Zhuangz’s Syncretism Practical Philosophical Solutions to Moral Challange
Author: Kang Chan
Abstract / Chinese PDF Download
The seven syncretist (often referred to as Huanglao) chapters attributed Zhuangzi are rich in practical philosophy. But intriguingly the writers(s) regards practical philosophy as the remedy to as well as the cause of moral crisis and social collapse. Thus practical philosophy is a self-fulfilled enterprise to solve the problems it created, and is self-sustained since any solution generates new problems that require new solutions.
Moral crisis and social collapse were initiated when the Yellow Emperor manifested morality, that is, to pronounce it for the mind to know. This practice was revolutionary since the nobles sauvages of the immemorial past were naturally good, namely, being good by nature without their consciousness telling goodness from evil. The replacement of nature with the mind marked the end of the blissful past and the beginning of endless evil and turmoil, and hence the need for an evolving practical philosophy. The state of affairs cannot be restored once the Pandora’s Box has been opened, and the best that is humanly possible is for rulers to command bureaucracy and to rely on gentlemen to carry cultural traditions, so that the mind can be tamed to exert itself within the boundary of morality.
Although the mind in Zhuangzi syncretism is of troublesome character, I suggest in the end that this conception of the mind is congenial to the modern Western philosophy in which the ideas of mind, will, and consciousness are amoral and de-ontological in essence. I also suggest that the Zhuangzi syncretism has less affinity with the Huanglao school of the Warring States period and the Former Han dynasty, while a case can be made that it is the core and encompassing vision of the Zhuangzi or the Zhuangzian school.