go of the past to contest its reification. Melancholic and nostalgic attachments to past cultural and environmental forms of life that cannot be revived are abandoned for the sake of responsively cultivating restored patterns of nourishing and flourishing life that best approximate them under current conditions. A Daoist ecology would advise following and emulating the exemplary self-​­generating changes of climates, ecosystems, and environments, allowing them to transform in their own ways, and restoratively assisting and nurturing (insofar as humans are players in ecological processes) for the sake of therapeutically healing their own self-​ ­generative patterns. In DDJ 5, the space between being like the bellows increases and decreases: as unique things arise and disappear, they are recognized in their life and let go of in their death. The “non-​­action” of the exemplary sages not only does no harm nor injury to things. It is not a negative restriction on committing harm that leads to inaction due to anxiety and fear of committing it. Modeling themselves on the patterns of heaven and earth, they responsively accord with the naturalness of things and a nurturing care (that cannot be a form of mastery) for life in its own transient yet significant moment. A more adequate ecological culture and ethos of nature needs to recognize the priority of things that exist for themselves beyond human desires and calculations and acknowledge generational death as part of the seasonality of things and the rotating processes of arrival, departure, and taking one’s turn. Intergenerational justice and ecological restoration operate within the parameters of the death and rebirth of things. The Daodejing: from morality to nurturing care Do Daoist sages exist beyond all senses of care and love? Not according to the texts that recognize their elemental nourishing care. No doubt they are depicted as tranquilly dwelling beyond ordinary afflictive emotions, desires, and attachments: they have a measure of impartiality in avoiding discriminatory and preferential treatment, even that which is accorded to moralistic or meritocratic elites as in Ruism. Yet, unlike the early Legalist texts considered previously that

60   Wuwei also stress being in accord with the naturalness of things and affairs, the Daodejing contains a series of passages that recognize the value of a Daoist form of nurturing care, kindness, or compassion (ci 慈) and love (ai 愛).39 Freedom from “care” as anxious and worrying concern (wushi) does not mean being without care as love of the body of the self and the world elucidated in the last chapter. The nourishing of life analyzed in the last chapter is a form of non-​­self-​ ­absorbed, and accordingly non-​­self-​­anxious care that is to be enacted in DDJ 19 through lessening self-​­concern and reducing desires (shaosi guayu 少私寡欲) in embracing the genuinely plain and simple (jiansu baopu 見素抱樸).40 Such nurturing also resonates with the language of the feminine and the maternal as generative and nurturing found throughout the Daodejing that counters the patriarchal emphasis on the masculine in other Chinese philosophies. The key roles of images of the maternal and the feminine counterbalance overemphasizing the masculine that also has its roles in things yet cannot represent and master the whole relational nexus of things. The feminine should not be essentialistically reified nor stereotyped given the shifting and reversible character of gender in early Daoist and yinyang 陰陽 patterns of thinking.41 In addition to nurturing (and potentially environmentally restoring) the conditions of life, Daoist sources speak of the love and care as well as the impartiality of the sages. This ethos of an impartial yet responsive nurturing care overlaps with while being clearly distinct from the teachings of Mo Di 墨翟 and the Mohists that posits a disinterested impartial love (jian’ai 兼愛) as a universal normative rule that informs moral judgments and calculations of rights and wrongs.42 The Daodejing and the Zhuangzi contain numerous statements that challenge the moralizing and moral theorizing of the Ruists and Mohists. In DDJ 19, benevolence and righteousness are to be discarded (jueren qiyi 絕仁棄義) so that people can once again be filial and caring (min fu xiaoci 民復孝慈). The Daodejing’s dismantling of the fixated norms and prescriptions of conventional morality occurs, as Wang Bi noted, not to repudiate but for the sake of what that moral language aims at yet fails to reach: the love of family and of others that Ruist discourse defines as the most essential feature of human life.43 In Wang Bi’s interpretation, even with its Huanglao Legalist elements as evident in his reading of DDJ 5, the Daodejing (and Daoist discourses more broadly) is not a-​­, anti-​­, or im-​­moral while rejecting moralistic ethics as inadequately ethical as an originary way of dwelling with things.44 The Daodejing’s critique of virtues contests the artificiality and calculative cunning of morality and moralists for the sake of the genuineness and sincerity of an ethos as a way of living that mirrors and echoes the natural tendencies of diverse things and their dao. It is also along these lines that DDJ 81 calls for recognizing the genuine reality (dao) in non-​ ­speaking rather than fixating and being captured in words that distort and obscure it. DDJ 67, which forms one basis of ethics in later Daoist lineages, includes nurturing care as the first of the three treasures (sanbao 三寳) that also embrace frugality/moderation (jian 儉) and humility or not daring to be first (bugan wei tianxia xian 不敢為天下先): “it is because of nurturing care that one is brave

Wuwei   61 (ci gu neng yong 慈故能勇), moderation that one is generous, and not being first that one can lead. Nurturing care results in victory in wartime and safekeeping in peacetime. Heaven assists and nurturing care is fostered.”45 Nurturing care entails not wasting life in war and peace. The concept is linked with the message in DDJ 30, 31, 68 and 69 to only engage reluctantly in war and always without celebration in mourning for the lives lost. Further passages elaborate on the sage’s comprehensive love: loving people and governing the country (aimin zhiguo 愛民治國) in DDJ 10; loving oneself (one’s embodied being) as much as one loves the world in DDJ 13; the sages impartially save all and discard none, loving the material (the people) with whom they work in DDJ 27; and loving oneself without treasuring or overly esteeming oneself in DDJ 72. These chapters indicate the ways in which nurturing care and love are significant. Along with nourishing life, they help clarify the meaning of “non-​­engagement in affairs” and “non-​­action” (which indicate non-​­coercion and being attuned) in the Daodejing.

Wuwei, responsive attunement, and a new Daoist ecology Non-​­action, non-​­engagement, and responsive attunement Wuwei (literally, not to act that is interpreted as attunement in the Daoist context) guides the basic perspectives expressed throughout the Daodejing. It is explicitly referenced in the received Wang Bi edition in nine chapters: 2, 3, 37, 38, 43, 48, 57, 63, and 64. Only three chapters of the Daodejing (including two which overlap) use the expression wushi (literally, not to engage in affairs) that is more prevalently utilized in early Legalist sources: 48, 57, 63. As described previously above, both expressions are often identified and interpreted as expressing a disposition of indifference and neutrality in the entangled midst of the worldly concerns and busyness. This is part of their range of meanings even in Daoist sources. However, there is another range of meanings that is highlighted in Daoist sources and also occurring at times in Legalist, Huanglao, and syncretic sources. They also signify acting and engaging in a different manner than conventional ways of doing so and, more crucially, concern one’s disposition. Disposition in this context is not the set nature and fixed character of the person that is the object of study in virtue ethics; it is more deeply intersubjectively and interthingly—disregarding neither the human nor the non-​­human— interactive and relational. Wuwei does not grasp or reject, pick or discard. It is not a deliberate or purposive choice made between action and inaction, assertion and withdrawal, willing and not willing. DDJ 81, for example, does not reject acting (wei) but overly assertive and contentious action: “heaven’s way is to benefit without harming; the way of the sages is to act without contention” (shengren zhi dao, wei er buzheng 聖人之道, 爲而不爭). It is not solely about agents calculating the minimal degree of necessary worldly intervention. Wuwei is misconstrued if

62   Wuwei conceived according to the categories of action and subjectivity, even if as a passive or minimal action, since it expresses more fundamentally being responsively attuned in interacting with the transformations of the world. The sages and sage-​­kings echo, mirror, and resonate with things not so much as detached, fixed, and self-​­enclosed observers but as responsively attuned within the shifts of affairs and movements of things without being anxiously self-​­concerned or engaged in attempting to externally coerce or dominate them. In what senses does the Daoist sage, as depicted in the Daodejing, not engage in and interfere with affairs? In what way should they be non-​­engaged or non-​ ­interfering in worldly affairs? DDJ 48 begins by distinguishing the acquisition of learning and knowledge, which pursues expanding itself each day, and acting according to the way (weidao 為道) that diminishes itself each day until it becomes the “non-​­action” of being responsively attuned and nothing is then left undone (wuwei er wu buwei 無為而無不為). The world is gained by not being engaged in/troubled by affairs (qu tianxia chang yi wushi 取天下常以無事).46 Wang Bi, who takes this chapter to be about ruling, noted that diminishing (sun 損 that frequently has a negative meaning of loss) signifies the emptying of the nothing (xuwu 虛無) and non-​­affairs (wushi) means being stirred by or moving (dong 動) in accord with things in all of their variation.47 Two points can be made at this time. First, wuwei transpires as a diminishing and emptying through which one becomes attuned to things and can respond to them in their self-​­so-​­ness; it is an exemplary ethical model to be emulated and practically enacted.48 Second, wushi occurs as a non-​­ absorption or non-​ ­immersion in the self-​­concerned busyness of worldly affairs such that one can be genuinely stirred and moved by things. Neither expression as deployed in DDJ 48 entails a denial of the world, except the world of anxious and obsessive self-​ ­involvement. They express instead a release through the enactment of emptiness into the interthingly world in which things are encountered, their priority recognized, and their singular moment cherished. Chapters 57 and 58 appear close to the language of early Legalism while bringing it to a radically different conclusion: DDJ 58 poses the question of who can know and posit the highest standard or measure, concluding that there is none (wuzheng 無正). It notes that the perceived good easily produces what is monstrous (shan fu wei yao 善復為妖) and that the people are most genuine and flourishing where the state is dull and weak.49 As mentioned previously, DDJ 57 stated that relying on prohibitions impoverishes the people and relying on laws generates criminals. Instead of building the power of the state and malnourishing the people, wushi and wuwei are advocated for the genuine ruler: “I do nothing (wo wuwei 我無為), and people transform themselves; I am tranquil (jing 靜), and people correct and regulate themselves; I do not engage in affairs (wushi), and people prosper on their own; I am without desires (wuyu 無欲), and the people simplify themselves.”50 The expressions wuwei and wushi point toward allowing the people to regulate themselves just as one lets the myriad things order themselves. Early Daoist sources observed the disruptions of a developing agricultural civilization and

Wuwei   63 recognized how systematic human behaviors can disrupt and undermine self-​ ­sustaining ecological systems, a disruptiveness that has only increasingly intensified and become the norm in modernity. A contemporary “new Daoist” reimagining of the model indicated in DDJ 57­–​­58 suggests how politics and political ecology, which will be analyzed in Chapter 5, require maintaining the conditions according to which persons and beings can flourish on their own while avoiding interventions for the sake of a perceived good that results in disrupting the generative nourishing and flourishing patterns of life. DDJ 63 further clarifies wuwei and wushi. It begins with the statement: act without acting, be involved without entangled or troubled involvements, taste without tasting (wei wuwei, shi wushi, wei wuwei 為無為, 事無事, 味無味).51 In DDJ 64, the non-​­acting of wuwei is identified with non-​­harming and non-​­ruining (wubai 無敗), which is a key aspect of the genuine sage in the Daodejing. The sage is portrayed here as neither using and ruining things nor clutching onto and losing things. By not coercively acting or daring to place themselves first, as noted in the previous discussion of ziran, the sages help support the myriad plurality of things in their own singular natural conditions.52 Further, ziran is noteworthy in how it brings in the ethical significance of things without requiring the questionable presupposition—employed for instance in Taylor’s biocentrism— of good or goal for each thing and a teleological order of nature.53 Based on the portrayal articulated here, there are two correlated aspects of the Laozi to keep in mind. First, action, engagement/involvement, and tasting are transformed through the not (wu), instead of completely eliminated in the sense of an antithesis or negation of action, involvement, tasting, or—in other passages—desire and knowing. The not in such expressions has the function of emptying, dismantling fixation, and releasing rather than negating in the sense of either logical negation or denial. Second, non-​­action and non-​­intervention in affairs can be clarified as other ways of acting and engaging—namely, as response (ying) and stirred movement (dong)—in the interthingly context of the self-​­occurrence of innumerable things. This interpretation answers the objection that Daoism advocates an extreme form of indifference and non-​­intervention that would passively and fatalistically accept anything that occurs whether it is flooding water or the spread of a virus. In contrast to fatalism, the exemplary sages do not overly desire or fear the happenings of the world, as they responsively accord with and transformatively work with things and their natural tendencies that encompasses balancing and limiting the harms that they can do. It is in this context of non-​­indifference to and nurturing working with the myriad things that a Daoist environmental ethics not only permits but encourages and can orient ecological restoration and sustainability through a guiding environmental aesthetic and ethics of simplicity, stillness, and emptiness. The functioning of emptiness and nothingness is a condition for and intertwined with the functioning of an unrestricted nurturing care and solidarity. Practices of nourishing and sustaining through attuned responsiveness and stirred motility can help constitute and motivate an environmental culture and life-​­praxis. A non-​­indifferent engaged Daoist ecology on behalf of things

64   Wuwei and relational environmental wholes is not oxymoronic depending on how that engagement with things occurs—if it is calculative and coercive action (wei) or if it is an ecologically attuned responsiveness (wuwei) that in non-​­doing does more than merely allowing the other to speak as it is in its own language. Wang Bi’s Laozi: is the sage indifferent or responsive? Wang Bi is a controversial figure who some scholars deny is a Daoist at all because of his focus on a philosophy of nothingness instead of religious biospiritual practices.54 However, this assertion is misleading, as Wang’s thinking of practice is deeply informed by the Daodejing. Practice is thought of precisely in relation to enacting emptiness in relation to generative nothingness. He is considered an eclectic and not a purely Daoist thinker since he resisted advocating a doctrine or school of thought and praised Confucius (while dismissing the Confucians).55 Yet this freedom from a fixed perspective and deployment of Confucius as an exemplary sage is also seen in the Zhuangzi. In any case, the Daoist dimensions of Wang’s writings helpfully clarify the centrality of non-​ ­indifferent responsiveness and enacting emptiness in the Daodejing and his interpretation has guided in part the interpretation of dao according with ziran in the present work. To turn now to the nexus of issues regarding emotional and existential aspects of indifference and responsiveness, which distinguished Wang’s perspective from other thinkers of dark or mysterious learning (xuanxue, sometimes controversially designated “neo-​­Daoism” due to its Confucian and eclectic elements), it should be asked: does Wang’s thinking of nothingness undercut or in some sense inform responsiveness and the myriad things, saying and the said, reflection and change? He Shao 何劭 (c. ce 236­–​­302) depicted in his biography of Wang, the Wang Bi zhuan 王弼傳, Wang’s criticism of the claims of He Yan 何晏 (ce 196­–​­249) regarding the sages’ indifferent lack of emotions and unmoved instead of moved responsive attunement with the myriad things.56 The questions at stake in this controversy are: Is sageliness the integration and balancing of the emotions or their denial and overcoming? Is the sage in a condition of indifference or responsiveness? Wang maintained the significance of affectivity in responding to the myriad things and their changes, which the affectively indifferent sage would lack.57 In addition, affectivity is part of the functioning of images and metaphors. Wang’s turn to affectivity of the sage and the subjectivity of the interpreter is a departure from the impersonal cosmological systems that characterized Han dynasty intellectual discourses. Wang’s commentaries suggest how forms of subjectivity, individuality, and affectivity have fundamental functions in the life that would be sagely as they help constitute the significance of the classics, language, and the cosmos.58 The commendation of eccentricity, independence, and uniqueness in Laozi, Zhuangzi, and Wang Bi, amongst others, is a reminder that singularity is as important as equality and relationality in these forms of Daoist philosophy. The importance of the individual is recognized in this spirit in chapter eight of the Zhuangzi when it states

Wuwei   65 how the individual is correlational with nature rather than merely absorbed into a static uniform unity: “Heaven and earth are born together with me, and the myriad things and I are one” (tiandi yu wo bingsheng, er wanwu yu wo weiyi 天地與我並生, 而萬物與我為一).59 Taking seriously individual life and its possibilities for responsive attunement implies that the emotions and workings in the self cannot be ignored in considering its dynamics. He Shao, to take clues from his biography of Wang once more, described the close interconnectedness between responsiveness (ying 應) and the affects or emotions (qing 情), which are to be emptied and freed rather than repressed, in Wang’s philosophy: Since sages are the same as other people in having the five emotions, they could not fail to respond to things without feeling sadness or pleasure. Nevertheless, the emotions of sages are such that they may respond to things without becoming attached to them. Currently, because the sages are considered free of such attachment, one immediately thinks it can be said that they no longer respond to things.60 He Yan, Zhong Hui 鐘會 (ce 225­–​­264), and subsequent xuanxue thinkers contend that the sages lack the emotions with all of their dependencies and pathologies. Wang rejected this position, placing him outside of the “mysterious learning” discourse and in proximity to Ruism in some accounts. This is erroneous: it would be historically and conceptually insufficient to contend that Ruist discourses are interested in the ethical priority of affective life and the positive function of the affects in the capacity to be responsively attuned to things and their dao.61 Wang’s arguments for movement and attunement are more conducive for an ecological ethics and praxis. The prioritizing of the natural tendencies of what is as it is (ziran) and responsive attunement (wuwei) in Wang leads him to a fuller account of the role of the emotions in the sage’s art of existence that is exemplary for others and potentially for us in being ecologically resituated. In Wang Bi’s analysis regarding the emotions of sages, which is motivated by the Daodejing here rather than Ruist sources, the affectively indifferent person is deficient, incapable of genuine attunement and responsiveness, and consequently not an authentic sage. The sage is not different in being affectively deficient and incapable, according to Wang, but rather is more fully adept at working with and balancing the emotions and other internal forces.62 Prototypical sages are precisely those who are capable of balancing and harmonizing the emotions and forces of life (qi) instead of anxiously avoiding and trying to repress these self-​­so natural tendencies. They respond to the myriad things in their temporal life without being attached to or possessed by them in having the aptitude to affectively and bodily respond without attachments and entanglements, integrating the forces of life, and harmonizing with nothingness (ti chonghe yi tongwu 體沖和以通無).63 Interpretations of Daoism that require the indifference of the sage would exclude the Zhuangzi that in chapter thirty-​­three contrasts the moni-​ ­perspectivalism and indifference of Shen Dao, who “did not know dao” (Shen Dao

66   Wuwei buzhi dao 慎到不知道), with the multi-​­perspectivalism and echoing responsiveness of Zhuangzi.64 This approach would also undermine core teachings of the Daodejing, if we reject the problematic interpretation that it advocates a form of indifference. As we have seen, the text deployed notions of “working with” and responding without attachment. Based on these passages, Wang Bi elucidated his own predominantly Daoist conception of attuned responsiveness. In his writings, Confucius as the primary figure of the sage is depicted as a Daoist sage embodying nothingness and responsive attunement. The flexible and varied capacity to respond without assertion, domination, and forced coercive action (wuwei er wu 無爲而無) to the myriad plurality of things in being oriented to nothingness is a key element in Wang’s reading of the Daodejing.65 Encountering and responding to things is, however, not merely based on the emotions. It is more fundamentally related to one’s responsiveness to nothingness. Wang depicted the Laozi text itself as enacting what it silently teaches in terms of its embodiment of responsiveness from and to the nothingness of dao. Questions of response and the absence of response, resonance and the lack of resonance, are articulated in Wang’s hermeneutics of the Daodejing and the Yijing. The realization of beginning and completing, embodying and enacting responsiveness characterizes the very structure and hermeneutics of the Daodejing, as a source that generates innovative ways of speaking in responsive sympathy or negative antipathy. Wang’s clarification of the affective aspects of responsiveness is informed by his hermeneutics of the Daodejing and the generative nothingness that he identified as its fundamental teaching that contests and points beyond the constraints of concepts, images, and words examined in Chapter 4. Wang’s Daodejing suggests words and models are to be performatively enacted, as one practices what is inexpressible in words. How do such emptying defixating practices lead to being responsively attuned to the functioning of the nothing and to the myriad things? Wang construes the enactment of emptying in his commentary on Daodejing chapter 38 as an “attuned responsiveness” (wuwei er wu) “out of nothing” (wu yi wei 無以爲) in contrast to those who act coercively, and without responsive attunement, “out of something” (you yi wei 有以爲).66 As will be considered further in the next chapter, emptying and undoing fixations allows for the releasement in which interthingly responsive attunement (and a more ecological life-​­praxis) can be cultivated and fostered. An ethos and culture of ecological responsive attunement There are numerous questions one could pose about the possible consequences of early Daoist discourses for contemporary ecology. Can archaic Daoist discourses speak to our current ecological crises and worries? Should nature be thought of in its own terms and language without reducing it to human concerns and calculations while not forgetting the roles of humans in natural worlds? Can the shared ecological body (that is, its overlapping interactive processes) of life be nurtured, restored, and sustained through practices and policies of nourishing

Wuwei   67 and caring for life? To what extent is responsive attunement to the generative self-​­occurring of nature meaningful for an ecological culture of nature? Does ecology need to think about emptying, undoing fixations, and nothingness? Living from creatures and environments is inevitably a parasitical predation and feeding from that is better understood more humbly as theft than ideologically misconstruing it as mastery and dominion. The Liezi records how the world and the body are not our own possessions and how such illusory fixations confine and damage our own lives as well as the lives of things around us.67 It tells how humans do not recognize their own parasitical way of being and their pilfering from the life of other things. Human life is inevitably a parasitical living from and a thief’s stealing from the shared elemental interthingly body of life and the natural world in which each of us partakes. If this narrative reflects the truth of the human condition, namely, that each of us lives from a borrowed body and time, then we must accordingly learn how to appropriately live and steal from others without damaging and undermining the vitality of our host, which would lead to our demise, by graciously following its self-​­so movements and tendencies rather than those we transient visitors and guests would wish to impose. Humans are generational guests taking their turns dwelling between heaven and earth. They take turns sharing the earth not only with other generations of humans but with generations of myriad creatures in their seasonal temporality (shi). They are not the masters they imagine themselves to be as they seek to systematically dominate nature, motivated by the fear of need and death. Without much if any exaggeration, we here today, not to speak of the coming generations, are faced with the increasingly grim realities of climate chaos (in which seasonal temporality is disturbed), overcrowded cities, plastic-​­filled oceans, pollution-​­filled air, perishing species, devastated ecosystems, and surviving in the increasingly and seemingly now inevitable nightmarish reality of— as already theorized in The Dialectic of Enlightenment written by Theodor W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer in 1944—the “disaster triumphant” of an ecologically decimated earth rooted in the “domination of nature.”68 In light of the prescient and disturbing analysis of Adorno and Horkheimer, and more recent ecofeminist and social ecological critiques of existing forms of domination, we should ask whether there is any way to therapeutically encourage and restore ways of nourishing and flourishing life in response to that which materially and socially reproduces life in limiting and damaging forms? If it is not already too late for the human species, as the current ecological situation is dire and the sages are no longer responsively attuned to things, to echo Wang Bi’s words, early Daoism tracks traces and spurs for a therapeutic reply to the present problematic of damaged life. The configuration of the priority of the thing as it is in its own naturalness, caring for and nurturing the conditions and patterns that allow the myriad things and peoples to flourish, and the responsive attunement through emptying and undoing entangling fixations in the earliest available Daoist sources (above all, the Daodejing) allows for the present reimagining of a Daoist inspired ecology and environmental philosophy that helps to

68   Wuwei motivate an appropriate ethos and culture of nature that is responsive to and cares for environing things instead of harming them. Early Daoist texts maintain the primacy of things in their own naturalness. They are not concerned with the so-​­called naturalistic fallacy of deriving “is” statements from “ought” statements, which G. E. Moore proposed in the ­Principia Ethica (1903) to justify the autonomy of the good against reductive forms of naturalism, since they don’t presuppose and reify their opposition and contest the moralizing language of “ought” in relation to what things are of themselves.69 Moore’s argument introduces a problematic radical idealizing separation between normativity and naturalness unknown in classical Chinese discourses. In early Daoism, the autonomy of the good is manifest in things themselves, as it points toward the things themselves in their persistent movements and transformations. The diversity—and concomitant biodiversity for a contemporary interpretation­—​ of natural things, creatures, and relational systems is not appropriately perceived and adequately conceived as having its own tendencies and characteristics which human activities should attune themselves to and be in accord with in order to preserve flourishing relational systems (the shared overlapping body in and from which the living are nourished). Although new ecological systems and species might emerge as the current ones are lost, as heaven and earth endlessly turn and beings take temporal turns at living, life itself is not guaranteed on a fragile and vulnerable planet and, more significantly, existing creatures and environmental relational systems need to be recognized and cherished in their singular moment of life without arbitrarily bringing them to an early demise whether through self-​ ­involved indifference, enmity and rage, or benevolently trying too hard to help like Hundun’s two friends whose help ends up killing him.70 To encapsulate the arguments of part one of the present work, early Daoism entails (1) non-​­harming and (2) nurturing and cherishing life of individual creatures in their plurality and collective species of creatures in their biodiversity as well as its interconnected self-​­reproducing relational systems.71 Daoist sensibilities were not developed in the context of the modern ecological crisis; yet, given its prioritization of the self-​­occurrence of things and relational wholes, it can be ecologically redeployed and reimagined for the sake of present life and addressing its most pressing environmental crisis-​­tendencies. Daoism equalizes things and singularizes the thing, which Ames and Hall describe as field (dao) and figure (de).72 Given such strategies to describe relational processes with singular moments of significance, a new Daoist environmental philosophy incorporates elements of biocentric and sociocentric ecologies while not being beholden or limited to either perspective in that it destabilizes and disrupts fixed principles and viewpoints to encounter and be attuned with things as they are for the sake of nourishing them.

Conclusion Early Daoist discourses recommend caring, nourishing, and tending to—without the partiality of favoring some and discarding others—the life of things (in a

Wuwei   69 Daoist sense) and their asymmetrically formed relational contexts. The ecologist stirred by the plurality and uniqueness of things would point human agents to recognizing and cherishing in an unimpeded solidarity the forms and ways of life that surround them, helping to cultivate and nurture the relationships that make their flourishing viable and sustainable. They point to the importance of our own individual and social comportment and disposition in the interthingly thick of living and non-​­living, sentient and non-​­sentient things. What is nature? First, is “nature” merely an ideological construct or that which is non-​­identical with human impulses toward identification and discursive constructions? It is no doubt in part both of these, and in this work will be used first and foremost in the sense of ziran. Second, is “nature” the struggle for existence or mutual flourishing? Our comportment can be anxiously self-​­concerned, obsessed with its own right and struggle to exist and succeed regardless of the costs, or it can contest and dismantle the fixations and barriers between itself and others, opening itself to being attuned to and responding to things that speak in their own languages, being touched and fluidly moving in reply without contending with them or imposing an unresponsive indifference and immobility. This attuned responsiveness requires emptying out and undoing the fixations (including those of instrumental and pragmatic usability and disposability) that prevent encountering, responding, and according with the plurality of singularizing “things” (as wu 物) that cannot be restricted to humans, sentient beings, or individual organisms. Anything with a relational nexus from the micro to the macroscopic and from the most transient and fleeting moment (as expressed in images of dewdrops, flowering blossoms, and floating leaves) to the most abiding durations (heaven and earth) can be cherished. This emptying that illuminates the fullness of things is correlated with the generativity of nothingness, as will be examined in the next chapter. As will be further addressed in the inquiry into political ecology in Chapter 5, wuwei means to responsively mirror, emulate, echo, and assist the multiplicity of things in their own immanent spontaneous natures. It is not minimal in the sense of not caring, yet entails a therapeutic minimalism of “doing less” that contests and disrupts the maximalism of relentless aggressive intervention, commodification, and overproduction and consumption characteristic of existing capitalist societies and political economies.

Notes   1 Rudolf Carnap argued that negation is intrinsically derivative, and nothingness a reification of negation, in his critique of Heidegger’s 1929 lecture “What is Metaphysics?”; see Rudolf Carnap, “Überwindung der Metaphysik durch logische Analyse der Sprache.” Erkenntnis 2 (1931): 219­–​­241; Eric S. Nelson, “Dilthey and Carnap: The Feeling of Life, the Scientific Worldview, and the Elimination of Metaphysics,” in Johannes Feichtinger, Franz L. Fillafer, Jan Surman, eds, The Worlds of Positivism: A Global Intellectual History 1770­–​­1930 (New York: Palgrave-​­Macmillan 2018), 321­–​­346.   2 On emptiness and response and emptiness and fullness, see Yuandao, 94­–​­95, 106­–​­107, 136­–​­137.

70   Wuwei   3 Analects 6.13; Slingerland, Analects, 57.   4 See Robin D. Yates, Five Lost Classics: Tao, Huang-​­Lao, and Yin-​­Yang in Han China (New York: Ballantine Books, 1997), 50­–​­51. Also see the opening line of chapter five of the Hanfeizi 5.1; Liao, Complete Works of Han Fei Tzu, 30.   5 See Marnix Wells, The Pheasant Cap Master and the End of History: Linking Religion to Philosophy in Early China (St. Petersburg: Three Pines Press, 2013), 188. On its notion of law, see Carine Defoort, The Pheasant Cap Master (He guan zi): A Rhetorical Reading (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997), 200­–​­201.   6 Hanfeizi 5.1; Liao, Complete Works of Han Fei Tzu, 30.   7 Analects 15.5; Slingerland, Analects, 175.   8 Liji, “Transmitting Ritual Propriety” (Li Yun 禮運), 25.   9 “無為而物成，是天道也。” Liji, Aigong Wen, 12. 10 “如此者，不見而章，不動而變，無為而成。” Liji, Zhongyong, 26. 11 On harmony, see Chenyang Li, “The Philosophy of Harmony in Classical Confucianism.” Philosophy Compass 3.3 (2008): 423­–​­435; Chenyang Li, The Confucian Philosophy of Harmony (London: Routledge, 2014). On the environmental import of Confucian teachings, see the essays collected in Tucker and Berthrong, Confucianism and Ecology. 12 For text and an alternate translation, see Herrlee G. Creel, Shen Pu-​­hai: A Chinese Political Philosopher of the Fourth Century B.C. (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1974), 349. 13 Creel, Shen Pu-​­hai, 351. 14 Creel, Shen Pu-​­hai, 375­–​­376. 15 For translations and analysis of these passages, see Paul M. Thompson, trans., The Shen Tzu Fragments (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1971); Eirik L. Harris, trans., The Shenzi Fragments: A Philosophical Analysis and Translation (New York: Columbia University Press, 2016). 16 “天雖不憂人之暗，闢戶牖必取己明焉，則天無事也; 地雖不憂人之貧，伐木刈 草必取己富焉，則地無事也; 聖人雖不憂人之危，百姓准上而比於下，其必取 己安安焉，則聖人無事也。” 17 Creel, Shen Pu-​­hai, 358. 18 Yuandao, 110­–​­111. 19 Lou, Wang Bi ji jiaoshi, 149; Lynn, Classic of the Way, 159; Ivanhoe, Daodejing, 60. 20 Lou, Wang Bi ji jiaoshi, 65; Lynn, Classic of the Way, 96­–​­97. 21 Lou, Wang Bi ji jiaoshi, 166; Lynn, Classic of the Way, 171. 22 On the issue of the relation between these two texts, see Kim, “Other Laozi Parallels in the Hanfeizi,” 1­–​­76. 23 On intrinsic value, note Ben Bradley. “Two Concepts of Intrinsic Value.” Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 9 (2006): 111­–​­130. 24 On natural intrinsic value, see the paradigmatic account by John O’Neill, “The Varieties of Intrinsic Value.” The Monist 75.2 (1992): 119­–​­137. 25 See Chai, Dao Companion to Xuanxue; Brook Ziporyn, The Penumbra Unbound: The Neo-​­Taoist Philosophy of Guo Xiang (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003). 26 Note my argument in favor of this interpretation in the context of the Zhuangzi in Nelson, “The Human and the Inhuman,” 723­–​­739. On difference, see Yong Huang, “The Ethics of Difference in the Zhuangzi.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 78.1 (2010): 65­–​­99. 27 On the problem of construing Daoism as naturalism, also see Randall P. Peerenboom, “Beyond Naturalism: A Reconstruction of Daoist Environmental Ethics.” Environmental Ethics 13.1 (1991): 3­–​­22. 28 See Lisa Kemmerer, “The Great Unity: Daoism, Nonhuman Animals, and Human Ethics.” Journal for Critical Animal Studies 7 (2009): 63­–​­83.

Wuwei   71 29 Karen J. Warren, “The Power and the Promise of Ecological Feminism.” Environmental Ethics 12. 2 (1990): 125­–​­146. Also see Sharon Rowe and James D. Sellman, “An Uncommon Alliance: Ecofeminism and Classical Daoist Philosophy.” Environmental Ethics 25.2 (2003): 129­–148. ​­ 30 Yuandao, 84­–​­87. 31 The Wenzi credits a similar sentence to the first line to Laozi, see Wenzi jiaozhu, 84. 32 Lou, Wang Bi ji jiaoshi, 13; this translation is modified from Ryden, Daodejing, 13; see Ivanhoe, Daodejing, 5. 33 See Hans-​­Georg Moeller, The Moral Fool: A Case for Amorality (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009); Nelson, “Questioning Dao,” 5­–19. ​­ On the problem of evil and the nature of things in early Chinese thought, see Franklin Perkins, Heaven and Earth Are Not Humane: The Problem of Evil in Classical Chinese Philosophy (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2014). 34 Lou, Wang Bi ji jiaoshi, 13­–​­14; Lynn, Classic of the Way, 60­–​­61. 35 Bokenkamp, Early Daoist Scriptures, 81­–​­82. 36 Eduard Erkes, trans., “Ho-​­Shang-​­Kung’s Commentary on Lao-​­tse.” Artibus Asiae 8. 2/4 (1945): 136; Reid, Heshang Gong Commentary, 15. 37 Watson, Chuang Tzu, 112. 38 Tim Jensen, Ecologies of Guilt in Environmental Rhetorics (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), 122­–​­146. 39 See the valuable analysis of ci in Ann Pang-White, “Daoist Ci 慈, Feminist Ethics of Care, and the Dilemma of Nature,” 275­–294; ​­ Pang-​­White, “Nature, Interthing Intersubjectivity, and the Environment,” 61­–78. ​­ 40 See Ivanhoe, Daodejing, 19; Lau, Tao Te Ching, 26­–​­27; Ryden, Daodejing, 41. 41 On Daoism and the feminine, see Catherine Despeux and Livia Kohn, Women in Daoism (Cambridge: Three Pines Press, 2003); Robin R. Wang, “Dao Becomes Female: A Gendered Reality, Knowledge, and Strategy for Living,” in Ann Garry, Serene J. Khader, Alison Stone, eds, The Routledge Companion to Feminist Philosophy (London: Routledge, 2017), 35­–​­48. On yinyang, see the excellent account of its development in Robin Wang, Yinyang: The Way of Heaven and Earth in Chinese Thought and Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012). On yinyang and the feminine, also see Arun Saldanha, “Against Yin-​­Yang: The Dao of Feminist Universalism,” Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities 17.2 (2012): 145­–​­168. 42 On the relation between the Mozi and the Daodejing, see Franklin Perkins, “The Mozi and the Daodejing.” Journal of Chinese Philosophy 41. 1­–​­2 (2014): 18­–​­32. On Mohist universal love and consequentialism, see Chris Fraser, The Philosophy of the Mozi: The First Consequentialists (New York: Columbia University Press, 2016). 43 Lou, Wang Bi ji jiaoshi, 45; Lynn, Classic of the Way, 82. 44 On Daoism as ethical teaching, see Livia Kohn, Cosmos and Community: The Ethical Dimension of Daoism (Cambridge: Three Pines Press, 2004); Karyn Lai, “Ziran and wuwei in the Daodejing: An Ethical Assessment.” Dao 6. 4 (2007): 325­–​­337; Jung H. Lee, The Ethical Foundations of Early Daoism: Zhuangzi’s Unique Moral Vision (Dordrecht: Springer, 2014); Eske Møllgaard, An Introduction to Daoist Thought: Action, Language, and Ethics in Zhuangzi (London: Routledge, 2007). 45 “慈故能勇，儉故能廣，不敢為天下先，故能成器長。今舍慈且勇，舍儉且廣, 舍後且先，死矣！夫慈以戰則勝，以血漿固，天將救之，以慈衛之。” See Ryden, Daodejing, 139; Lynn, Classic of the Way, 174. 46 Lau, Tao Te Ching, 82­–​­85; Lynn, Classic of the Way, 143; Ivanhoe, Daodejing, 51. 47 Lou, Wang Bi ji jiaoshi, 127­–​­128; Lynn, Classic of the Way, 143. 48 See Lai, “Ziran and wuwei in the Daodejing,” 325­–​­337. 49 Ivanhoe’s translation captures this sense very well in his Daodejing, 61. 50 Ivanhoe, Daodejing, 60; Lau, Tao Te Ching, 82­–​­85. 51 Ivanhoe, Daodejing, 66; Lau, Tao Te Ching, 92­–​­93. 52 Ivanhoe, Daodejing, 67; Lau, Tao Te Ching, 92­–​­95.

72   Wuwei 53 Taylor, Respect for Nature, 121­–​­124. 54 Schipper, The Taoist Body, 192­–​­193. Note that this section draws from the fuller account in Nelson, “Language and Nothingness in Wang Bi.” 55 See Chan, Two Visions of the Way, 35; Rudolf G. Wagner, Language, Ontology, and Political Philosophy in China: Wang Bi’s Scholarly Exploration of the Dark (Xuanxue) (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003), 1, 9. 56 Lynn, “Wang Bi and Xuanxue,” 369­–​­396, also compare Huainanzi 766. 57 For an overview of this problematic, see Alan K. L. Chan, “Embodying Nothingness and the Ideal of the Affectless Sage in Daoist Philosophy,” in JeeLoo Liu and Douglas Berger, eds, Nothingness in Asian Philosophy (New York: Routledge, 2014), 213­–​­229. 58 On this point, see Ying-​­shih Yü, “Individualism and the Neo-​­Taoist Movement in Wei-​­Chin China,” in Donald Munro, ed., Individualism and Holism: Studies in Confucian and Taoist Values (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1985), 121­–​­155. 59 Victor Mair, trans., Wandering on the Way: Early Taoist Tales and Parables of Chuang Tzu (New York: Bantam Books, 1994), 18. 60 Lynn, “Wang Bi and Xuanxue,” 376. 61 Wang appears closer to this Confucian insight while using a Daoist register. On the ethical import of affective life in Confucianism, see Eric Nelson, “Confucian Relational Hermeneutics, the Emotions, and Ethical Life,” in Paul Fairfield and Saulius Geniusas, eds, Relational Hermeneutics: Essays in Comparative Philosophy (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2018), 193­–​­204. Wang Yangming can be interpreted as belonging to a more ethically expansive Ruism extending from Mengzi’s discussions of the priority of the people and significance of animal suffering through Zhang Zai and Wang Yangming to progressive New Confucians such as Zhang Junmai (張君勱). While critiquing the historical and contemporary ideological employment of Confucian authoritarianism and meritocracy, there are also prospects for a progressive egalitarian Ruism, as I explore in Eric S. Nelson, “Zhang Junmai’s Early Political Philosophy and the Paradoxes of Chinese Modernity.” Asian Studies 8.1 (2020): 183­–​­208. On this topic, also see Stephen C. Angle, Contemporary Confucian Political Philosophy (Cambridge: Polity, 2012); Chenyang Li, “Equality and Inequality in Confucianism.” Dao 11.3 (2012): 295­–​­313. 62 Lynn, “Wang Bi and Xuanxue,” 376. 63 Lynn, “Wang Bi and Xuanxue,” 376. 64 Mair, Wandering on the Way, 339–341; Watson, Chuang Tzu, 293­–​­294. 65 Lou, Wang Bi ji jiaoshi, 196; Lynn, Classic of the Way, 34. 66 Lou, Wang Bi ji jiaoshi, 93­–​­94; Lynn, Classic of the Way, 119­–​­121. 67 Graham, Lieh-​­Tzu, 29­–​­31. 68 See Adorno and Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment; Nelson, Ethics of the Material Other. 69 G. E. Moore, Principia Ethica (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993). 70 Mair, Wandering on the Way, 71; Zyporyn, Zhuangzi, 54. 71 On this point, see Huang, “The Ethics of Difference in the Zhuangzi,” 65­–​­99; Yong Huang, “Respecting Different Ways of Life: A Daoist Ethics of Virtue in the Zhuangzi.” The Journal of Asian Studies 69.4 (2010): 1049­–​­1069. 72 Ames and Hall, Daodejing, 11­–​­13.

4 Emptying ecology Nothingness, language, and encountering things

Enacting emptiness and simplicity to encounter nature Introduction Present-​­day Daoism in the Chinese-​­speaking world has been described as a “Green religion” due to its meaningful contributions to ecology in a society that has undergone massive industrialization and growth, with all of its destructive costs, and developing a more ecologically attuned culture and life-​­praxis.1 The Daoist emphasis on nurturing the common elemental body of life as well as one’s own bodily being and cultivating an attentive receptive recognition of things and the intersecting patterns of life in their own ways of occurring help form the potential for an ethos and praxis that motivates a double therapeutics of self and society that encompasses both individual ecological thinking and behavior as well as systematic social-​­political policies and practices. Critics might wonder to what extent (1) present-​­day incarnations of Daoism could ecologically motivate and therapeutically transform present life given (2)  the role of those tendencies in early Daoist sources (in particular, the Zhuangzi) that have been anachronistically construed as expressing epistemic, linguistic, or moral forms of skepticism, relativism, or nihilism: the impossibility of knowledge or ethics.2 The preceding chapters of the present work have already shown how early Daoist sources (including the Zhuangzi’s numerous examples of perspectivalism and pluralism) from the Warring States period are not limited to the reductive univocal ideas of skepticism, relativism, or nihilism. They have elucidated strategies of nourishing individual and common life (yangsheng), caring for and cooperating with the natural tendencies (ziran) of things in their interthingly relational networks, and encountering and responsively attuning oneself (wuwei) to things in the unique moment of their transient yet momentous lives. These chapters began to illuminate aspects of early Daoism that might seem to offer support to skeptical and nihilistic readings and appear to be distant from our ongoing ecological plight. The present chapter will accordingly further clarify the uses of the “not” in wu-​­ 無-​­ expressions, practices of emptying and strategies of unfixing, and indicative orientating concepts such as emptiness (xu 虛), nothingness (wu), and uselessness

74   Emptying ecology (buyong 不用 and wuyong 無用).3 The negative and deconstructive language and strategies unfolded in early Daoist texts have therapeutic liberating consequences in releasing ourselves and things from reifying fixations in generative nothingness.4 These communicative strategies are not purely negational or skeptical (in the restricted sense of these terms). As they stimulate encountering and responding, they have noteworthy implications for contemporary environmental thought and practice that is in need of a transformation that embraces the priority of things in their relational contexts. This contests the fixations and barriers that have been imposed between self and other, humans and things with the detrimental consequences discernible in environments and corporeal life that characterize the domination of nature in the Anthropocene. The enactment of emptiness and responsiveness to things The Daodejing, the Zhuangzi anthology, Huanglao and syncretic works such as the Guanzi 管子 and Huainanzi 淮南子 collections, and Post-​­Han mysterious learning sources such as Wang Bi’s Daodejing commentary deploy ways of speaking to evoke that which cannot be directly spoken, emptiness and nothingness. They illuminate practices of enacting emptying in becoming plain, simple, and still, in forgetting, and in fasting the body and heart-​­mind such that they become like withered wood (gaomu 槁木) and dead ash (sihui 死灰). Emptiness is not a speculative concept in the various forms of Daoism and quasi-​­Daoism. It is fundamentally a happening of generative nothingness constitutive of things and their interthingly relations. Emptying is enacted in communicative strategies of contesting conventions and subverting ensnaring fixations. It is practiced in individual and social therapeutics, often described as biospiritual and biopolitical, aiming at releasing, nourishing, and sheltering the shared intersecting life of peoples and things. The Daodejing traces the enactment of simplicity (pu 樸), tranquility (jing), and emptiness (xu) which indicate the primordial condition prior to being and non-​­being. The excavated “Primordial Constancy” (hengxian 恒先, heng is replaced by chang 常 in the received versions of the Daodejing) text begins with the statement that: In primordial [or prior to] constancy, there is no being. There is simplicity, tranquility, and emptiness. Simplicity is great simplicity; tranquility is great tranquility; emptiness is great emptiness. It fulfills itself without exhausting itself. 恆先無，有樸，靜，虛：樸，大樸。靜，大靜；虛，大虛。自厭，不自 忍，或作。5 In Daodejing 3, 5, 16, and 22, core chapters on emptiness, one finds no radical separation between the “biospiritual” and “biopolitical,” as the sage-​­kings enact emptiness and quietude, thereby motivating through their exemplary model their

Emptying ecology   75 peoples to do so as well. Wang Bi elucidates DDJ 16 to interpret the enactment of emptiness as the utmost sincerity (jidu 極篤) and quietude as maintaining genuineness.6 As things arise from and revert to emptiness, and actions from quietude, constancy (heng or chang) and impartiality (gong 公) in embracing things and people is the mark of the genuine king stirred by and moved in accordance with (without rejection or absorption) transforming nature.7 Enacting emptying is the fullness of plainness and simplicity. Emptiness does not signify negation or impossibility in classical Daoist sources but that which allows receiving to be possible. For instance, it is depicted as the condition of fullness through the enactment of which sages become exemplary models (shi 式 or ze 則) according to Wang Bi’s elucidation of DDJ 22.8 The spacing, relationality, and balancing between emptiness-​­fullness (xushi 虛實) and being and nothingness, such as is indicated in emptying the heart-​­mind and making the body (literally, stomach) full in DDJ 3 (xu qi xin, shi qi fu 虛其心, 實其腹), becomes an orientating sensibility for classical Chinese environmental aesthetics according to which the heart-​­mind can be emptied and responsively echo and mirror the fullness of the landscape and the garden just as the calm water can reflect the fullness of the moon.9 Emptiness has a cosmological dimension, as texts such as the Hengxian make clear, as space and vital energy generatively emerge from it, but it is not primarily a speculative construction. It is a profoundly practical teaching of releasing and emptying to encounter and receive, and accordingly has suggestive environmental implications. Wang Bi noted in his account of DDJ 5 that in maintaining emptiness and letting things follow their own course and be themselves, neither embodied form nor the political body will lack its own self-​­generating order.10 Emptying undoes fixated affects and actions in responsive attunement (­kongdong wuqing wuwei gu xu 空洞無情, 無為故虛).11 It contests calculation (in which things are measured only by costs and benefits) and coercion (external imposition and violence), allowing the self-​­ordering of relational wholes (which in their exteriority and excess cannot be reduced to an assemblage of internal parts) to reproduce and maintain themselves. Further, by extension, we should consider whether enacting emptiness, as undoing ideological fixations and as the letting releasement of responsive attunement, could be a condition of an environmentally oriented culture that encourages an individual and social ethos and life-​­praxis of the ecological nourishing and flourishing of creatures in the milieu of their relational climates and ecosystems. In DDJ 3 and 5, emptying the heart-​­mind (xu qi xin 虛其心 and xinxu 心虛) is encouraged as part of a political project of returning to genuineness and simplicity, reducing excessive desiring and calculative thinking of rulers and peoples.12 As discussed elsewhere in the book, the reign of the sage-​­king described in these chapters appears Legalistic or even totalitarian to some interpreters who focus on the reduction of desiring, knowing, and willing depicted here. They imply an anarchic or self-​­governing politics according to a number of interpretations as they portray a self-​­nourishing and self-​­ordering community that arrives at plain simplicity through a culture that abandons not only excess

76   Emptying ecology but a calculative and coercive ideal and model of politics. The contemporary application of these two readings leads to radically opposing models of a Legalistic ecological dictatorship and anarchic democratic ecological self-​­organization as will be analyzed further in the next chapter. In the first “Art of the Mind” (Xin Shu 心術) text, one of the biospiritual meditative chapters of the syncretic Guanzi anthology that primarily concerns politics and arts of administration, agriculture, and warfare, the way of heaven is described as enacting emptiness and the way of earth as enacting quietude (tian zhi dao xu, di zhi dao jing 天之道虛, 地之道靜).13 Heaven is the model of emptiness and earth of quietude (tian yue xu, di yue jing 天曰虛, 地曰靜). Heaven and earth constitute the space in which things occur as their happening functions as a model for the praxis of sages and sage-​­kings. Emptying (xu) and quieting (jing) the movements of breath, body, the heart-​­mind, and social-​ ­political life, undoing their tendencies to attempt to possess and store, are the conditions of responsive resonance (ying), receptively being moved (dong), and responsive attunement in relying on things, conditions, and the way as they are, allowing them to order themselves without oppressing them or ourselves with fixated prejudices and preferential likes and dislikes. Cultivating such all-​­embracing responsive impartiality and objectivity (as the priority of the object) is becoming genuine (zhen). Interthingly responsive attunement means letting things act and receptively being guided by them and their own self-​­ordering. One shadows the bodily forms and echoes the sounds of things. This praxis of “regulating” through non-​­regulating and releasing does not anxiously and calculatingly aim at yet results in prolonging life and insuring sage-​ ­like rule. Emptying, as a deconstructive strategy and as a cultivation practice, leads to encountering what is as it is in its shifting naturalness (ziran) that can change how we interact with things and ecosystems in a potentially more ecological direction. Can practices of communicative deconstruction and cultivation of the heart-​­mind and dynamic vital forces of life help heal the earth?14 A Daoist inspired ecology (which could and would not need to adopt every feature of the Daodejing or the “Art of the Mind”) would contest the prevailing partialities and prejudices of environmental discourses that would pick, choose, and discard either the human or the non-​­human, sentient beings or mere things, individuals or relational wholes. Instead of raising up some and lowering others, Daoism equalizes things (as indicated by expressions such as qiwu 齊物), evening out and embracing each one, deconstructing fixations so as to receive and respond to things such that the ecological conditions of their livability and flourishing are nourished.15 The preceding point brings us back to the paradox of nurturing life discussed in earlier chapters. If environments are more suitable and livable for creatures, this in turn makes them more livable for human creatures. Human creatures have made the world unlivable in maximizing its livability for themselves (their own self-​­nourishment) and thereby limiting its overall livability. Livability and sustainability as biased self-​­concerned goals (of individuals, collectives, or species)

Emptying ecology   77 are in the end self-​­undermining as they inevitably reductively forget and neglect the reality of the priority of things and their interthingly relations. To flourish, human creatures must dwell and find a home within the livability of overlapping climates, ecosystems, and environments rather than coercively reconstruct environments according to their own desires and wishes that bring about ecological destitution and collapse. A new or reimaged Daoist ecology prioritizes things as they exceed categories of instrumentality and usefulness. It therefore critically contests prevailing models and practices of the domination of nature, and their systematic harms, to nurture ecological sustainability and restoration for the sake of things themselves that in turn nurtures human life. Such a Daoist inspired ecology encourages and motivates a more appropriate ecological culture and life-​­praxis that resituates scientific inquiry into an ethos of responsiveness: emptying to receive, and quieting to listen to the whispering of things without either anthropocentric renunciation or biocentric absorption and identification. Fasting, forgetting, and becoming genuine in the Zhuangzi Notwithstanding hegemonic skeptical readings among contemporary Western philosophers, a key notion running throughout significant passages of the Zhuangzi anthology is an attuned genuineness that signifies emptying and unfixing the snares of constructs and obstructions by living freely in accord with and in attuned response to the intrinsic character and, as they have no underlying essence or teleological goal, relentless transformations of things. As in other Warring States Daoist discourses (insofar as we know them through the twists and turns of their literary transmission), practices of emptying are not directed at the inside, interiority, or detached spirituality of a subject. They concern intraworldly and interthingly encounters and attunements with things that would encourage a more appropriate ecological ethos and culture. The enactment of emptiness transpires in the Zhuangzi in practices of fasting of the heart-​­mind (xinzhai 心齋), forgetting (wang 忘), letting go and letting releasement in a condition of becoming genuine (zhenren) and, in a statement attributed to Laozi in its fourteenth “Natural Turnings” (tianyun 天運) outer chapter, spontaneously far-​­roaming (xiaoyao 逍遙) in responsive attunement, in bland plainness and simplicity, freely wandering in gathering genuineness.16 While the Zhuangzi collection deploys and modifies familiar expressions from the Daodejing (including wuwei, ziran, etc.), which was familiar to its authors in some version or another, it also mobilizes expressions and communicative strategies that are uniquely its own (xiaoyao, zhai, zhenren) that were adopted by subsequent Daoist transmissions. The exemplary ancient genuine ones come and go, receive and give away, and forget rather than cling in attachment or aversion. An example of genuineness is depicted in the sixth “Great and Venerable Teacher” (da zongshi 大宗師) chapter of the Zhuangzi. The highpoint is to be aware of what arises from

78   Emptying ecology transforming nature and what arises from the fixations of humans without, as A.  C.  Graham noted, taking one’s own heart-​­mind as one’s authority and measure and without fixation and planning.17 As in the fragment attributed to Shen Dao, discussed previously in Chapter 2, Zhuangzian genuine ones share some features with Legalist sage-​­kings as they are said to not dream while they sleep nor worry while they are awake. Receiving and letting go without trying to impose themselves and their desires upon the way and what is as it is, they do not partially prefer this and discard that even when it comes to their own life and death, and they are aware how to remember and forget: The genuine ones of old did not know how to desire life nor despise death. Emerging without pleasure and returning without aversion, they suddenly arrive and then depart. They didn’t forget the beginning nor implore the end. They received and enjoyed something and then forgot and returned it without utilizing the heart-​­mind to give to the way or using the human to assist the natural. This is what we call the genuine person. 古之真人，不知說生，不知惡死。其出不訢，其入不距。翛然而往， 翛然而​來而已矣。不忘其所始，不求其所終。18 The genuine person gathers, cultivates, and particularizes the genuine. Such genuineness is characterized by a humility and reserve such that the human can accord and be attuned with the inhuman and the natural, which can be taken as an ecological lesson. The genuine can appropriately encounter things, extending kindness and generosity without loving humanity and assisting things without trying to act as a sage, taking part in the life and death of things and blending what is human and what is natural (or not overcoming one with the other) without losing what is genuine.19 This discourse of genuineness introduces other exemplary elements for a new Daoist ecology and a more appropriate environmental culture. Ecological degradation is often due to the systematically reproduced cultural and social-​­economic mismatches between humans and their environing world as economic development impedes natural growth. The Zhuangzi teaches deploying the human and the natural in mutuality and simplicity in ways so that one does not overwhelm and damage the other, such as by the fixations of one-​­sided favoring of the human (anthropocentrism) or the non-​­human (biocentrism) in contrast to prioritizing things and their interthingly relations. In early Daoist contexts, mutuality and reciprocity are asymmetrical and non-​­identical given the singularity of things. Yang Guorong 楊國 榮 elucidates the entangled mediated relationality between the human and non-​ ­human as the mutual accomplishing, elucidating, and cultivating of self and things.20 In the nineteenth “Attaining Life” chapter that elucidated bodily form, emptiness is described as the “fasting that calms the heart-​­mind” (qi yi jingxin 齊以靜心) without relying on cultivation as a technique or instrumental skill, expectation,

Emptying ecology   79 or calculation. This first use of the “fasting of the heart-​­mind” (xinzhai) occurs in the fourth “Amidst the Human World” (renjian shi 人間世) chapter where it is attributed to Confucius who here appears in the guise of a Daoist teacher. Focus your intentions! Don’t listen with your ears, but listen with your heart-​­mind. Don’t listen with your heart-​­mind, but listen with your vital energy. Listening is limited by the ears, the mind is limited by what it recognizes, but vital energy is empty awaiting for things. The dao gathers in emptiness alone, and this emptiness is the fasting of the heart-​­mind. 若一志，無聽之以耳，而聽之以心，無聽之以心，而聽之以氣，聽止於 耳，心止於符，氣也者，虛而待物者也，唯道集虛，虛者心齋也。21 Such emptiness means for his interlocutor Yan Hui 顏回 that he has forgotten himself. It is through practices of enacting emptying and forgetting that it can be stated in the first chapter that the attained person has no self (zhiren wuji 至人無己), the spiritually realized person has no merit (shenren wugong 神人無功), and the sagely person no fame (shengren wuming 聖人無名). The sixth chapter of the Zhuangzi accordingly thematizes a forgetting that is concurrently a transforming with dao (wang er hua qi dao 忘而化其道) and a practice of “sitting and forgetting” (zuowang 坐忘).22 This emancipatory Daoist therapeutics of self-​­forgetting contests fixations of the self and bodily form, releasing oneself and things. It is a forgetting that forgets forgetting itself and is far more radical than the skeptic’s cognitive doubting of epistemic contents. It can be described as “a perpetual letting-​­go of names and designations.”23 Forgetting is a practice of return (fan, designating the dao’s mobility in the Daodejing), and letting passing traces (ji 跡) return to their tracelessness (wuji 無跡).24 Forgetting is not so much an issue of knowing and not knowing memories or other cognitive-​­perceptual contents. It is enacting emptying in sitting-​­in forgetfulness, composing the heart-​­mind, and allowing the myriad things to return to themselves. One forgets names, images, and the constructed meanings of things in emptying, as one forgets both being and non-​ ­being in the functioning of generative nothingness. Genuine reality is disclosed in self-​­forgetting. Self-​­forgetting is consequently a non-​­forgetting of genuineness of that which is as it is. Without being controlled by desires to possess that which is only transiently granted and burdened by the anxieties of losing, emptiness (xu) and stillness (jing) are the conditions for receiving and responsiveness as things arise and depart.25 The therapeutics of the self through emptiness is not then a mystical withdrawal from the world, particularly into the soul or the interiority of the subject, but rather a release into abiding and dwelling in the world in the thick of things themselves that is suggestive, as an exemplary orienting model since the Zhuangzi rejects moralizing and instrumental prescriptions, for reimagining an ecology in the interrelational midst of and in tune with the world’s changing vital rhythm (associated with yun 韻 in subsequent aesthetic traditions).26

80   Emptying ecology

Undoing fixations and the freedom of nature in the Zhuangzi Unsaying the said with Zhuangzi The Zhuangzi contains a number of elements for a critical new Daoism and a critical ecology that undoes structures of alienation/reification and exploitation/ domination.27 Emptying, fasting the heart-​­mind, and forgetting contest and undo fixations of bodily form (wuxing 無形) that result in increasing rigidity and death (一受其成形, 不亡以待盡). These three practices dissolve fixations of the self in enacting no self (wuji). In addition, as the skeptical and deconstructive interpretations of the text have emphasized, the Zhuangzi radically dismantles fixations of words and language (yan 言) and pragmatically reproduced everyday ideologies and regimes of value, usefulness, and purposiveness that impoverish the sense of the possibilities of things and words in reducing them to instrumental means and tools. Let’s consider language first. The deconstructive, paradoxical, and skeptical communicative strategies of the Zhuangzi appear to risk reducing language to meaninglessness, and raise troubling questions. How is undoing the fixation of words possible? Can we speak and convey meaning without some degree of reification insofar as words stabilize meaning as they are passed along and circulated? Can there be a saying that undoes linguistic fixation and functions through unsaying instead of fixating the said? Freeing language from reifications is not merely a conceptual liberation, since it would allow for more ecologically sensitive and attuned uses of language in speaking with and about things. In the second “Equalizing Things” (qiwu lun 齊物論) chapter, an equalizing that can be deployed as an ecological strategy, a number of passages undermine the ordinary hierarchy and meaning of words. In the midst of this, the question is posed whether words are not merely nonsensical empty wind, but have something to say (yan zhe you yan 言者有言)? Whether if what words say is not fixed and undecided (yan zhe te weiding 言者特未定), do they then not really have something to say or say nothing?28 There are multiple interpretations of this passage: some assert it undermines language for the sake of mysticism or skepticism, others maintain that it introduces the responsive flexibility of speaking without fixating and lodging one’s words in one location such that they are unmoved and unstirred by the transformation of things and circumstances. The former appears more likely if one separates these skeptical passages and assumes that they are the product of a skeptical author(s) that have been incorporated into a larger collected work.29 But the authors of the Zhuangzi collection are neither mystical gurus nor analytical skeptics. The latter interpretation makes better sense given that these passages deconstruct and overcome both knowing and doubting to responsively encounter what is as it is, leaving debate and demonstration (including its speculative and skeptical varieties) to those who are unaware of the natural illumination of the “pivot of the way” (daoshu 道樞) that responds to all without the partiality of choosing and discarding.30

Emptying ecology   81 The twenty-​­seventh “Imputed Words” (yuyan 寓言) miscellaneous chapter articulates a Zhuangzian motivated philosophy of language.31 It does not focus only on the ineffable that is of concern in mystical and skeptical discourses, but—analogous to Wang Bi’s account of ways of speaking as described later in this chapter—on the flexibility and fullness of various ways of speaking to indicate and evoke diverse layers of meaning, different sensibilities, as well as the primordial ineffability of emptiness and nothingness. There are three types of words, and one further step beyond words into namelessness, in Zhuangzi chapter 27: (1) imputed or dwelling words (yuyan) are metaphorical words that function through images and narratives as the lodging or dwelling places ( jiyu) for ideas, meanings, and their consequences; (2) heavy or double-​­layered words (chongyan 重言) express multivocal ambiguities and multiple meanings, frequently playing with authoritative voices such as that of Confucius; (3) spillover or goblet words (zhiyan 卮言) are those that tip when they are full and stand aright when they are empty; finally, there are wordless words, the no words (wuyan 無言), that wander beyond the limits of language in stillness and simplicity.32 Speaking can fixate the said or unfix the saying: it entangles and releases. The frequently underappreciated fullness of language in meeting and conversing with the thing has been impoverished along with our capacities to encounter and respond to it. This is not a question of projecting anthropomorphic or animistic categories onto the thing, since such endeavors already illustrate the great extent to which contact with the thing has been lost. It concerns instead the openness and flexibility of language, and not only poetic language, to receive and interact. Daoist philosophies of language in the Zhuangzi or in Wang Bi (examined below) are concurrently philosophies of how to comport oneself in the midst of things in interthingly and—at least in this specific reimagining of it—ecological interaction. They indicate ways of recovering the emptiness and fullness of saying in order to address things and their relational systems anew. One failure of contemporary culture is its inability to speak in non-​­literal and non-​­fixated ways that would be part of more adequate intersubjectively communicative and interthingly ecological ways of abiding and dwelling. Wandering amidst things beyond being and use Let’s now think through the questionable hegemonic regime of use, value, and purpose that confines, restricts, and injures the myriad things and which was analyzed as a system of instrumental rationality by Theodor W. Adorno and the early Frankfurt School.33 In addition to the social-​­economic dimensions of instrumental rationality interrogated by Adorno and others, Daoism offers exemplars and models of what non-​­instrumentalizing relations with things could potentially look like. The Zhuangzi and related sources trace examples and models that continue to communicate today as alternative possibilities for a culture and society whose social reproduction is entangled with ecological crisis-​­tendencies that cannot be maintained.

82   Emptying ecology Contesting instrumentality and the reduction of things to usefulness is a characteristically modern problematic in social theory, yet it was already a question at issue in early Chinese philosophical discourses that proposed the priority of expediency, frugality, and usefulness as a standard (Mozi), maintained the moral value of the exemplary morally noble person (junzi 君子) that is irreducible to functional use (Confucius), noted how use is possible through emptiness that cannot be used (Laozi), or radically disrupted the very category of usefulness and its one-​­sided and partial standards of the healthy, normal, and the anthropocentrically construed category of the human (Zhuangzi). Should the myriad things, in the way that they are as themselves, be judged and determined according to human and anthropocentric measures of what is useful and useless, purposive and non-​­purposive, extrinsically and intrinsically valuable? Early Daoism presents a challenge to contemporary environmental discourses by contesting this way of thinking about things and their relations. In a series of remarkable narrative and dialogical passages, which rely on a full array of linguistic strategies, the Zhuangzi traces how expectations of what is useful are undermined and fail, how the healthy fall while the mocked unhealthy and malformed have their own perfection and survive, the normal remain imprisoned in prejudice while the “abnormal” freely travel, and how human-​ oriented partiality and preconceptions of usefulness restrict changing nature ­ while listening to and wandering with creatures and things disrupts and transforms limiting partial perspectives. Two expressions for uselessness (buyong 不用 and wuyong 無用) occur in the inner chapters and throughout the received version of the Zhuangzi. The received version of the Daodejing does not use wuyong, but buyong occurs in DDJ 27 and 80. DDJ 4 and 11 relate the empty and the useful. In the former chapter, dao is compared to an empty vessel that use cannot fill (道沖而用之或不盈). Another intriguing passage is found in the latter chapter, a verse that fascinated the philosopher Martin Heidegger, where use occurs from emptiness and nothingness as constituting the space of its presencing: Thirty spokes held in one hub; in empty non-​­being lies the cartwheel’s usefulness. Molding clay into pots; in empty non-​­being lies the pot’s usefulness. Chiseling doors and windows to make a room; in empty non-​­being lies the room’s usefulness. Therefore, possess something to make it profitable; take it as nothing to make it useful. 三十輻，共一轂，當其無，有車之用。埏埴以為器，當其無，有器之 用。鑿戶牖以為室，當其無，有室之用。34 The emptiness of nothingness is the generative clearing of the space of things allowing them to become useful. Use presupposes an emptiness that cannot itself be directly used much less reduced to mere use. Emptying things is to

Emptying ecology   83 empty them of their confinement to the useful, just as emptying philosophizing in speechlessness frees it from the fixated families of teachings according to Wang Bi.35 In the Zhuangzi, the connection between emptiness and usefulness is radicalized to further place the very category of the useful into question. In a discourse in Zhuangzi chapter four attributed to Jie Yu 接輿, the madman of Chu who is portrayed as confounding the seriousness of Confucius in Analects 18.5, it is stated: “All recognize the usefulness of the useful (yong zhi yong 用之用), yet none recognize the usefulness of the useless (wuyong zhi yong 無用之用).”36 The Zhuangzi anthology encompasses multiple examples of its meaning. Zhuangzi chapter four recognizes the fortunes of the “useless” person or tree who survives in not being used. This example of uselessness has its limits in modernity even though its point is all the more relevant: in mass deforestation, which destabilizes the soil and habitat, all trees are clear cut for use. In chapter twenty-​­six, the useful is shown to be useful and the useless as more useful because it is not concerned with and confined by ordinary preconceptions and categories of what is and is not useful. This is the uselessness of the conventional and useful and the usefulness of the useless. The Zhuangzi expresses how to live in accordance with dao through enacting emptiness and through uselessness. Instead of fixating being and relying on limiting useful calculations and techniques concerning governing the self and the nation, abiding in non-​­being and uselessness is the genuine cultivation of nourishing life. Embracing uselessness allows for embracing the possibilities of things and their relational contexts that the category of usefulness obscures: thus the useless giant gourd can become a boat to set oneself adrift in and the useless twisted tree a place to rest. Uselessness concerns the taking in of and releasement of nothingness as, for example, emptiness is enacted in the empty vessel’s giving and receiving in Daodejing chapters four (in which chong 沖 is used for emptiness) and eleven.37 With no special abilities or demands, and by becoming ordinary and embracing plain simplicity, the emptying person wanders freely (xu er ao you 虛而敖遊).38 The dao uselessly nurtures through nothingness, and the loss of the creativeness and generativity of nothingness in the useful, the calculative, and the artificial is the loss of the dao’s nourishing power: “From nothingness all things arise, and from uselessness all things obtain their use.”39 The life-​ ­praxis of the dao is as a result letting and allowing things and their relations in their natural spontaneity to arrive and depart. As chaos and ordering, cacophony and harmonizing, the Zhuangzi indicates an ethos of tracing and responsively attuning oneself to the transformations of nature (tian). This nature is a dynamic self-​­generating ordering of things to be encountered in which one’s own self and sense of self shifts and transforms in the encounter. The ecologically pertinent Zhuangzian ethos of nature is illustrated in the opening paragraph of the second chapter that explicitly connects practices of emptying with encountering earth and heaven beyond humanly conceived limits. The dialogue begins by considering whether in a trance-​­like meditative state the self can forget or lose itself (wu sang wo 吾喪我) as one’s bodily form

84   Emptying ecology becomes like withered wood and the heart-​­mind like dead ashes. In emptying oneself, one no longer merely listens to the notes and rhythms of the piping of humanity (renlai 人籟) but to the music of earth (dilai 地籟) and heaven (tianlai 天籟). While human sounds are formed by their voices and instruments, there are more fundamental musical forms to be heard: the music of earth is the rustling of the myriad things, as the pipe’s holes open and close and they emerge and disappear, and the music of heaven the wind moving through the myriad differences, letting each thing be itself (ziyi 自已) or what it is in its own way.40 Other Zhuangzian conceptions of the natural reveal the ecological potential of its ethos. Equalizing measures are accordingly articulated in three natural patterns (tianli 天理) that offer an interpretive schema for ecologically dwelling amidst things: natural differentiation (tianni 天倪), natural measure (tianjun 天 均), and natural harmony (tianhe 天和). These measures are sheltered in the freedom, mystery, and genuine silence—that relies neither on speaking nor on non-​­speaking (feiyan feimo 非言非默)—of the generative functioning of nothingness in emptying and forming, and indicate both an ecological aesthetic and ethos of how to dwell in nature.41 The Zhuangzi’s practice of shifting measures and equalizing things (including the “human” and the “natural”) is reflected both in its ecologically suggestive philosophy of language and its philosophy of wandering amidst things between heaven and earth. This shifting and equalizing offers an exemplary model and interpretive strategy for contemporary environmental reflection. Free and ecological roaming in the immanence of natural occurrence The practice of undoing fixations in the Zhuangzi is not merely a contemplative skeptical doubt, and a resulting indecision or indifference. It is a freedom from the rejection of and absorption in things, occurring in the thick of things and in the midst of the shared embodied world. The expression xiaoyao 逍遙, free and distant, is most frequently used in the fifth “Wandering Far Away” (yuanyou 遠 遊) chapter of the Songs of Chu (Chuci 楚辭) in antiquity.42 While wandering afar in distant realms, the poet mourns the transitory plants that wither first, confides to the wind, and looks for a model to emulate. The poem evokes earlier shamanic and subsequent Daoistic “far-​­roaming” in natural/supernatural worlds beyond ordinary human affairs, where one experiences a contentment born of quietude and responsive attunement (dan wuwei er zide 澹無為而自得), liberates oneself from dust and troubled cares, and cultivates genuineness (zhenren 真人) and ascends to immortality (dengxian 登仙).43 This poem’s guiding imaginary and aesthetic of wandering freely and according with the natural embraces encountering the unique and otherwise in nature, promoting practices and genres of encountering and appreciating natural phenomena that were integral to the formation of East Asian aesthetic sensibilities and cultures of self-​ ­transforming nature that continue to have ecological significance. Although

Emptying ecology   85 imperfectly historically embodied and enacted, they continue to evoke naturalness and, if not reified in eroticized commodified forms, can inform a contemporary environmental aesthetics and poetics as crucial aspects of environmental culture. Xiaoyao is employed in the received edition of the Zhuangzi, in which the whole expression free and distant wandering (xiaoyao you 逍遙遊) is only used once as the title of chapter one, in the same way to imagine faraway hermits and extraordinary immortals. It is further deployed to indicate a freedom not only in the distant but in the familiar amidst the affairs and things of ordinary life. This freedom is found in responsively rather than fatalistically embracing things: Embody endlessness and freely wander on the pathless, receive what is given from nature but do not try to possess it, just be empty and nothing more. The genuine person’s [zhenren] mind is like a mirror, rejecting nothing, welcoming nothing; responding without storing, interacting with things without harming them. 體盡無窮，而遊無朕；盡其所受乎天，而無見得，亦虛而已矣。至人之 用心若鏡，不將不迎，應而不藏，故能勝物而不傷。44 In the sixth chapter of the Zhuangzi, genuineness recognizes what arises from the transformations of nature and what arises from the fixations of humans. In chapter twenty-​­three, in a seeming retort to Xunzi’s reproach that Zhuangzi fixated the natural and neglected the human, the Zhuangzi states that “the sage is adept in dealing with heaven but clumsy in dealing with humanity,” while “it is only in genuineness (zhenren 真人) that one is adept in dealing with the natural and the human.”45 Genuineness in this passage is the balancing of self and world, nature and humanity.46 The dao of heaven and humanity are repeatedly distinguished in the Zhuangzi, supporting its anti-​­ or posthumanistic interpretation; yet they are one in the consummation of cultivation as a relationalizing field of singularization of one’s own “nature”—interpreting words such as sheng 生 (life) and xing 性 (natural quality) as dynamic generative processes rather than signifying a fixed principle or original essence that is only recovered. There are two aspects of the discussion of “this” and “that” in chapter two of the Zhuangzi that indicate that: (1) the whole is necessary for there to be me, yet without me nothing would be selected out and particularized (天地與我並生, 而萬物與我為一); and (2) this perspective of the whole is one that allows the recognition of each in its ownmost self-​­so-​­ing without dividing or completing it and consequently injuring it.47 The lesson of the Zhuangzi in such passages is the releasement and non-​­domination of things that can be reimagined as an ecological comportment in considering the life of ecosystems and species in ways that are informed in dialogue with scientific biology and ecology. Why are natural occurrences models to be inspired by and emulated? Insofar as one can speak of norms at all in Daoist discourses, norms are not externally imposed through principles and rules but immanent to the occurrence of the

86   Emptying ecology myriad things themselves. Amongst natural phenomena, water is an exemplary happening in offering models for emulation. In the thirteenth “Heavenly Way” (tiandao 天道) chapter of the Zhuangzi, it is noted how water is an exemplary model for the sage just as still level water (shui jing you ming 水靜猶明) is the model for the carpenter (dajiang qufa yan 大匠取法焉).48 The “Water and Earth” chapter of the Guanzi notes how “the water level is first among the five measures,” an image of equalizing, “water is the level for all things, the quality of tranquility in all life, and the quality of impartiality between right and wrong, profit and loss.”49 In allowing language to be deployed in its rich diversity and fullness, water’s manifestations (tranquil, flowing, falling, and so on) can be taken as models and teachers for a transformed ecological ethos and aesthetic.50 Encountering a polluted stream or a plastic filled harbor teaches lessons as well. Observing and learning from things need not necessitate a full enchantment of water, mountains, and forests, insomuch as such projections constitute mythologizing forms of the fixating reification of things that preclude their being encountered. The joy of fish This one-​­sidedness and partiality is revealed in a passage that is typically taken to address knowledge and its limits. In the seventeenth “Autumn Floods” (qiushui 秋水) chapter, Zhuangzi is said to recognize the free and easy play (chuyou congrong 出遊從容) and joy of fish (yule 魚樂) in the waters below. His friend and frequent philosophical interlocutor Huizi (惠子) skeptically questions how one who is not a fish can know the joy of fish. Zhuangzi retorts by undoing the presuppositions of the skeptic by asking how Huizi, not being Zhuangzi, can know that he does not know the joy of fish. Huizi responds that he does not know Zhuangzi but does know that he is not a fish. Zhuangzi concludes this discussion by stating that Huizi posed the question already knowing that Zhuangzi knew the joy of fish and he knew it from recognizing it from above the waters below. Zhuangzi, in kinship with Ludwig Wittgenstein’s dismantling of skepticism in On Certainty, is portrayed as revealing how skepticism does not understand or question its own presuppositions on which it depends.51 While Huizi in this dialogue anthropocentrically does not recognize encountering the fish, using the human language of joy to describe this encounter, Zhuangzi recognizes the fish in encountering them, as is confirmed in the reiteration of the statement in the conclusion, deploying without doubt a human tongue and his own philosophical discourse without, however, needing to assume either an identity or non-​­identity between himself and the fish. Zehou Li commented that Huizi won the logical victory but Zhuangzi the aesthetic victory in this dialogue.52 More than this, however, Zhuangzi relies on a perspective-​ ­shifting and unrestricted mimesis to unfix limited perspectives. He confronts the presuppositions of logical and anthropocentric boundaries and reveals a different proto-​­ecological aesthetic and ethical comportment between humans, animals, and natural environments from which a new Daoist ecology can take its point of departure.53

Emptying ecology   87 Language, in the communicative play between Huizi and Zhuangzi, can embody and emulate the play of the fish without limiting language by artificially posting a limit between knowing and not knowing, and human and non-​­human creatures. The joy of fish dialogue indicates an ecologically relevant alternative to the linguistically, experientially, and environmentally impoverishing assumptions (particularly when they are combined) of anthropocentrism (as the priority of the human) and anti-​­anthropomorphism (as the impermissibility of attributing ostensibly solely human attributes to non-​­human entities) with respect to the myriad things. While the anthropocentric perspective presupposes that the thing cannot be genuinely encountered, and the biocentric perspective assumes a common identity and identification, the Daoist dismantles and empties such presuppositions to encounter the thing.

Wang Bi and the deconstruction of concepts, images, and words Emptying fixations and the generative functioning of nothingness Early Daoist sources contest determinate uses of words and concepts as reified fixations, which is informative for a contemporary ecology that contests the fixated constructs that help reproduce the domination of nature. The Daodejing, the Zhuangzi, and Wang Bi’s Daodejing commentary prioritize nothingness as generative, procreative, and nourishing of the myriad things that sages and ordinary humans can emulate and enact. Expressions such as wuwu 無無 in the Zhuangzi and xuwu 虛無 in Wang Bi radicalize the deconstructive and nourishing potential of this functioning of generative nothingness. A noteworthy analysis that recognizes both how determinate referential language collapses in encountering nothingness and how other forms of speaking can indicate and express nothingness is articulated in the commentaries of Wang Bi.54 His interpretation of the Laozi has two sides standing in tension that are potentially contradictory. On the one hand, one encounters the words, images, models and linguistic strategies of the Daodejing. On the other hand, they operate at the very limits of language and being (you) in relation to what the opening passage of the Daodejing designated a mystery hidden in or beyond all mystery (xuan zhi you xuan 玄之又玄).55 Mystery (xuan 玄) according to Wang is “the darkness, where in silence absolutely nothing exists” (xuanzhe, mingmo wuyou 玄者, 冥默無有).56 Wang’s boundary-​­crossing images of darkness and silence point toward that which is without image (even the blankest color) and word. The transitional crossing over of images and words is both an unfixing linguistic strategy to overcome fixed limited ways of speaking and conceptualization as well as an embodied (or bio-​ ­spiritual) practice of emptying the heart-​­mind (xu qi xin 虛其心) and emotional attachments.57 This enactment of emptiness (xu) does not repress what it empties nor does it result in a neutral indifference toward the myriad things. By neither

88   Emptying ecology rejecting nor grasping according to preconceptions, self-​­emptying is the condition for encountering, resonating with, and responding to things in their own natural self-​­occurring way of being. That is, Wang portrayed an embodiment and practice of emptying the heart-​­mind and existence, which signified a keeping to simplicity and sincerity, in movement toward the generative functioning (yong) of the originary or primordial nothing (benwu 本無), an expression that played an historical role in the Sinification of Buddhist emptiness (kong 空, sunyata). Wang Bi’s Daodejing does not offer settled propositions and prescriptions, and it is questionable to project such a restrictive philosophical paradigm onto Daoist sources. Instead, Wang interpreted the Daodejing as offering words and models to be performatively enacted, as one practices what is inexpressible in words. How can such emptying and unfixing practices be responsively attuned to the functioning of the nothing? Wang construes the practice of emptying in his commentary on DDJ 38 as an “attuned responsive acting” (wuwei er wu 無為而無) “out of nothing” (wu yi wei 無以為) in contrast to those who act coercively, and without responsive attunement, “out of something” (you yi wei 有以為).58 Wang’s discourse of emptying and nothingness has a practical and social-​­political import.59 It discloses an art of existing or practice of the self for those who would be genuine sages and sage-​­kings. Wang defined exemplary virtue (de) as the fulfillment of the way in the attuning functioning of nothingness (wuwei yong 無為用) through which all are carried.60 According to Wang, heaven and earth accomplish their power by having nothingness function as their core; the exemplary sage-​­kings likewise receive their power and fullness by ruling through emptiness.61 Emptiness and nothingness are expressions that refer to the functioning of dao that are performatively enacted by the sages and sage-​­kings. The sage-​­kings in particular realize this functioning. They are said to fulfill the dao by letting nothingness function as their heart-​­mind and achieve their greatness through emptiness without regard for profit and loss.62 Practices of emptying are the condition for a greater natural (in the sense of ziran) and ecological receptivity. They constitute a therapeutics of desire that contests regimes of calculation and domination that produce ecological devastation and crisis. The Daodejing is not an ascetic rejection of desire as such, since not all desires are the same or destructive. In its therapeutics of the self in DDJ  1, it describes being both “without desire” (wuyu 無欲) and “having desire” (youyu 有欲). Whereas the former distract and obscure one’s own path, the latter is fulfilled in non-​­coercively and effortlessly according with that which generatively follows its own course of its own accord. What is this non-​­coercive responsive acting from and in attunement with the happening of nothingness? First, Wang proposed a negative description of what it is not: it is freedom from biased, coercive, partial, or mis-​­attuned non-​ ­responsive action (wei). Second, Wang offered positive images of what it is resorting to the feminine and maternal nurturing imagery in the Daodejing. Being attuned to and in accord with the functioning of the nothing is called

Emptying ecology   89 embracing “the mother,” as Wang adopted the Daodejing’s maternal imagery and language: using the child and abandoning the mother means that things lose their support and cannot be protected.63 It is the mother who births the functioning of nothingness and the loss of the mother signifies death: the loss of the nourishing operations of life that constitute the conditions of flourishing. Wang’s argument for prioritizing the conditions of flourishing can be given an ecological reinterpretation. Wang upheld and extended the Laozi’s linking of the feminine with nothingness such that nothingness is both: (1) primordial, originary, imageless, wordless, and beyond any possibility to even pose its mystery and secret; and, as the mother, (2) generative and nurturing. One indication of their relationship is found in Wang’s remarks on Daodejing chapter 21. Laozi notes that: (1) What exists originates in nothingness, the origin of the myriad things prior to forms and names; (2) once there are forms and names, it grows them, rears them, ensures them their proper shapes, and matures them as their mother. Wang’s response was that: (1) The dao, by being formless (wuxing 無形) and nameless (wuming 無名) (2) originates and brings the myriad things to completion.64 A second indication is marked in Wang’s commentary on DDJ 6. The image of the valley spirit (gushen 穀神) discloses “the nothingness in the center of the valley” (gu zhongyang wu 谷中央無). The “mysterious female creature” (xuanpin 玄牝), an expression used in the Laozi and quoted from it in the Liezi, points beyond words and is an indication of the ultimate.65 This strategy is evident in Wang’s commentary on the Yijing where he associated the second hexagram kun 坤—and its images of the earth, the feminine, the receptive, birthing all things, and the dark mare (pinma 牝馬)—with the primordial nothingness of the Daodejing, deploying feminine images to empathize the dao’s primordial generative fecundity.66 Three initial conclusions can be drawn of this discourse of the feminine that, as ecofeminist discourses have demonstrated, plays a striking role in ecologically living without domination, duality, or hierarchy.67 First, Wang’s discourse of mysterious dark learning elucidates “feminine” qualities as the virtuosity of flexibility, receptivity, and responsiveness as well as infinite depth and mystery. Second, the originary or fundamental (ben 本) is linked to images of the constancy of the earth, the bland simplicity (supu 素樸) of the uncarved block, which are reposed in themselves and world-​­generative in not keeping or possessing but generating and nurturing things. Third, the generative nourishing of life is described as greatness itself in DDJ 7 as heaven and earth are enduring in selflessly (wusi zhe 無私者) living for others rather than for themselves.68 Their generosity and care are discernible in non-​­coercive and non-​­restrictive responsive action. Heaven and earth fulfill the dao, its generative nourishing function, by nurturing and caring for the myriad things without self-​­concern and without limiting moralistic norms of virtue or duty as construed from early Mohist and Ruist to contemporary philosophical discourses. Generative nothingness is the generating and nourishing of being and the myriad things. The enactment of emptying allows responsiveness to this

90   Emptying ecology functioning of the nothing in the myriad things. How should this connection between emptiness and nothingness be interpreted? In his account of DDJ 16, Wang clarified how reaching the absolute limit of emptiness is the attainment of the limitless: One makes one’s virtuosity conform to that of Heaven and embodies the dao so that it completely permeates oneself. As such, one attains the condition of reaching the absolute limit of emptiness … To reach the absolute limit of emptiness is attaining the constancy of the dao. As such, one attains the condition wherein absolutely no limits exist. 與天合德，體道大通，則乃至於極虛無也 ... 窮極虛無，得道之常，則乃至於不有極也。69 In the extreme limit of emptiness (yu ji xuwu 於極虛無), the dao is without conditions or limits (buyou ji ye 不有極也). The dao can be addressed as constancy and oneness, as it arises in and returns to the functioning of generative nothingness. All things and beings arise from and return to nothingness. Accordingly, nothingness can be designated as one.70 One implies the myriad things. Wang’s philosophy of nothingness is at the same time a philosophy of the functions and limits of language that resonates with the Zhuangzi, which he uses in his Yijing commentary. Another noteworthy facet of the preceding quoted passage is Wang’s attention to the indicative concepts of reversion, return, and reversal. The utilization of reversion/return (fu 復) and reversal/return (fan 反) links Wang’s commentaries on the Daodejing and the Yijing. DDJ 40 begins with the statement that reversion is the stirred movement of dao (fan zhe, dao zhi dong 反者, 道之動).71 What does it signify to revert and return to nothingness? In one sense, this refers to the arising and vanishing of beings in birth and death. In another sense, it designates a practice of opening oneself with the generative functioning of nothingness according to which all beings flourish or fail to flourish. The emptying of the heart-​­mind is to let or allow all beings to return to nothingness in its generative function, and can therefore be described as the realization of the fullness of the reality of things. In his elucidations of the Tuanzhuan 彖傳 (Commentary on the Judgments) to Hexagram 24, return or the turning point (fu) is defined as returning to the original root of perfectly quiescent nothingness.72 Return is described in the Yijing as the heart-​­mind of heaven and earth (tiandi zhi xin 天地之心). The movement of rotation, reversal, and return to dao is a non-​­absorption in affairs (wushi). This should not be interpreted as a mystical withdrawal from the world nor a nihilistic fall into a nothingness without generative and nourishing functions. The enactment of return is one of repetition (fanfu 反復): fanfu is the return and renewal of dao each day in embodying and enacting the dao in virtuosity.73 The ceaseless generative movements and alterations of life (shengsheng zhi wei yi 生生之謂易 in the “Appended Remarks” [Xici 繫辭] to the Yijing) and the

Emptying ecology   91 movement of reversal, opposition, and return (fan) are identified by Wang with cultivating the roots of virtuosity and self-​­awareness through emptying and renewing in life’s returning repetition just as the flow of breathing and vital energy empty and fill.74 Already in the Hengxian excavated manuscript, dao is identified with the good and self-​­generating ordering of things, and humans with their systematic tendencies to disrupt and undermine the self-​­generating propensities of creatures and relational systems.75 This is an important lesson for an age in which climates and ecosystems have been systematically damaged through human practices. In Wang Bi’s philosophy, the teaching of dao is primarily a teaching of non-​ ­indifference to the immanence of the good. This immanence of the good in the self-​­generating ordering of things is suggestive—even if one does not wish to retain all of the facets of ancient Chinese cosmology today—in calling us to impartially care for and be responsive to the ecological sustenance of the life-​ ­conditions of the myriad things. Wang Bi and the functioning of language It would be unsuitable to conclude that Wang Bi offers only a purely “non-​­” or “anti”-​­referentialist account of language. His conception of language elucidates multiple functions that encompass referential and non-​­referential uses. One operation of language is naming (ming 名) and actuality (shi 實).76 Their correlation is described as referential in the Outline Introduction to the Laozi (Laozi zhilue 老子指略) insofar as names are dependent on forms (xing) and necessary to differentiate and analyze forms and principles (li 理). First, Wang appreciated how names are required to differentiate principles and need to be determinately applied to discuss actualities. Second, Wang makes the stronger claim that names necessarily arise from forms as forms do not arise from names. Third, the consequence of one and two is that if there is a name, there must be the form that it names; and if there is a form, it is distinguishable (fen 分) from other forms.77 This account of referential language prioritizes the reality and the form over the name that depends on it to be a genuine name. Naming is one modality in which language functions in relation to actualities. Wang introduces another way in which language operates in calling or designating (cheng 稱). Naming makes an objective determination arising from and concerning a distinguishable entity. Designating arises from the self and stylizes things to make them understandable.78 Language cannot only be directed at the reality of objects; it is affectively and subjectively motivated. There are other dimensions of language in addition to its referential use. There is the shifting transformative responsive functioning of language in relation to the transition of images, meanings, and principles in his interpretation of the Yijing. Wang depicts the dynamic structures of the Yijing, the hexagrams and yarrow stalks, as they “respond to questions as if they were echoes.”79 Wang has a sense of indirect and transitional languages, requiring a form of interpretive and reflective responsiveness, as in his interpretation of the

92   Emptying ecology Yijing: its “language twists and turns yet hits the mark” (yan quer zhong 言曲 而中) as the transformations of things cannot be essentialized since they lack fixity and one determinate paradigm that could grasp them (buke wei dian yao 不可為典要).80 While Wang acknowledges the referential use of language in determining entities and their qualities, understanding can transition from the obvious to the subtle and hidden. He discloses further linguistic possibilities by critiquing the reification of language in his well-​­known discussion of Clarifying Images (­mingxiang 明象) that clarifies the interpretation of the Yijing through extending a well-​­known analogy in the Zhuangzi. Words are to be forgotten for meanings (yi 意) in the conclusion of the twenty-​­sixth miscellaneous chapter “External Things” (waiwu 外物): The fish trap exists to catch the fish; once you get the fish, you can forget the trap. The rabbit snare exists to catch the rabbit; once you get the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words exist to catch meaning; once you get the meaning, you can forget the words. Where can I find a man who has forgotten words so I can have a word with him? 荃者所以在魚，得魚而忘荃；腳者所以在兔，得兔而忘蹄；言者所以 在意，得意而忘言。吾安得忘言之人而與之言哉?81 Wang’s reiteration of the Zhuangzi distinguished the functions of the rabbit-​­trap and the fish-​­snare as referring to a two-​­fold practice of forgetting (wang 忘): “words (yan 言) are snares for images (xiang 象), and images are traps for meanings (yi 意).”82 The image has an intermediate function between word and meaning so that the forgetting of both word and image is required to disclose the genuine meaning. This process is depicted as one of unfixing the fixating reification of words and images: “the one fixated on words will not grasp the images, and the one fixated on the image will not grasp the meaning.”83 The order of generation that proceeds from meaning (yi) through the image (xiang) to the word (yan) in Wang’s description can be distinguished from practices of intensifying unfixing and forgetting (that is, emptying) the word through the image and the image through the meaning.84 In Wang’s outline commentary of the Daodejing, he elucidates a related yet ultimately far more radical strategy of unfixing reifications. The word dao does not refer to an entity and thus does not have a determinate name or image: As it is nameless and formless, “try to conceive of [dao] as a thing, and it will turn out to be amorphous and incomplete; try to capture it as an image, and it will be utterly formless …”85 Wang remarked how it functions beyond naming and comparing such that: “Any name for it would fail to match what it is. Any comparison for it would fail to express all that it is.”86 How then does one appropriately speak about the dao as Laozi, Wang Bi, and other Daoists relentlessly do? As Wang remarked in his commentary on the Analects, giving this Confucian text a Daoist orientation, language becomes a

Emptying ecology   93 designation through metaphor, simile, and indirect ways of speaking that cannot rely on the fixating reification of either word or image: Dao is a designation for nothingness. It is because it moves through absolutely everything and absolutely everything moves through it that we use a simile for it and call it dao. As it functions silently and without embodiment, it is impossible to provide images for it. 道者，無之稱也，無不通也，無不由也。況之曰道，寂然無體，不可 為象。87 The way to speak about dao, which points to the functioning of primordial nothingness, is to deploy the rich variety of communicative strategies such as extending categorical correspondences or corresponding analogies (chulei 觸類). The sages form analogous models from things in order to track their transformations. It is not only a question of how to speak, since language concerns things and following their propensities through the flow of their alterations, but how to enact and practice affective responsiveness (ganying 感應), as being touched or affected (gan) is a condition of attuned receptive response (ying). Ways of speaking and wandering in the limitless beyond language Wang Bi’s philosophy of language has been categorized as non-​­ referential, which is only one aspect of his analysis of language. This chapter has shown how referential language is one function of language for Wang. It is the language of naming and actuality to refer to determinate things and their qualities. It is arguably the most elemental and pragmatic yet not the most primordial function of language. Following the discussion in the last section, three different functions of language and one further consideration concerning silence can be differentiated in Wang’s commentaries that offer models for speaking about and potentially encountering things and no-​­things. The first functioning of language is naming as referential discourse that refers determinate words to things. These words arise from and can accord with existing forms. While this first form is closer to the meaning of denotation, the second is closer to the meaning of connation as it indicates the word’s rich nexus of meanings. A second form of language is designating. This relies on the affectivity, subjectivity, and poetics of language in conveying meaning through analogies, similes, metaphors, and responsive echoes. Language encompasses words that are conventional and subjectively related to the self. Wang’s articulation of this second function of language is connected to new forms of communicating and senses of the self just as we today are in need of new and renewed forms of communicating with and about the natural world and our sense of self within it.

94   Emptying ecology In the historical situation of the Post-​­Han Three Kingdoms period, there is an altered role for “subjectivity” (a sense of self, interiority, and affectivity) in language as well as in situationally interpreting and reflecting on the changing conditions of the world in relation to the exemplary figures and models indicated in the Analects, the Daodejing, and the Yijing. There is a noteworthy role for subjectivity in dark learning discourses from “pure conversations” to the sensibilities expressed in poetry to the echoing responses and individual reflections in Wang’s elucidation of the Yijing that also has interesting environmental implications.88 A third function of language transpires in relation to what is beyond language. The namelessness of the dao is non-​­referential in that it can have no determinate name, no fixed image, and is a non-​­thing: that is, the “great name” functions beyond all naming, the “great image” cannot be perceived or imagined, and the “great thing” (to the extent that one could speak of it) transcends thingliness.89 As it is non-​­referential in referring to a nameless imageless non-​ ­thing, it operates at the limits of saying, through which more can be said than what is enclosed in the expression, pertaining to originary generative functioning of nothingness that speaks to the absence of adequate ways of speaking that are part of the contemporary ecological plight. What then is this expression “nothingness”? It is neither a determinate name nor concept. It cannot be posited as a thing or something, which it is not, and resists being treated as a determinate meaning or propositional said. It is irreducible to the words, images, and meanings that would capture it. Its primordiality is revealed and experientially enacted in response (responsiveness) to its functioning in and beyond language. Moreover, and far more radically, there is a fourth consideration that is no longer a functioning of language but deeper and profounder than any way of speaking (which is inevitably reductive and inadequate) about dao, nothingness, oneness, or the mother of all things. It is a practice of non-​­saying that appears to overcome the borders and boundaries of language altogether. According to Wang, and his biographer He Shao, the ultimate is disclosed in not speaking at all and wordlessly teaching that is still inadequate to nothingness. This is imagined in the figure of Confucius (who Wang construed as a Daoist sage higher than Laozi while critiquing Ruist teachings) insomuch as Confucius did not speak of nothingness yet simply, plainly, and humbly lived in accord with it despite the erroneous interpretations of his students and the partial limited teachings of the Ruists (ruzhe 儒者) who claim the legacy of his authority.90 Such responsiveness in and out of nothingness would signify encountering the limitless in encountering the very limit of language. Wang’s philosophy of language is concurrently a radical critique of the reification of language that is part of the human misrelations with things and their world. This elucidation of language is informed by a practice of the self that would be emancipated from limiting biased conceptions and presuppositions. Each linguistic form has its own appropriate function and associated limits. When they are over-​­extended and misapplied, and one becomes trapped and

Emptying ecology   95 ensnared in words, images, and concepts, then practices of forgetting and undoing fixating reifications are called for so that the sense can be liberated from its (1) practical-​­experiential and (2) linguistic-​­conceptual confines. First, practices of forgetting and emptying transpire, as noted previously in this work, through an attuned responding in and out of nothingness that constitutes the releasement of things in naturally being what they are (ziran) that can be reimagined in the context of responding to culturally and socially produced environmental crisis conditions. Second, undoing linguistic and associated conceptual fixations allows for richer and more varied uses of communication and accordingly more ecologically attuned uses of language in communicating with and about things and their relations. The linguistic impoverishment correlated with the loss of a sense of nature has led to a condition in which we cannot adequately express the life and death of things, their flourishing and injury, or their domination and releasement. Expressions such as the “domination of nature,” notably deployed by Adorno and Horkheimer, would thus find their significatory force instead of being disregarded as merely rhetorical. In this case, the emancipatory language of non-​­domination and liberation found in Daoist discourses could be applied not only to human affairs, as anthropocentric partiality maintains, but things and ecosystems.

Conclusion: reimagining ecology with Zhuangzi and Wang Bi Where have the reimagining of naturalness, language, and emptiness in Zhuangzi and Wang Bi led? The topic of this chapter has been the extent to which the philosophy of language and non-​­language in Zhuangzi and Wang Bi indicates two overlapping yet divergent potential models for ecological ways of speaking and thinking. In the discourses attributed to the proper names Zhuangzi and Wang Bi (insofar as they are known through their varied historical transmissions), the diversity of functions of speaking, and the entire range of language in all of its formalizing emptiness and concretizing and singularizing fullness, described by Ames and Hall in terms of field and focus, are suggestive of a more varied language with which to speak about things and nothingness.91 A greater richness of ways of speaking about things, without reducing these ways of speaking to conceptual and doctrinal fixations of the enchanted nature of animism or biocentrism (on the one side) or reductive anthropocentrism and other forms of the disenchantment of nature (on the other side), is crucial to the ongoing task of cultivating a more appropriate environmental culture. Dismantling and interrupting linguistic reification is not its own end, as in skeptical reconstructions of the Zhuangzi’s shifting positionality and per­ spectives that subvert essentialist and substantialist fixations. Beyond skepti­ cism, the text illuminates shifting perspectives and positions that align with the thing’s self-​­transformations (wu zihua 物自化) and it is the statement of things in their transformation (wuhua 物化) that concludes the butterfly dream

96   Emptying ecology passage. The Daodejing accentuated the thing, and the Zhuangzi prioritized it in its transformations. The recognition and appreciation of things (that which is as it is) pulls us, as in the dream of the butterfly (an exemplar of transformation) interpreted as a challenge to preconceived boundaries, outside of our own presumptions and projects toward the nothingness that cannot be determinatively said and conceived even through the most flexible and indirect uses of language. The first and second sentences of the received version of the Daodejing can be read in this light in a Zhuangzian way as contesting the fixation of dao and speaking in stating that the dao that can be said in words (the fixation of dao) is not genuinely dao (dao ke dao, feichang dao 道可道, 非常道) and the name that can be named (the fixation of the name) is not a genuine name (ming ke ming, feichang ming 名可名, 非常名). Early Daoist philosophies of cultivating emptiness in embodied “biospiritual” practices and through linguistic and other communicative strategies from the Warring States (those ascribed to Laozi and Zhuangzi) through the eclectic collections of the Guanzi and Huainanzi to the Three Kingdom eras (encompassing Wang Bi and other mysterious learning literati) offer critical and exemplary models for a contemporary ecologically focused critical therapeutics of self and society. Reimagining language and non-​­language, as well as the non-​­human and the human, in this manner reveals a number of crucial dimensions of Daoism that can inform and allow the reimaging of environmental philosophy and ecological therapeutics. The present chapter has shown how a critical ecology and environmental philosophy can be informed and stirred by a reimagining of early Daoist discourses of emptiness and nothingness. Daoist enactments of emptiness and undoing fixations offer models for the ecological releasement of things. Emptiness is to be enacted in response to generative nothingness, releasing things to flourish in their own paths and allowing them to be genuinely encountered and cherished in their own temporalizing moments that can appropriately be designated life.

Notes   1 Note the helpful overview of Daoism’s ecological commitments in Miller, China’s Green Religion and Schönfeld and Chen, “Daoism and the Project of an Ecological Civilisation,” 630­–​­645.   2 The skeptical interpretation of Daoism is typically based on select passages from the inner chapters of the Zhuangzi. A prominent example of this type of overly reductive approach is found in Chad Hansen, A Daoist Theory of Chinese Thought: A Philosophical Interpretation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). On Daoism and nihilism, see Geir Sigurðsson, “Creating Meaning: A Daoist Response to Existential Nihilism.” International Communication of Chinese Culture 3. 3 (2016): 377­–​­390.   3 I explain the deployment of deconstructive and formally indicative concepts in the context of Chan Buddhism and Heidegger’s early hermeneutics of facticity in chapter eight of Nelson, Chinese and Buddhist Philosophy, 225­–​­252.   4 On generative nothingness, note David Chai, “Daoism and wu.” Philosophy Compass 9.10 (2014): 663­–​­671; Chai, Zhuangzi and the Becoming of Nothingness.

Emptying ecology   97

  5   6   7   8   9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29

For an excellent account of Daoist deconstructive linguistic strategies, see Wang, Linguistic Strategies in Daoist Zhuangzi and Chan Buddhism. On Daoism and deconstructive strategies, see Steven Burik, The End of Comparative Philosophy and the Task of Comparative Thinking (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2010); Dan Lusthaus, “Aporetic Ethics in the Zhuangzi,” in Scott Cook, ed., Hiding the World in the World: Uneven Discourses on the Zhuangzi (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003), 163­–​­206; Dan Lusthaus, “Zhuangzi’s Ethics of Deconstructing Moralistic Self-​­Imprisonment: Standards without Standards,” in Youru Wang, ed., Deconstruction and the Ethical in Asian Thought (London: Routledge, 2007), 53­–​­72. Translation modified from Erica F. Brindley, Paul R. Goldin, Esther S. Klein, “A Philosophical Translation of the Heng Xian.” Dao 12.2 (2013): 146. Lou, Wang Bi ji jiaoshi, 35; Lynn, Classic of the Way, 75. Lou, Wang Bi ji jiaoshi, 36; Lynn, Classic of the Way, 76. Lou, Wang Bi ji jiaoshi, 56; Lynn, Classic of the Way, 89. See Wangheng Chen, Chinese Environmental Aesthetics (London: Routledge, 2015), 77­–​­78. Lou, Wang Bi ji jiaoshi, 14; Lynn, Classic of the Way, 61. Lou, Wang Bi ji jiaoshi, 14; Lynn, Classic of the Way, 61. Lou, Wang Bi ji jiaoshi, 8; Lynn, Classic of the Way, 56. For an introduction and translation, see Rickett, Guanzi, 56­–​­81. On the interconnections between self-​­cultivation and ecology, see Livia Kohn, “Healing and the Earth: Daoist Cultivation in Comparative Perspective,” in Ip, Environmental Ethics, 147­–​­171. On livability in Chinese environmental culture, see Chen, Chinese Environmental Aesthetics, 61­–​­67. See Watson, Chuang Tzu, 114; concerning zhen in the Zhuangzi and Daoist lineages, see Chai, Zhuangzi and the Becoming of Nothingness, 165; Kim-​­chong Chong, “The Concept of ‘Zhen’ 真 in the Zhuangzi.” Philosophy East and West 61.2 (2011): 324­–​ ­346; Kirkland, Taoism, chapter 5. Zhuangzi, 6.1; see Graham, Chuang-​­Tzŭ, 84; Watson, Chuang Tzu, 43; Ziporyn, Zhuangzi, 39­–​­40. Ibid. Watson, Chuang Tzu, 43; Ziporyn, Zhuangzi, 40­–​­41. Guorong Yang, The Mutual Cultivation of Self and Things: A Contemporary Chinese Philosophy of the Meaning of Being (Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2016). Graham, Chuang-​­Tzŭ, 68; Watson, Chuang Tzu, 25; Ziporyn, Zhuangzi, 26­–​­27. Zhuangzi, 6.2, 6.9. Chai, Zhuangzi and the Becoming of Nothingness, 109. On the trace, see Steven Burik, “Tracing Dao: A Comparison of Dao 道 in the Daoist Classics and Derridean ‘Trace.’ ” Comparative and Continental Philosophy 12.1 (2020): 53­–​­65; Chai, Zhuangzi and the Becoming of Nothingness, 41­–​­47. See Chai, Zhuangzi and the Becoming of Nothingness, 109­–​­119. On yun, see Chen, Chinese Environmental Aesthetics, 76­–​­77. On questions concerning critique in Daoism, see Wenning, “Daoism as Critical Theory,” 50­–​­71. Mair, Wandering on the Way, 14–15; Watson, Chuang Tzu, 9. This argument is formulated in Chad Hansen, “Guru or Skeptic? Relativistic ­Skepticism in the Zhuangzi,” in Cook, Hiding the World in the World, 128­–​­162. Insofar as there is a Zhuangzian skepticism, it is closer to the argumentation that skeptically undermines the dogmatic presuppositions of skeptical doubt (in assuming the very foundationalism it would deny) as in Ludwig Wittgenstein, On Certainty (Oxford: Blackwell, 1969). Rather than having no conditions, even Liezi depends on the winds that he would ride in freedom and ease.

98   Emptying ecology 30 Mair, Wandering on the Way, 15; Watson, Chuang Tzu, 10. 31 On philosophy of language in the Zhuangzi, see Steve Coutinho, Zhuangzi and Early Chinese Philosophy: Vagueness, Transformation, and Paradox (Burlington: Ashgate, 2004); Møllgaard, An Introduction to Daoist Thought; Carmine M. Morrow, “Metaphorical Language in the Zhuangzi.” Philosophy Compass 11.4 (2016): 179­–​­188; Wang, Linguistic Strategies in Daoist Zhuangzi. 32 See Chong, Zhuangzi’s Critique of the Confucians, 100­–​­102; Sarah A. Mattice, Metaphor and Metaphilosophy: Philosophy as Combat, Play, and Aesthetic Experience (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2014), 63­–​­64; Wang, Linguistic Strategies in Daoist Zhuangzi, 147; Watson, Chuang Tzu, 234­–​­235; Guorong Yang. “Names and Words in the Philosophy of Zhuangzi.” Frontiers of Philosophy in China 3.1 (2008): 1­–26. ​­ 33 On the ecological crisis as a crisis of instrumental reason and capitalist social-​ ­economic reproduction, see part one of Nelson, Ethics of the Material Other. 34 Translation altered from Ryden, Daodejing, 25; see Lou, Wang Bi ji jiaoshi, 26­–​­27; Lynn, Classic of the Way, 69. On Heidegger’s interpretations of emptiness and uselessness in Laozi and Zhuangzi, see Eric S. Nelson, “Heidegger’s Daoist Turn.” Research in Phenomenology 49.3 (2019): 362­–384. ​­ 35 Lou, Wang Bi ji jiaoshi, 196; Lynn, Classic of the Way, 31. 36 Watson, Chuang Tzu, 33; Ziporyn, Zhuangzi, 32. 37 See Chai, Zhuangzi and the Becoming of Nothingness, 92­–​­99. 38 Graham, Chuang-​­Tzŭ, 48­–​­49; Watson, Chuang Tzu, 280. 39 Chai, Zhuangzi and the Becoming of Nothingness, 98. 40 Graham, Chuang-​­Tzŭ, 142; Watson, Chuang Tzu, 7; Ziporyn, Zhuangzi, 9­–​­10. 41 See Chai, Zhuangzi and the Becoming of Nothingness, 140­–147. ​­ On aesthetic ordering, note Kirill O. Thompson, “Taoist Cultural Reality: The Harmony of Aesthetic Order.” Journal of Chinese Philosophy 17.2 (1990): 175­–​­185. 42 Sukhu, Songs of Chu, 142­–​­151. 43 Sukhu, Songs of Chu, 144. 44 Zhuangzi, chapter 7; modified translation of Ziporyn, Zhuangzi, 54; Watson, Chuang Tzu, 97. 45 Mair, Wandering on the Way, 235. See Nelson, “The Human and The Inhuman,” 724. 46 JeeLoo Liu, An Introduction to Chinese Philosophy: From Ancient Philosophy to Chinese Buddhism (Malden: Blackwell, 2006), 172. 47 Zhuangzi, chapter 2; Ziporyn, Zhuangzi, 10­–​­13. 48 Zhuangzi, chapter 13.1. 49 Rickett, Guanzi, vol. 2, 101. 50 See Kirill O. Thompson, “‘Fallingwater’: Daoist inklings about Place, Strategy, Design, and Space.” International Communication of Chinese Culture 4. 1 (2017): 5­–23. ​­ 51 Ludwig Wittgenstein, On Certainty (Oxford: Blackwell, 1969). 52 Zehou Li, The Chinese Aesthetic Tradition (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2009), 82­–​­83. 53 On the animal and the non-​­human in Zhuangzi, also see Franklin Perkins, “Of Fish and Men: Species Difference and the Strangeness of Being Human in the Zhuangzi.” The Harvard Review of Philosophy 17.1 (2010): 118­–​­136; Wenning, “Heidegger and Zhuangzi on the Nonhuman,” 93­–​­111. 54 See Wagner, Language, Ontology, and Political Philosophy, 2. 55 Lou, Wang Bi ji jiaoshi, 1­–​­2; Lynn, Classic of the Way, 51­–​­52. 56 Ibid. 57 Lou, Wang Bi ji jiaoshi, 8. On language and embodiment in early Chinese thought, see Geaney, Language as Bodily Practice in Early China. 58 Lou, Wang Bi ji jiaoshi, 93­–​­94; Lynn, Classic of the Way, 119­–​­121. 59 The political situation of Wang’s ontology of nothing is analyzed in Rudolf G. Wagner, Language, Ontology, and Political Philosophy. 60 Lou, Wang Bi ji jiaoshi, 93; Lynn, Classic of the Way, 119­–​­120.

Emptying ecology   99 61 Ibid. 62 Ibid. 63 Lou, Wang Bi ji jiaoshi, 196; Lynn, Classic of the Way, 34. On the use of maternal language in Daoism, see Ellen Marie Chen, “Tao as the Great Mother and the Influence of Motherly Love in the Shaping of Chinese Philosophy.” History of Religions 14.1 (1974): 51­–​­64. 64 Lou, Wang Bi ji jiaoshi, 52­–​­53; Lynn, Classic of the Way, 86­–​­87. 65 Lou, Wang Bi ji jiaoshi, 16­–​­17; Lynn, Classic of the Way, 62. 66 On the problematic of gender in Wang Bi, in reference to his interpretation of images of the feminine in the Yijing and Daodejing, see Eric S. Nelson and Liu Yang, “The Yijing, Gender, and the Ethics of Nature,” in Ann Pang-​­White, ed., The Bloomsbury Research Handbook to Chinese Philosophy and Gender (London: Bloomsbury, 2016), 273. 67 See Warren, “The Power and the Promise of Ecological Feminism,” 125­–​­146; Rowe and Sellman, “An Uncommon Alliance,” 129­–​­148. 68 Lou, Wang Bi ji jiaoshi, 19; Lynn, Classic of the Way, 63. 69 Lou, Wang Bi ji jiaoshi, 37; Lynn, Classic of the Way, 76­–​­77. 70 Lou, Wang Bi ji jiaoshi, 117; Lynn, Classic of the Way, 135. 71 Lou, Wang Bi ji jiaoshi, 109; Lynn, Classic of the Way, 130. 72 Lou, Wang Bi ji jiaoshi, 336; Lynn, The Classic of Changes, 286. 73 Lou, Wang Bi ji jiaoshi, 337; Lynn, Classic of Changes, 287. A classic depiction of this topic is found in Etienne Balazs, Chinese Civilization and Bureaucracy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1964), 226­–​­254. 74 Graham, Lieh-​­Tzu, 128. 75 Brindley, Goldin, Klein, “A Philosophical Translation of the Heng Xian,” 148. 76 Lou, Wang Bi ji jiaoshi, 199; Lynn, Classic of the Way, 39. 77 Ibid. 78 Ibid. 79 Lou, Wang Bi ji jiaoshi, 578; Lynn, Classic of Changes, 120. 80 Lou, Wang Bi ji jiaoshi, 565; Lynn, Classic of Changes, 87. On the problem of agency in his Yijing interpretation, see Tze-Ki Hon, “Human Agency and Change: A Reading of Wang Bi’s Yijing Commentary.” Journal of Chinese Philosophy 30.2 (2003): 223­–​­242. 81 Watson, Chuang Tzu, 233, compare Mair, Wandering on the Way, 276–277. 82 Lou, Wang Bi ji jiaoshi, 609; Lynn, Classic of Changes, 32; Lynn, “Wang Bi and Xuanxue,” 389. 83 Ibid. 84 Ibid. 85 Lou, Wang Bi ji jiaoshi, 195; Lynn, Classic of the Way, 30. 86 Lou, Wang Bi ji jiaoshi, 196; Lynn, Classic of the Way, 32. 87 Lou, Wang Bi ji jiaoshi, 624; Lynn, “Wang Bi and Xuanxue,” 387. 88 On this point, see Nelson and Yang, “The Yijing, Gender, and the Ethics of Nature,” 267­–​­288. 89 Lou, Wang Bi ji jiaoshi, 196, 87–8; Lynn, Classic of the Way, 31, 114. 90 Lou, Wang Bi ji jiaoshi, 196; Lynn, Classic of the Way, 33­–​­34. 91 Ames and Hall, Daodejing, 11­–​­13.

5 Early Daoist biopolitics and a new Daoist political ecology

Early Daoist biopolitics in context Introduction Appeals to encountering the myriad things in their environmental contexts and relations are necessary for an ecological transformation of existing cultures and societies. Yet an environmental ethos and culture of nature is not sufficient given how systematically reproduced social-​­economic processes in advanced capitalist societies mediate, entangle, and obstruct the transformative potential of such encounters. To this extent, an adequate environmental philosophy must concurrently be a social-​­political philosophy that can offer an environmentally oriented critique of existing social structures and institutions that directly and indirectly harm creatures and degrade ecosystems in myriad ways such that transformations must transpire in economic and societal structures as well as at the level of individual cultivation and reflection. To what degree do early Daoist sources, or later explications such as those of Wang Bi and Guo Xiang, offer examples, insights, and models for contemporary critical ecology and social theory?1 Does Daoism have anything pertinent to say about politics and by implication about political ecology? Early Daoist sources are political documents articulating models of responsive and nourishing sage-​­rulers, “anarchic” (better designated dao-​­archic) internally self-​­ordering and organizing communities living closely with their natural environments, and an anti-​­authoritarian politics of anti-​­political withdrawal.2 Interpretations of early Daoist political thought range all over the place. It has been anachronistically construed in modern accounts as advocating anything from authoritarianism and totalitarianism (when emphasis is laid on their closeness to Legalist discourses) to anti-​­authoritarian anarchism, expressive individualism, and a laissez-​­faire like libertarianism (when they are distinguished from Legalist thought). Modern critics of Daoism selectively conflate different tendencies in Daoist sources, often based on a reductive and de-​­contextualized reading of Daodejing chapters 3 and 5. They neglect the many chapters that elucidate care, nurture, and the primacy of others (recall the discussion in Chapter 2). In contrast proponents of early Daoism can overly idealize the latter tendencies.3 Questions of authority and freedom in

Daoist biopolitics and political ecology   101 early Daoist sources are much more complex than the former and latter interpretations tend to imagine.4 A contemporary redeployment of early Daoist discourses is without doubt shaped by contemporary forms and reconstructions of Daoism. An ongoing interpretation has to acknowledge its own anachronism as it consists of a reimagining from our own interpretive situation of realities expressed in ancient fragments and traces that are no longer part of their original interpretive context of meanings. That being said, and admitting this problematic that requires hermeneutical sensitivity, it is the latter “anarchic” tendencies that can be redeployed in new Daoist (which is modern without being uncritical of modernity) confrontations with the existing social realities insofar as these systemically obstruct the genuine realities of things and the nourishing and flourishing of the myriad creatures, ecosystems, and environments. It should be noted that anarchic here does not so much signify modern Western notions of anarchism or libertarianism, which are typically based on the presupposition of bounded individuals, but rather an anarchy of dao (dao-​­archy) as the immanent happening of the good in the autopoietic self-​­organizing propensities of persons and things.5 This anarchy of the good (shan 善), in which dao nourishes the myriad things, is irreducible to the usefulness and moralizing of the “being good for.”6 The early Daoist biopolitics of the self-​­generative and self-​­ordering patterns of natural and political life, which occur either with (in most sources) or without (in the case of more ostensibly purely “primitivist” statements) the assistance of the sages and sage-​­kings, offers the basis for exploring democratic ecopolitics insofar as democratic practices, institutions, and discourses best approximate the utopian tendency toward an anarchic self-​­ordering of self-​­regulating individuals and collectives that if attained would function without deploying coercion, contention, and domination. It is almost needless to say that early Daoist sources are not democratic in a modern sense since politics is interpreted, even in rejections of it in the Zhuangzi, in relation to the monarchs and ruling elites who dominated ancient forms of life. It is all the more noteworthy in this political context how the Daodejing and Zhuangzi (in differing ways) focus on cultivating a life of freedom in relation to social-​­political authority and power. These two texts emphasize strategies and practices of expanding equalization and focusing singularization, non-​­partiality, non-​­exclusion, and non-​­domination (none of which can be fixated as static principles or measures) that have a radically democratic and ecological potential in relation to the structural reproduced forms of partiality, exclusion, domination, and contention (of both non-​­human and human life) that restrict and undermine the nourishing and flourishing of life in contemporary societies. Legalist and Daoist biopolitical models of the sage-​­kings A number of the discursive affinities and the close historical connections between early Legalist and Daoist political thought were considered earlier in

102   Daoist biopolitics and political ecology the present book. Both fundamentally biopolitical discourses deploy images of the sage-​­king operating through emptying and responsive attunement in order to effortlessly guide affairs and nurture things without the anxieties of being entangled in them. Both can stress the simplification of the people and their desires and worries through appropriate political organization functioning in accord with the natural. Based on their intersections and kinship, it should not be surprising that Huanglao and syncretic sources during the Qin and early Han dynasty periods blend and unify Daoist and Legalist discourses in which the king assumes the appearance of a sage-​­king for the sake of greater authority and legitimacy. There are conspicuous divergences between early Legalist and Daoist sources that critics of the contemporary potential of Daoist political philosophy have neglected. The received edition of the Hanfeizi appeals to the authority of Laozi while giving his politics a purposive interpretation. In the biopolitics of power in the text attributed to Hanfei, law-​­oriented kings empty themselves so as to better employ the useful and purposive, operating through law (as the expression of the dao), method, technique, and fixed naming of realities to extend their longevity and maximize their political power. This king plays at the role of and pretends to be a Daoist-​­like sage-​­king for calculative and purposive reasoning and motivations. The establishment of laws, names, and an administrative system allows for the thorough ordering of society, and the instrumental and purposive political rule of Legalist monarchs, such as the first emperor of the short-​­lived Qin dynasty (Qin Shi Huang 秦始皇), is in effect the opposite of the political sensibilities envisioned in the Daodejing and the Zhuangzi. There are a number of indications of this in the texts themselves. In the Daodejing, the Daoist sage-​­kings persuade without contending through being exemplary models who do not rely on the proliferation of laws and the use of force and violence. They practice a more radical form of emptying, vacating law, technique, and names to be in tune with dao. Instead of being self-​ ­concerned in their own longevity and power, they are depicted as at most indirectly aiming at nurturing themselves in prioritizing nourishing and nurturing care for the myriad things and peoples that—as in the images of heaven and earth in DDJ 7—constitutes genuine longevity and greatness. The exemplary other-​­oriented sage-​­kings of the Daodejing do not purposively seek to maximize power; they attain power through abandoning power, and order society by assisting things and persons to be capable of ordering themselves to the point that the best ordered society does not appear to have a ruler at all in DDJ 17 and 57. This conception of assisting and nurturing the self-​ ­ordering of people is based on the wuwei/ziran inspired model of letting nature order itself. It is expressed in more radical forms in the anti-​­political sections of the Zhuangzi. In the context of recent discussions of an environmentally legitimated eco-​ ­dictatorship, some might believe that an eco-​­legalistic environmental dictatorship (an eco-​­Qin Shi Huang so to speak) might be a last resort for saving the planet from its devastation through self-​­interested human activities.7 This is

Daoist biopolitics and political ecology   103 highly questionable in too many ways to be enumerated here but a few of them can be mentioned here to illuminate an ecopolitical alternative to appeals to authoritarian rule. First, in being committed to a calculative and instrumental framework, one does not attend to or care for the things themselves, what is as it is in its natural propensities, much less persons. Second, the ecological objective of such a regime would not survive its own contradictions, since dictatorship in effect aims at reproducing its own power rather than actualizing the ideology that legitimated it. Third, a more appropriate ecological culture and politics must be democratic, instead of being the result of coercion, legal administration, and manipulation, for people to genuinely change themselves and cultivate an ecological comportment and life-​­praxis. The Daoist sage-​­kings ideally establish the conditions allowing people to nourish and govern themselves. The idealized figure of such a ruler has been ideologically deployed in Chinese history by emperors and leaders of religious-​ ­political millennial movements. Given such considerations, not only the Legalist but also the Daoist image of the sage-​­king needs to be reimagined within a democratic context in which persons (can ideally) communicate and participate without coercion and restriction in the conditions and formation of their own self-​­governing.8 The biopolitics of Agrarian simplicity The political passages in the Daodejing and the Zhuangzi anthologies, as collected works later attributed to respective authors, do not express one unified political theory. In addition to the controversies regarding Legalism and Daoism, there are further ones concerning the imperfect classifications of what is inadequately designated “primitivism” in that the term encompasses differing conceptions of attaining simplicity, naturalness, and genuineness. This category can include either or both egalitarian agriculturalism (nongjia 農家, with its imagining of an equal communal simple form of living with the land) and individualistic “Yangism” (with its egoist self-​­interested or hedonistic bearing as depicted in the Mencius and much later in the Liezi).9 These two tendencies intersect with or are identical with some forms of Daoist discourse and contest the coercive power of hierarchically organized society by attempting to withdraw from it by (1) simplifying society and living more closely with the land or (2) escaping into one’s genuine individual form of life, and its bodily integrity and longevity, or its bodily pleasures. Each of these classifications is uncertain in a number of conceptual and historical ways. What is problematically classified as “primitivism” in the case of the agriculturalists advocated reducing social-​­political hierarchy and complexity to a simpler more equal form of life centered around farming. It was not necessarily “primitive” (at least in many senses of this word) as they developed systematic ideas of shared participation in food production and distribution as closely integrated with local environmental conditions. Appealing to the exemplar of the ancient agricultural sage-​­king Shennong 神農, it stressed

104   Daoist biopolitics and political ecology living in simple egalitarian agricultural communities without hierarchical leadership. The ruthless Robber Zhi (daozhi 盗跖) is portrayed as terrifying Confucius with his philosophical argumentation in the twenty-ninth chapter of the Zhuangzi which is named after him. Zhi describes the times of Shennong on the way to making a Yangist conclusion, portraying how the people lived without anxieties, slept without dreams, not harming and living together with human and non-​­human life: In the age of Shennong, the people lay down peaceful and easy, woke up wide-​­eyed and blank. They knew their mothers but not their fathers and lived side by side with the elk and the deer. They plowed for their food, wove for their clothing, and had no thought in their hearts of harming one another. This was flawless virtuosity at its height! 神農之世，臥則居居，起則於於，民知其母，不知其父，與麋鹿共處, 耕而食，織而衣，無有相害之心，此至德之隆也。10 A. C. Graham identified philosopher-​­farmers such as Xu Xing 許行, whose idea of shared simplicity and self-​­sufficiency was criticized for the sake of upholding social distinction and hierarchy in Mencius 3A4, with an agriculturalist “School of the Tillers” (nongjia) who are at the beginnings of the peasant utopian lineage in Chinese thought that reverberated in Chinese peasant revolutionary movements from antiquity to the communist revolution.11 The inappropriate label of “primitivism” refers to a family of discourses expressing the desire of abandoning complex societies, their proliferation of desires, inequalities, and hierarchical stratification, for the sake of forming small simple self-​­organizing communities analogous in some measure—to introduce crosscultural examples—to Socrates’ initial proposal of a healthy society in Plato’s Republic, which his interlocutor Glaucon dismisses as a city of pigs, and Rousseau’s discussion of small republics that best approximate natural goodness in a social-​­political condition.12 Be that as it may, these egalitarian proto-​­ecological tendencies in Daoist contexts are more adequately depicted as aiming at social equalization and simplification in small self-​­sufficient communities that are more in tune with their environing world rather than as a return to a “primitive” autarkic and organic condition. This ethos could be potentially democratically and ecologically reimagined; yet it is faced with the question posed to Socrates by Glaucon, as well as by contemporary proponents of consumerism, of who would wish to live without luxuries and the benefits of wealth regardless of the inequalities and conflicts that they generate through resource intensive and wasteful development. To the extent that such options are not available at this point, the question is (analogous to Rousseau) how best to approximate such equality and simplicity under the complex conditions of existing democratic societies. Murray Bookchin remarked that “present ecological problems cannot be clearly understood, much less resolved, without resolutely dealing with problems

Daoist biopolitics and political ecology   105 within society.” As ecofeminist and social ecological philosophy has elucidated, we are facing an environmental catastrophe (due to processes of the domination of nature) that is interwoven with the reproduction of inequalities (due to systems of interhuman domination) that systematically shift ecological and other tasks and burdens onto the poor, marginal, and disposed inside and outside the so-​­called “first world.”14 The warnings are signaled in interhuman and interthingly relations.15 Accordingly, critics of the inequities of environmentally destructive overdevelopment that disproportionally harms the poor, particularly Vandana Shiva, have analyzed the intimate links between environmental crisis-​ ­tendencies and interhuman domination based on relations of class, gender, and race and argued for an environmentally more just society that promotes both the bio-​­diversity of species as well as human diversity that in Daoism can be addressed through the expression “myriad things” (wanwu).16 13

Yang Zhu and the biopolitical primacy of bodily being In the case of Yang Zhu 楊朱, who is sometimes described as “primitivist” in the sense of following and maximizing the integrity of one’s embodied core nature (xing 性), debates surround the attribution and appropriate meaning of expressions such as “acting for self” (weiwo 為我, mentioned in the Mencius and early sources), “cherishing oneself” (guiji 貴己, mentioned in Master Lü’s Spring and Autumn Annals), “cherishing life” (guisheng 貴生, mentioned in the Xunzi), and the cherishing of life and bodily form (shen 神) in the Western Han text Exemplary Figures (Yangzi Fayan 揚子法言) by Yang Xiong 揚雄. There are further questions regarding whether Yang’s thinking of embodied life expresses a form of Daoism due to similar expressions of cherishing life and bodily form being found in the Daodejing, the Zhuangzi, the Wenzi, and a version of Yang’s thought being incorporated as a whole chapter into the Liezi text.17 While a butcher can teach a prince how to nourish life in an earlier chapter, a robber teaches here—face-​­to-​­face with Confucius who is depicted as lacking genuineness and embodying moralistic hypocrisy, artificiality, and ambition— how to fulfill one’s life as best as possible by living according to one’s own integral core nature (xing) and disposition (qing). The “Robber Zhi” chapter of the Zhuangzi emphasizes preserving one’s genuine core yet unfixed nature in the enjoyment of life and achieving longevity by focusing on oneself. The real human disposition (ren zhi qing 人之情) follows its desires as “the eyes yearn to see colors, the ears to hear sound, the mouth to taste flavors, and the will and spirit to achieve its fulfillment” (目欲視色, 耳欲聽聲, 口欲察味, 志氣欲盈).18 Given human finitude and mortality, one lives best by fulfilling desires and cherishing one’s allotted time: “No one incapable of gratifying their desires and cherishing the years that fate has given them can be called a master [or passageway] of the way” (說其志意, 養其壽命者, 皆非通道者也).19 The way of the moralist, of Confucius, lacks and undermines the natural genuineness of life. As pointed out in the Zhuangzi’s second chapter, the rules of benevolence and

106   Daoist biopolitics and political ecology righteousness and the paths of right and wrong all are hopelessly snarled and jumbled” (仁義之端, 是非之塗, 樊然殽亂).20 “Yangism” retrospectively designates families of conceptions of life related to the figure Yang Zhu that accentuate the primacy of natural self-​­concern, interpreted either as nourishing the health and longevity of individual bodily form or as the pursuit of individual pleasures, over the interests of others and society as a whole. If we follow the transmitted conflicting accounts of Yang, how might a Yangist respond to the ongoing ecological crisis? Yang is linked with the precedence of embodied form.21 Individuals motivated by nourishing their own embodied life without regard for others or all under heaven (tianxia) might nourish the life around them so as to be able to nourish themselves. As the environing world and things wither away, it is increasingly difficult to maintain and extend one’s own well-​­being and longevity. The interpretation of Yang’s philosophy as a pure hedonistic embrace of the transient moment implies that one is concerned neither with nourishing one’s own life nor the life of others, as one delights in what is directly received in the moment while forgetting and ignoring all that is not (potentially even future states of their own self). In this context, there is a literati variation on Daoism, the hedonistic irresponsibility of which medieval Confucian and Buddhist critics highlighted as expressing its deeper tendencies, of idling away life in game-​­ and music-​­playing, eating and drinking, and conversing and poeticizing, avoiding the burdens and tasks of life until fate brings one’s play to a close. Hedonistic elucidations of Daoism, which have been associated with mysterious learning literati and rejected by Daoist religious transmissions, revive the specter of the amoral and potentially nihilistic interpretation of Daoism (as meaning destroying instead of meaning generating) and its consequences that would abandon things and the world to its fated outcome.22 In a time of growing environmental despair in fear of an irreversible ecological tipping point, upholding such an attitude might appear more persuasive.

Sage-​­kings and self-​­organizing communities Emptying and simplifying the political in the Daodejing Are agricultural egalitarian simplicity or bodily self-​­regard the only options? While sharing features with these discourses, the Daodejing appears to present another option of how to empty and simplify the political. There are numerous chapters in the Daodejing that discuss the simplification of life as noted throughout this work.23 Chapter eighty is a notable example: it calls for lessening the size of the state and the population, avoiding the use of labor-​­saving instruments, vehicles to travel far, and weapons, employing simple means of life and enjoying food, clothes, one’s home, and living together. This might be achieved according to chapter sixty-​­five by not ruling through knowing but rather not-​ ­knowing and turning with things. According to chapter nineteen, cutting off the

Daoist biopolitics and political ecology   107 pursuit of sageliness, wisdom, benevolence, and righteousness will allow the people to benefit themselves in plainness and simplicity. Such social simplicity cannot be achieved through enacting laws and applying coercion, as is evident from a number of chapters. In chapters sixteen and seventeen, genuine rulers are described as impartially working for the shared good while being like shadows in not coercively intervening in affairs. As discussed earlier in this work, chapters fifty-​­seven and fifty-​­eight describe how political order is best achieved by being non-​­coercive and responsively attuned in affairs, allowing the people to transform themselves. The weakened and discouraged state is the best one, as it allows the people to cultivate their own life-​ ­praxis. In chapter thirty-​­two, we see that the myriad creatures and people achieve peace, justice, and self-​­equilibrium (zijun 自均) of their own accord without relying on external forces or decrees. As the Heshang Gong Commentary notes, this means that the myriad things are not governed by external decree (  jiaoling 教令) but are naturally self-​­adjusting with one another.24 In addition to the minimalist quasi-​­anarchic state that encourages the self-​ ­ordering of people by not imposing a moralistic or Legalistic order upon them, other passages articulate how the sages and best governments practice non-​ ­injury and a nurturing associated with feminine imagery. Thus sagely rule doesn’t abandon and sacrifice but rather assists people and things according to chapter twenty-​­seven. Chapter forty-​­nine states that the sages take the people’s heart-​­mind as their own while maternally nurturing them like their own children. In chapter sixty, the great states and sages are numinous without injuring humans; they illuminate without limiting coercion. In chapter sixty-​­one, the great state is said to maintain itself through stillness (jing) rather than activity, through the receptivity and nurturing that is taken to be characteristic of the feminine. Chapter sixty-​­six states that to rule one must put oneself behind and below the people, guiding them without burdening or harming them. The anarchic politics of anti-​­politics in the Zhuangzi and Liezi Daoist hermits, farmers, and other eccentrics are well-​­known in Chinese cultures for their refusal of and escape from the sphere of the political whether it is conceived in moralistic (Confucian, Mohist, etc.) or calculative strategic (Legalist, syncretist, etc.) terms. The Zhuangzi contains a number of anti-​­political passages such as Robber Zhi’s rejection of the strategizing and moralizing of Confucius as an overextending of oneself that leads to early defeat and demise. The violent robber reveals to Confucius the real violence of the quest for gain and reputation that does violence to one’s own genuineness (zhen) and the tendencies of one’s own integral core nature (xing).25 If one is ensnared by moral and social-​­political desires and plans, one cannot appropriately care for and nourish longevity (yangshou 養壽). There is an analogous message in the “Autumn Floods” narrative of Zhuangzi’s refusal while fishing at the River Pu to take up royal service under the King of

108   Daoist biopolitics and political ecology Chu. Zhuangzi expresses how he would rather remain in the river mud than be like the dead sacred tortoise honored and stored in the king’s ancestral temple.26 In these two narratives it is better to play free than be ensnared by the political as the integrity of life matters more than either moralistic or calculative political fixations of service to others or the ruler. The account of Yang Zhu’s thought as depicted in the Liezi has other anti-​ ­political and anarchic dimensions, as it advises following the propensity of the myriad things encompassing one’s own singular heart-​­mind and nature. Nurturing one’s own life first is not to restrict life to oneself, fixating and bringing it to death, but to liberate both oneself and others from artificial and coercive limits and restraints.27 As endeavors at ordering life result in the opposite and its disorder, and attempts to organize life injure individuals and peoples, individuals pursuing their own immanent good and the self-​­ordering of their own natures could extend to the entire world until the dao of ruler and ruled comes to rest (以我之治內, 可推之於天下，君臣之道息矣).28 Functioning through non-​­functioning, governing itself is emptied and stilled (even if not “ended” as in Graham’s translation) through letting things and affairs govern themselves. In this situation, the preservation of one’s own body correlates with the preservation of the common body as things freely order themselves through the anarchic (as not bound by principle, law, or decree) and egalitarian (as no matter how unusual and different are excluded in the specificity of their moment of life) circulation of dao and communication between singular things. This analysis of “Yangist” passages and their anarchic (albeit not anarchist) potential reveals the link between Yang Zhu’s prioritization of nourishing this particular embodied form and nourishing the shared elemental body of life, of which we all partake, evoked to varying degrees in the Daodejing, Zhuangzi, and Leizi collections. This shared elemental body is singularized in each thing while its field flows in the free circulation and communication of things. This insight remains relevant as an exemplary model for a renewed less restrictive and less exclusionary democratic and ecological praxis, will-​­formation, and institutionalization of the political as traced further below. The politics of nothingness in Zhuangzi and Wang Bi The texts ascribed to Laozi, Hanfei, and Zhuangzi present different possibilities for a politics of nothingness. Thus, for instance, other political passages in the Zhuangzi are closer to the ethos of the Daodejing. One of these is attributed to Lao Dan 老聃 himself who is said to assert: The government of enlightened kings? Their achievements blanket the world but appear not to be their own doing. Their transforming influences touch the myriad things, but the people do not depend on them. There is no promotion or praise with them, as they let everything find its own enjoyment. They take their stand on the unfathomable, wandering in nothingness.

Daoist biopolitics and political ecology   109 明王之治：功蓋天下而似不自己，化貸萬物而民弗恃；有莫舉名，使物 自喜；立乎不測，而遊於無有者也。29 To turn from the Zhuangzi anthology, the writings of Wang Bi in the later Three Kingdoms period offer a further example of the politics of the sage-​ ­kings who model themselves on and freely wander in nothingness. His commentaries on the Daodejing and the Yijing have been frequently interpreted as articulating an abstract metaphysical system lacking direct reference to practice. A number of recent interpreters have sought to correct this one-​­sided reading by emphasizing the practical political dimensions of Wang’s thought. Onto-​­cosmology and practically oriented political philosophy are interconnected in Wang Bi’s commentaries through the fundamental notion of nothingness. According to Wang Bi’s clarification of Daodejing chapter fifty-​­eight, good rule (shanzhi 善治) anarchically appears as if it were without form (wuxing 無形), without name (wuming 無名), without intervention in affairs (wushi 無事), and without government (wuzheng 無政), and the people are accordingly uncontentious, simple, and generous.30 The ruler coordinates with conditions such that they order themselves (Laozi) or at least appears to do so (Huanglao). The ordinarily negative meaning of leaderless anarchy (wuzheng), decried in other early works, is reversed in this passage. The wu-​­ (as it is interpreted by Wang) indicates that this is to rule not through negating normal governmental activities but to rule from and out of nothingness. The virtuosity (de 德) of the genuine sages and kings is the fulfillment of the way in the attainment of functioning out of nothingness.31 The cycles of heaven and earth nourish the myriad things by having nothingness operate as their heart-​ ­mind and the sage-​­kings receive their capacities to rule through emptiness.32 Emptiness and nothingness refer to the generative operating of dao that are emulated and enacted by the sage-​­kings who realize this functioning in their own life-​­praxis. They fulfill dao in letting nothingness operate as their heart-​­mind and attain greatness through emptiness without regard for expectations and calculations of profit and loss.33 Generative nothingness is accordingly not a fixated abstract static metaphysical principle as it is enacted in practices and strategies of emptying. It operates simultaneously as an onto-​­cosmological reality in things, which undoes fixations of thinking and speaking, and as a political orientation for the sage-​­kings who engage in and enact emptiness that undoes the reifications of practices and stratifications of forms of life. Genuine or self-​­ordering communities are constituted by enacting emptiness and releasing the generative nothingness within things and the free circulation of dao and communication between things. The freedom of dao and our potential free and easy wandering in its nothingness, as disclosed in Zhuangzi and Wang Bi, is suggestive for a new Daoist democratic ecological politics that attunes itself within the transformations of things.

110   Daoist biopolitics and political ecology Equalizing and singularizing things The previous sections present a number of issues and potential objections from the perspectives of consequentialist and egalitarian moral theory concerning the scope of equalization and reflection. First, in what way should early Daoist approaches to equality and equalization be interpreted? The Daoist sensibility concerning impartial care and equalizing things shares some affinities with the impartial egalitarian spirit of Mohism while contesting its moralistic and coercive application of a fixed standard or measure that does violence to the natures of things by weighing them as interchangeable with one another.34 Greatness signifies in the seventeenth chapter of the Zhuangzi not injuring others and not promoting oneself as benevolent and righteous: neither competing nor renouncing, one has no fixed portions of right and wrong and no fixed standard for the small and the great.35 In simplicity and genuineness, the Daoist sense of impartial equality is conjoined with a sense of cherishing the singularity of the moment of life that the moralist and pragmatic instrumentalist sacrifice by picking one and discarding the other. This ethos contests reducing equalizing to a law, principle, or measure of equality, as seen in its own time in Mohist ethics or, by extension, modern consequentialist moral theory. How might a Daoist respond to the claims of sentience consequentialism? Even though Daoism is consistent with the declaration that all animals are equal and deserve liberation from oppression, made famous by Peter Singer in Animal Liberation, the Daoist sense of equality would not offer and would contest a consequentialist principle of calculative exchange and sacrifice between individual (inhuman and human) creatures.36 Singer’s consequentialism restricts and fixates ethics in a calculative applied moralistic principle concerning sentient beings that are capable of experiencing suffering and can be construed as having moral interests. This argument contests human exceptionalism and anthropocentric speciesism yet remains restrictive. Sentience alone is not the only mark of ethical relevance, as the myriad things (encompassing self-​­reproducing relational wholes such as climates and ecosystems) are to be cherished as they are with their own intrinsic patterns and propensities. The consequentialist and the moralist might well (for different reasons) reject such anarchic responsive attunement and cherishing as impossible, contending that a calculative measure of biospheric (including ecological systems) or species equality is necessary for setting priorities and resolving disputes.37 However, by picking “this” and discarding “that,” principles of equality ­reestablish—contrary to their own intentions—the fixations and hierarchies between things contested in Daoist sources. This might be called the tragedy of Mohist and other forms of universal equalization based on one (coercive) measure that are self-​­undermining in theory and practice. The Daodejing and Zhuangzi do not only portray equalizing but also singularizing things. The recognition of the thing in its transient yet unique moment of life calls for it to be cherished in its moment. The thing’s singularity consequently undoes fixating equalization in the reductive sense of making equivalent, interchangeable, and

Daoist biopolitics and political ecology   111 sacrificial, just as equalization undoes holding on to and reifying the singular thing. Another potential issue for advocates of equality concerns who is the one who enacts equalization. It is typically the exemplary kings and sages who equalize things (without reductively making them equivalent and interchangeable) by maintaining the conditions that allow them to generatively organize and order themselves. Equalizing and balancing the high and the low is attributed to sage-​­kings and exemplary noble persons. Wang Bi’s Yijing commentary interprets the mountain under the earth image in the fifteenth humility (qian  謙) hexagram as humbling the mighty and raising the destitute.38 This image applies to the individual and to society who learn that height is achieved through humility rather than status and power. Early forms of Daoism were primarily conceived in relation to kingly rule, in its affirmation in a sagely rule of responsive attunement or its denial in discourses of escaping from unjust rule by turning toward one’s own embodied self or to small mutually reciprocating and sharing communities. Nonetheless, early Daoist thought has egalitarian and democratic impulses and implications even as it prioritizes things and heaven and earth in their exteriority and excess that are beyond human control. The anarchy and equality of the free circulation and communication of dao, along with critical strategies of undoing fixations through equalizing and evening out, entails unrestricting interhuman and interthingly solidarities while cherishing the singularizing natures of things in their generational moment of life. Finally, another question that can be posed from the perspective of conceptualizing moral theory, and its demand for a normative standard, is whether Daoism radically dissolves all varieties of reflection and conceptual thinking into reflex and responsive immediacy.39 Although this might diverge from some interpretations of Daoism that construe it as irrational mysticism or as a pre-​ ­reflective and direct attunement and according with nature, such an objection would be a misunderstanding. The sagely ecological activist, policy advocate, and political figure would also need to reflectively engage with administrative, deliberative, and calculative issues such as urban planning, waste management, scarcity and allocation of resources, overpopulation, and viable wilderness preservation. Daoism should not be construed as entailing an irrationalism that does away with all reflection, planning, deliberation, and calculation. The reflective and purposive are not eliminated but rather their fixity and sedimentation are to be undone. These are directed toward what is more crucial to life: the unplanned and incalculable. As argued earlier, reflective processes and purposive concerns regarding nourishing life, health, and longevity are not excluded but reoriented for the sake of maximizing and embracing simplicity in ecological policy and practice.40 Even the most basic agricultural way of life, as imagined in agriculturalist passages, has these features while guiding them toward embracing the elemental of land, water, and sky. In being emptied and simplified, thinking comes into its own clarity in being oriented toward and

112   Daoist biopolitics and political ecology becoming responsive and attuned with the priority of the thing, heaven and earth, and dao.

Early Daoist biopolitics and a new Daoist ecopolitics Emptiness, simplicity, and ecopolitics Early Chinese philosophies can be differentiated by how they conceive of genuine nature (namely, if there is one, and what it is) and how to be it, cultivate it, or transform into it. These ancient controversies about what should be nourished in life and how continue to be of current concern as we too are pressed to reconsider what it means to live appropriately with the nature of heaven and earth and our own relationally constituted core nature under conditions of ecological distress. The Daodejing and the Zhuangzi articulate variations on the themes of social-​ ­political simplicity. They contested and emptied the self and its constructs and desires. To what extent can current economic and social-​­political relations be emptied and simplified without primitivist egalitarian or Legalist hierarchical coercion? Passages stressing living a simpler form of life are expressed in the Daodejing, in forms such as the sage-​­kings guiding the people to plainness and simplicity, while passages that prioritize social simplification or self-​­caring individuality are found in the Zhuangzi and Liezi texts. These extended families of discourses (those of social simplicity and individual longevity or pleasure) contest social and political coercion and artifices that distort life based on a biopolitical understanding of the functioning of life and nature that is of such concern in early Chinese philosophies. These interpretive strategies have anti-​ ­political and anti-​­social implications as one withdraws into either an uncomplicated egalitarian agricultural community, in which each gives and receives according to basic capacities and needs, or a purely self-​­concerned egotistical or hedonistic form of life so as to live out one’s years or fulfill one’s desires in accord with one’s integral core nature.41 Such a community of sustainable locally self-​­organizing agriculture, in which simplicity is a condition of longevity, would no doubt be considered “unproductive” and useless in contrast to large-​­scale agri-​­business with its relentless instrumentalized and technicized extraction of economic value from the material being of creatures, land, water, and the environment. Its excesses call for economic and agrarian reform. The preceding Yangist argument does capture, even if imperfectly, a significant aspect of ecological sustainability as a more expansive and impartial perspective would extend the care for the conditions of bodily integrity to all bodies in their generational moment of life. In Daoist biospiritual inward alchemical discourses, like Ge Hong’s Baopuzi, the inner landscape reflects the natural landscape, each with their own geopolitical topography, as nourishing one’s own individual body intersects with nourishing the body of the whole and one body (with its interconnected differentiated functions) is an image of the country (yiren zhi shen, yiguo zhi xiang 一人之身, 一國之象).42

Daoist biopolitics and political ecology   113 At the same time as the Daodejing and the Zhuangzi elucidate the simplification of life for the sake of a good life, they recognize the role and import of desires and self-​­concern that are prioritized in interpretations of Yangist ideas. The effects of self-​­regarding interests and pursuits cannot be eliminated or excluded but are coordinated and guided to balance them out as far as possible. In the realities of this context, which undermine the effectiveness of altruistic and moralizing discourses that can produce results opposite to their intentions (which could be designated the Hundun problem), an ecological civilization and organization of economic and social life would need to provide a motivational context for individuals following myriad interests and concerns. As exemplary Daoist sage-​­kings were portrayed in the Daodejing as creating the conditions for the people to nourish themselves without coercion, ecologically-​ ­motivated cultural and social-​­political institutions, policies, and practices would need to allow individuals and communities to flourish in ways that minimally injure and assist the health of self-​­ordering of ecological systems. As it could not maintain itself as a self-​­reproducing relational system through coercive rule, an ecologically oriented society could only empty and simplify the people through their own motivations and participation. This suggests nurturing the conditions for equalizing, harmonizing singulars without coercing or hierarchically stratifying them, and utilizing individual and collective self-​­interests and motivations for the sake of minimizing their ecologically destructive effects and side-​­effects of self-​­interest and the instrumental reduction of things to usability and disposability. Early Daoism accordingly indicates different models of less to more radical forms of simplifying life that can be rethought in relation to current conditions of political ecology. The anarchy of dao and ecological self-​­organizing democracy The anarchic models mirroring and echoing the traces of dao, in the unforced and unrestricted free circulation and communication between things and peoples, speaks to possibilities of a contemporary ecological-​­democratic politics. What is an ecological democracy that could be understood as Daoist? The classical modern idea of democracy is of a society that maximizes and coordinates equality, liberty, and solidarity while diminishing inequality, coercion, and discrimination. Daoism, at least one of its possibilities as interpreted and reimagined in this book, is potentially both democratic and ecological in discarding neither people nor things, contesting the harm done to things in their reduction to instrumental use, and in being unobstructed and open to all, embodying and enacting the free flow, circulation, and communication modeled upon dao. According with the flowing self-​­ordering of nature (xuntian zhili 循天之理) is consequently social-​­politically accomplished through an anarchic or democratic self-​­ordering in responsive attunement with its environing world. We might well agree with Socrates in Plato’s Republic and the agriculturists following the model of Shennong that a simple egalitarian agrarian form of life

114   Daoist biopolitics and political ecology expresses the best possible social condition in accord with the natural world.43 Yet, as with Socrates’ reply to Glaucon’s demand for luxuries and thus social distinctions in the Republic, we are compelled to consider approximating this best possible fair self-​­ordering under more complex economic and social conditions. The nurturing anarchy of dao initially offers exemplary models for sage-​ kings in the Daodejing and simplified self-​­organizing communities in ­ agriculturalist sources. It can be reimagined as a model for democratic ecological politics, insofar as it is best approximated under contemporary conditions in the self-​­ordering tendencies of democratic societies that are conjoined with the basic elemental guarantees offered by constitutional rights and participatory processes. A number of modern Western thinkers have elucidated elemental features of democratic life that have yet to be adequately realized in democratic societies and can be reconceived in relation to the self-​­organizing tendencies expressed in early teachings of dao. John Stuart Mill introduced in On Liberty the worth of unhindered freedom of individuality and communicative expression in democratic societies, providing a way of reconsidering Daoist-​­affiliated politics of anti-​­politics that cherish genuineness and singularity.44 Mill pointedly argues for the impossibility of democracy without the freedom of expression that continues to be constrained by entrenched political and economic forces and conditions. Daoist philosophies of communication, such as those ascribed to Zhuangzi and Wang Bi discussed in Chapter 4, offer strategies for undoing communicative fixation, stirring the flowing permutation of words in response to transforming things and situations. Hannah Arendt accentuated in The Origins of Totalitarianism the importance of a plurality of unrestricted forms of civil society and individuation as a check on the totalization of power that occurs through modern pathological forms of republicanism that produced ethnocentric nationalism and classist internationalism.45 In more recent democratic theory, Jürgen Habermas envisioned democracy according to a non-​­coerced participatory and deliberative communicative practice in which opinion-​­ and will-​­formation can openly and fairly occur.46 These political philosophers exposed how democratic societies require democratic forms of culture, civil society, and the public sphere that can sustain and nurture free circulation and communication of ideas and persons in societies without the fixating artificiality of authoritarian government, stratified hierarchies, and coercive violence. Accounts of less restricted and anarchic unrestricted incarnations of democracy resonate with the anti-​­authoritarian and anti-​­coercive tendencies of Daoist models in which self-​­organizing autopoietic political life arises from interpersonal and interthingly relations themselves rather than from artifice and imposition. Early Daoist discourses can deepen this potential, as freedom is enacted in emptying, contesting, and undoing the fixations and limitations of reified economic and social-​­political structures and processes that at present reproduce damaged life for inhuman and human creatures and environments.

Daoist biopolitics and political ecology   115 Toward a new Daoist political ecology Multiple anti-​­moralistic Chinese philosophical paradigms have been explored in this chapter and throughout the present work. Each would have different implications for political ecology. First, if we could imagine an eco-​­legalist model, it would advise a hidden sage-​­leader to dispassionately and impartially manipulate affairs from behind the scenes through laws and techniques to administratively shape an ecological form of cultural and social life. In these discourses, the “good for” of ­usefulness—​ contested in ziranist (dao follows ziran) if not purposive Daoist sources— prevails. Although despair might lead some to wish for an ecological totalitarian dictatorship, as in contemporary discourses of ecofascism with their fixations on hierarchical authorities and restricted communities based on limited conceptions of identity, Legalist rule (which aims at hierarchical social order) only takes on the appearance of Daoist (or in the Han dynasty Confucian) sage-​­kings while failing to enact the key point of their ethos in responding and nurturing the myriad things rather than themselves, resulting in the insufficiency of this model for politics and, by extension, models of political ecology. Second, despite its purportedly “dark primitivist” sides that worry contemporary meritocratic Confucian opponents of anti-​­elitist and anti-​­hierarchical discourses, the teachings of agrarian simplicity and equality in production and distribution modeled on the sage king Shennong and apparently taught by the philosopher Xu Xing would result in a more balanced and fair ecologically oriented form of life if adjusted for modern conditions.47 Perceiving its radical potential, Confucians like Mencius feared its equalizing tendencies that would undermine social stratification based on the division of labor. Given that this model is unlikely to be adopted in the current economic situation, for a variety of reasons, a contemporary ecology might still consider how to best approximate them in a democratic ecological ethos and praxis in relation to conditions of social distinction, consumerism, and the commodification of life to the extent that this is possible given that these are deeply interwoven with environmental crisis-​­tendencies. Third, the teachings of Yang Zhu offer another seemingly anarchic-​ ­libertarian model of relying on nurturing the integrity of one’s own bodily form (the “Robber Zhi” Zhuangzi chapter) that by extension (as seen in the “Yang Zhu” Liezi chapter) would encompass nurturing the shared elemental body of things to nourish oneself to the point that no distinction between ruler and ruled, subject and object is maintained, and the boundaries between selves and others are undone.48 Earlier we saw how “anarchic” ideas of equalizing ruler and ruled were attributed to Zhuangzi, Yang Zhu, and Bao Jingyan. The anarchic potential of this Daoist anti-​­politics could be either reimagined for the sake of a contemporary anarchistic politics or be considered—given the complexity of contemporary societies—as an orientating ethos for praxis to approximate through the democratic institutions and public practices that are necessary for a

116   Daoist biopolitics and political ecology self-​­organizing and participatory ecological civilization. It is more difficult to conceive, but not impossible since they still desire some good for themselves, how an ecological culture and ethos might be able to encompass and educate the self-​­interested egoist and hedonist of the moment to non-​­coercively guide their desires for the non-​­injury and flourishing of the environment as a relational whole. Fourth, early Daoist texts emphasize the non-​­injury and non-​­domination of things that have been interpreted ecologically in the present work. Another reading is found in the libertarian economist Murray Newton Rothbard’s proposal that Laozi was the “first libertarian intellectual.”49 Is Daoism then a pre-​ ­modern non-​­Western form of libertarian and laissez-​­faire political philosophy? The understanding of non-​­coercion expressed in the Daodejing and the Zhuangzi intersects in ways with libertarian conceptions of what is called “negative liberty” in modern Western political philosophy, since they both wish to allow the individual person and thing to follow its own tendencies with minimal externally imposed compulsion. They differ as the Western model promotes individual competition and contention between individuals for the sake of promoting and fulfilling human desires, minimizing political coercion while embracing capitalist economic and social coercion between individuals. An adequate political philosophy must contest the coercive powers of the state, the market, as well as popular opinion (steered through the culture industry and manufactured consent). Daoist inspired critical models are potentially far more radically democratic in teaching more expansive forms of non-​­domination that anarchically release persons and things from forms of violence, hierarchical stratification, and coercion.

Conclusion In addition to the “negative” ethical models of non-​­injury and non-​­domination, early Daoism also articulates a life-​­praxis of nurturing care and impartial equalizing rather than libertarian and economic self-​­interest. Its understanding of people following their own forms of life (with or without the help of sage-​­kings reimagined as sagely democratic political activists and participants) can potentially empty and undo the fixations of authoritarianism and libertarianism that hinder existing democracies in regard to the political ecology of human and non-​­human subjects. A contemporary Daoist, relying on wuwei and ziran to guide its basic comportment, reimaging of political philosophy can be informed by and in turn inform modern democratic and environmental discourses and practices.50 A new Daoist conception of ecological democracy, informed by equalizing and singularizing the thing in the Zhuangzi, is environmental in recognizing the shared interthingly body of life, and its intergenerational taking of turns and letting go as the myriad creatures arrive and depart, and in not harming and in nurturing the becoming with of shared yet at points fragile self-​­generative processes operative in things, persons, and ecosystems.

Daoist biopolitics and political ecology   117

Notes   1 See Wenning, “Daoism as Critical Theory,” 50­–​­71.   2 For an overview of early Daoism’s social-​­political dimensions and potentially anarchistic tendencies, see Ames, “Is Political Taoism Anarchism,” 27­–​­47; Roger T. Ames, The Art of Rulership: A Study of Ancient Chinese Political Thought (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994); Livia Kohn, Cosmos and Community; Rapp, Daoism and Anarchism; Stamatov, “The Laozi and Anarchism,” 260­–​­278.   3 Instances of the former style of critique include Paper, “Daoism and Deep Ecology,” 3­–​­21; Hagop Sarkissian, “The Darker Side of Daoist Primitivism.” Journal of Chinese Philosophy 37.2 (2010): 312­–​­329. For an alternative reading of primitivism, see Jung H. Lee, “Preserving One’s Nature: Primitivist Daoism and Human Rights.” Journal of Chinese Philosophy 34.4 (2007): 597­–​­612.   4 For an example of this complexity, see Thomas Michael, “Explorations in Authority in the Daodejing: A Daoist Engagement with Hannah Arendt.” Religions 9 (2018): 378­–​­402.   5 While retaining the expression “an-​­archic,” I agree in part with the arguments against calling Daoism anarchism per se in Alex Feldt, “Governing Through the Dao: A Non-​ ­Anarchistic Interpretation of the Laozi.” Dao 9.3 (2010): 323­–​­337. For a nuanced approach to the question of the Daodejing’s anarchism, which reinterprets this issue in light of the text’s maternal nurturing dimension, see Sarah Flavel and Brad Hall, “State Maternalism: Rethinking Anarchist Readings of the Daodejing 道德經.” Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy (forthcoming).   6 For an intercultural analysis of the anarchic good, see Eric S. Nelson, “Levinas and Kierkegaard: The Akedah, the Dao, and Aporetic Ethics.” Journal of Chinese Philo­ sophy 40.1 (2013): 164­–​­184.   7 There are “right” and “left” versions of eco dictatorship and eco-​­totalitarianism: on the former see Balša Lubarda, “Beyond Ecofascism? Far-​­Right Ecologism (FRE) as a Framework for Future Inquiries.” Environmental Values 29 (forthcoming).   8 On communicative democracy, see Jürgen Habermas, “Three Normative Models of Democracy.” Constellations 1.1 (1994): 1­–​­10.   9 On the categories of primitivism, agriculturalism, and Yangism in relation to Daoism and the Zhuangzi, see Graham, Disputers of the Tao; Graham, Chuang-​­tzŭ; A.  C.  Graham, “The ‘Nung-​­chia’ 農家 ‘School of the Tillers’ and the Origins of Peasant Utopianism in China.” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 42.1 (1979): 66­–​­100; Lee, “Preserving One’s Nature,” 597­–​­612; Liu, Classifying the Zhuangzi Chapters. 10 Watson, Chuang Tzu, 255­–​­256, compare Mair, Wandering on the Way, 302–3. 11 Graham, “The ‘Nung-​­chia’ 農家,” 66­–​­100. 12 Plato, Republic (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2004), 368­–​­372d; see Melissa S. Lane, Eco-​ ­Republic: What the Ancients Can Teach Us about Ethics, Virtue, and Sustainable Living (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012), 45. 13 Murray Bookchin, “What Is Social Ecology?” in by M. E. Zimmerman, ed., Environmental Philosophy: From Animal Rights to Radical Ecology (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1993), 362. 14 Among many other works on social ecology and ecofeminism, see Adorno and Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment; Bookchin, “What Is Social Ecology,” 354­–​­373; Nelson, Ethics of the Material Other, part one; Warren, “The Power and the Promise of Ecological Feminism,” 125­–​­146. 15 See Jane Anna Gordon, Lewis R. Gordon, Of Divine Warning: Disaster in a Modern Age (London: Routledge, 2015). 16 Vandana Shiva, Earth Democracy: Justice, Sustainability, and Peace (Cambridge: South End Press, 2005). On gender and nature, also see Donna J. Haraway, Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (New York: Routledge, 2015).

118   Daoist biopolitics and political ecology 17 On problems of interpretation and alternative accounts of Yang Zhu, see Ranie Villaver, “Does Guiji Mean Egoism? Yang Zhu’s Conception of Self.” Asian Philosophy 25.2 (2015): 216­–​­223; Jana S. Rošker, “Yang Zhu: Enfant terrible of Philosophical Daoism and His Concept of Privatism.” Asian Studies 5.1 (2017): 289­–​­299. 18 Watson, Chuang Tzu, 258. 19 Watson, Chuang Tzu, 258. 20 Watson, Chuang Tzu, 15. 21 On the body in Yang Zhu, see John J. Emerson, “Yang Chu’s Discovery of the Body.” Philosophy East and West 46.4 (1996): 533­–​­566. 22 On nihilism and meaning in Daoism, see Sigurðsson, “Creating Meaning,” 377­–​­390. 23 For translations of these chapters, see Lau, Tao Te Ching; Lynn, Classic of the Way; Ivanhoe, Daodejing. 24 Erkes, “Ho-​­Shang-​­Kung’s Commentary on Lao-​­tse,” 181; Reid, The Heshang Gong, 89. 25 Watson, Chuang Tzu, 257. 26 Graham, Chuang-​­tzŭ, 119; Watson, Chuang Tzu, 137. 27 Graham, Lieh-​­Tzu, 140, 142. 28 Graham, Lieh-​­Tzu, 145­–​­146. 29 Watson, Chuang Tzu, 57. 30 Lou, Wang Bi ji jiaoshi, 151­–​­152; Lynn, Classic of the Way, 160­–​­161. 31 Lou, Wang Bi ji jiaoshi, 93; Lynn, Classic of the Way, 119. 32 Lou, Wang Bi ji jiaoshi, 93; Lynn, Classic of the Way, 120. 33 Lou, Wang Bi ji jiaoshi, 93­–​­94; Lynn, Classic of the Way, 120. 34 On Daoism and Mohism, see Perkins, “The Mozi and the Daodejing,” 18­–​­32. 35 Graham, Chuang-​­tzŭ, 150. 36 Peter Singer, Animal Liberation (New York: New York Review of Books, 1975), 1­–​­22. 37 On different notions of environmental equality, see Helen Kopnina, “Environmental Justice and Biospheric Egalitarianism: Reflecting on a Normative-​­Philosophical View of Human-​­Nature Relationship.” Earth Perspectives 1.1 (2014): 1­–​­11; Tongjin Yang, “Towards an Egalitarian Global Environmental Ethics.” Environmental Ethics and International Policy 1 (2006): 23­–​­45. 38 Lou, Wang Bi ji jiaoshi, 295; Lynn, Classic of Changes, 230; Nelson and Yang, “The Yijing, Gender, and the Ethics of Nature,” 277­–​­278. 39 See Alan Fox, “Reflex and Reflectivity: Wuwei in the Zhuangzi.” Asian Philosophy 6. 1 (1996): 59­–​­72. 40 A revealing discussion of related issues in contemporary Ruist ethics can be found in Chenyang Li, “Confucian Moral Cultivation, Longevity, and Public Policy.” Dao 9.1 (2010): 25­–​­36. 41 On different senses of following and according with nature, see Perkins, “Following Nature with Mengzi or Zhuangzi,” 327­–​­340. 42 See Schipper, The Taoist Body, 104. 43 Plato, Republic 372d. 44 John Stuart Mill, On Liberty and Other Essays (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998). 45 Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York: Houghton Mifflin ­Harcourt, 1973). On Arendt and Daoism, see Michael, “Explorations in Authority in the Daodejing,” 378­–​­402. 46 Jürgen Habermas, Between Facts and Norms (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1996) and “Three Normative Models of Democracy.” 1­–​­10. 47 See Paper, “Daoism and Deep Ecology,” 3­–​­21; Lee, “Preserving One’s Nature,” 597­–​­612; Sarkissian, “The Darker Side of Daoist Primitivism, 312­–​­329. 48 Watson, Chuang Tzu, 255­–​­256; Graham, Lieh-​­Tzu, 145­–​­146. 49 Murray N. Rothbard, “Concepts of the Role of Intellectuals in Social Change Toward Laissez Faire.” Journal of Libertarian Studies 9. 2 (1990): 43­–​­67. 50 See Chapter 3 and Lai, “Ziran and wuwei in the Daodejing,” 325­–​­337.

6 Epilogue Emptying ecology and Chan Buddhism

The question of Chan Buddhism Introduction: the trouble with Zen It is interesting that forms of Daoism share intersecting affinities and common problems with a specific later East Asian Buddhist transmission that also prefers to speak in paradoxes and challenge conventional and moralistic ways of thinking and living. Given their affinities and differences, what problems might they share? To begin with recent analyses of its Japanese situation, Zen Buddhism (Zen Bukkyō 禅仏教) has received serious doses of disenchantment and critique (in both the hermeneutical and social-​­political senses of criticism) in recent decades. Due to a number of legitimate questions, both its historical self-​ ­interpretations and its moral and political sensibilities have been contested and deconstructed in East Asian (particularly Japanese) and Western scholarship. Further, even deeper worries about its understanding of reality as buddha-​­nature (the functioning of awakening) manifesting itself in all things question the status of Zen as a provocative yet genuine form of Buddhist teaching. A key proponent of critical Buddhism (Hihan Bukkyō 批判仏教) Hakamaya Noriaki (袴谷憲昭) made the provocative assertion that “zen is not Buddhism” in the early 1990s in “A Critique of the Zen School” (Zenshū Hihan 禅宗批判) to distinguish genuine critical philosophy of Buddhism from what he portrays as the Japanese ideology of direct experience.1 Zen transformed the Buddhist teaching from a critical way of thinking into a topical rhetoric and socially problematic ideology. While Hakamaya explicitly claimed that this criticism did not apply to Chinese Chan Buddhism (chan fojiao 禪佛教), subsequent scholarship has radicalized his thesis as it has sought to problematize the entire history and ethos of Chan, Seon, Thiền, and Zen teachings in East Asia.2 The troubles with Zen have seemingly multiplied in recent critical accounts, as critical interpretations challenge its philosophical presuppositions, its history as mythological, its rhetorical devices and strategies as uncritical, and its complicities with established powers and their hierarchies and inequalities. The circumstances of Zen Buddhist complicity with and radical engagement in the form of “Imperial Way Zen” (kōdō Zen 皇道禅) on behalf of Japanese imperialism, militarism, and nationalism is a vivid and powerful example employed to

120   Epilogue identify structural problems with Chan/Zen as a whole in the work of critical Buddhism and in Brian Daizen Victoria’s works Zen at War and Zen War Stories.3 Victoria’s two works provide a globalizing critique of Chan/Zen traditions as fundamentally antinomian based on their early and mid-​­twentieth-​ ­century Japanese uses and misuses, identifying its amoral and antinomian ethos (one that shares affinities with the early Daoist rhetoric of not dualistically distinguishing right and wrong, good and evil) as its primary deficit that have been ideologically deployed to legitimate coercion and violence.4 Critical Buddhist and other recent scholarship has extended the deconstruction (as Bernard Faure has called it) of the aura of modern Zen to earlier forms of Chan Buddhism by critically undermining the retrospectively reconstructed narratives of its mythic Indian origins and spread through iconoclastic teachers and teachings during the Tang Dynasty that inherit from and share affinities with Warring States Daoist and post-​­Han mysterious learning (xuanxue) sources.5 Two primary examples traced in this chapter are: (1) the images of “wild” iconoclastic Chan masters such as Mazu Daoyi 馬祖道一 (d. ce 788) and Linji Yixuan 臨濟義玄 (d. ce 866)—a figure who is portrayed as using variations on Zhuangzian strategies and vocabulary such as the genuine person without rank (wuwei zhenren 無位真人)—have been repeatedly retrospectively refashioned and stylistically radicalized since the Tang dynasty;6 (2) the rhetoric of radical spontaneity, non-​­duality, immediacy, directness, and emptiness, associated with the Hongzhou 洪州 and Linji Chan styles, has ethically and socially destructive antinomian and nihilistic consequences, a concern posed earlier against the feared anti-​­moral consequences of the mysterious learning literati and their “pure conversations,” and which was raised during the Tang dynasty by the Chan Buddhist monastic scholar Guifeng Zongmi 圭峰宗密 (780­–​­841). Recent critical literature is concurrently concerned with an essentialist reification of things in the teaching of an intrinsic buddha-​­nature in all things, which would contradict the Buddha’s teaching of no-​­self, and the destructive consequences of an antinomian teaching of emptiness.7 In the current chapter, I respond to this dilemma by articulating the Chan Buddhist concept of emptiness as a practice of emptying that has meaningful implications for an ethics without norms and principles and an environmental ethics calling for the emptying dereification, including the undoing of fixated Buddhist principles and practices characteristic of Mazu and Linji, and releasement of things, including human beings.8 Given the dangers of the ethically problematic reification and essentialism of words and practices, in which one no longer hears or responds ethically to others, one of the potential gifts of Chan teachings is that they can contest and not merely be used as an ideological source for fixation and domination, as recent critical Buddhist scholarship has revealed. Its emancipatory moment can place these fixations—and specifically its own self-​­fixation and reification— into question. The apparent ethical skepticism and antinomianism of Daoist and Chan Buddhist discourses can be a point of departure for the ethical if such skepticism does more than subvert habitual morality and conventional

Epilogue   121 immorality (as noted below) by performatively enacting a way (dao as ethos and life-​­praxis) through exposing it to its own lack of essence and emptiness. These historical and philosophical considerations will lead to the consideration of an ecological comportment and practice of emptying and encountering as part of more appropriate ecologically oriented cultures of nature that was explored in the distinctively Daoist context of the Daodejing and related works in the previous chapters. Killing the Buddha Daoist and Chan discourses both deploy paradoxical ideas and shocking images to reorient perspectives. Perhaps the best known shocking and controversial assertion of such a kind is the one attributed to Linji in the Recorded Sayings of Linji (Linji yulu 臨濟語錄) when he says to kill the Buddha: Followers of the way, if you want insight into dharma as it is, just don’t be taken in by the deluded views of others. Whatever you encounter, either within or without, slay it at once. On meeting a buddha slay the buddha, on meeting a patriarch slay the patriarch, on meeting an arhat slay the arhat, on meeting your parents slay your parents, on meeting your relative slay your relative, and you attain emancipation. By not cleaving to things, you freely pass through. 道流，爾欲得如法見解，但莫受人惑。向裡多餘，逢著便殺。逢佛殺 佛，逢祖殺祖，逢羅漢殺羅漢，逢父母殺父母，逢親眷殺親眷，始得 解脫，不與物拘，透脫自在。9 This statement ascribed to Linji is still able to shock readers: slaying the Buddha contradicts the proper reverence owed the Buddha as the transmitter of the dharma and seems to advocate a violence that is incompatible with his teachings. The focus of this negation of worldly and Buddhist authorities is on not being taken in by them and achieving a form of emancipated freedom (toutuo zizai 透脫自在). The statement has contributed to the modern interculturally constituted aura of Zen as a radical rejection of authoritarian power for the sake of self-​­realization. This image of Linji, and Zen, has been repeatedly constructed and reconstructed since his lifetime in East Asia and global modernity to emphasize a radical freedom that constituted the authority and orthodoxy of this teaching and lineage.10 Moreover, the notorious images of violence and destruction can be better interpreted as indicating profoundly Buddhist practices in response to their conventionalization and reification that the classic Chan masters are portrayed as contesting. Another later passage in the Linji yulu clarifies the language of murder and iconoclastic destruction—namely, the five heinous crimes (wu wujian ye 五無間業, pañcānantarya) of classic Buddhism—as indicating practices of emancipation that unfixate fixations and empty reified constructs of beings: (1­–​­2) killing the father and mother means overcoming the locus of

122   Epilogue arising and extinguishing and coveting in non-​­attachment; (3) the Buddha’s murder indicates the freedom of pure non-​­thinking; (4) the destruction of the sangha means seeing through the conditionality of the passions; and (5) the destruction of scriptures and images is a practice of emptying (jiongran wushi 迥然無事) in which causal relations, the mind, and the dharmas are disclosed as intrinsically empty (kong 空, śūnyatā).11 The figure of Linji can be described as radicalizing earlier Chan deconstructive tendencies. In the Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch (Liuzu Tanjing 六祖 壇經), the quasi-​­mythical Huineng 惠能 teaches awakening through non-​ ­abiding and is depicted as contesting the idealizing perfectionist fixation of the pure mind in Yuquan Shenxiu 玉泉神秀 through emphasizing the free-​­flowing mobility of thoughts and things: “dao must flow or circulate freely (dao xu tongliu 道須通流).”12 “Killing the Buddha” and other iconoclastic declarations attributed to Linji contest the conventional and Buddhist understanding of precepts, principles, and rules to be merely applied and followed. They aim at, adopting an expression from the Zhuangzi, becoming a genuine person without rank or status (wuwei zhenren 無位真人) since external social conventions of rank and status undermine the genuineness of the way. One can question the extent to which Linji’s “killing the Buddha” metaphorically challenges appeals to authority without insight and his “genuine person without rank,” as self-​­erasing, contests deeply hierarchical and unequal societies for reasons of awakening and compassion.13 As current historical research into the monastic and social-​­political contexts of Chan and Zen has demonstrated, its shocking and strange language about morality challenges conventional understandings of the ethical, including self-​ ­critically Buddhism itself; yet this does not necessarily entail the absence or negation of the ethical in the sense of endorsing or advocating the immorality or nihilism that some detractors fear.14 Linji’s statement about killing the Buddha, the patriarch, and one’s parents, is intended to shock and disorient the listener to awakening rather than advocate its literal practice. In Linji’s discourses, the “genuine person without rank” breaks with the hierarchy and conventionality of society and thereby becomes capable of a spontaneous compassion and responsiveness. The emptiness of things disclosed in aporetic and shocking exchanges is not itself a positive or final explanation but a means to dismantle fixed and reified structures, awakening receptiveness to the disclosure and singular event of the thing itself in its suchness. Accordingly, the amoral and nihilistic interpretations ignore the multiple adaptations of the classic Buddhist concept of the “fault of annihilation” in classic Chan sources.15 Such accounts inadequately address the worldly and ethical character of awakening in Chan Buddhist portrayals.16 Youru Wang has remarked that “The entire Linji Lu is full of the spirit and energy of deconstruction and self-​­deconstruction.”17 How might this be understood? The preliminary illustration of deconstructive communication and enacting emptiness in the previous passages leaves open numerous questions

Epilogue   123 concerning the nature and adequacy of Linji’s strategies: does this radical language leave us without an ethical measure or standard? Does it legitimate a plurality of contradictory ethical and anti-​­ethical comportments and practices? What dao or ethos could it possibly suggest as a therapeutic response to contemporary ecological crisis-​­tendencies?

Antinomianism and the Chan Buddhist dao The question of antinomianism There is a more extensive problem of antinomianism in early and mysterious learning Daoist and Chan/Zen transmissions that needs more nuanced consideration: it is not only a modern or recent critical concern or one that only applies to a modern nationalistic form of Zen Buddhism. Criticisms of what is now categorized as “antinomianism” (and potentially “nihilism”) belong to the Chan tradition itself as well as its non-​­Chan Buddhist and Neo-​­Confucian critics: an early indirect expression of such concerns (which critiques non-​ ­duality without identifying its potential antinomian consequences) can be explicated in the response of Guifeng Zongmi to the Hongzhou lineage of Chan, associated with Mazu, from which Linji’s Chan is descended through Baizhang Huaihai 百丈懷海 (720­–​­814) and his teacher Huangbo Xiyun 黄檗 希運 (d. 850).18 Chan Buddhism has been portrayed, as Wendi Adamek describes, as “iconoclastic, anti-​­institutional, antinomian, and subitist.”19 These interrelated categories emerged from Christian and modern Western discourses such that one can genuinely pose the question of their appropriateness in premodern East Asian contexts and discourses. For instance, what is “antinomian”? “­Antinomian” arises from the Greek expression ἀντί νόμος, which signifies “against the law.” Its sense emerged as a polemical term of abuse in Christian debates, as it was employed against advocates of the absolute priority of faith who were seen as undermining conventional ethical norms and laws. ­Buddhism does not have the same conception of faith, law, or the rejection of the law in the name of faith. Scholars have nonetheless identified affinities in Chan’s “strange words and extraordinary actions” (qiyan jixing 奇言畸行) such as shouting, the uses of the stick and the whisk, and its focus on single-​ ­minded practices to the point of overturning conventional norms and the ­Buddhist precepts themselves. These are not merely unconventional ways of expressing the conventional, at least in the period of their radical employment. They seek to go more deeply into the heart of the matter itself through paradoxical, tautological, and poetic “living words” (shengyu 聖語) and the great doubt (dayi 大疑) that defixates the self in ways that conventional teachings and practices cannot in principle accomplish.20 The notion of antinomianism appears to capture the philosophy and specific gestures of Hongzhou style Chan Buddhism.21 It might be seen as insufficient insofar as Chan endeavors to realize in practice (rather than in a subjective

124   Epilogue disposition of absolute faith) an emptiness immanently operating in things themselves that is more fundamental than norms and principles (nomos) or the opposition to them (anti). However, antinomianism returns here in a specifically un-​­ or anti-​­ethical form if it means, as Jinhua Jia remarked, that the buddha-​­nature “can be identified with the all activities of daily life, whether good or evil.”22 The irreverent discourse and practice (that reminded some of its critics of Daoism) encountered opposition as they developed at the same time as they were increasingly integrated by becoming conventionalized, fixated, and established as orthodox in the Linji school during the Song dynasty and in subsequent historical forms. The history of the development of paradoxical ways of speaking from the encounter dialogue (jiyuan wenda 機緣問答) between master and student to the formalization of the kōan (gong’an 公案) and its meditative and ritual practices indicates this process of simultaneous radicalization and de-​­radicalization of Tang dynasty Chan, such as, for example, later forms of meditation focusing on key-​­words or the critical phrase (huatou 話頭) and kōan practice as a ritualized performance.23 Zongmi and Jeong Dojeon: two critiques of Chan Buddhism Among sundry examples that might be addressed, two instances of the antinomian problematic (as conditionally redefined in the previous section) and critical response to Chan Buddhism can be found in Tang dynasty China and early Joseon dynasty Korea. First, Guifeng Zongmi was a notable scholar and patriarch in both the Chan and Huayan 華嚴 lineages of Buddhism and his interpretations would play important roles in later Chinese and Korean debates about Buddhism as well as debates between Buddhism and Neo-​­Confucianism.24 Zongmi critiqued Daoist generative nothingness (wu) and naturalness (ziran) in light of the Buddhist teaching of entangling karmic causal conditioning, a critique of course not accepted in the previous chapters of this work. He warned of the negative antinomian moral consequences in his Inquiry into the Origin of Humanity (Yuan ren lun 原人論) in which he endeavored to integrate the three prevailing families of teachings (sanjiao 三教) and demonstrate the hierarchical superiority of Buddhism over the rival teachings of Confucianism and Daoism.25 All, he remarked, are “determined by particularizing karma of previous lifetimes and not by spontaneous naturalness.”26 The three teachings each aim at according with the times and responding to things (suishi yingwu 隨時應物).27 Daoism and Zongmi’s Sinicized elucidation of the Buddha dharma aim at a free interthingly responsiveness (yingwu) to be achieved through their respective ways of enacting emptiness. But the Daoist way is even at its best only partial, undermining its own innermost aspirations according to Zongmi’s critical portrayal, as it is the Buddhist analysis of the nexus of causality, directive and particularizing karma, and morality that makes the crucial difference that leads to the genuine free responsiveness discussed in Daoism as the Buddha freely responds to all beings and their plight without any limits (yingxian wuqiong

Epilogue   125 應現無窮). The responsive attunement to “what is as it is” has been reinterpreted in relation to the Buddhist dharma that alone can genuinely attain it. Zongmi’s understanding of karmic causalities would offer different lenses from the naturalness of ziran, which he rejected for its supposed causal indeterminacy in contrast to karmic conditioning, for environmental philosophy. Related issues of karmic causality, morality, and spontaneity arise in ­Zongmi’s interpretation of the Hongzhou style of Chan that shares a number of affinities and problems with ziran-​­oriented forms of Daoism. He critiques it in a number of philosophical ways without identifying it with radical iconoclasm, antinomianism, and anti-​­ or immorality. This interpretation, along with surviving Tang sources, indicates that the Tang version of Hongzhou Chan is not as radical as its later Song dynasty depictions (where they are used to legitimate an orthodox establishment) as well as Zongmi’s carefulness in assessing a related yet different rival lineage of Chan Buddhism. Zongmi expresses a number of concerns in his letter to the official and ­Buddhist literati Pei Xiu 裴休 (791­–​­864) regarding whether the Hongzhou prioritization of the “ordinary mind” undermined the disciplined pursuit and cultivation of the mind in the Buddhist path. Mottos such as “ordinary mind is the way” (pingchang xin shi dao 平常心是道), “this mind is the Buddha” (shi xin shi fo 是心是佛), and “no mind, no Buddha” (fei xin fei fo 非心非佛) were attributed to Mazu.29 These statements signify: “no intentional creation or action, no right or wrong, no grasping or rejecting, no terminable or permanent, no profane or holy (無造作, 無是非, 無取捨, 無斷常, 無凡無聖) … all these are just the way: walking, abiding, sitting, lying, responding to conditions, and handling matters (只如今行住坐臥, 應機接物, 盡是道).”30 It means here in this moment the non-​ ­dual enactment of ordinary everyday life. The dao (i.e., the dharma) needs no cultivation (dao buyong xiu 道不用修) as everything is and culminates in dao (  jin shi dao 盡是道). Zongmi has these sorts of assertions in mind when he comments in his letter that: “Present-​­day Hongzhou’s just saying that every type of passion, hatred, precept [holding], or concentration [samadhi] is the functioning of the buddha nature fails to distinguish between the functioning of delusion and awakening, perverted and correct.”31 If the ordinary mind already is the way in its delusions and passions and everything (things and states) is an expression of the function of buddha-​­nature (the tathāgatagarbha or nexus or matrix of the Tathāgata), then the distinctions necessary to Buddhist (non-​­awakening and awakening) and ethical (wrong and right) practices are lacking: “Passion, hatred, friendliness, and good are all the buddha nature. What distinctions exist?”32 Zongmi contests the Hongzhou lineage’s presupposition that the mind-​­nature of the world as it is, in its suchness/thusness (zhenru 真如, tathātā), occurs without words and cannot be ignorant or foolish such that discrimination and judgment are unnecessary: “This is like a person who just discerns that wetness from beginning to end is undifferentiated but does not realize that the merit of supporting a boat and the fault of overturning it are widely divergent.”33 As Broughton notes in his edition, Zongmi criticized the antinomian breakdown of 28

126   Epilogue distinctions between “precept holding and precept breaking,” “mental concentration and mental distraction,” “perverted views of reality and correct views,” and “merits and faults.”34 Consequently, as a partial and self-​­defeating form of ­Buddhist teaching, Hongzhou is according to Zongmi still “near to the gate of all-​­at-​­once awakening;” yet, unlike his own Heze lineage (菏澤宗), standing at “the gate of step-​­by-​­step practice [Hongzhou] makes the mistake of completely deviating from it.”35 Hongzhou has one-​­sided understandings of buddha-​­nature and emptiness in Zongmi’s analysis, which some argue infects later understandings of Zen ­Buddhism. In the context of the Tang period, Zongmi expresses in this letter a worry about antinomianism in moderate form: that is, if everything is true or pure just as it is in its non-​­dual suchness, then all ethical and Buddhist distinctions, judgments, and spiritual undertakings will be undermined. It will be later commentators and critics who will conclude that the Hongzhou and Linji lineages advocate radical anti-​­conventionalism and iconoclasm that entail the destruction of religion, morality, and the ethical life of the community. This line of criticism will become one key element of the Neo-​­Confucian critique of Chan and Buddhism as a whole. Thus, around the beginning of the Joeson dynasty in Korea, the Neo-​­Confucian politician and polemicist Jeong Dojeon 鄭道傳 (1342­–​­1398) wrote a series of critiques of Buddhism, culminating in his Array of Critiques Against Buddhism (Bulssi Japbyeon 佛氏雜辨) to which the Seon Buddhist monk Gihwa 己和 (1376­–​­1433) responded in his Exposition of the Correct (Hyeonjeong non 顯正論).36 Citing The Sutra of Perfect Enlightenment (Yuan jue jing 圓覺經), on which both Zongmi and Gihwa wrote commentaries, Jeong remarked that Chan advocates claimed that “goodness is none other than this mind, and you cannot use mind to cultivate mind. Evil is none other than this mind, and you can’t use mind to eliminate mind.” The consequence of this ethos was that “the practices of disciplining oneself against doing evil, and endeavoring to cultivate one’s goodness disappeared.” Chan Buddhists claimed according to him that: “Even lust, anger, and ignorance are divine practices; one loses the way by regulating one’s behavior through observance of the precepts.” Jeong concludes: “Regarding themselves as having avoided falling into the pit of entanglements, having released themselves from bondage and cast off the fetters, they arrogantly abandon themselves, ignoring the norms of social order …”37 Zongmi argued that Chan non-​­dual practices need not entail the absence of ethical distinctions (i.e., wholesome, shan 善, kuśala and unwholesome, bushan 不善, akuśala) that he perceived at work in Hongzhou Chan. Gihwa laments the loss of “practices of disciplining oneself against doing evil, and endeavoring to cultivate one’s goodness,” and disagrees with those who assert that “lust, anger, and ignorance are sacred practices.” Such practices are all the more entangled in believing that they have been overcome. Gihwa continues the Zongmi model by justifying the specifically ethical character of Chan ­Buddhist practices, distinguishing between two forms of Buddhist ethics: (1) a basic shallower rule-​­oriented practice of following precepts and (2) a non-​­dual

Epilogue   127 practice of the six perfections (liudu 六度, pāramitā) that are intertwined with the fundamental Buddhist teachings of interdependent origination (yuanqi 緣起, pratītyasamutpāda) and emptiness. This suggests both a way of addressing antinomianism and another way of considering the question of an appropriate and responsive comportment in an age of deeply rooted and systematic ecological and environmental crisis. On the one hand, these crisis conditions require a social-​­political behavior; on the other hand, they also call for a radical transformation of the current destructive culture of nature that is intimated in practices of emptying constructs and prejudices until emptiness is itself emptied, defixation and dereification, and the opening of the encounter in the extreme deconstructive and self-​­deconstructive tendencies of Hongzhou-​­Linji Chan Buddhism that its subsequent established forms have used for a variety of purposes.38 Beyond nomos and antinomos: ordinary mind as the way As discussed previously above, authors such as Brian Victoria have identified antinomianism as the primary problem of Zen Buddhism that can be extended to other forms of Buddhism as well as Daoism insofar as they contest the dualistic language of good and bad, right and wrong, and so on. Victoria is primarily concerned with modern Japanese Zen Buddhism, yet Mazu-​­Linji lineage is thought to be the primary exemplar of antinomianism. The following discussion has shown how historically problematic this conclusion is and how Hongzhou Chan offers a different way of conceiving ethics in the midst of the world in maxims such as Mazu’s “ordinary mind is the way.” Chan has been criticized as an unorthodox and inauthentic form of Buddhism; yet it is deeply attuned with Buddhist teachings and practices of emptiness, non-​­duality, and awakening as an awakening in and to the world. The example of Chan Buddhist radicalism is indicative for environmental philosophy, as espoused below in greater detail, insofar as an ecological culture of nature calls for a therapeutic awakening of humans in and to their crisis-​­ridden ecological worlds. A philosophical reconsideration of Hongzhou Chan in conjunction with the critical clarifications of Zongmi and Gihwa allows for a more adequate and nuanced interpretation of the antinomian problematic. Based on these brief accounts of Zongmi and Gihwa, there should be no “antinomian” destruction of ethics or morality. Yet does the radical Chan of Mazu and Linji merely destroy ethics or rather indicate a more primordial situation of encounter and response akin in a number of ways to the path opening model articulated in early Daoism (according to the present work’s interpretation)? This nexus of issues leads away from the more crucial issue of how one should comport oneself vis-​­à-​­vis sentient and insentient beings. Moreover, following ethical radicalism of Mazu and Linji, the questions concern its further completion and perfection as a non-​­dual ethos of the ordinary “imperfect” mind in the midst of the very incompletion and imperfection of the world. Linji accordingly describes how one does not find Mañjuśrī (the bodhisattva of wisdom) on the sacred Mount Wutai (五臺山), but

128   Epilogue rather in one’s own present functioning and activities (始終不異， 處處不疑， 此箇是活文殊).39 This statement is not so much a rejection of the “other-​ ­power” (tariki 他力)—to refer to a commonly used yet insufficient dichotomy— of the bodhisattva, and his virtues and perfections, for the sake of “self-​­power” (  jiriki 自力) and self-​­perfection; it is the other-​­power within the self, the happening of perfection within a life perceived as lacking such perfection.40 Returning to the initial question raised at the beginning of this chapter, it is not so much the ostensible radicalism and antinomianism but the conventionalism and adaptation of ordinary social custom of beliefs of historical forms of Chan-​­Zen Buddhism that explain their political and other uses. Critiques of the political deployments of Zen as “unethical” are anachronistic given the mythic character of the unrestricted radicalism of Chan-​­Soen-​­Zen lineages. Given the patterns of conventional monastic and social morality and politics that Chan rhetoric presupposes, it is unconvincing to argue that Chan entails antinomianism in the sense of being the negation of social and ethical life. According to a statement attributed to Bodhidharma, the emptiness of good and evil entails not doing evil.41 The Sutra of Complete Enlightenment admonishes its readers to abandon good and evil in treating all with virtue, that is, the virtuous and non-​ ­virtuous alike, without breaking the precepts.42 Further, the concern regarding the radicalness of Chan is itself empty. The drastic rhetoric of Hongzhou and Linji Chan points toward the turning point in the experience of awakening that occurs through the monastic context and Chan Buddhist ritual behaviors, including those that provoke the question of the meaning of the ritual and insight into its emptiness. Such “radical strategies” are typically not understood in traditional contexts as “radical” in the sense of overturning conventional morality and politics in everyday life. Nonetheless, they do point to critical models of their transformation. The employment of anti-​­religious (that is, the holy and sacred) and anti-​ ­ethical (that is, precepts and principles) language in Chan discourses challenged conventional patterns of behavior and thought in a limited domain even as they reconfirmed them at large. The wildness of anti-​­moralistic and aporetic communicative strategies attributed to early Daoist and Tang Chan Buddhist discourses appear to be tamed in terms of their wider context and consequences. While the standard literature frequently opposes antinomianism with morality, understood as a system of fixed rules and conventions, antinomian, iconoclastic, and subitist moments are part of a larger fabric of monastic and lay education, practice, and self-​­cultivation. The fideistic context of “antinomianism” can be displaced towards what other authors have described as an ethics of aporia, paradox, or tension.43 Emptiness (kong) can be understood as enacted in ritual practices of emptying that reveal the way in which things, others, and oneself can be encountered in their suchness just as they are (zhenru 真如, tathatā). The practice of emptiness, including its own emptiness (kongkong 空空), is enacted through a rich variety of Chan linguistic and behavioral strategies and provocations. These practices challenge conventional morality and religion in the rhetoric of Chan

Epilogue   129 Buddhism to the extent that they point toward the encounter and accord with (renyun 任運) things and conditions in their suchness.44 Through the defixation and destructuring of the everyday mind through disruption and disharmony for the sake of awakening the ordinary mind (as the genuine mind without fixed position or rank) to its own core functioning, even “killing” the Buddhist soteriological path as conventionally understood and the aporetic ethics of “killing the Buddha” in Hongzhou and Linji Chan, point practitioners toward the ordinary mind and, modifying the classical Chinese notions (operative in Daoist sources as sketched in previous chapters) of reciprocal resonance or response (ganying 感應) through disorienting events of dissonance, its openness for encountering and responding (ying 應) in the midst of the world. Next we will consider to what extent this historical and philosophical reimagining of Hongzhou and Linji Chan Buddhism entails a different experience of nature and an environmental ethos and enactment of emptying and encountering that is crucial for more appropriate ecologically oriented ways of dwelling and cultures of nature.

Toward a Chan Buddhist environmental ethos Undoing perfectionism: Chan ethics and moral theory In his Recorded Sayings, Linji is reported to have stated: When you meet buddhas, you speak to buddhas; when you meet ancestral teachers, you talk to ancestral teachers; when you meet arhats, you talk to arhats; when you meet hungry ghosts, you talk to hungry ghosts. Everywhere you go in your travels through the various lands you teach and transform sentient beings without ever departing from this one moment of mindfulness. Wherever you are the pure light extends in all directions and the myriad phenomena are one suchness. 一剎那間透入法界，逢佛說佛，逢祖說祖，逢羅漢說羅漢，逢餓鬼說 餓鬼，向一切處，游履國土，教化眾生，未曾離一念，隨處清淨，光 透十方，萬法一如。45 Linji is not only depicted as addressing the iconoclastic destruction of the reification of Buddhist images and words, but also—and more fundamentally—of encountering and addressing them in a more genuine way through emptiness or—more precisely given the interpretation articulated above—the enactment of responsiveness through emptying. What, if any, are the ecological and environmental implications of the ethos and praxis of encountering through emptying in the records ascribed to Mazu and Linji (figures who were repeatedly restyled in subsequent accounts) interpreted in relation to Zongmi’s clarifications and Gihwa’s differentiation of the ethics of precept or rule-​­following and a comportment of enacting emptiness?

130   Epilogue Christopher Ives, Simon P. James, and other authors have maintained that Zen ethics is best described as a variety of aretaic virtue ethics that emphasizes cultivating specific pāramitā (perfections, characteristics, or virtues) such as wisdom and compassion, and one’s character and “way of life” as a whole.46 The virtue ethical paradigm corresponds to Gihwa’s morality of precept-​­following to develop one’s capacities, but it fails to clarify the specificity and radicalness of Chan imperfectionist ethics. It emphasizes the self— instead of its emptiness in no-​­self (wuwo 無我)—and the self’s character and virtues—instead of the non-​­duality of perfections and imperfections. It consequently inadequately recognizes how the Chan ethos is enacted as a relational other-​­oriented disposition in which perfections and virtues are not cultivated and realized for the sake of the self but rather in loving kindness, compassion, and generosity toward sentient beings in general as well as nature as an asymmetrical and non-​­identical interactive relational whole in the context of which the singular being is recognized and cherished in their moment of life without being sacrificed to a monolithically understood biocentric and organismic whole. This Chan ethic indicates an altered environmental ethos that is significant for therapeutically fostering a more appropriate ecological culture. Classical Aristotelian perfectionist virtue ethics is a prevalent yet questionable way of interpreting South and East Asian philosophies. It is also a problematic means for interpreting Chan ethics in relation to environmental ethics. Virtue ethics paradigmatically focuses on the moral self-​­cultivation and the mastery of aristocratic citizens and householders or (in contemporary versions) meritocratic elites: it is a perfectionist discourse of a hierarchically stratified community and the form of the self that it requires. Chan Buddhism elucidates an ethically-​­oriented biospiritual cultivation—which can be taken as an exemplary lesson and model for environmental philosophy—that contests the self, its mastery, and its socially defined virtues in a condition of homelessness and openness that allows the responsive encounter between beings without rank and status. The undoing of rank and status, the equalizing of things in their own “imperfection” in the discourses attributed to Zhuangzi and Linji, allows things to come forth and be encountered in their own suchness and self-​­so-​­ness. The aretaic virtue ethical model is as inappropriate for Chan Buddhist as it was for Daoist ethics. In contrast to the perfectionist models of mastery, Chan ethics is better described as another form of an ethics of encounter between beings that gives priority to non-​­coercive responsiveness understood as loving-​ ­kindness, compassion, and generosity. By contesting and undoing fixations of principles and precepts, merit and “perfection” are located in worldly imperfection and the genuine in everyday existence such that ordinary living and affairs become the way. Accordingly, echoing the no-​­merit and no-​­self statements from the Zhuangzi, the legendary figure of Bodhidharma reportedly told Emperor Wu of Liang (梁武帝) that there is no merit, no self, no sacredness, only vast emptiness (kuoran wusheng 無聖廓然).47

Epilogue   131 An ecological ethos of emptiness and encounter Different ways of elucidating Chan ethics are required that do not impose hierarchical conceptual models onto it. In particular, there are alternatives to virtue ethics that more adequately express—and are more deeply rooted in—the dialogical ethical implications of “encounter” in Chan-​­Seon-​­Zen Buddhist teachings. Of particular germaneness here are: (1) the “encounter dialogues” and (2)  encounters with natural phenomena such as animals, plants, mountains, waters, and landscapes. A Chan ethos of encountering and responsiveness toward sentient beings and “nature” as a whole is constituted in being experientially exposed to and encountering others, things, and oneself. In contrast to reducing natural things to their instrumental use and exchange, according to dominant models of instrumental rationality and universal exchangeability, the prospect arises of encountering and responding to things in their alterity and singularity by disorienting the individual and social constructs and recognizing them in the intrinsic or immanent character of their interdependent uniqueness. This means “to function responsively without losing balance.”48 It is a responsive attunement to things, without reifying non-​­action, as described in a statement attributed to Mazu: “Responding to things, [the dharma-​­body] manifests itself in [many] shapes like the reflection of the moon in water. It functions constantly without establishing a fixed root. It does not exhaust action nor does it cling to non-​­action.”49 The ecological import of Chan can be articulated in relation to Zongmi’s Inquiry into the Origin of Humanity. While he states that wisdom is to know the human, and illumination is to know oneself, the ultimate is to allow the source or root (ben 本) to function in the mindfulness that consists of being awakened by and tracelessly responsive to the suchness or as-​­is-​­ness of others and things or “freely manifesting oneself in response to things without any bounds.”50 The comportment of Chan as an awakening-​­responsiveness to things and others in their alterity and singularity immanently within the encounter itself is a model for the ecological encounter that is lacking and systematically undermined in contemporary environmental crisis conditions. Comparable to Zongmi before him, Gihwa in his work Hyeonjeong non suggestively reconceived in a proto-​­ecological direction the Confucian notion of benevolence or humaneness (ren 仁) as the comprehension of the mutual affinities, resonances, and interconnectedness unfixing the dualistic binary boundaries between self and other, civilized and uncivilized, as well as human and non-​­human animal life.51 It remained inadequate inasmuch as allowing violence toward and the killing of life can never accomplish life’s nourishment. In contrast to narrowing benevolence to the human that he identified with Ruist teachings, Gihwa described how his own awakening and conversion from Ruism to Buddhism occurred in encountering animal suffering. His problem with Ruism might receive an answer in Zhang Zai and Wang ­Yangming, as previously discussed, but it does present a genuine challenge to its typical forms. Gihwa did not see an answer in the ruist paradigm. He

132   Epilogue closely links Buddhist awakening with a sensibility for nature, maintaining that genuine awakening only begins when all creatures are perceived as sharing in the same sufferings and possibilities of illumination.52 Given the continuing prevalence of views and practices (including ecological ones) that reify natural phenomena and reduce the natural world to a background for human activity and self-​­realization or natural phenomena to instrumental objects of exploitation defined exclusively according to human desires and projects, there is a particular salience in being reminded that there can be more to life than human desires and projects as well as in being challenged to consider the reality that human responsibility extends beyond communication with and obligations to other humans—even as compassion and responsibilities for humans ought not be abandoned, as humanist critics of biocentric holism and radical posthumanism fear, for the sake of anti-​­humanism or in the name of saving an unaffected and untouched nature that neglects the injustices and suffering of humans along with other sentient beings. Models of Buddhist biospiritual awakening (as also seen in analogous ways in Daoist models discussed earlier in the present work) are exemplars for a therapeutic ecological awakening and cultivating a more adequate culture that can embrace elemental and wild nature.53 The Chan interactive responsive model of immanent awakening does not only concern the human agents who are engaged in it but addresses and is addressed by natural phenomena. A number of Chan encounters famously or notoriously involve animals such as foxes, dogs, and cats; often metaphorically and figuratively yet also in ways that reveal basic questions about animal and thingly life.54 Tang dynasty Chan and subsequent Zen models of encountering and the encounter dialogue, in the asymmetry and reversibility of master and student, monk and layman, and so forth, are intriguing examples of how to encounter and experience natural phenomena. These also help to contextualize the role of nature and its images in classical Chan-​­Seon-​­Zen discourses. According to a statement attributed to Linji’s teacher Huangbo, all life—from Buddhas to wriggling things—partakes in Nirvanic nature.55 Chan can accordingly extend the moral circle to encompass the diversity of life as a reflection of the inherent yet empty buddha-​­nature in all things. The Chan ethos of encountering natural phenomena indicates potential ecological models of encounter and response that allow for the asymmetry and non-​­identity of relations between different beings even as they disclose their basic equality and symmetry. Each thing rests in the emptiness of its own self-​­or buddha-​­nature or, more precisely, its own functioning without root. Given the deconstructive and naturalizing (in an expansive non-​­reductive sense that prioritizes things rather than method and technique) tendencies of early Daoist and Hongzhou/Linji Chan sources, we should consider: to what extent can there be a non-​­instrumental recognition of natural phenomena and dynamic interactive wholes without an underlying conception of identity, essence, or substance? Chan discourses have emphasized the most ephemeral and fragile phenomena in ways that have shaped the East Asian natural aesthetics. Examples

Epilogue   133 extend from the blossom and leaf to the dewdrop. Just as each dewdrop distinctively reflects the moon, each moment is singular and an expression of the entirety of the dynamically transforming non-​­identical and non-​­uniform whole, and each being has its own worth and height in and through itself and in relation to everything else.56 Undoing the barriers between things with dharma and dao In the Genjōkōan (現成公案, “Actualizing the Fundamental Point”), Dōgen Zenji 道元禅師 (1200­–​­1253), the Japanese Sōtō lineage (曹洞宗) Zen master, stressed awakening through practicing self-forgetting: To study the way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be awakened by all things. To be awakened by all things is to remove the barriers between oneself and others.57 This breaking of obstructions and walls is an undoing of the fixated separation between self and others and, as his writings on natural phenomena such as the Mountains and Waters Sutra (Sansui kyō 山水經) reveal, the separation of the human and natural. The dismantling of the barriers between self and other described by Dōgen does not aim at mystical or metaphysical unity; it concerns the ethical relationship in which the self is no longer privileged over the other, as self and other are no longer unconditionally differentiated. The removal of barriers is not mere absorption and participation in being; it is the possibility of an ecological dao of responsive attunement in Daoist nurturing care (ci 慈) or the overlapping yet distinctive life-​­praxis of Buddhist compassion (cibei 慈悲) for the suffering world.58 The self-​­generating self-​­manifesting of things—in a fused Buddhist-​­Daoist language—is evocatively formulated in Dōgen’s works such as in his discussion of the self-​­blossoming of the world as it is and in its suchness or the liberation and non-​­abiding of things as an abiding in their own phenomenal expression.59 This is not only an ontological but a fundamentally ethical claim of how one encounters and, in the encounter, relates and responds to natural phenomena. This encountering requires practices of emptying fixations of language and the self. Such forms of Buddhist praxis are self-​­ deconstructing in contesting Buddhism’s own self-​­reifications. Our own practices and prejudices are placed into question to practice genuine compassion and generosity. The spontaneity of giving without calculation or expectation, according to Dōgen, is appropriately the most fundamental of the perfections (pāramitā) since nothing else can more thoroughly transform the comportment of the mind.60 In Daoist and Chan/Zen texts elucidated in previous chapters, one can learn from and become like the natural world—from the uncarved block to the flow of the river—and natural entities have a communicative and ethical role as teachers, models, and exemplars that can inform and orient ecological thought and practice. These lessons can be taken up in purportedly mundane existence.

134   Epilogue Dōgen portrays in the Tenzo Kyōkun (典座教訓) how monastic chefs (tenzo 典座) calm the anxious troubles of their duties and obligations in an attuned mindfulness attentive to the tiniest transient grain of rice.61 Finding attunement in encountering and responding (ying) to things in the midst of the world and in reciprocal resonance or response (ganying) with them is more response-​­able than signifying a form of calculative or moralistic responsibility. Donna J. Haraway speaks of response-​­ability as the “becoming-​­with” of species and environments living and dying with one another on a damaged earth.62 This responsiveness contests conceptions of responsibility, and the ideologies built upon it, which are—as this work has shown—the fixation and limitation of an unrestricted interthingly circulation, communication, and responsiveness between things. In the Chan context, Buddhist self-​­reification is undone by contesting focusing on polishing the reified images of the self, its nature, and the pure mind in self-​­cultivation. Such essentialist models are repeatedly rejected in Chan texts as a form of gradual enlightenment that continually dusts off the mirror (the self) without seeing the lucidity of things (by breaching the barriers of the self). Awakening the mind in Buddhism, as with Daoist nourishing life, is not constituted by or through the self, much less its own “self-​­power.” Chan Buddhism continues to linguistically and philosophically echo older Daoist teachings. Ziran and nature oriented elements in Daoist, Chan, and the more expansive Ruist discourses of thinkers such as Zhang Zai and Wang Yangming (as brought up near the end of Chapter 2) do not merely concern the care and nourishing of the “self” to the exclusion of others. Awakening and nurturing transpire through the self and its constructs and fixations being exposed to, being opened up to, and encountering others, things, as well as itself in the unrestricted communication and free circulation of dao that, as was shown in the last chapter, can be taken as a critical exemplary model for democratic eco-​ ­politics. This interthingly co-​­arising is the genuineness (zhen) of an unfixed yet integral core nature (xing) that responsively functions without immovable roots or foundations.

Conclusion Distinctive forms of Daoist and Chan discourse and practice—in their own ways across their differences—indicate a therapeutics and embodied practices of emptying that dismantle the illusions of self-​­power and the mastery and domination of nature that reflects our current ecological crisis-​­tendencies. Turning away from constructed barriers and relying on the “other-​­power” in things and nature as a whole is another way of expressing the recognition of the priority of things that is necessary for more adequately ecologically nurturing life and forming sustainable cultures and political economies of nature that can learn individual and social practices of simplicity, stillness, and emptiness for the sake of flourishing. New forms of culture, economy, and politics are to be thought of in the multi-​­perspectival singular plural rather than either as a static monistic unitary

Epilogue   135 one or a relativistic incommensurability that prevents recognizing the shifting and transforming circulation and communication between things.

Notes   1 Hakamaya Noriaki, “A Critique of the Zen School” (Zenshu Hihan 禅宗批判). See Paul L. Swanson, “‘Zen Is Not Buddhism:’ Recent Japanese Critiques of Buddha-​ ­Nature.” Numen 40. 2 (1993): 135; Paul L. Swanson, “Why they say Zen is not ­Buddhism: Recent Japanese Critiques of Buddha Nature,” in Jamie Hubbard and Paul L.  Swanson, eds, Pruning the Bodhi Tree: The Storm Over Critical Buddhism (­Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1997), 19; James Mark Shields, Critical ­Buddhism: Engaging with Modern Japanese Buddhist Thought (London: Routledge, 2016), 7.   2 For an overview of Chan Buddhism, see Peter D. Hershock, Chan Buddhism (­Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2005); Heinrich Dumoulin, Zen Buddhism. A History (New York: Macmillan, 1988). For accounts of its philosophical dimensions, see Wang, Linguistic Strategies in Daoist Zhuangzi and Chan Buddhism; Dale S. Wright, Philosophical Meditations on Zen Buddhism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).   3 See Christopher Ives, Imperial-​­Way Zen: Ichikawa Hakugen’s Critique and Lingering Questions for Buddhist Ethics (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2009); Brian Daizen Victoria, Zen at War (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2006); and Brian Daizen Victoria, Zen War Stories (London: Routledge, 2012). Also see James W. Heisig and John C. Maraldo, eds, Rude Awakenings: Zen, the Kyoto School, and the Question of Nationalism (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1995). The role of war is not only problematic in Japanese or East Asian Buddhisms, as some critical Buddhists suggest. See my analysis of war in Sri Lankan Theravāda Buddhism in Eric S. Nelson, “Virtue and Violence in Theravāda and Sri Lankan Buddhism,” in Chanju Mun and Ronald S. Green, eds, Buddhist Roles in Peacemaking (Honolulu: Blue Pine Books, 2009), 199­–​­233.   4 See my discussion of this problematic in Nelson, Chinese and Buddhist Philosophy in Early Twentieth-​­Century German Thought, 221­–​­223.   5 Bernard Faure, The Rhetoric of Immediacy: A Cultural Critique of Chan/Zen ­Buddhism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994); Bernard Faure, Chan Insights and Oversights: An Epistemological Critique of the Chan Tradition (­Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996). On the relation between Daoism and early Chan Buddhism, see Wang, Linguistic Strategies in Daoist Zhuangzi and Chan Buddhism.   6 See Jinhua Jia, The Hongzhou School of Chan Buddhism in Eighth Through Tenth-​ ­Century China (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2006); Mario Poceski, The Records of Mazu and the Making of Classical Chan Literature (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015); Albert Welter, The Linji lu and the Creation of Chan Orthodoxy: The Development of Chan’s Records of Sayings Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008). The exact phrase “genuine person without rank” does not occur in the Zhuangzi. Spiritually cultivating oneself without regard to rank or position is mentioned in the miscellaneous Zhuangzi chapter 28 “Abandoning Kingship” (rangwang 讓王):“行修於內者無位而不怍。”   7 On the charge of essentialism, see Jacqueline Stone, “Some Reflections on Critical Buddhism.” Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 26. 1­–​­2 (1999): 159­–​­188.   8 For further discussion of practices of emptying, see chapter eight of Nelson, Chinese and Buddhist Philosophy in Early Twentieth-​­Century German Thought, 225­–​­252. On the problems of ethics, karma, and violence, see Eric S. Nelson, “The Complicity of the Ethical: Causality, Karma, and Violence in Buddhism and Levinas,” in

136   Epilogue Leah Kalmanson, Frank Garrett, Sarah Mattice, eds, Levinas and Asian Thought (­Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 2013), 99­–​­114.   9 Linji yulu 臨濟語錄 T47n1985_p0500b21­–​­25; Thomas Yuho Kirchner and Ruth Fuller Sasaki, trans., The Record of Linji (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2008), 236. Note that Chinese terms are transliterated in pinyin except in the bibliographical information of works using Wade-​­Giles. Some translations have been silently modified. For Chinese and Japanese Taishō references, I have used the CBETA Chinese Electronic Tripitaka at www.cbeta.org/, the SAT Taisho shinshu daizokyo at http://21dzk.l.u-​­tokyo.ac.jp/SAT/index.html, and I have also consulted the Digital Dictionary of Buddhism at www.buddhism-​­dict.net/ddb/. 10 On the early formation of the text, see Welter, The Linji lu and the Creation of Chan Orthodoxy. 11 Linji yulu T47n1985_p0502b13­–​­25; The Record of Linji, 275­–​­276. 12 Wang, Linguistic Strategies in Daoist Zhuangzi and Chan Buddhism, 68. Also see Nelson, Chinese and Buddhist Philosophy in Early Twentieth-​­ Century German Thought, 247. 13 On self-​­erasure, see Wang, Linguistic Strategies in Daoist Zhuangzi and Chan ­Buddhism, 79, 118­–​­120. 14 A significant example is developed by Mario Poceski, “Guishan Jingce (Guishan’s Admonitions) and the Ethical Foundations of Chan Practice,” in Steven Heine and Dale S. Wright, eds, Zen Classics: Formative Texts in the History of Zen Buddhism (Oxford University Press, 2005). Poceski examines how the ethical and monastic presuppositions are adhered to by even the famously iconoclastic Hongzhou School. 15 Shengyan, The Sutra of Complete Enlightenment (Boston: Shambhala, 1999), 56. 16 Note the analysis of this issue in James, Zen Buddhism and Environmental Ethics (Hampshire: Ashgate, 2004). 17 Wang, Linguistic Strategies in Daoist Zhuangzi and Chan Buddhism, 79. 18 As Jeffrey L. Broughton makes evident in his edition of Zongmi on Chan (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012), 18. 19 Wendi L. Adamek, The Mystique of Transmission: On an Early Chan History and Its Context (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007), 253. 20 See Wang, Linguistic Strategies in Daoist Zhuangzi and Chan Buddhism, 175­–​­182. 21 On its philosophical dimensions and implications, see Youru Wang, “Philosophical Interpretations of Hongzhou Chan Buddhist Thought,” in Youru Wang, Sandra Wawrytko, eds, Dao Companion to Chinese Buddhist Philosophy (Dordrecht: Springer, 2018), 369­–​­398. 22 Jia, Hongzhou School of Chan Buddhism, 79. 23 See Morten Schlütter, How Zen Became Zen: The Dispute Over Enlightenment and the Formation of Chan Buddhism in Song-​­Dynasty China (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2008); Bernard Faure, ed., Chan Buddhism in Ritual Context (London: Routledge, 2005); Barry Stephenson, “The Kōan as Ritual Performance.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 73. 2 (2005): 475­–​­496. 24 An example of such argumentation and polemic is Charles Muller, trans., Korea’s Great Buddhist-​­Confucian Debate: The Treatises of Chong Tojon (Sambong) and Hamho Tuktong (Kihwa) (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2015). 25 See Peter N. Gregory, trans., Inquiry into the Origin of Humanity: An Annotated Translation of Tsung-​­mi’s Yüan jen lun with a Modern Commentary (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, Kuroda Institute, 1995), 80­–​­104. For a broader contextualization of Zongmi, see Peter N. Gregory, Tsung-​­mi and the Sinification of ­Buddhism (University of Hawaii Press, Kuroda Institute, 2002). On the context of Daoist-​­Buddhist relations during the Tang era, see Mollier, Buddhism and Taoism Face to Face. 26 Gregory, Inquiry into the Origin of Humanity, 203. 27 Gregory, Inquiry into the Origin of Humanity, 74.

Epilogue   137 28 Gregory, Inquiry into the Origin of Humanity, 206. 29 Jingde chuan deng lu 景德傳燈錄 (Records of the Transmission of the Lamp) T51 N2076: 445a05 and 444a01. On the historical context of Hongzhou Chan, see Jia, Hongzhou School of Chan Buddhism, 67­–​­82. 30 Jia, Hongzhou School of Chan Buddhism, 123. 31 Broughton, On Chan, 98. 32 Broughton, On Chan, 98. 33 Broughton, On Chan, 99. 34 Broughton, On Chan, 18. 35 Broughton, On Chan, 100. 36 Original texts and translations of these texts can be found in Muller, Korea’s Great Buddhist-​­Confucian Debate. On the controversy between the Neo-​­Confucian Jeong Dejeon and the Buddhist Gihwa, see Eric S. Nelson, “Suffering, Evil, and the Emotions: A Joseon Debate between Neo-​­Confucianism and Buddhism.” International Journal of Korean Studies (국제고려학) 16 (2016): 447­–462. ​­ 37 See Jeong’s “Critique of the Buddhist Notion of Hells,” which criticizes vulgar popular karmic beliefs and elite Chan anti-​­morality, in Muller, Korea’s Great B ­ uddhist-​ ­Confucian Debate, 82. 38 Both sides of this argument are developed more fully in part one “After Nature: Ethics, Natural History, and Environmental Crisis” of Nelson, Levinas, Adorno, and the Ethics of the Material Other. On the question of de-​­reifying strategies, see Wang Youru, Linguistic Strategies in Daoist Zhuangzi and Chan Buddhism, 78. 39 Linji yulu T47n1985_p0498c27­–​­29; The Record of Linji, 202. 40 On self-​­power and other-​­power, see Bret W. Davis, “Naturalness in Zen and Shin Buddhism: Before and Beyond Self-​­ and Other-​­Power.” Contemporary Buddhism 15.2 (2014): 433­–​­447. 41 Bodhidharma, The Zen Teaching of Bodhidharma (San Francisco: North Point Press, 1989), 19. 42 Sutra of Complete Enlightenment, 56­–​­57. 43 On interpretations of Zen ethics, see Nelson, Chinese and Buddhist Philosophy in Early Twentieth-​­Century German Thought, 219­–​­221. 44 On following or according with conditions (renyun) in Hongzhou Chan, see Wang, Linguistic Strategies in Daoist Zhuangzi and Chan Buddhism, 77­–​­78. 45 Linji yulu T47n1985_p0498b10­–​­13; The Record of Linji, 192. Translation from Three Chan Classics (Berkeley: Numata Center for Buddhist Translation and Research, 1999), 21. 46 James, Zen Buddhism and Environmental Ethics, 34­–​­36; Christopher Ives, “Resources for Buddhist environmental ethics.” Journal of Buddhist Ethics 20 (2013): 541­–572. ​­ 47 Adamek, Wendi L. The Teachings of Master Wuzhu: Zen and Religion of No-​ ­Religion (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011), 11. 48 The Blue Cliff Record, trans. T. Cleary and J. C. Cleary (Boston: Shambhala, 1992), 42. 49 “應物現形，如水中月，滔滔運用，不立根栽。不盡有為，不住無為。” 50 Yuan ren lun (原人論) T45 N1886: 707c27, 708a02, 710c24; Peter N. Gregory, Inquiry into the Origin of Humanity (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1995), 66 and 206. 51 Gihwa, HBJ 7.223b15; Muller, Korea’s Great Buddhist-​­Confucian Debate, 104. See Nelson, “Suffering, Evil, and the Emotions,” 447­–​­462. 52 Gihwa, HBJ 7.219b4. 53 On Zen Buddhism and the elemental and the wild, see Brian Schroeder, “Hiding Between Basho and Chōra: Re-​­imagining and Re-​­placing the Elemental.” Research in Phenomenology 49. 3 (2019): 335­–​­361; Brian Schroeder, “Walking in Wild Emptiness: A Zen Phenomenology,” in Ron Scapp and Brian Seitz, eds, Philosophy, Travel, and Place (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), 129­–​­149; Jason M. Wirth, “Dōgen and the Unknown Knowns: The Practice of the Wild after the End of Nature.” Environmental Philosophy 10.1 (2013): 39­–​­61.

138   Epilogue 54 See Steven Heine, “When there are no more Cats to Argue About: Chan Buddhist Views of Animals in Relation to Universal Buddha-Nature.” Journal of Chinese Philosophy 43.3­–​­4 (2016): 239­–​­258. 55 Huangbo, The Zen Teaching of Huang Po on the Transmission of Mind, trans., John Blofeld (New York: Grove Press, 1959), 48. 56 See James, Zen Buddhism and Environmental Ethics, 83­–​­105. 57 Kazuaki Tanahashi, ed., Moon in a Dewdrop: Writings of Zen Master Dōgen (New York: North Point Press, 1995), 70. 58 See Pang-​­White, “Daoist Ci 慈, Feminist Ethics of Care, and the Dilemma of Nature,” 275­–​­294. 59 Tanahashi, Moon in a Dewdrop, 98, 102. On Dōgen and contemporary ecology, see Jason M. Wirth, Mountains, Rivers, and the Great Earth: Reading Gary Snyder and Dōgen in an Age of Ecological Crisis (Albany: SUNY Press, 2017). 60 Tanahashi, Moon in a Dewdrop, 45. 61 Tanahashi, Moon in a Dewdrop, 50, 59. 62 Haraway, Staying with the Trouble, 2, 12; Haraway, When Species Meet, 71.

Afterword

The warning signs are overwhelmingly evident, spreading through interthingly and interhuman relations.1 Observing them requires no special act of divination or prophecy, although they do need an unfixing of the obsession and indifferent partiality that distorts and denies their recognition. In this complexly mediated and entangled situation of the world suffering from catastrophic climate chaos and environmental devastation, and the corresponding decreasing quality of ecosystems and the ways of life of beings, even as the availability and quantity of products and services expands at an incredible pace for privileged classes and regions, one could well wonder whether a ways of life and thought originating in ancient East Asia and advocating self-​­awakening and nurturing care for things can address the complexity of current environmental crisis-​­tendencies and predicaments. The current work has delineated Daoist strategies of life-​­praxis and speaking in an intercultural context and in a philosophical way to disclose the therapeutic potential of a more appropriate ecological compartment and practice that— through enacting practices of emptying, responsively letting, nourishing, and encountering—could help promote a more suitable cultivation, ethics, and politics of the ways of things as they are in their own naturalness (in the sense of ziran). Its argument has shown that a related set of early texts are salient to contemporary ecological issues in that they indicate exemplars and critical therapeutic models for an intercultural environmental ethics emphasizing the formation of environmental cultures and societies that nourish life and responsively prioritize things. The early twentieth-​­century phenomenologist Edmund Husserl called for thought to return to engaging the things themselves (Sachen selbst), writing in a quasi-​­Daoistic vein (at least on the side of the thing) that: [T]o judge rationally or scientifically about things signifies to conform to the things themselves or to go from words and opinions back to the things themselves, to consult them in their self-​­givenness and to set aside all prejudices alien to them.2 Early Daoism is more radical in how it prioritizes the thing, which exceeds calculation and expectation, instead of the ideas of method and law that are at work in Husserl’s phenomenological recourse to the thing.3

140   Afterword The priority of the life of things beyond their being grasped requires a different way of conceiving the subject and its freedom. Elements of Daoism, in particular in the Zhuangzi, reveal a shifting wandering transperspectival freedom—which is not bound to a fixed conception of the self and its ­perspective—in the flow of the world that undoes barriers and fixations to embrace a natural plainness, simplicity, and stillness. Finding freedom in naturalness points us toward a more ecologically responsive model and way of life. The Zhuangzian freedom is one that follows the flowing transforming natures of things. It is not a fatalistic indifference, as it responsively works with things. Practices of responsive freedom continue to take on gendered forms and be bodily enacted in subsequent Daoist lineages.4 This Daoist way of responsive attuning offers a model for an environmental responsiveness enacted in a communicative and interthingly comportment in the midst of words and things. In this form of Daoism, freedom is not isolated nor idealized in a detached subject and set into opposition to things and others. Instead of contending and competing with things, struggling with them for existence, it is only attained in relation to and in the midst of things and in their care and nourishment. The Daoist teaching of emancipation concerns bodily and linguistic practices. As depicted in Chapter 4 concerning language in Zhuangzi and Wang Bi, one avoids becoming entangled in the snares and traps of one’s own words, images, and concepts.5 One does not fixate the means and models of communication but empties them to encounter and receive things as they are. The said is emptied and unsaid so that the saying of things themselves can be heard. One adoptively learns from features of forms and models of life in their own imperfection as one shifts and wanders through them without being transfixed or limited by them. Zhuangzian freedom occurs in relation to the relational whole of things. Brook Ziporyn described the relation of whole and particular in the inner chapters of the Zhuangzi as a dao-​­centric “omnicentric holism” in which wholes are anarchically understood through each shifting singularizing thing instead of one governing unicentric epicenter.6 Yet one is not bound to one perspective. The Zhuangzi illuminates freely passaging through myriad particular conceptions, perspectives, and bodily forms. This shifting freedom in responsive attunement with changing things and affairs entails a radical releasement of oneself and things that is lacking in other teachings and has ecological implications for how humans relate to themselves, the plurality of singularizing things, and their environing worlds in words and in practices. Ziran-​­Daoism recognizes that it is salutary to take our “measure from the things themselves,” such as waters’ manifold manifestations, as vibrant generative realities in excess of human powers with which we must responsively learn to live and work, without following a predetermined principle or norm.7 As argued throughout this book, there are in early Daoist sources ethically suggestive descriptions of nature and things and a sensibility of responsively observing and tracing transforming things and their relations. These ways of being attuned constitute an ethics more in the sense of a way of dwelling with

Afterword   141 species and environments than ethics in the sense of justifying and prescribing determinate norms and values that are posited as ideally separable from their entanglement in the transforming with of interthingly relations. Undoing the fixated barriers and reifications of the self and nature and emptying ecology, as indicated through a multiplicity of models explored throughout this work, does not entail their insignificance or an attitude of uncaring indifference. As the present work has shown, the exemplary emulate dao in being non-​­indifferent in nourishing and cultivating the myriad things. It is the releasement that allows encountering and attuned responsiveness with as well as nurturing compassion for the myriad things that dwell in and make up our shared elemental interthingly body of life and our systematically damaged environmental nexus.

Notes 1 See Gordon and Gordon, Of Divine Warning. 2 Edmund Husserl, Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy: First Book (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1983), 35. On the affinities and differences between Daoism and phenomenology, see the papers in Chai, Daoist Encounters with Phenomenology. 3 There are also further problems concerning Husserl’s Eurocentric conception of subjectivity, rationality, and culture that I delineate in chapter six of Chinese and Buddhist Philosophy in Early Twentieth-​­Century German Thought, 159­–​­199. 4 See, for instance, Robin R. Wang, “Kundao: A Lived Body in Female Daoism.” Journal of Chinese Philosophy 36. 2 (2009): 277­–​­292. 5 Watson, Chuang Tzu, 233; Lou, Wang Bi ji jiaoshi, 619; Lynn, Classic of Changes, 32; Lynn, “Wang Bi and Xuanxue,” 389. There is an intertextual connection as Wang Bi’s thinking of language refers to and complements the Zhuangzian discourse. 6 Brook Ziporyn, “How Many are the Ten Thousand Things and I? Relativism, Mysticism, and the Privileging of Oneness in the ‘Inner Chapters,’ ” in Cook, Hiding the World in the World, 33­–​­63. 7 See Graham, Lieh-​­Tzu, 165­–​­166; Kirkland, Taoism, 33. This Liezi passage speaks of being loyal and true to water. Water operates as an image of the highest good, and illustrates a changing natural reality that humans can work and transform with. Alan Watts famously depicted Daoism as the “watercourse way.” For a contemporary ecological investigation of becoming with water, see Margaret Somerville, Riverlands of the Anthropocene: Walking Our Waterways as Places of Becoming (London: ­Routledge, 2020).

Index

adaptation 28–29, 128; elements of 29; to things 35 Adorno, Theodor W. 12, 67, 81, 95 affairs, naturalness of 60; see also wushi affectivity 64–66, 93–94; affective responsiveness (ganying) 93 agriculturalism (nongjia) 103–104, 111, 114; as egalitarian 103 agrarian/agricultural simplicity 14, 103–106 alienation/reification, structures of 80 analogous models 93 anarchism 32, 52, 100–101, 107–108 Anthropocene 12, 13, 17, 74 anthropocentrism/biocentrism 31, 87 anti-anthropomorphism 87 anti-authoritarian politics 100 anti-elitist discourse 115 anti-hierarchical discourse 115 anti-moralistic discourse 7, 115, 128 antinomianism 120, 123–128; and Chan Buddhism 123–124; notion of 123–124; primary exemplar of 127 anti-politics 13–15, 32, 35, 100, 102, 107–108, 112 antiquity 1, 13, 84, 104 Arendt, Hannah 114 argumentation: conflicts of 6; Confucian strategies of 2; philosophical 104; strategies of 8 artificiality 14, 33, 35–36, 60, 105, 114; of efforts at extending life 25–28, 35–36 attunement 11–13; of care for things 32; and disposition 12; and emptiness 15; genuine 65; responsive 12, 37, 41, 65–66, 88; schema of 11; to things 35, 38 augmentation 26; acceptance and 28; advocacy of 27; artificial 28;

intervention and 28; life 27; of longevity 28 authoritarianism 13, 100, 116 autopoiesis 10, 15, 31, 33, 101, 114 balancing scale 51–52 Bao Jingyan 13, 32, 115 Baopuzi 4, 13, 27, 112 benevolence (ren) 43, 57–58, 60, 68, 105, 131 biocentrism 31–32, 63, 77 biodiversity 40; in Daoist and contemporary interpretations 68 biopolitics 3, 15, 51, 101–102; and biopolitical order 11 biospiritual 3; awakening 132; being 11–12; cultivation 9, 11; meditative techniques 4; self-cultivation 11; therapeutics 37–38 bodily life: attitudes toward 32–33; biopolitical primacy of 105–106; discussions of 33; elemental 24, 38, 43–44, 108, 115; fixating of 38; selfinterested preservation of 30; significance of 32; types of body 38 Bookchin, Murray 104–105 breathing, techniques of 8, 11 Buddhism: classic 121–122; critical philosophy of 119; criticisms of Daoism 4, 106, 124; hierarchical superiority of 124; self-reification of 134; see also Chan Buddhism; Zen Buddhism: capitalism 13–14, 69, 100, 116 Capitalocene 12–13 care see nurturing care Celestial Masters (tianshi) 3–4 Chan Buddhism 119–120, 123; antinomianism and 123–124; critical

Index   143 response to 124; critiques of 124–129; ecological import of 131; environmental ethos 129–134; ethics and moral theory 129–130; Hongzhou style 123–124; inappropriate for 130; killing Buddha 121–123; Neo-Confucian critique of 126; radicalness of 128; social-political contexts of 122; specificity and radicalness of 130; teachings 120 China/Chinese: conceptions of life 11; cultural spheres 25; discourses 8, 9 Chuci 11, 84 classical Daoism 4 communication: Daoist indirect forms of 8, 91, 93; uses of 95 communicative deconstruction 76 communicative strategies 8, 9, 93 Confucianism (rujia, Ruism) 25, 43, 50, 54, 59, 65, 124, 131 Confucians 43, 56, 115 Confucius 7, 8, 50, 64, 94, 104, 105; and the Analects (Lunyu) 7, 49–50, 83, 92, 94 consequentialism 41, 110 consumerism, contemporary proponents of 104 contemplative Daoism 25 contemporary culture 81 contemporary ecology, Daoist discourses and 66–67 contestation 40, 46, 82, 96, 110, 113–114, 121, 122, 130, 133, 134 conventional morality 58; and conventional prejudices 55; and norms and prescriptions 60 corresponding analogies (chulei) 93 cosmos 1, 2, 5, 11, 64 Creel, H.G. 13, 25 critical model 12, 30, 116, 128 critical therapeutic ecology 9, 16–17 damaged life 17, 24–25, 28, 67, 114 dao 93, 133–134; anarchic characteristics of 15; ethos of 10; interpretation of 64; namelessness of 94; nurturing anarchy of 114; teaching/instruction of 2, 4–5; transmissions of 3–5 Daodejing 8, 17, 24, 32, 57, 60, 92, 113, 114; body (shen) in 32–33; critique of law 54; discourse 33; edition and analysis of 26; empty vessel in 82–83; nourishing life in 30–34; sage-kings of 102 Daoism (daojia) 2, 4–5, 13, 50, 52, 53, 56, 59, 103, 105, 113, 124, 140;

appropriateness of 16; aspect of 58–59; attunement and cultivation 11–13; communal and egalitarian 14; contrast proponents of 100–101; critical therapeutic ecology 16–17; definition of 1–2, 6; environmental philosophy, and political ecology 9; forms of 25, 101; hedonistic elucidations of 106; interpretations of 16, 65–66; literati variation on 106; model of 40; modern critics of 100; naturalistic interpretation of 31; “nature” and environing world 9–11; nihilistic interpretation of 106; organized religious 3; philosophical literature concerning 25; philosophy 5–9; politically-oriented form of 2; potential environmental significance of 57; prevalent readings of 52; reconstructions of 101; between religion and philosophy 3–5; “religious” biospiritual forms of 5; society and politics 13–16 Daoist biopolitics 100–101; of agrarian simplicity 103–105; models of sagekings 101–103; sage-kings and selforganizing communities 106–112; Yang Zhu and 105–106 Daoist discourses 6, 8, 49, 52–53, 85–86, 114; for contemporary ecology 66–67; contemporary redeployment of 101; initial sketch of 28 Daoist ecology 63–64, 78, 86; of shifting perspectives 31 Daoist ecopolitics: dao and ecological selforganizing democracy 113–114; emptiness, simplicity, and ecopolitics 112–113 Daoistic political models 14 Daoists 4, 92–93; destructuring strategies 12; environmental ethics 63; ethics 41–42; exemplars 8–9; generative nothingness 124; interpretations of life 58; perspectives and strategies 1–2; philosophy 14, 64–65; political ecology 15–16, 115–116; politics, “primitivist” model of 14; sage-kings 102; sources 1; strategies 139; therapeutic ecology 9; traditions 14 Daoist sources 9, 49; environmental implications of 24; tendencies in 100 deconstructive communication 122–123 deep ecology 1, 32 deontology 41 dharma 133–134

144   Index discourses: academic theoretical 6; antielitist 115; anti-hierarchical 115; Chinese forms of 1; contemporary 9; Daoist see Daoist discourses; syncretic political 50; Western philosophical 8; Yangist 29–30 discriminatory preferences 7, 38, 59, 113, 125 disposition 61; attunement and 12 divinization 3–4 Dōgen Zenji 133–134 domination of nature 9, 30, 42, 55–56, 59, 67, 74, 77, 95, 134 dreams 34, 36, 52, 78, 95–96, 104 eco-authoritarian political order 15 ecofeminism 56, 67, 89, 105 eco-legalism 33, 102; eco-legalist model 115 ecological civilization (shengtai wenming): as motivational and structural context 113; as self-organizing and participatory 116 ecological crisis 106, 123 ecological degradation 39–40, 78 ecological ethos 40–42, 56, 86 ecological self-organizing democracy 113–114 ecological significance 84–85 ecological systems, self-ordering of 113 ecological transformation 16 ecology 42; democracy 113; emptiness and responsiveness to things 74–77; emptiness and simplicity 73–74; fasting, forgetting, and becoming genuine 77–79; freedom of nature in Zhuangzi 80–84; immanence of natural occurrence 84–86; joy of fish 86–87; Wang Bi see Wang Bi; ways of speaking and wandering 93–95 ecopolitics 30, 101, 103, 112–113 ecosystems 17, 55, 59, 67, 75–77, 85, 91, 101, 110, 139 embodied being 30, 32, 33, 42, 61 embodied life 29, 32, 105, 106; coercive reshaping of 37 emptiness/emptying (kong) 122, 128, 139; and encounter 131–133 emptiness/emptying (xu) 73–74, 80, 88, 89–90, 102, 112–114; attunement and 15; enactment of 53, 74–77; functioning of 63; of heart-mind 90; limit of 90; of nothingness 82; practices of 73–74, 87–88, 95

emulative models 32, 40, 50, 53, 56, 59, 62, 84–87, 109, 140 encountering 53, 55, 66, 69, 83, 86, 87, 139, 140–141; critical models of 12; nature, emptiness and simplicity to 73–74; rhythms in 32; spiritual 36 environmental catastrophe 105 environmental crisis 7, 12, 16, 28, 68, 95, 105, 115, 127, 131 environmental culture 63–64, 139; aspects of 85 environmental ethics 41–42, 63, 120, 130 environmental ethos 32, 36, 56, 100, 129–134 environmentalism 2, 16, 42, 53; contemporary environmentalism 1–2 environmental philosophy 9, 11, 12, 24, 53–54, 68, 130; adequate 100; contemporary environmental philosophy 53, 56; critical ecology and 96; Daoist 68; dispute in 54; indicative for 127; lesson and model for 130; reimaging of 96 environmental planning 37, 78, 111 environmental relational systems 68; see also autopoiesis environmental restoration 40, 42, 56, 59, 63, 77 environmental systems, relational forms of 56–57 equality 10, 15–16, 104, 110–111, 113, 115, 118, 119, 132 equalizing 7, 27, 80, 84, 86, 110–111, 113, 115–116, 130 ethics 41; basis of 60–61 ethos 73; ecological 40–42, 56, 86; ecological potential of 84; environmental 36, 100, 129–134; of nature 83–84; of nourishing life 17; of sustainability 42; of wuwei 51; Zhuangzian 83–84 exemplary sages, “non-action” of 59 expanded self 24 expressions 6, 8, 10, 12, 35, 87, 88 fasting the heart-mind (xinzhai) 39, 74, 77–80 fatalism 16, 57, 63 feminine, discourse of 89 foolishness 51 forgetting 33, 38–39, 77–79, 92; practices of 95; sitting and 79 Foucault, Michel 6 freedom 11, 16, 60, 64, 85, 88, 100–101, 114, 121, 140; of being 44; genuine 39; of nature 37, 80; sense of 33

Index   145 Ge Hong 4, 13, 27–28, 34–35, 37, 112 generative nothingness 12, 49, 79, 89–90, 109 generosity 40, 78, 89, 130, 133 genuineness (zhen) 77, 103, 114; attunement 65; discourse of 78; reality 79 genuine person (zhenren) 25, 33, 77, 84–85; and genuine person without rank 120, 122, 130 Gihwa 126–127, 129–131 geopolitical topography 112 good, the 5–7, 26–27, 31, 41, 53, 68, 91, 101 governing, forms of 52–53 Graham, A.C. 13, 29, 78, 104 Green religion 73 grief 59 Guanzi 2, 3, 6, 76, 86, 97 Guifeng Zongmi 120, 124–127 Guo Xiang 44, 55, 100 Habermas, Jürgen 114 Hadot, Pierre 6 Hakamaya Noriaki 119 Hanfeizi 2, 14–15, 27, 50–52, 54, 102, 108 Haraway, Donna J. 6, 12, 134; and reimagining 6; and response-ability 134 heaven (tian) 31, 58, 84; nature of 112 heavy/double-layered words (chongyan) 81 Heguanzi (Pheasant Cap Master) 50 Heidegger, Martin 82 Hengxian (“Primordial Constancy”) 74–75, 91 Heshang Gong 3, 26–27 He Shao 64, 65 He Yan 64, 65 Hongzhou Chan 123, 125–129, 132 Horkheimer, Max 67 Huainanzi 6; see also Yuandao Huanglao 2, 14, 15, 18, 20, 60, 74, 102 Huizi 27, 86, 87 humanism/posthumanism 31 Husserl, Edmund 139 hypostatization 12 immortality 3, 4, 17, 84 impartiality 52–53, 57–61, 75–76, 86, 101, 110, 112 imperfection 9, 42, 127, 130, 140 imputed/dwelling words (yuyan) 81 individuality 15, 42, 64, 112, 114 inward alchemy (neidan) 4, 27, 112

instrumentality 77, 82; social-economic dimensions of 81 intercultural philosophy 7 intergenerational justice 17, 34, 59; and taking turns 67–68, 116 interpretive strategies 4, 6, 8, 41, 112; Confucian 2 intrinsic nature 17 intrinsic value 31, 54–55 Jensen, Tim 59 Jeong Dojeon 126 Ji Kang 4 karmic causality 124–125 knowledge: accumulation of 37; acquisition of 62; boundaries of 35; discursive 35; perfection of 36; specific forms of 35 laissez-faire thought 100, 116 language 87; borders and boundaries of 94; conception of 91; Daoist philosophies of 81; dimensions of 91; elucidation of 94–95; functioning of 91–94; indirect and transitional 91–92; referential use of 92; reification of 92; theoretical analysis of 6; underappreciated fullness of 81 Lao-Zhuang: Ge Hong’s criticisms of 4, 13, 27; priority of ziran in 50 Laozi 4–6, 12, 41, 63, 64, 87, 92–93; “divinized” 4; philosophy of nature 3; teaching of 2 learning: acquisition of 62; element of 29; from things 29 Legalism (fajia) 2, 14, 50, 52, 62, 102–103; and biopolitics 51–52; and biopolitical strategies 51–53; orientation toward order 52; role of monarchs 102 libertarianism 52, 100, 101, 116 Liji (Book of Rites) 25, 50–51 Liezi 2, 6, 8, 10, 13, 17, 36, 67, 105, 107–108 life: augmenting and extending 27; boundaries of 35; Chinese conceptions of 11; configuration of 32; Daoist interpretations of 58; forms of 17, 109; generative movements and alterations of 90; instrumentalization and domination of 59; natural genuineness of 105–106; nourishing operations of 89; practices of 37; relational forms of 56; rotations of 40; simplification of 106, 113; of things 140; usability and disposability of 24 linguistic strategies 82

146   Index Linji Yixuan 32, 120–124, 127–130; and killing the Buddha 121–122, 129; and the genuine person without rank 120, 122, 130 livability 76–77 Li Zehou 86 longevity 11, 26, 28, 30, 36, 37, 102, 103, 105–107, 111–112 love: of the body 33, 60; as comprehensive 61; as impartial 60 maternal 31, 33, 39, 60, 88–89, 94, 107 Mazu Daoyi 120, 123, 125, 127, 129, 131 measure 15, 37, 53, 62, 78, 82, 84, 86, 110, 140 medical language 3, 25 meditation 3 melancholy 59 Mencius (Mengzi) 13–14, 25, 36 metaphysics 3, 41 militarism 119–120 military strategies 49 Mill, John Stuart 114 mimesis 29, 56, 86 mindfulness 129, 131, 134 modernity 14, 63, 82, 101, 121; theoretical form in 6 moral disposition 51 moralistic hypocrisy 105 morality 60, 125 moral quality 50 mortality 57 Mou Zongsan 25 Mount Wutai 127–128 Mozi (Mo Di) 1–2, 60, 82; Mohism 110 music 84 mutuality 78 mysterious learning (xuanxue) 3, 27–28, 55, 64; consequences of 120 mysticism 9, 41, 80, 111 naming 91, 93 Næss, Arne 1 nationalism 119–120 naturalism 9, 55; forms of 10; Western scientific naturalism 10, 29, 42, 55, 57 naturalistic fallacy 68 naturalness 27, 54, 59–60, 68, 76, 103, 124–125 natural occurrences: immanence of 84–86; models 85–86 natural patterns (tianli) 84 natural phenomena, non-instrumental recognition of 132 natural philosophies 6

natural tendencies 58, 65 nature 9, 85; bodily life of 40; changing workings of 39; culture of 100; denial and domination of 9; domination of 55, 77; dynamic patterns of 17; escapism 14; experiences and ideas of 9; generative self-occurring of 67; human domination of 42; humanity and 31; indifference and cruelty of 57–59; instrumentalization and domination of 59; Laozian philosophy of 3; multivocal concept of 10; renewed culture of 29; self-occurring of 53; selfordering of 9, 113; tiande and 10; Zhuangzian ethos of 83–84; Zhuangzian freedom in 28; ziran and 10, 41, 53–55, 63 nature-mysticism 9 nature-oriented language 7 nature-oriented sensibility 28 negation, conventional senses of 12, 49 Neiye (“Inward Training”) 3, 8, 11 Neo-Confucianism: criticisms of Buddhism 123, 126; and shared body of life 43, 131, 134 neo-Daoism 3, 64; see also mysterious learning nihilism 73, 90, 106, 122, 123 non-action 61–64; of being 62; connotations of 51; Ruist conceptions of 50–51 non-benevolence 57 non-domination 17, 24, 29, 39, 56, 85, 95, 101, 116 non-exclusion 101 non-interference 39, 51 non-maleficence 57 non-purposive Daoism 55 nostalgia, forms of 59 nothingness (wu) 3, 66, 73–74, 88, 89–90, 94; creativeness and generativity of 83; emptiness of 82; feminine with 89; functioning of 63; generative 79, 87–91; philosophy of 64, 90; politics of 108–109; Wang Bi’s thinking of 64 nourishing: of being 89–90; of spirit 38 nourishing life (yangsheng) 9, 11, 25, 26, 36, 139; and acknowledging death 39–40; and augmenting life 25–26; bodily form 37–39; controversies over 25–26; and cultivation of life 11–13; Daoism as ecological ethos and praxis 40–42; Daoist conceptions of 57; dao of 26; divergent interpretations of 15; ethos of 17, 30–34; exemplar of 36; Ge Hong 27–28; historical and philosophical

Index   147 considerations 28–30; model of 28; Neo-Confucianism 43; problem of 24–25; processes of 40; significance of 24; Wang Bi and Heshang Gong 26–27; Zhuangzi 27–28, 34–37, 40 nurturing care (ci) 11, 40, 59–61, 63, 133; morality to 59–61; senses of care 59 nurturing life 13; paradox of 76–77; see also nourishing objectivity 76 onto-theology 3 otherness, critical function of 11 perfectionism 41–42, 122, 129–130 personal self- cultivation 2 perspectivalism 73; and moni‑perspectivalism 65–66; and multi‑perspectivalism 55, 66, 73, 134; transperspectival freedom 140 philosophical Daoism 5–6 philosophical presuppositions 119 philosophical teachings 4 philosophy 5–7, 55–56; natural 6; of nothingness 64, 90; practical 6; religion and 3–5; vocation of 7 plainness (su) 11, 75, 89, 112 Plato 6–7; and society in The Republic 104, 113–114 pluralism 44, 73 political ecology 9, 11, 15, 24, 63, 113, 115–116 politics, society and 13–16 pollution 7, 16, 33, 67 posthumanism 31–32 practical philosophy 6, 8 praxis 40–42, 73 “primitivism” 14, 101, 103–104, 115 prototypical sages 65 purposive Daoism 25 reality, theoretical analysis of 6 reciprocity 78 reification 12, 80 relativism 73, 135 religion 5; and philosophy 3–5 religious Daoism 3–4 religious practices 5 religious teachings 4 religious transmissions 26 responsibility, moralistic conceptions of 10 responsiveness 10, 65; as attunement 12, 37, 41, 61–66, 88, 102, 113; as impartial 76; as letting 139; and sympathy 66

rhythmic transformational functioning 11 ritual propriety, sensibility of 58 Rothbard, Murray Newton 116 sacrificial economy 14 sage-kings 8, 52–53, 76, 88 schools (jia) 2, 5–6, 50 seasonal temporality (shi) 17, 67 self-concerned care 42 self-contentment 13 self-cultivation 3, 5 self-functioning 10 self-governing politics 75–76 selfhood 32 self-interest 29–30, 52, 113 self-ordering community 75–76 self-organizing tendencies 114 self-power 42, 128, 134 self-sufficiency 104 shared simplicity 104 Shen Buhai 27, 51–52 Shen Dao 52, 57; fragments of 58; moniperspectivalism and indifference of 65–66 Shiva, Vandana 105 Sima Qian 2 Sima Tan 2 simplicity (pu) 1, 4, 11, 14, 74–75, 78, 88–89, 112–113 simplification of life 103–107; and social simplicity 107, 112–115 sincerity 51, 58, 60, 88; utmost sincerity ( jidu) 75 Singer, Peter 110 singularity 64, 78, 110, 114, 131 singularization 85, 101 skepticism 35, 41, 73, 80, 86 skillfulness: culmination of 36; perfection of 36 social ecology 67, 105 social-political hierarchy 42, 103–104 social-political inequality 104–105, 113 social theory 59, 82, 100 society, and politics 13–16 Socrates 6, 9, 104, 113–114 solidarity 16, 63, 69, 113 Sommer, Deborah 38 spillover/goblet words (zhiyan) 81 spiritual escapism 14, 37 spontaneity 10 straw dog (chugou) 17, 58 subjectivity 62, 64, 93–94 sustainability 39–40, 42, 44, 56, 59, 63, 76–77, 112; ethos of 42 syncretic political discourses 50, 52

148   Index Taylor, Paul W. 31, 63 teachings 2; of dao 16–17; of Laozi 2; of modern environmentalism 16–17; of Mo Di 60; of Yang Zhu 115 things (wanwu): death and rebirth of 59; emptiness and responsiveness to 74–77; equalizing and singularizing 110–112; instrumental reduction of 113; myriad plurality of 66; naturalness of 60; natural tendencies of 56; non-injury and non-domination of 116; seasonality of 59; self-arising 54; self-generating ordering of 90; self-generating selfmanifesting of 133; self-generative capacities of 56; transformation of 80 totalitarianism 100 tranquility (jing) 62, 74, 76, 86 transcendence 3 transformation of things (wuhua) 34, 38, 80, 95–96 transformative strategies 8–9 transience 57, 59, 67, 69, 73, 79, 106, 110, 134 unfixing, strategies of 73–74, 92 usefulness, human categorizations of 55 uselessness 73–74; embracing 83; expressions for 82; human categorizations of 55 violence 17, 75, 102, 107, 110, 114, 116, 120–121, 131 virtue ethics 41–42, 61, 130–131 virtuosity 6, 7, 11, 41, 89–91, 104, 109 vital energies (qi) 9, 11, 27, 75, 79, 91 wandering: and far-roaming (yuanyou) 11, 84; and free and easy wandering (xiao yao you) 11, 44, 72, 84–85 Wang Bi 3, 26–27, 30, 61, 64–67, 74–75, 88–89, 92–93, 100, 109; analysis 65; biography of 65; and deconstruction of concepts 87–91; ecology with 95–96; elucidation 75; and functioning of language 91–93; philosophy of language 93, 94–95; and Yijing 26, 66, 89–92 Wang Yangming 43, 131, 134 Wang Youru 122–123 Warren, Karen J. 56 water 7, 10; and pollution 16; as teacher, measure, and model 29, 75, 86, 131 way of life 5–7, 9, 140 Wenzi 26, 105

Western metaphysics 3 Western philosophy 5–8 Wisdom: love of 6; sense of 49 Wittgenstein, Ludwig 86 wushi 50–52, 57, 60–63, 90, 122; and nonengagement in affairs 52, 61–64 wuwei 12, 41, 49–50, 61–63; alternative interpretation of 24–25; connotations of 50; contemporary ecological example and model 55–57; Dao follows ziran 53–55; in Daoism 24; ecological responsive attunement 66–68; ethos of 51; indifference and cruelty of nature 57–59; legalist biopolitical strategies 51–53; from morality to nurturing care 59–61; non-action, non-engagement, and responsive attunement 61–64; Ruist conceptions of “non-action” 50–51; Wang Bi 64–66 Xiang’er Laozi Commentary (Laozi Xiang’er zhu) 3, 30, 33, 35, 58 Xunzi 25, 34, 37, 50, 54, 85, 105 Xu Xing 104, 115 Yangism 13–15, 29–30, 33, 103–104, 106, 108, 112–113 Yang Zhu 11, 13–14, 29, 32, 105–106, 108 Yan Hui 79 Yang Guorong 78 Yuandao (“Originating in Dao”) 1, 7, 10, 29, 49, 53, 57 Zen Buddhism 119; nationalistic form of 123; problems of 127; social-political contexts of 122 Zhang Zai 43, 131, 134 Zhong Hui 65 Zhuangzi 4, 5, 27–28, 32, 36, 41, 60, 64, 66, 77–79, 86, 107–108; celebration 17; ecology with 95–96; fixations in 84; freedom of nature in 80–84; nourishing life in 34–37 Zhuangzi 6, 8, 11–13, 24, 29, 39, 64, 65–66, 77–78, 83, 85, 92, 113; “anarchic” threads of 35; anti-political language of 14; Butcher Ding in 34, 36–37, 105; butterfly dream in 34, 95–96; conversation with skull in 13; ethos of nature in 83–84; freedom 140; four expressions for body in 38; Hundun story in 37, 68, 113; joy of fish in 86–87; readings of 34–35