Editors’ Note: The following is an extract from Rose Novick’s ongoing translation into verse of the Zhuangzi: one of the early major Daoist works (another being the Daodejing) from the golden age of Chinese philosophy. It was written around 300 BCE in China and was named after its putative (but probably composite) author, Zhuangzi. The translation’s odd line breaks are intentional, as readers will find in the commentary and philosophy of translation that follows. Once complete, the translation will be purchasable from a small independent press as well as available for free online. The Zhuangzi is probably the most delightful and enlightening piece of ancient philosophy you will read. Please enjoy this very short introduction to a work that is near and dear to our hearts.
TRANSLATION
Chapter 1. Boundless Wandering
In the northern deep is a fish;
Its name is Roe. Roe’s vastness—
Unknown, how many thousands of li it spans.
Changing to a bird, its name is Roc. Roc’s back—
Unknown, how many thousands of li it spans.
Furious, it flies, its wings like sky-sus-
pended clouds.
This bird, when the sea
churns,
Will migrate to the southern deep.
The southern deep—
that is Heaven’s Pond.
Leveling Levity is a record of curiosities. The Levity’s words say:
Roc’s migration to the southern deep strikes the
water for 3000 li. Spiraling on a cyclone, it rises
90000 li, departing on the midyear’s breath.
wild horses,
dust,
living things puffing each other up with their breath –
Is the blue sky’s blue its true color
Or is it its remoteness and limitlessness?
Roc’s looking down is also like this, that’s all.
Moreover, if water’s accumulation is not great,
It will lack the strength to bear a big boat.
Capsize a cup of water in a dais hollow:
a mustard seed becomes a boat;
place a cup there – it’s stuck.
The water is shallow and the boat is big.
If wind’s accumulation is not great,
It will lack the strength to bear big wings.
Thus: 90000 li, and wind is then below it –
only then is wind banked up;
Its back bearing azure Heaven
And in no way deflected or obstructed –
only then will it chart a course south.
The cicada and the learning dove smile at it, saying:
Departing, we rise and
flying collide
with elm or sappanwood. Sometimes,
without arriving, we drop
to the ground –
that’s all.
Whence this 90000 li, this southern striving?
Who travels to the lush, green grass
takes three meals and returns
with a belly still full;
Who travels one hundred li
grinds grain overnight;
Who travels one thousand li
gathers three months’ grain –
What do these two vermin know!
Small knowing does not reach big knowing;
Short lifespans do not reach long lifespans.
How do I know it’s so?
The morning mushroom does not know the interlune;
The short-lived cicada does not know spring and autumn –
these are short lifespans.
In southern Chu there is Dark Spirit, who takes
five hundred years as spring,
five hundred years as autumn.
In antiquity there was Big Toon, who took
eight thousand years as spring,
eight thousand years as autumn.
Today Grandpa Peng is famously long-lived:
Multitudes try to match him –
isn’t it sad!
Scald’s Questions to Jujube also affirms this:
In the desolate north is a deep ocean – Heaven’s Pond.
There is a fish there, thousands of li wide, its length
unknown – its name is Roe. There is a bird there –
its name is Roc, with a back like Mount Tai, wings
like sky-suspended clouds. Spiraling up a goat’s horn
cyclone and climbing 90000 li, cutting through
cloudy vapors, bearing azure Heaven on its back
it charts a course south – soon it will reach the
southern deep. The scold-quail smiles at it, saying,
« Where is that going?
I bounce and rise,
cover few fathoms and fall,
take wing and soar
amid fleabane and wormwood –
this is flying’s utmost.
So where is that going? »
This is the dispute between small and big.
So one with knowledge suitable to one office,
conduct adequate to one village,
virtue fitted to one ruler, tested in one state,
Also regards himself like this, and yet –
Song Rongzi still smiles at him.
Let the world lift and acclaim him –
he is not any more encouraged;
Let the world lift and condemn him –
he is not any more arrested.
Fixing the division between inner and outer,
Disputing the limits of honor and dishonor –
here he stops,
Not reckoning his lifespan.
Even so –
he is still not quite planted.
Liezi chariots the wind with breezy skill,
Traveling fifteen days before returning,
Not reckoning what might bring him fortune.
This one –
though he avoids walking,
there is still something he waits for.
But one who mounts what conforms
To Heaven and earth, who chariots
The six vapors’ disputations, and so wanders
The limitless –
what does he wait for?
So it is said: the Utmost are selfless
the Numinous are worthless
the Sage are nameless
COMMENTARY
Discourse on method
The following commentary traces the path of an idealized, naïve reader as she encounters the Roc passage for the first time. Let us call her Lucretia. Lucretia has no detailed knowledge of the Zhuangzi, but she has a lively, inquisitive mind. Sensitive to the nuances of literary expression, she attends not just to what the text says but also to its manner of saying it.1One advantage of this method is that it offers an easy excuse to relegate all fussy academic matters to footnotes. I include sundry divagations in the notes that follow; without exception, all of them can be skipped without harm, though I hope they will provide additional pleasures for those who choose to read them. 2The first such divagation is a brief account of what the Zhuangzi is, for those readers who are not familiar. It is an early Chinese text, predominantly comprising writings from the latter half of the Warring States period (c. 457- 221 BCE), commonly associated with the Daoist tradition (though “Daoist” as an identity did not exist during the Warring States). The received text contains 33 chapters, traditionally split into inner (1-7), outer (8-22), and miscellaneous (23-33). While some hold that the inner chapters are the original work of the historical Zhuāng Zhōu (莊周, c. 369-286 BCE), more recent scholarship strongly suggests that (a) the inner chapters are a later editorial construction and (b) no portion of the text can be confidently attributed to any historical individual. Instead, the text is best viewed as an anonymous anthology whose constituent passages are unified (but only partially) by various shared themes, images, and meditation practices. This partial unity allows for a great deal of heterogeneity in both doctrine and literary style. For recent work on the authorship of the Zhuangzi, see especially the work of Esther Klein (“Were there ‘Inner Chapters’ in the Warring States? A New Examination of Evidence about the Zhuangzi,” 2010, T’oung Pao 96 4:299-369).
As she reads the passage, Lucretia interprets it forward. That is, when she encounters a segment for the first time, she interprets it in light of what comes before, but she remains ignorant of what comes after. (Since this is the Zhuangzi’s opening passage, she does not draw on any other passages in the text to guide her.) Later segments, when she reaches them, may prompt Lucretia to revisit her interpretation of earlier segments, but in such cases the fact of revision is itself part of her interpretation.
This procedure thus gives special attention to the drama of the passage.3In emphasizing the passage’s dramatic elements, I am inspired by the work of Lian Xinda (“Zhuangzi the Poet: Re-Reading the Peng Bird Image,” 2009, Dao 8 3:233-254). Though our conclusions disagree, I have learned much from his method. It yields not a single, settled interpretation that satisfactorily explains every feature of the passage, but rather a temporal sequence of interpretations, which may or may not culminate in any settled, total view. It allows contradictory interpretations to arise and confront each other, and it leaves open how – even whether – such conflicts are to be resolved.
Why is this an advantage? Sadly and happily, I cannot answer in advance. My only argument is the result. I leave to what follows the task of convincing you.
Segment 1: In the northern deep is a fish… (Lines 1-12)
“In the northern deep is a fish; its name is Roe…” So the Zhuangzi first confronts Lucretia: with a giant fish named Roe (鯤 kūn) that no sooner appears than it transforms to a giant bird named Roc ( 鵬 péng). This bird, with furious effort, rises and flies south, but its reasons for this grand journey go unmentioned.
Both fish and bird are unimaginably vast. And yet, the fish is also as small as can be, for it is an egg, something nascent, something not yet formed. The bird, meanwhile, is a friend: pulling apart its name yields 朋 (péng, friend) 鳥 (niǎo, bird).4This reading of Péng’s name is possibly tendentious, for the function of 朋 in the character is to determine its sound, and it may not be semantically relevant. However, as the Zhuangzi is a richly literary text, I prefer to regard every detail as potentially relevant. If a detail resonates in interesting ways with other details, it can legitimately shape our reading. In the background of this interpretive principle is a much larger question about the aims of interpreting the Zhuangzi. Such a question threatens to swallow this entire commentary, if pursued, so I shall restrain myself. Suffice to say that, given the Zhuangzi’s status as an anonymous, multi-authored anthology iteratively written, compiled, transmitted, and edited across 600 years before achieving relatively stable form, the familiar idea that interpretation seeks to recover a text’s “original meaning” is fraught.5
Its journey, too, is vast: from deep to deep – a metaphor, perhaps, for the origin of the world.6 This reading is elaborated by Wu Kuang-Ming in The Butterfly as Companion (SUNY Press, 1990), a thoroughly delightful book and to my mind the best English-language book on the Zhuangzi. While I have not revisited it in the process of writing this piece, my interpretation is undoubtedly indebted to Wu’s far beyond any particular points I might cite. 7 This journey begins with a “furious” (怒 nù) effort.8Traditional commentaries take 怒 to be a cognate loan for 努 (nǔ, to exert one’s strength), perhaps hoping to avoid presenting Roc as angry. However, 怒 is used as such a loan nowhere else in the Zhuangzi, and “furious” in English can serve the same double meaning, so I prefer to render the text as written.9
Lucretia does not yet know what to make of Roe and Roc. Their vastness defies comprehension. Their journey defies comprehension. Still, the rhapsodic tenor of the language suggests something admirable in them – perhaps they are exemplars in some way. Certainly she feels she is meant to be impressed.
Of what are Roe and Roc exemplars? The chapter title is “Boundless Wandering” (逍遙遊 xiāoyáo yóu), and this finds immediate echo in the passage’s opening: the vastness of the creatures suggests boundlessness, while their journey might be a kind of wandering. But the ideal of boundless wandering will require further elaboration.
Segment 2: A record of curiosities (Lines 13-16)
The text cuts to a citation of a strange book, the Leveling Levity ( 齊諧 qí xíe).10Alternative translations of the title include: The Equalizing Jokebook (Ziporyn) and The Tall Stories of Ch’i (Graham). The difference turns on whether 齊 is interpreted as the name of a state or as meaning “to make equal.” As the character is used in its latter meaning in the title of Chapter 2, I follow Ziporyn.11 This text elaborates on Roc’s journey, describing its ascent. Zooming in, we see not just furious effort, but a long period of skimming the surface before finally rising on a cyclone. It is not clear why this particular detail should be highlighted.
As for the Leveling Levity itself, its most salient feature is that it does not exist.12More cautiously, it is not attested anywhere else. It is possible that this passage marks a later editorial interpolation, the result of some editor noting that another text corroborates what the Zhuangzi is saying. AC Graham reads it in this way (Chuang Tzu: The Inner Chapters, Hackett Publishing, 2001). This is part of Graham’s attempt to recover an “original” text; interesting as these efforts are, the citation is part of the text as received, which is what I am interpreting. As we shall see, treating this citation as if it were intentionally placed in the text at just this point will bear fruit. As if anticipating a sedulous reader seeking a source for its incredible claims about Roc (née Roe), the text pokes out its tongue and replies, “I made it up.” This tells Lucretia something about how to read the Zhuangzi: to ask it for factual corroboration is to ask the wrong question. Whatever the text is doing, it is not history.
Segment 3: Wild horses (Lines 17-22)
We regard Roc from below. As the creatures of earth behold Roc’s ascent and flight, they see… what? Nothing definite, merely a dusty haze,13“Wild horses” (野馬 yěmǎ) likely refers to the cloud of dust kicked up by running horses. or something of that nature, and then the vast blue sky. Roc, for its part, looks down and sees the same indefiniteness. The distance between Roc and the creatures of earth is unfathomable; no recognition is possible across it.
If Roc is an exemplar, it is a strange one – one that defies comprehension, perhaps defies even emulation. If it represents to us boundless wandering, such wandering is a far cry from the petty concerns of earth.
Segment 4: A mustard seed becomes a boat (Lines 23-35)
The initial description of Roc’s flight is complete. The text shifts now to a theoretical disquisition on the big and the small. A mustard seed can float in a tiny puddle; the cup that spilled it cannot. So, too, can Roc fly only at a great height, with a great wind below it.
It occurs to Lucretia that the text is once again focusing on a single detail of Roc’s flight: the conditions of its ascent. Now, however, this detail is highlighted in service of a contrast: Roc is big, and thus Roc is separate from the small. Roc’s vastness is underscored, as is its distance from the mundane.
Segment 5: The morning mushroom (Lines 36-65)
Lucretia’s growing impression that Roc is intended as a model – one that will carry us far from our everyday concerns – finds confirmation in the laughter of the cicada and the dove. These two small creatures observe Roc’s flight and fail to understand it. After all, it is nothing like their flight between elm and sappanwood. Perhaps we, if we were earlier inclined to ask for corroboration of the text’s claims about Roc, were something like these creatures.
That the cicada and the dove are laughable in their smallness is confirmed by the theoretical discussion that follows. Blinkered as they are by their own limitations, their small knowing falls short of big knowing. For them to try to comprehend Roc’s flight would be like the morning mushroom attempting to understand the lifespan of Big Toon – it simply cannot be done.14Big Toon (大椿 dàchūn) is a Toona sinensis tree.
Somewhere in the middle, between the short-lived cicada and the long-lived tree, is the human being with her 70-odd years. And what does she spend these years doing? Nothing but chase the “long” lifespan of Grandpa Peng (no relation), whose several hundred years of life are not even a single season in the life of Big Toon. Sad, indeed.
Lucretia, by this point, is pretty well convinced that Roc is in some way a model of boundless wandering. She scoffs at the cicada and dove’s scoffing; she sees their smallness for what it is. Only one thing gives her pause: the mystery of how to emulate Roc. She is a human, and humans have certain limitations. To try to overcome them by extending one’s life is pathetic. Whatever it means to take Roc as a model, it cannot mean becoming a bigger creature.
Segment 6: The dispute between small and big (Lines 66-83)
There now intrudes another citation to another made-up text,15Scald’s Questions to Jujube is, like Leveling Levity, unattested elsewhere (except in sources tracing back to the Zhuangzi). Scald is the sage-emperor Tang, who is said to have asked one of his advisors, “is there a limit to the above, the below, and the four directions?” A few stories of these questions exist in the Liezi, a later Daoist text likely compiled in the 4th century CE by Zhang Zhan. telling us the story of Roe and Roc for a third time. Whereas the second version of the story was consistent with the first, merely elaborating one aspect, this third version is curiously different. Heaven’s Pond is located now in the north, not the south. Roe and Roc both appear, but there is no mention of any transformation. There is only one creature that laughs at Roc’s flight, and it is neither a cicada nor a dove: it is a quail, flying amid fleabane and wormwood.
The overall thrust of the passage nonetheless harmonizes with the earlier tellings: the small misunderstands the big. Perhaps the variation in details merely serves to highlight – as with the Leveling Levity citation – that we are not to treat this story as history. What matters are the recurring structures: the vastness of the bird, its journey from deep to deep, the incomprehension and scorn with which it is greeted.
Or perhaps the differences signal something more. Perhaps these contradictions, rather than canceling each other out, tell us something significant about Roc’s journey. In Leveling Levity, “Heaven’s Pond” is the southern deep; in Scald’s Questions to Jujube, it’s the northern deep. Might not Lucretia take this to indicate that Roc’s journey in an important sense goes nowhere, ending where it began?
In Leveling Levity, Roe transforms into Roc; in Scald’s Questions to Jujube, Roe and Roc are distinct identities. Might not Lucretia take this to indicate that the facts of identity are not so stable as they seem? At this, Lucretia recalls the joke in Roe’s name: Roe is both the largest and the smallest of fish. By retelling the story while varying its details, all of these distinctions – small and big, same and different, journeying and staying put – are simultaneously underscored and struck through.
Segment 7: Liezi chariots the wind… (Lines 84-112)
The passage draws to a close and draws its moral. Leaving behind the myth of Roe and Roc, it presents an ascending series of four figures. First is the village official, puffed up on petty power, strutting about with the same deluded self-regard as the scoldquail. Song Rongzi – who drew a sharp distinction between inner and outer, and on that basis challenged the prevailing notion that one must defend one’s honor from insult – scorns him.16Song Rongzi is a real figure, attested in other texts at the time (e.g., the Xunzi) as holding the same basic position that Zhuangzi attributes to him. No writings associated with him survive. But higher still is Liezi, who “chariots the wind with breezy skill,” unconcerned with material gain.17Liezi is a recurring figure in proto-Daoist texts, and there is a text attributed to him, likely dating from the Han dynasty or later (though plausibly containing some Warring States material). He appears a few times in the Zhuangzi, the most prominent appearance being in chapter 7, where he is represented (as he is here) as falling short of full realization. In the end he, too, is limited: there is something he “waits for” (待 dài), something he depends on. Highest of all is the fourth, nameless figure, who “wanders the limitless.” All of this is then cemented with a description of the three properties of the sage: selfless, worthless, nameless.18A note about the translation. I have chosen “selfless” (無 己 wújǐ) and “worthless” (無功 wúgōng) because and not in spite of their established connotations in English. Normally, “selfless” is a term of praise, “worthless” a term of condemnation. Here they are used descriptively: the sage is one who has no self and has no worth. Neither praise nor blame is intended as such. Why use such loaded English? Because the text is concerned precisely with confronting our reflexive judgments (more on this below, in “Roc’s Silence”). Moreover, I suspect that calling someone 無 功 would have sounded just as insulting in Warring States China as calling someone “worthless” does today. An overarching goal of my translation is to trust the text to explain itself: I want it to be just as bracing to readers today as it was to its original generations of readers. I do not believe that any extant translation manages this, excellent as many of them are (especially those of Fraser, Graham, and Ziporyn).
The critique of the village official is straightforward.19The village official was a common target of opprobrium across early Chinese philosophical traditions. A contemporary analog – both for their perceived venality and for their control over local politics – is the owner of your local car dealership. [For more on this comparison, see: Patrick Wyman, “American Gentry.” The Atlantic (23 September 2021) –Eds.] He regards his small morsel of power as if it were worth all the world. He is irritable and petty. Death will take him in the end.
Of greater interest is Song Rongzi, who scorns the petty possessions of the official. Far better, he says, to possess oneself. Recognizing how capriciously fortune comes and goes, Song Rongzi seeks a more stable foundation for life. He gets far, but, we learn, “he is still not quite planted.” The division between inner and outer is not so reliable as he hopes. (Lucretia thinks here of the passage’s dogged destabilization of distinctions.)
In contrast to Song Rongzi stands Liezi. Liezi’s chariot ride on the wind suggests an Easy Rider-like freedom from the constraints of life, and this is confirmed by Liezi’s indifference to fortune. Unlike Song Rongzi, Liezi does not seek firm ground; rather, he seeks a lack of dependence. In this search, he is not successful: “though he avoids walking, there is still something he waits for.” Liezi can chariot the wind only if there is wind to chariot, and even then his journey is limited to a mere fifteen days. Though certainly he wanders, his wandering is not boundless.20An earlier version of this paragraph got the Strange Matters editors wondering about exactly what it is Liezi is waiting for. One suggested the wind. The other replied, “or maybe death – his transformation from fish to bird.” Both are defensible. Given what is said explicitly in the text, the simplest reading is that Liezi is dependent on the presence of wind – only then can he wander. However, numerous other passages in the inner chapters (and beyond) reveal that the Zhuangzi is concerned with our anxieties surrounding death. These passages suggest that it is just these anxieties that lead to our dependence. In this sense, Liezi might be said to be waiting for death. Could he but stop that, he could ride even without the wind. These passages, however, are not available to Lucretia (yet). So far as she is concerned, Liezi’s dependence is just what it superficially appears to be: dependence on the wind.
Song Rongzi and Liezi seek liberation by apparently opposite means, but Lucretia suspects that this distinction is not so sharp as it seems – that being planted versus being independent is another dichotomy the text seeks to trouble. The true sage manages both.
It is only the fourth figure, nameless and described in puzzling terms, who truly depends on nothing.
But here Lucretia pauses.
The collision
Up through Segment 6, and most of the way through Segment 7, Lucretia has been developing a reading of the text that might be called Sage. Inspired by the rhapsodic description of Roc’s flight and noticing the text’s reliable privileging of the large over the small, she has been taking Roc as a model of sagehood – an ambiguous and difficult one, perhaps, but nonetheless a model.
Segment 7 disrupts this. In the fourfold sequence, the village official plainly parallels the small creatures who scoffed at Roc. Roc, too, has a parallel, but it is not the highest figure – it is Liezi. Liezi, like Roc, rides the wind. If Liezi’s journey is not quite so big as Roc’s, still it is the same basic kind of activity. But Liezi is a limited figure. Is Roc, too, limited? Liezi’s limitation is that he “waits for” something. Does Roc wait for something? What?
Possessed by this question, Lucretia looks back at earlier segments with a new eye.21Here my disagreement with Lian Xinda, mentioned above in note 3, appears. Lian defends a reading like Sage. To do this, he must explain away apparent evidence for Roc’s limitations. He does so by arguing that it only appears as evidence of limitation with hindsight, after we have read the critique of Liezi. And he argues, further, that it is illegitimate to rely on hindsight, that to do so papers over the rhapsodic nature of the description of Roc’s flight. He is right to insist that, on first reading, this evidence does not appear as evidence of limitation. He is right, further, to protest any reading that fails to account for how the description of Roc draws our admiration – any reading that replaces this first impression with the hindsight view. However, it is equally an error to neglect the position of hindsight. After being struck by the Roc/Liezi parallel in segment 7, how can Lucretia not be puzzled and seek an explanation? What is needed is a reading that accounts for both vantages: the initial admiration and the looking back. Lucretia cannot but look back; let us see what she finds. In Segment 1, she notices that Roc flies only with “furious” effort, only “when the sea churns.” In Segment 2, she wonders again why the invented text elaborates on Roc’s ascent. Is it because it reveals a further dependence, shows that Roc requires a cyclone to ascend? Segment 4, which formerly seemed to underscore Roc’s vastness, now appears to confirm this supposition: Roc flies only when a sufficiently strong wind supports it. Segment 5 reads now as a caution against taking Roc as a model: how is it different from chasing Grandpa Peng?
Looking back, evidence of Roc’s dependence is everywhere. Collectively, this evidence jolts Lucretia out of her reverie, and she sets beside Sage a reading we might call Liezi. Like Sage, Liezi regards Roc as something elevated above the small creatures, but it also regards Roc as a limited being, and thus not as a model of the fully realized sage.
But, while this reading makes sense of the passage’s (incessant, in hindsight) mentions of Roc’s limitations, it does not answer all of Lucretia’s questions. Why, if we are not to take Roc as a model, does the text seem to goad us into doing so, describing it in rhapsodic terms and repeatedly highlighting its elevation above the small creatures? Why the sudden revelation at the end of the passage?
Lucretia cannot, at this stage, decide between Sage and Liezi. She is left only with their collision.
Roc’s Silence
The collision is uncomfortable. Her admiration having been heightened to a fever pitch, Lucretia now finds herself face to face with the limits of her exemplar. Facing the discomfort of this strange reading experience, Lucretia realizes that this collision of perspectives, this moment when both readings of Roc coexist – uneasily – in her mind, is the passage’s heart.
Lucretia has been goaded by the first segments of the passage to regard Roc as a model. We might say she has become attached to her image of the great bird. The jumpscare in Segment 7 jolts her out of this attachment, but she does not dismiss Roc as merely a limited figure. Rather, she finds herself free to be inspired by Roc without reifying the ideal it represents. She recalls another feature of Segment 7: the highest figure is not named. Anything named, after all, is but a thing among things, and to treat a thing among things as an ideal is dangerous – is chasing Grandpa Peng.
Out of this collision, a third reading emerges. Call it Creature.22A version of this reading is offered by Guo Xiang (252-312 ce), who edited the Zhuangzi into its received form, accompanied by a commentary. Richard Lynn (Columbia University Press, 2022) has recently translated his commentary into English. Unfortunately, Guo arrives at this reading by rather procrustean means. (His error is failing to appreciate the dramatic flow of the text, and so he can recognize no collision and must explain away all the evidence that generates it.) A more sophisticated version of the reading, which gives due credit to Sage and Liezi, is provided by Wang Fuzhi (1619-1692 ce) in his peerless commentary. Relevant portions of Wang’s commentary are gathered in Brook Ziporyn’s Zhuangzi: The Essential Writings (Hackett Publishing, 2009). Unlike both prior readings, Creature regards Roc as something not fundamentally distinct from the small creatures that mock it. All are things among things, with the same basic possibilities for freedom and unfreedom. The trouble with the cicada, dove, and quail is not their smallness, but their mockery. This mockery is the very self-reification23In other words, the false inference that the conditions underlying one’s own life and experience are in fact the universal conditions of all things. that traps them. To reverse their judgment, mocking them (as Song Rongzi does) and venerating Roc, is merely to choose a bigger ideal, but not to escape the fundamental problem. Carry this thought through to its endpoint, and the distinction between big Roc and small creatures – the distinction that drives both Roc’s appeal as a model and its danger as a trap – vanishes into the equality of all these creatures as they recede into the distance.2420. This equality poses its own puzzle. We have seen two ways not to approach it: neither by mocking nor by emulating Roc does the cicada properly relate to it. And we have seen that the proper way to approach it involves an avoidance of self reification (discussed further in the next two paragraphs of the main text). But it is difficult to give a positive characterization of this equality, which is not sameness, but which must also not reify the differences between things. I do not think Lucretia yet possesses the resources necessary to resolve this puzzle, as these are developed in the Zhuangzi’s second chapter, “Leveling Things Discourse” (齊物 論 qíwùlùn). We, however, do not share her constraints.
The core of “Leveling Things Discourse” is a technical intervention into late Warring States debates in the philosophy of language. Starting from the disputes over “right” (是 shì) and “wrong” (非 fēi) prosecuted between the different philosophical partisans of the age (especially the Mohists and Confucians), the chapter identifies a still more basic form of judgment: distinguishing between “this” (是 shì) and “that” (彼 bǐ). This basic form of judgment has an ineliminably indexical, perspectival character. On this basis, the text details how to respond to disputes without being a mere partisan within them. Importantly, its suggestion is not a vulgar relativism or perspectivism, of the sort that says that what a Mohist judges right is right-for-Mohists (and likewise for Confucians). Rather, like any good relativism, the Zhuangzi’s is a theory not of truth makers but of communication. The question is: how can distinct perspectives talk to each other?
Zhuangzi’s solution contrasts the staunch back-and-forth of disputers with the action of Dao. Dao’s characteristic action is 通 (tōng), whose range of meanings include: “pass all the way through,” “give passage or access to,” “open, unobstructed,” “communicate with, have free exchange with.” The full phrase used is 道通為一 (dào tōng wéi yī): “Dao opens, makes one.” In other words, Dao harmonizes the myriad things neither by effacing nor by reifying their differences, but by opening passages of transformation between things. The Zhuangzi’s most famous episode – the butterfly dream that ends chapter 2 – is an example of just such passagework.
For an excellent discussion of Zhuangzi’s analysis of debates, see Stephen Walker (“‘Are You Really Right? Am I Really Wrong?’: Responding to Debates in Zhuāngzǐ 2,” 2022, Dao 21:533-548). For a technical discussion of the chapter’s philosophy of language in relation to its context, see Ernst-Joachim Vierheller (“Language and Logic in the Zhuangzi: Traces of the Gongsun Longzi,” 2011, Oriens Extremus 50:29-46).
Here, at last, Lucretia recognizes the most important feature of this remarkable passage. She notices this feature last because it is an absence and not a presence. The passage presenting this long and winding account of Roc’s flight is strikingly polyvocal. Besides the central authorial voice, we hear from two (alleged) other texts and from three small creatures. Each provides its own view of Roc – indeed, the central voice seems to provide two such views, one admiring and one cautious. Among all these perspectives, however, there is one conspicuously absent; among all these voices, there is one conspicuously silent: Roc itself.25I gave an early draft of an academic paper outlining this reading to my partner, Moss Quanci. Her feedback was simple: “very good, but why didn’t you talk about Roc’s silence?” She is often ahead of me in such matters. All of our perspectives on Roc are judgments we project onto it. As for Roc itself, it changes and makes its journey – that’s all.
Roc’s silence is startling. Rubbing her eyes, Lucretia realizes the extent to which her own instinctive self-projection has guided her reading of the passage. Throughout, she has tried to fix some singular, stable judgment onto Roc, reducing the grandeur of its flight to some modest meaning-for-her. But Roc, in its silence, resists all such impositions – resists them not actively but passively, letting each slide off its sleek wings. Lucretia recognizes that the passage has presented not a doctrine but a drama. Its dramatic structure has goaded her to regard Roc now one way, now another, until she was brought by her interpretations’ irresolvable inconsistencies to reflect on her own cognitive mechanisms of attachment formation and self-reification. Though Lucretia does not know it yet, this process exemplifies the theoretical analysis of the structure of judgment given in the Zhuangzi’s all-important second chapter.26Discussed above, note 20. From its first beginnings, the Zhuangzi spurs her toward the flexible selflessness that opens her up to the changes.
Goblet speaking
Let us skip forward in time. Lucretia has grappled with the Roc-image and read far beyond it: she has now arrived at the twenty-seventh chapter of the Zhuangzi. It is puzzling her, as it puzzles many readers. In a striking piece of meta commentary, this chapter describes the entire text as engaging in “goblet speaking – daily spilling over, harmonizing using the Heavenly parapet.”27“Heavenly parapet” is a translation of 天倪 (tiānní), which first appears in chapter 2, then reappears in chapter 27. 倪 is a difficult term: it can mean both “origin” and “division,” and other translators have rendered this phrase “Heavenly transitions” (Ziporyn) or “natural divisions” (Fraser). However, Fan He (“Epistemic detachment from distinctions and debates: an investigation of yiming in the ‘qiwulun’ of the Zhuangzi,” 2021, Asian Philosophy 31:240- 253) shows that 倪 specifically refers to a parapet wall used for defense (it is easy to see how the abstract meaning of “division” could be derived from this concrete referent). 天倪 is one of four compounds in Zhuangzi ch. 2 that have the structure 天[X]. The other three are Heavenly pipes (天籟 tiānlài), Heavenly potter’s wheel (天鈞 tiānjūn), and Heavenly reservoir (天府 tiānfǔ). These are all distinctly concrete metaphors, which suggests that we should expect 天倪 to be concrete as well. As for how we are to understand the Heavenly parapet, I cannot do better than Fan He’s own explanation: “Tianni is a paradoxical expression: ni refers to a wall by which a space is demarcated, whereas tianni refers not to a particular place (such as ni, which represents a limited space) but to tian (a boundless space, namely the sky). Unlike ni, the sky can never be used to demarcate any spaces. Therefore, tianni conveys a sense that lodged in the boundless, we would view the world beyond any fixed or narrow perspectives and eventually detach from distinctions and debates.” The Heavenly parapet is a border structure in a space without borders, the place – or, perhaps better, the no-place – from which one can access and harmonize both sides of a dispute. The goblet in question is 卮 (zhī), a trick cup that tips and spills its contents when full, then uprights when empty. (One may readily find such goblets at the contemporary water park, with giggling children waiting to be drenched below, a fact that surely would delight the passage’s author.) It is a thrilling yet enigmatic image. What does it mean to liken language to such a goblet?
In her reading of the Roc passage, Lucretia realizes, she has seen the concrete operation of a linguistic goblet. The Roc-image is boundless; it cannot be contained by any single reading that purports to give it definite meaning. In the course of her reading, Lucretia considered three bounded, internally consistent interpretations of the Roc-image; each one fell short of encompassing the passage’s vastness. The Roc-image spills out over the sides of any reading that would dare contain it. There is always some remainder.
Lucretia sees now why this passage should begin the Zhuangzi. To meet the Roc-image adequately, Lucretia had to unfix her mind, riding Roc’s changes without demanding it be any single bounded thing. If she can manage that, the rest is commentary. ~
