Miami University The Graduate School

Certificate for Approving the Dissertation

We hereby approve the Dissertation

of

Timothy Lawrence Smith

Candidate for the Degree:

Doctor of Philosophy

______Director Dr. LuMing Mao

______Reader Dr. Kate Ronald

______Reader Dr. Gwendolyn Etter-Lewis

______Graduate School Representative Dr. Elaine Miller Abstract

The Language of Paradox and Poetics: A Comparative Study of Zhuangzi and Kierkegaard

by Timothy L. Smith

This dissertation examines the paradoxical and poetic language of Zhuangzi, a Daoist writer from Ancient China, and Søren Kierkegaard, a Western philosopher of 19th century Denmark. Despite writing from differing contexts, traditions, and time, both writers appear to share similar positions and strategies for illuminating their messages of indirect communication. This dissertation is a comparative study of those indirect practices and positions in light of their similarities and differences and attempts to answer what significance can be attached to Zhuangzi and Kierkegaard’s mutual decision to use paradox and poetics. The dissertation is in five chapters. The first chapter examines certain critical terms and practices frequently used in comparative studies. The second chapter provides important contextual background for Zhuangzi and Kierkegaard’s respective traditions, including the dominant rhetorical tendencies of each. Chapter Three is an examination of Zhuangzi’s use of paradox and poetics in his message of indirect communication. Chapter Four is a similar study of Kierkegaard’s own use and understanding of paradox and poetics. Finally, the concluding chapter draws general conclusions regarding Zhuangzi and Kierkegaard’s use and understanding of indirect communication and the language of paradox and poetics and what this might mean to comparative studies and the field of rhetoric in general. The dissertation concludes that both Zhuangzi and Kierkegaard believe that the unique language of paradox and poetics necessary to achieving the full effect of his message of indirect communication. This includes the sensibility of paradoxical subjective experience that arises in the language of paradox and poetics. The Language of Paradox and Poetics: A Comparative Study of Zhuangzi and Kierkegaard

A Dissertation

Submitted to the faculty of Miami University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

Department of English

By

Timothy L. Smith

Miami University Oxford Ohio 2008

Dissertation Director: Dr. LuMing Mao ©

Timothy L. Smith 2008 Table of Contents

Acknowledgements………………………………………..page iv

Introduction……………………………………………….page 1

Chapter One…………………………………………….....page 6

Chapter Two………………………………………………page 34

Chapter Three…………………………………………….page 77

Chapter Four……………………………………………...page 112

Chapter Five………………………………………………page 139

Works Cited……………………………………………….page 168

End notes…………………………………………………..page 171

iii Acknowledgements

In grateful acknowledgment to my committee: Dr. Kate Ronald, Dr. Gwen Etter-Lewis, Dr. Elaine Miller, and with special thanks to my director, Dr. LuMing Mao.

iv Introduction

A century or so before postmodern writers examined the question, Constantin Constantius, a pseudonym of Søren Kierkegaard, lamented: “What kind of miserable invention is this human language, which says one thing and means another?” (Kierkegaard Repetition 200). Nor is the question solely a Western perspective, as Zhuangzi demonstrates writing over two thousand years ago in Ancient China: “Words are not just wind. Words have something to say. But if what they have to say is not fixed, then do they really say something? Or do they say nothing?” (34). This dissertation takes up again the question of language. Specifically, it looks at the unique positions of Søren Kierkegaard and Zhuangzi, and how both writers challenged the conventions of their times and offered compelling new perspectives on language’s relationship to truth explication. As a comparative study, this dissertation will examine both writers in light of what they have to offer not only their own time and contexts, but our own. The latter represents a unique opportunity in comparative studies, where new meaning is created by addressing two differing traditions alongside one another. As such, my efforts in this dissertation will attempt to address the opportunities and new insights that occur in comparative studies, particularly in light of the Western and Sino traditions. Further, as this study is concerned primarily with how each tradition communicated its notions of truth, I will focus primarily on what role language plays in creating and passing along meaning—a provisional definition I offer to the concept of “rhetoric.” I argue from the position that in its most inclusive, broadest sense, “rhetoric” is present in every site, including so- called objective sites and arguments where truth is traditionally thought to be outside the implications of language and perspective (e.g. Western science). In addition, I argue that the creation and passing along of meaning is never restricted to just one tradition, one culture, one time, or one described system of thought, but is found in all facets of human communication. Consequently, I believe ‘rhetoric’ provides the most productive ground from which to approach the questions of language, truth, and meaning across various cultures. Finally, my focus on Kierkegaard and Zhuangzi is an attempt to further situate the dissertation by examining two figures from differing traditions; figures who not only sought to

1 challenge their respective cultural and philosophical contexts, but along the way developed strikingly similar rhetorical strategies and positions on what can—and can’t—be said on truth. While these two writers do not share similar cultures, philosophies, historical time periods, or contexts, their writing does suggest tantalizing similarities in their approach to language, truth, and meaning. These similarities, I argue, are all the more illuminating for their evident differences. For despite their vastly varying contexts, both Kierkegaard and Zhuangzi appear to share a unique understanding of language’s role in regards to truth and meaning. To be specific, I argue that Kierkegaard and Zhuangzi hold similar rhetorical positions in regards to language’s limits and possibilities concerning certain truths. As a consequence of their similar understanding, each writer practiced highly unconventional rhetorical strategies. This includes the similar use of indirect communication and paradox to illuminate a truth that (for them) could not be expressed in conventional form. It is this compelling point of comparison that will form the basis of my dissertation and provide the focus of my study on the language of paradox. Sources In addition to the work of the primary authors, I will build on the works of such comparative scholars as Xing Lu, David Hall, Roger Ames, A. C. Graham, Kuang-Ming Wu, and George Kennedy (among others). These scholars have endeavored to create new discourse and meaning by identifying tendencies and dominant traits of various cultures and studying them alongside other, differing traditions and tendencies. Using their work, I hope to illuminate some of the complex and shifting forces that Kierkegaard and Zhuangzi were operating within. At the same time, I hope to develop a clearer understanding of the issues and possibilities surrounding comparative scholarship and how these relate to the subject of rhetoric. The scholars above represent a variety of informed and diverse positions regarding both comparative scholarship and the Western and Sino traditions. They include George A. Kennedy’s cross-cultural rhetorical analysis, Hall and Ames’ philosophical ars contextualis, Xing Lu’s multicultural hermeneutics; Derk Bodde’s humanism; A. C. Graham’s textual and grammatical exegesis, and Kuang-Ming Wu’s subjectively-embracing “Companion.” Though each writer shares a general sense of what marks the Sino and Western traditions as unique, their

2 individual methodologies and positions often demonstrate striking differences regarding specific points and issues of meaning in both contexts. In short, the scholarship represented above suggests subtle differences of emphasis concerning what is different and similar to each tradition. This complex variety of perspective—far from being disconnected with the more immediate positions of Kierkegaard and Zhuangzi—is a fitting example of the primary writers’ central positions. Said another way, the variety and diversity of positions in comparative studies reflect Kierkegaard and Zhuangzi’s complex and perspectival positions on language and truth’s relationship. As a consequence, an examination of recent comparative scholarship goes a long way to preparing the more focused examination of the primary writers and their traditions. To that end, Chapter One of this work will examine many of the various comparative studies in light of their understanding and approach to the issues of context, truth, and language. In this way I hope not only to address certain critical contextual and academic implications regarding the respective contexts, but also provide an introduction to some of the core issues concerning the primary authors. Chapter Two then takes a closer look at what marks each site of meaning, Sino and Western, as unique and/or different from one another. This includes a discussion of the tendencies each cultural site demonstrated in regards to their respective approaches and understanding of truth and language. With these contextual elements in place, Chapter Three then turns to the work and rhetoric of Zhuangzi. The focus of this chapter pays particular attention to his unique understanding of positionality and language in regards to meaning and truth, or what Kuang-Ming Wu calls “the position of no position.” Chapter Four is a similar examination of Kierkegaard’s rhetorical positions; including his understanding and practice of “imaginatively constructed” meaning. Chapter Five will conclude with a general comparison of the two authors and the implications of their positions upon the present discourse. The Subjective Turn of Indirect Communication I believe the respective positions of Zhuangzi and Kierkegaard have much to offer this discourse, and the questions surrounding language and truth. Their subjectively-oriented philosophies and unique appreciations of how meaning is created and passed along still have much to say about the current discourse surrounding language, meaning, and truth in various contexts today, including comparative studies. Particularly relevant to this study are their respective understandings of ‘the individual’ and their relationship to meaning.

3 In this regard, both Zhuangzi and Kierkegaard were concerned that their own teachings and works could not simply replace one imposed conventional meaning for another. Critical to each thinker’s conception of truth was that it is “actual” and “lived”—not a lifeless construct of objective meaning. In addition, both writers were sensitive to the implications of language’s limits and possibilities to illuminate such actuality. As a consequence each chose unique strategies to “awaken” their readers to the conditions surrounding truth, not compel them to a particular belief or conviction. These unique rhetorical strategies included an attempt to illuminate “teachings that go beyond what can be said” and were guided by the shared principle of indirect communication. In keeping with this sensibility, and to offer further insight into my study, I want to address here certain terms that will be used in the latter sections dealing with the primary writers. Specifically, I will be using the terms irony, paradox, and poetic, and their special significance/use by Kierkegaard and Zhuangzi. Throughout this dissertation I will be using these terms in a rather loose fashion. My reluctance to define these particular terms more succinctly was based on two conditions. First, as I hope will become apparent in the following chapters, Kierkegaard and Zhuangzi inform the meaning of these special sensibilities with unique connotations of meaning that make general and succinct definitions a problematic enterprise. As such, Kierkegaard’s ‘paradox’ is in many ways different from Zhuangzi’s, and both writers complicate the current standard definitions of irony, paradox, and poetic in their own contexts and in general. Consequently, to invest these terms with the full significance of their meaning for each writer, a more expansive illumination (not definition) is required. Secondly (and very much related to the first point), these terms appear to be particularly resistant to concise definition anyway. That is to say, paradox, poetic, and irony share the sensibility of being language/terms/descriptions that move beyond convention, including conventional definition. Though identifiable by their use, they also remain open-ended and tenuous. In fact, these terms appear to a share a deliberate sensibility of contention with fixed convention of meaning by consequence of their play on what is expected. For example, Richard A. Lanham defines ‘Irony” as: “1. Implying a meaning opposite to the literal meaning...” and adds, “Generally speaking, the more sophisticated the irony, the more is implied the less stated” (A Handlist of Rhetorical Terms 92). Lanham similarly defines “Paradox” as: “(Greek “contrary to opinion or expectation); a seemingly self-

4 contradictory statement, which yet is shown to be (sometimes in a surprising way) true” (107). Significantly, what both terms/concepts share is the condition of creating meaning from the unexpected, the practice of turning upside down or contradicting the norm. The practice of creating meaning through contradiction of what is expected is further illuminated by Lanham’s “amplification” of another unconventional meaning practice, “Pun.” Using mechanistic/psychological metaphors, Lanham suggests that puns represent a “toggle switch” of meaning that “oscillates” between the two “poles” of understanding: the “regular dependable language which tells us about the world outside” and the “chance-ridden, self- referential and self-pleasing world of language itself.” Pun thus creates a purposeful “bistable illusion” of meaning (Lanham uses the perception psychologist description, exemplified by the classic Duck/Rabbit picture, to illustrate what he means by bistable illusion). Irony, Lanham goes on to suggest, “creates the same kind of bistable illusion but on a much larger scale” (127- 28). While both Kierkegaard and Zhuangzi certainly enjoy many of the characteristics of the immediate definitions of irony and paradox above, each writer’s actual use and understanding of these concepts/terms also rely on the “bistable illusion,” and particularly the “toggle switch” of further meaning. Said another way, Kierkegaard and Zhuangzi are investing far more than a clever argument to illuminate his respective ‘truth.’ Each is consciously creating additional awareness and meaning by his use of paradox and poetics; meaning they believe essential to awakening the reader to truth’s conditions and actual nature. Thus, a specific definition of these terms of play and unconventional meaning is, in one sense, contrary to their particular use and actuality in Kierkegaard and Zhuangzi. What follows represents an attempt to articulate each writer’s particular understanding of this paradoxical and poetic sensibility and to draw some tentative conclusions regarding indirect communication in general when Kierkegaard and Zhuangzi are studied side by side.

5 Chapter One

“Can the truth be learned? With this question we shall begin.” (Søren Kierkegaard Philosophical Fragments 9) “Can the Way be learned?” (Zhuangzi “The Great and Venerable Teacher” 78).1

This dissertation is about the search for meaning and truth. Specifically, it looks at two unique thinkers from differing cultures and philosophies who nevertheless appear to share similar views regarding language’s role in the search and expression of truth. The subjects—Zhuangzi, an Ancient Chinese Daoist writing sometime between 400 and 300 B. C. E., and Søren Kierkegaard, a Danish Philosopher of Christian orientation writing in the 19th Century—held different notions of truth, each reflective of their respective cultural and philosophical contexts. Yet despite their differences, both Kierkegaard and Zhuangzi appear to offer similar cautions and insights into language’s complicated relationship to truth and the individual. What is particularly telling is each writer’s decision to employ unconventional rhetoric to illuminate a position on what (for them) could not be expressed simply, if at all: their respective truths. As a consequence of this rhetorical position, each demonstrated a compelling testimony to language’s complex relationship to truth, including their use of paradox and poetic argument to communicate indirectly with the reader. I believe it is significant that these two writers from two unique cultures, differing philosophies, and distinctive visions of truth, should hold similar views on language’s limitations and possibilities in explicating said truth(s). Reflected in their similar rhetorical decisions are Kierkegaard and Zhuangzi’s philosophical understandings of knowing and positionality; an understanding that takes up the questions surrounding subjectivity and meaning and ultimately leads both authors to write his unique message with a specific audience and purpose in mind: to free the individual from convention.2 Both writers believed that conventional understanding and use failed to address truth and the individual properly. Instead convention created chains of meaning that inhibited the individual from freely participating in truth. This was due in part to a

6 misappropriation of language to communicate what resided outside conventional language to articulate. Of course, Zhuangzi and Kierkegaard were aware of the paradoxical nature of their stances. They recognized the irony and potential conflict of using language to reveal a truth they believed outside conventional language and reasoning.3 Their answer to this dilemma was as creative as their positions. Each believed an unconventional rhetoric was required; rhetoric that most authentically allowed for both their own and the reader’s individual freedom. This rhetoric worked on at least two levels: first, undermining conventional practices of argument and awakening the reader to its inherent chains; secondly, positioning their own “words” in such a manner that the individual (reader) awakened to their own sense of truth (not Kierkegaard’s or Zhuangzi’s). Kierkegaard believed this rhetorical position “...necessary for implementing his highly explicit method of indirect communication”; a strategy “he regard[ed] as central to his authorship...” (Oden Parables of Kierkegaard xvii). Similarly, Watson notes “... [Zhuangzi] employs every resource of rhetoric in his efforts to awaken the reader to the essential meaninglessness of conventional values and to free him from their bondage” (Chuang Tzu: Basic Writings “Introduction” 5). For Zhuangzi, these resources include a “highly poetic and paradoxical language” (7) and often a deliberate rejection of conventional argumentation and the use of words (15). Together, Kierkegaard’s “explicit method of indirect communication” and Zhuangzi’s “poetic and paradoxical language” represent two purposeful and unique rhetorical strategies toward enabling truth’s discovery. The Comparative Opportunity Studied independently each author has a great deal to say about his own cultural and philosophical contexts. Studied comparatively, however, I believe they also provide further insight into the nature of language and truth cross-culturally; that is, outside of one particular tradition or purview. This dissertation is such a comparative study. Its aim is to uncover what is shared and what differs between Zhuangzi and Kierkegaard’s central claims, contexts, and

7 rhetoric, and to cast these findings in light of the general discourse surrounding language and truth. As a comparative study, my efforts are informed by the works of modern comparative scholars from both traditions. These writers were chosen for their efforts to identify dominant tendencies and traits of meaning in various cultures and study them alongside other sites of meaning, sites that may have chosen different paths and emphasized different tendencies. In using these works I hope to illuminate some of the complex and shifting forces that Kierkegaard and Zhuangzi were operating within in their respective contexts and how these inform each writer’s philosophical and rhetorical positions. In addition, comparative studies share with the work of Kierkegaard and Zhuangzi a concern for how situated positionality and language complicate truth. Consequently, comparative scholars often consider the same self-reflexive questions on truth and knowing Kierkegaard and Zhuangzi ask themselves. An example of this self-reflexive questioning can be found in Zhuangzi’s “Discussion on Making All things Equal”: ...However, suppose I try to say something. What way do I have of knowing that if I say I know something I don’t really not know it? Or what way do I have of knowing that if I say I don’t know something I don’t in fact know it? (41) Of course, in the largest sense these types of questions have been asked by any number of cultural sites and disciplines and individual thinkers. It is not surprising, then, that it is also an underlying element of comparative scholarship. What is perhaps unique to comparative scholarship, though, is the special focus and emphasis “knowing” receives when dealing with two or more apparently different cultures. Because comparative studies start with two presumably unique experiences, differences are often expected to be present and available for consideration. In one sense, then, comparative scholarship appears to encourage a greater appreciation of the rich and diverse practices of rhetoric and meaning across various cultures. While this opportunity for enhanced focus on “difference” does exist, it also comes with a necessary caution. Such expectation can create potential bias and unintentional impositions of meaning, as well.

8 This last point deserves further discussion. Presumably, comparative scholarship is open to more and various interpretations of the world around us as it engages at least more than one particular culture and/or tradition. However, in opening up to more and various understandings, the comparative scholar is also faced with implications of depicting, understanding, and “knowing” what is essentially different or similar to any two given sites of meaning. This depiction/understanding raises a number of questions regarding the concept and practice of naming difference (or for that matter, similarity). Before any such distinctions can be drawn, the comparative scholar must ask how such distinctions can be determined in the first place. At issue here is the complicated task of knowing another culture’s unique nature, one presumably different and outside the scholar’s own tradition. How much of the scholar’s own situated nature affects their ability to understand or depict another culture faithfully is a critical matter for anyone approaching comparative scholarship. This is precisely the issue that Hall and Ames take up in their comparative study of Chinese and Western philosophy. They suggest a scholar’s situated-nature—while informing and aiding the sensibility of one context—may in fact hinder the understanding of another, differing context. They argue the cultural situated nature of any particular scholar can create “obstacles” that “only serve to obfuscate and embarrass our attempts to understand when we use them out of their cultural context” (Anticipating 119). In other words, a Western scholar (to take one example), while possessing valuable tools and knowledge from their own disciplines and cultural context, cannot assume that the acumen and practices of their tradition will necessarily explicate another (say, Chinese tradition) accurately or authentically. In fact, Hall and Ames conclude the scholar’s situated identity, if left unexamined, may actually undermine or conflate (to their own tradition) what is unique to another site of meaning. Consequently before any distinctions can be drawn between two various cultures and traditions, the comparative scholar must first re-examine their own situated nature in light of his or her ability to understand—or “know”—another. For Hall and Ames this includes a careful examination of critical cultural tendencies of meaning:

9 Our comparative method […] presumes that it is often impossible to clarify what something is without saying a great deal about what it is not. This is particularly true when....otherwise most useful interpretive ideas turn out to be real barriers to understanding [...]. We wish primarily to clear away the useless lumber blocking the path to China. Paradoxically, that useless lumber turns out to include many of the concepts and doctrines that came to compromise the dominant intellectual inventory of Western culture. (Anticipating xx). Comparative rhetorician Xing Lu illustrates a similar concern in her preface to Rhetoric in Ancient China: The first challenge I encountered in undertaking this ambitious project pertained to methodology. My training in Western rhetoric has helped me be more sensitive to rhetorical expressions and theories in Chinese texts and contexts, but at the same time, I am aware of the importance of not imposing Western rhetorical categories on the Chinese tradition. (xii) As these writers suggest, comparative scholarship is not simply a matter of studying two or more sites of meaning textually, historically, philosophically or rhetorically. It is also a study of what it means to know/understand from a situated-context. However diverse and/or reflective a scholar may be, they are always faced with the implications of their own situated- nature. That said, I believe the questions of positionality surrounding comparative scholarship are particularly fitting to a study of Kierkegaard and Zhuangzi. Both writers were critically concerned with the subjective individual’s situated nature and its role in determining meaning, particularly as this impacted an individual’s ability to approach and know truth. Consequently, a study of what Kierkegaard and Zhuangzi have to say about positioning, knowing, and truth has a great deal to say about current comparative scholarship, and vise versa. In addition, this shared concern for situated meaning is also a reflection of the complicated role language plays in constructing knowledge. As Xing Lu suggests, when drawing distinctions or similarities scholars must constantly be aware of their own language-constructions

10 of meaning—constructions that, if left unexamined, may make it difficult to see or depict any “other” meaning for its own, unique identity. Similarly, both Kierkegaard and Zhuangzi saw in language a complex site of ability and limitation to communicate truth to, and for, the individual. Specifically, Kierkegaard and Zhuangzi believed language and truth enjoyed, at best, a tenuous relationship. As I hope to show, this represented a critical element to each author’s essential philosophical and rhetorical understanding of truth as well. As such, they built their respective messages on truth upon an interconnected sense of knowing, the individual, and language’s limits/ability to convey particular sensibilities of truth’s actual nature. Because of this understanding, Kierkegaard and Zhuangzi continually position their own messages in light of language’s limits and possibilities. This includes both authors deliberate employment of indirect communication to illuminate his message. Such a highly complicated and paradoxical approach to language and argument offers a compelling insight into the complicated relationship of human nature and one’s ability to “know.” 0r in other words, as Kierkegaard and Zhuangzi suggest in the opening quotes of this chapter: “Can the Way be learned?”; “Can the truth be learned?” Their responses to this question have a great deal to say about human communication, knowing, and truth still today, including the underlying questions of “knowing” another culture or tradition in comparative studies. With this in mind, my dissertation is also in part an examination of Zhuangzi’s and Kierkegaard’s rhetorical insights and what they might have to say about similar modern concerns regarding language and the ability to “know.” Specifically, I want to see if new meaning can be derived from a study of, for example, Hall and Ames “obstacles” and Xing Lu’s “challenge” in light of Zhuangzi’s “reckless words” and Kierkegaard’s “indirect communication.” Can the latter’s paradox of language and complication of conventional meaning tell us something about the challenges inherent in studying and depicting another culture, tradition, or context? Can the “opportunity” of comparative studies and its emphasis of diversity offer something more to Kierkegaard and Zhuangzi’s independent positions alone? Some Terms and Examples

11 As an example of what I mean by the opportunity in comparative study (and Kierkegaard and Zhuangzi’s further complications of this opportunity), let me address certain key “words” of my own. Specifically, I want to discuss my intended meaning of the terms truth, rhetoric, and language. My intention here is two-fold. First and foremost I hope to provide a better understanding of my intended meaning of these complex terms. Secondly, I hope to illustrate how language-constructed meaning often plays a critical role in comparative studies, and understanding in general. To accomplish this, I will offer a discussion of my understanding of truth, rhetoric, and language, and some illustrative examples where I believe language and constructed meaning have complicated understanding between two or more differing sites. In using the examples I hope to both clarifying my own terminology and also provide a sense of the methodological applications and issues I see surrounding comparative study. As many of the issues and terms are similar to the concerns of my primary subjects, Kierkegaard and Zhuangzi, it will also go a long way to providing some important philosophical background. That said, let me turn now to one of the most critical and difficult terms of this study and a central occupation of both Kierkegaard and Zhuangzi: truth.4 “Truth,” as I intend it here, is not merely (or even essentially) the usually preferred alternative of the dichotomy true/false (as in, not a lie; accurate); nor is it the state of being frank. It is closer to the concept or theory most often evident in the West as the search for essential meaning; i.e., “What is Truth?” However, this definition is itself abstract and fails to acknowledge the complex and various forms this quest took in the Western tradition. To that point, comparative philosophers Hall and Ames note: “Western culture has been so obssessed [sic] with the notion of truth, that we find ourselves grossly overstocked with answers to the question ‘What is Truth?’” (Thinking From the Han 120). Consequently, no immediate, definitive answer is available to what is ‘truth’ from a Western-oriented context (or rather, too many are available), but the concept of searching for “A” truth that is essential and pervasive—a “what”—is familiar to most Western individuals and helps inform some of what I mean by truth.5

12 Yet, that said, even the tentative notion of “truth as a concept” (however multitudinously understood) is complicated here by the fact that this is a comparative study and I cannot leave it unexamined with this Western-context alone. For this study involves another tradition, one that (perhaps) took different directions, enjoyed different understandings of ‘truth’—including its conceptual nature. To be specific, many suggest the Chinese context does not evidence the same assumptions, locutions, or tendencies of meaning as the Western tradition, including the notion of truth as a concept. Said another way, the Chinese tradition did not develop its answers (or questions) in the same fashion as the West, and this includes their understanding of ‘truth.’ As a result, more than one scholar of the Chinese tradition has suggested that the Western notion of truth as a concept (i.e., ‘what is the truth?’) fails to adequately capture the Chinese experience (Hall and Ames; Graham; Lu): In the West, truth is a knowledge of what is real and what represents that reality. For the Chinese, knowledge is not abstract, but concrete; it is not representational, but performative and participatory; it is not discursive, but is, as a knowledge of the way, a kind of know-how. (Hall and Ames Anticipating China 104) Distinguishing the Western experience from the Chinese as “Truth-seekers” and “Way-seekers,” respectively, Hall and Ames go on to argue that appreciating such distinctions in meaning (if they exist) may help us to better understand what is unique to each culture. In other words, for many scholars, “What is Truth?” does not faithfully represent the dominant tendency of the Chinese thinking. They suggest, rather, the question might more accurately be phrased, “Where is Truth?” (Thinking from the Han 105-111). Given such an understanding, any discussion of ‘truth’ must first be prepared to acknowledge that the Western understanding and history may not suffice—even as a notion of a concept—for the Chinese experience. My point here is not to defend the “What/Where” distinction—a subject that will be taken up more thoroughly in the next chapter—but to point out how comparative studies illuminate the situated nature of language-constructed meaning and how this bears significantly on critical

13 terms like truth. In short, truth may not be understood or experienced universally or historically from one context to another. To use the term loosely, then, is to risk imposing one contextual sensibility on another. Given this situation, comparative scholarship is faced with the difficult task of articulating multiple interpretations and expressions of critical concepts and understandings from various contexts, and somehow being faithful to each site’s intended meaning and value. Usually this involves a critical and extensive examination of both the differing cultural interpretations and the individual scholars approach to identifying and articulating those differences. In other words, how do the different cultural and contextual sensibilities inform the scholars own work? The necessity of examining what this articulation of difference means to a comparative study is crucial to a faithful understanding and appreciation of each culture’s unique identities. Without such an examination problematic impositions of language-constructed meaning may occur. This examination, however, is no simple task as the cultural and historical contexts of meaning often remain hidden in our most significant and general terms. Before offering my own sense of truth and other critical terms, let me offer a few relevant examples to comparative studies, and in doing so illuminate some more of the issues and concerns surrounding my key terms of truth, language, and rhetoric. In his study Chinese Thought, Society, and Science, Derk Bodde takes as his subject the apparent lack of scientific development and logic in the Chinese tradition. Bodde, writing from what he calls a “humanist” perspective (9), notes an absence of a European-like “scientific revolution” in China based on four factors, “language, concepts of time, organismic thinking, and ideas of government” (357). At issue here is Bodde’s depiction of “science” as most evident and “authoritative” in the Western culture (358).6 In such a light, the conclusion of absence/presence of a given experience becomes problematic. In part this is because Bodde’s absence is based on an idealized Western Scientific Revolution, resulting in an inconclusive depiction of both the Chinese and Western actual experience. The idealized Western experience is possible because

14 of Bodde’ s perceptions of “humanist” and “science” and the constructed meaning he imposes on both concepts. For Bodde, the humanist, the “major focus of the book is not upon science and technology per se but upon the intellectual and social factors that may have influenced them” (9). Such factors, Bodde determines, can be understood best when one culture’s experience is compared to another’s, consequently revealing significant variances in meaning between the two. What Bodde is suggesting by such a paradigm is that all humans share a common mode of thinking—i.e., we all share a universal human potential to achieve what is evidenced in a given particular cultural experience. Consequently, the West achieved the Scientific Revolution, therefore all cultures could presumably achieve the same. From Bodde’s perspective, then, one could conclude that dissimilar experiences between two cultural contexts are a result of some absence (or preventive flaw) in a given culture experience of a shared human-potential. This allows Bodde, among other things, to conclude the absence of a given experience (scientific development) in a particular site of meaning (i.e., Chinese) is evident when viewed in light of an “authoritative” ideal (i.e., the Western experience of the scientific revolution). From such a position, he argues, one can then study what “factors” determined such an experience. Said another way, Bodde believes the Chinese lack of a scientific revolution can be understood in light of the unfavorable cultural and/or linguistic practices that inhibited their similar experience to the West. What is troubling about this conclusion is its positioning of “standard.” Unfortunately, as is the case with Bodde’s model, that standard is all too often a moment of situated meaning, not the universal description it claims to represent. In Chinese Thought, for example, the standard is clearly the Western realized experience of science. What becomes problematic is when this standard is imposed on other cultural experiences, particularly when the two cultures may have different conceptions of what “standard science” entails. Bodde is aware of this difficulty and, in fact, that this is indeed the case between the Chinese and Western cultures. As he notes in his introduction, the Ancient Chinese did not use Western conceptual frameworks or definitions of science—“we must remember that the term

15 represents an abstraction unknown as such to the people being talked about” (11). He readily admits that this “unknown” quantity may hinder or complicate any findings of a study built around a universal concept of science (in this case, the Western standard of science). His answer to this dilemma, however, is to gloss over such problems and implications with the assumption that the authoritative definitions of science could only be found in the West anyway, as the West alone enjoyed the Scientific Revolution: “Only in an environment both modern and Western (or at least Western-oriented) could this consciousness have happened. No comparable definitions of science are to be found in pre-modern Chinese literature” (358- 359). But if there is any doubt as to the hierarchy of language and meaning—particularly what is meaningful “scientifically”—Bodde makes it clear that the Western depiction of science and its lexicon of terms, concepts, and meaning is the final voice of authority. Again, confronting the problem of discerning difference in comparative studies, Bodde suggests what is “quantifiable” is the Western vision of quantification. And what is truth is the authority of Western science to discern truth. Truth outside of this paradigm of meaning is merely personal opinion, and to Bodde’s mind, obviously less authoritative: How, for example, is one to measure with any certainty the impact of language, social institutions, or religion on scientific development? Obviously, in the absence of quantifiable data, what purports to be solid judgment can often only amount to personal opinion. This is why one sometimes wonders whether the social sciences, especially when applied to pre-modern societies, really deserve the name of ‘science.’ (11) It is not surprising, given the context of situated-meaning Bodde allows for “science” (its Western-dependency and hierarchy of quantifiable data over “social sciences”) that he concludes an absence of “science” in the Chinese experience.7 What remains yet to be explored, however, is the actuality of the Chinese experience in a language, and from a position, that (if possible) are more open to multiple understandings. In other words, it may be that

16 “social sciences” are a far more appropriate platform to the actual Chinese experience than the “quantifiable” science of Bodde’s West. While Bodde’s study is commendable for its effort to engage the Chinese culture in the discourse surrounding meaning and technology, his methodological emphasis of presence/absence is problematic in that it concludes what has yet to be engaged, consequently limiting the opportunity for further meaning. No Chinese “science” (i.e., a science of equal status as the Western) is possible in Bodde’s methodology, only its absence—an absence grounded in light of the Western site of meaning, experience and definition. Compared to such a standard, Chinese science can easily be “interpreted” as less, absent, or somehow flawed. Further, by implication, since the Chinese did not achieve in their advancement as a culture that “universal opportunity,” there must be an apparent “failure” in the Chinese way of life: somehow, they are flawed in their human ability by the constructs and cultural practices of their unique context. Indeed, though Bodde insists that he does not hold this view,8 there appears to be a misguided attempt here to validate one experience over another as the standard propriety of a given concept (i.e. “science”). This is evidenced by Bodde’s determination to understand the Chinese absence of science and logic by isolating those “intellectual and social factors” that influenced them away from the idealized Western experience. Such an understanding is made possible in part because of Bodde’s tendency to impose situated meaning on critical terms and concepts; terms and concepts that may not have enjoyed similar understandings and experience in multiple contexts. Thus, Bodde concludes with the troubling assumption that the Western-defined experience and consequent language are the only ways to see a given experience or to understand the meaning of a given comparison. Bodde’s example suggests that even in the most well-intended approaches there remains room for caution in regards to language. Significant conceptual terms such as science (or truth) are so vast and cultural-dependent that simple or idealized terminology remains problematic, at best. This includes attempts to universalize or humanize certain conceptual terms and

17 experiences. The risk will always remain that the standard or universal definition will depend on an ethnocentric or problematic ideal of what one culture, one point of view decides is ideal. This caution in mind I’m hesitant to offer, a general sense of my meaning of the word, truth. A general sense of ‘truth’ might very well risk the unintended imposition of a standard where no such standard exists. Nevertheless, to expedite what I hope will be a more thorough and faithful depiction of this term’s multiple meanings in the latter chapters, I offer here a generic sense of ‘truth’ as ‘a search for meaning’ in, and of, life. It is not my intention to leave the term ‘truth’ in this state for long, as the next chapter will look to the various nuances and tendencies in both the Chinese and Western contexts of this “search.” Yet for now, ‘truth,’ as I intend it, is an answer to the human search for meaning; a search which evidently takes various forms and directions but is essentially determined to offer an answer to those perennial questions that appear to accompany human experience. I do not mean to imply here an essential “what” to truth (as in the Western tendency), but to include the “how” of Chinese sensibilities. That is to say, truth is an answer to the search for meaning in life from both how and what perspectives. I offer this “definition” with the full hope that it will be understood as provisional in nature, particularly in light of my reading and use of the Bodde example. In a similar vein, my next term, “language,” is employed here without call to any particular theoretical or scientific position. Language, as I intend it, is the act of human communication in all its various forms and contexts. This does not suggest that language is simply an act of human communication. Quite the contrary. Ancient and modern discourses of nearly every culture and tradition are marked by discourses on language and truth’s complex relationship, and their answers vary as often as the cultural traditions themselves.9 Part of that discourse includes the role language plays in one’s ability to know truth. In other words, can language share knowledge of truth? As language is such a broad and loaded concept, I’ll turn here directly to the primary writers for further clarification. For both Kierkegaard and Zhuangzi the question of language’s ability to convey truth becomes paramount to their own writing. For these thinkers, meaning is always subject to the possibility that we do not understand the other, not completely, not really;

18 and then again, paradoxically, it appears we may understand them just enough. From one perspective, the question here has little to do with whether one person ultimately agrees or disagrees with another’s ‘answers.’ What is at issue (here) is not whether one agrees, but what can be known and shared between two or more subjects in language. It is the latter that becomes the focus of Kierkegaard and Zhuangzi’ s understanding of language. In this regard, it is directly related to the opening questions: can truth be learned? Or, to be more specific, it is the paradox that Zhuangzi contemplates in his “Discussion on Making All Things Equal”: “What way do I have of knowing that if I say I know something I don’t really know it? Or what way do I have of knowing that if I say I don’t know something I don’t in fact know it?” (41). And, it is this paradox of never absolutely being able to confirm understanding in language that is essentially critical to thinkers like Kierkegaard and Zhuangzi; particularly in light of their respective understanding of truth (i.e., a ‘truth’ which appears outside language’s explication). Hence, for both writers the question is not does truth/Dao exist, but can ‘truth’/Dao be learned? Their answers, ultimately, will be a paradoxical qualification of truth and its relationship to human reason and language and what we can know. This includes an attempt to set the record straight about language’s role in conveying truth, an effort that saw both Kierkegaard and Zhuangzi challenge the foremost thinkers and conventional arguments of their time. For Kierkegaard, building heavily upon his understanding of Socratic notions of irony and language (including the latter’s battle with the relativism of Sophistry), this meant challenging what he saw as problematic in the systematic writings of Hegel and Kant, including their understandings of language and truth. For Zhuangzi this meant engaging the teachings of Kongzi (Confucius) and the Sophist, Hui Shi, to illuminate both his own positions and understanding of the Dao, and to offer a sophisticated critique of where Confucian and Sophistic notions are brought into question by their problematic positions on language. Like Kierkegaard, the question of knowing for Zhuangzi was not something to be overcome by ignoring or explaining away language’s ambiguous nature; this condition did not suffice where truth was concerned.10 Instead, the ambiguous nature of language was a signpost,

19 reflecting how truth (paradoxically) makes itself present while at the same time remaining outside mere language’s ability (communication) to convey. Knowing (and particularly, knowing truth) was a paradoxical event of recognition from what is left out, left over, in language. Said another way, the question of knowing truth was in fact the answer to knowing truth; and the role of language no small part of this phenomenon. At the heart of language for Kierkegaard and Zhuangzi) resides the issue of knowing and the subjective individual’s relationship to truth. It was this relentless and unique position of the question of language, truth and knowing that distinguished both writers from their peers and conventional wisdom. How Kierkegaard and Zhuangzi accomplish the task of edifying their audiences through such a problematic vehicle (language) brings me to my final term and the last element of my own methodology: rhetoric. It is no coincidence that the two terms follow one another, as I believe they are intimately linked in both meaning and function. Though “rhetoric” was originally a Western term, developed from its historical roots in the Ancient Greek tradition and enjoying numerous subsequent usages and definitions, my discussion of this critical concept begins, again, with a short examination of its role in comparative studies. I start with the work of renowned Ancient Greek and Comparative scholar George Kennedy. In his attempt to approach rhetoric cross-culturally, Kennedy offers four “objectives” for the comparative effort, including identifying universal and distinctive rhetorical trends across differing cultures with the ultimate aim of formulating a “[g]eneral Theory of Rhetoric that will apply to all societies” (Introduction 1). Particularly insightful to this dissertation is Kennedy’s call to “push the definition of rhetoric beyond an abstract concept of an art, skill, or technique of composition […] Rhetoric is not, I think, just a convenient concept existing only in the mind of speakers, audiences, writers, critics, and teachers. It has an essence or reality that has not been appreciated…” (3). Kennedy argues that “rhetoric” is not restricted to human persuasion, but an “energy inherent in an utterance,” one that may be as evident in animal communication as human (5). Kennedy arrives at this conclusion, in part, because of his extensive work in the history of rhetoric in the West, a history that includes a constantly shifting definition and understanding of

20 rhetoric, making the term highly unstable as a language concept. It is also in part because of his cross-cultural efforts which seek understanding outside the traditional boundaries of the Western tradition. In such a light, Kennedy’s “energy” definition can be seen as an attempt to remove rhetoric from a standardized ideal or problematic orientation (i.e., essentially a Western definition, practice, and experience of ‘rhetoric’) and situate it as an opportunity and practice native to all communication efforts. However, even while pushing the definition of rhetoric Kennedy makes a problematic and contentious conclusion, one that recalls the similar problematic stance of Bodde. Kennedy writes in his general conclusion: “So far as I can discover, the word ‘rhetoric’ does not exactly correspond to any term in non-Western languages” (Comparative Rhetoric 217). Like Bodde’s reading of science, this conclusion can only be reached from an idealized vision of both the Ancient Greek and other traditions. Specifically, exact correspondence between languages would presume that the Greek tradition itself had a readily identifiable practice, experience, and understanding of the term rhetoric. Such is evidently not the case.11 More specifically (and to the subject of this dissertation) based on his review of cultural practices and terminology, Kennedy insists that the Chinese lacked a “distinct discipline” as compared to the Greek model: “A significant difference between rhetoric as it came to be conceptualized in Greece and what is found elsewhere is that in Greece, and thus in the Western tradition generally, rhetoric was identified as a distinct, academic discipline that could be taught, studied, and practiced separately from political and moral philosophy” (218) The conclusion that the conceptualized form of rhetoric evident in the Ancient Chinese is different from that of the Ancient Greeks or the Western tradition is not, in itself, a matter of striking controversy. However, that Kennedy has positioned the Western tradition as the model from which to judge all other experience does raise some serious concerns regarding his scholarly positioning and presumed authority of meaning. Said another way, this positioning is, like Bodde’s, an example of employing and valuing one idealized vision of experience over another. As a consequence, the message again is a mixed one: the Chinese, too, enjoy the “mental and emotional energy” potential of “rhetoric” (answering Kennedy’s universal quest);

21 however, they did not achieve or demonstrate a similarly conceptualized vision of that “energy,” as compared to the West, and consequently it represents a lack of theoretical development. What contributes to the problem here is Kennedy’s depiction of the Western practice as “distinct” and separated from politics and philosophy. There was indeed a thinker from the Ancient Greek tradition who envisioned rhetoric in this light, Aristotle, and his influence on the subsequent tradition of the West was remarkable. However, Aristotle’s understanding was not the only one in the Ancient tradition; nor did his hopes for positioning rhetoric as a distinct discipline separated from politics or moral philosophy necessarily determine such a practice in reality. In fact, the practice and understanding of rhetoric and rhetoric’s role was highly contentious in the Ancient Greek tradition. To ignore this variable and shifting meaning is to risk imposing the “ideal” on what was instead conflicted and diverse. Kennedy’s heavy dependence on an idealized Aristotelian rhetoric (like Bodde’s reliance on the Western understanding of science) limits the field of meaning and (like Bodde) determines the findings of the Chinese experience as not just different, but “absent” or “less.” Such depictions are in fact repercussions of Kennedy’s assumptions of what is meaningful to the study of rhetoric and rhetorical practice, not the actuality of Chinese experience. In other words, Kennedy’s assumption of meaning appears to necessitate an unwarranted conclusion of absence, when in fact the actuality might most faithfully be understood as difference. Further exasperating the problem is the specific manner in which Kennedy appears to be determining meaning and similarity. Kennedy’s quest for semantic correspondence (or in this case, a lack of one): “...the word ‘rhetoric’ does not exactly correspond to any term in non- Western languages” (218), offers little room for cultural distinctions and emphasis.In fact, if Kennedy is looking for exact correspondence to the Platonic and/or Aristotelian understanding of rhetoric, he would have difficulty finding it even among the Ancient Greeks. The diversity of rhetorical understanding in the Ancient Greek culture is evident both historically and philosophically. The actuality of rhetorical practice and understanding in the Ancient Greek culture is not the idealized vision of any one understanding, but a complex and constantly shifting discourse of various meanings and understandings. Yet, the “distinct discipline” and

22 definition of rhetoric Kennedy is looking for in non-Western sites is, for him, clearly the one identified by the idealized vision of Plato and his student, Aristotle (Comparative Rhetoric 209). This determination to visualize and use an idealized rhetoric can be explained, in part, as an attempt to answer the over arching questions of language, truth and meaning: to contain meaning. The actuality of rhetoric’s diverse nature and interpretation would appear to make any attempts to idealize or universalize its essence a problematic endeavor, if not an impossibility. But the consequence of accepting the chaotic actuality of constant change and shifting perspective can be an even more unsettling repercussion. Hence, there appears to be a tendency in Kennedy’s comparative study to idealize terms and experiences (like rhetoric) in order to contain—to hold—meaning in a more stable, answerable form. Mary Garrett notes that this tendency to rely on an idealized vision of rhetoric— including the quest for semantic correspondence with the idealized Western term, “rhetoric”—“is not uncommon and is just one aspect of unintended Orientalism, one based on “intellectual politics among 20th-century rhetoricians” (55-56). The “attractions and advantages” for this reliance are many, including the “cachet” it carries—the “vision of a society in which rhetoric played a powerful role,” and the respectability rhetoric acquires in light of Aristotle’s “conception of the audience as reasonable judges” (56). These implications serve, she claims, to validate and define rhetoric and “Rhetorical Scholarship” as necessary and important elements to the discourses surrounding ethical, political, and social moments of meaning (56-57). Yet, when this dependence on an idealized vision of “rhetoric” (as a practice or term) is employed in comparative studies, its situated nature creates problematic generalizations and reductive reasoning for all other sites of meaning. The “Idealized Rhetoric” thus becomes a workable standard that omits its own problematic fluctuations in order to best understand and determine the “other” in light of what it is not to the standard, the Ideal. Consequently, when Chinese or other experiences are compared in light of an idealized practice or definition—not actuality—their unique experience is seen as different by “absence” (or “lack”) to a corresponding likeness to the Ideal. Not only does such a paradigm reinforce the Western dominance and validate it as the

23 standard, it also goes a long way to protecting the rhetorical ‘answer’ from those troubling variations and complexities inherent in its own philosophical, cultural and historical actuality. On the other hand, when the Chinese experience is cast in light of rhetoric’s complex actuality its uniqueness is not one of “absence” or “lack,” but emphasis and direction. In such an understanding new awareness and meaning are created that does not deny or conflate any one tradition’s experience in light of another’s ideal but suggests more or various nuances of meaning. What prohibits this understanding in Kennedy’s (and Bodde’s) work is a dependence on idealized conceptions of one tradition’s terminology and practices. Such dependence is due in part to convention, including the often hidden assumption of the Western hierarchy of language and tradition as the standard of all cultural and philosophical development. It also includes the tendency to “contain” actuality’s complex shifts and variations in language that “defines” concepts, experiences, and meaning for all. It is this tendency of error that is uppermost in my mind when I begin to define my own use of “rhetoric.” A universal definition, even one that seeks inclusions of diverse realities such as Kennedy’s “energy,” is no easy task and its success and inclusive nature is directly tied to its subsequent development and use. To be clear, it is not Kennedy’s effort that I find at fault—or even his conclusion of difference—but his reliance on an idealized vision of one tradition to determine another’s experience. In my own use and understanding of “rhetoric” (or language for that matter) I feel a need to guard against the harmful aspects of unexamined Idealization and generalization. To address such practices, comparative scholar Xing Lu suggests a more careful and open practice of language that reflects the diversity of terms and concepts that are apparent across various cultural sites of meaning. Lu calls “for an end to the tendency of seeing ideas, traditions, and people from other cultures as wholly ‘other’ and a development of an attitude of appreciation for perceived cultural differences” (25). For Lu, this includes the appropriate use of native language terms, in part to offset problematic tendencies of imposed meaning, but at the same time to acknowledge the significant points of contact that arise in a comparative study.

24 In her own comparative work with the Ancient Chinese and Greek traditions of rhetoric, she discovers a number of significant differences and similarities between the two cultures, including the presence of a rhetorical tradition in Ancient China. This tradition she argues cannot be understood solely in light of its Ancient Greek counterpart but must be appreciated in its own context and paradigm of meaning and, when necessary, its own language. This includes the “particularly problematic area in the study of non-Western rhetoric...the issue of key terms” (xii). When scholars simply impose the term “rhetoric” upon non-Western traditions (e.g., the Ancient Chinese tradition) they “run the risk of obscuring the authentic meaning of Chinese persuasive discourse and language art by imposing Western rhetorical assumptions upon the Chinese experience”( xii). To offset this tendency, Lu suggests a multicultural language to reflect the varying and different sites of meaning in terms most authentic to their unique natures: In this regard, I will argue that the Western study of rhetoric is comparable to the Chinese Ming Bian Xue […] literally translated as ‘the Study of Naming (Ming) and Argumentation (Bian),’ while it conceptually encompasses the study of language art, logic, persuasion, and argumentation […] Ming is not the perfect equivalent to logos, however, nor is bian the perfect equivalent to rhêtorikê. As the meaning of terms is always culturally specific, ancient Chinese and Greek thinkers would necessarily have attached their own linguistic and cultural understanding to such terms. Therefore, attempting to find exact cross- cultural correlations and linkages is futile. (“Rhetoric in Ancient China” 4-5) As a consequence of this futility—and in an attempt to offset the imposition of Western meaning—Lu employs both “rhetoric” and the Chinese term, “ming bian,” when discussing the Ancient Chinese tradition. In doing so, Lu suggests the practice and conceptual framework of “ming bian” is both comparable and unique to what the Ancient Greek tradition often describes as “rhetoric” and offers touchstones of further understanding when used jointly. To be more specific, ming bian is comparable in that the Ancient Chinese developed and practiced meaning making that shared “common ground” with the Ancient Greek tradition,

25 including: “the art of persuasion, ethical emphasis, rational engagement, psychological activity, and evolutionary nature” (293). It is unique in that the Ancient Chinese experience differed in critical ways from the Greek and, consequently, ming bian demonstrated differences in regards to “the role of language, mode of inquiry, treatment of emotions, the domain of rationality, and rhetorical education” (299). Because of these various similarities and differences, Lu resists simply reifying the term “rhetoric” to a Chinese perspective, arguing that scholars should practice a “multicultural hermeneutics in order to generate multicultural meanings” (43). I see Lu’s attempt to inform and use the term “ming bian” as an effort to present a broader and deeper understanding of the unique Ancient Chinese tradition to the reader. Such an attempt seeks to address the complication of meaning and language by validating and positioning key terms in light of their significance and illumination of each unique cultural site. This includes using non-Western terminology where appropriate to illuminate the uniqueness of the non-Western tradition. However, simply utilizing culturally-oriented terminology is not enough. In order to understand the Chinese conceptional framework, scholars must also approach this tradition from its own unique context of meaning. For Lu this means avoiding “an overemphasis on analytical and definitional mode(s) of inquiry” that, frequently used in the Western tradition, may undermine a full appreciation of the Ancient Chinese experience (34). Lu suggests the frequent use of the analytical mode in the Western tradition represents a tendency to see things conceptually and “compartmentalize and categorize” concepts in a hierarchy of explicit meaning. Consequently, some Western scholars appear determined to find “explicit theories, concepts, and statements about rhetoric in the works of the Chinese philosophers rather than locating implicit senses and meanings of rhetoric in the contexts” (35). In other words, the Western tradition’s analytical modes of inquiry tend to miss the significant meaning and practices of rhetoric in the Chinese tradition, which emphasizes “holistic and contextualized” tendencies. Or, as Lu indicates: “The ancient Chinese culture was a highly contextualized constellation of political intrigue, art, and philosophical expression within which ideas and concepts were not explicitly codified or systematized. Consequently, rhetoric was

26 never officially codified as a separate discipline by Chinese scholars…” (35). In such a world view, separation of a critical element of meaning like “rhetoric” would be artificial and unreflective of the reality: rhetoric informs every aspect of meaning in the Chinese culture, including moral philosophy and science. Consequently, analytical modes of inquiry can help locate points of meaning, but risks missing contextual significance by imposing parts on the whole without properly understanding the influence of the whole on those parts. Therefore the analytic practice of compartmentalizing and categorizing elements of a given cultural practice and terminology must also include such moments in light of their contextual significance. In other words, the Western tendency of analysis must address first the Chinese contextual differences of meaning or it risks missing the conceptual forest for the categorical trees. Similarly, the “definitional” mode of inquiry seeks direct correspondence of meaning between language terms and concepts across two differing sites of meaning. This practice is in part based on the Western tradition’s determination to find “correct” language—or definition of terms—to enable further meaning in discourse. Hall and Ames suggest the roots of this practice can be seen partly in the early Socratic dialogues, where the protagonist constantly endeavors to find “objective connotation” of key terms. Socrates’ aim was in part a reflection of the Western conception of reality that holds a “belief in objective ‘essences,’ or ‘natural kinds,” (Hall and Ames Anticipating 74).12 Such an understanding holds that language terms could reflect an objective connotation of a given concept or thing. As I hope to show in Chapter Two, this tendency is not the only available model. In fact, the Chinese tradition will emphasize an interconnective and analogical world view that complicates any importation of the definitional mode to the actual Chinese experience. From the Ancient Chinese perspective, “rhetoric” need not be defined separately (from science or moral philosophy) to enjoy significance or proper understanding. On the contrary, any attempts to define “rhetoric” as distinct from other activities of reason or philosophy would be to impose artificial distinctions on the actual practices and experiences of human interaction and communication. In such a world view, no distinctive definitions are necessary or, perhaps, even possible.

27 I would argue the overemphasis of the analytic and definitional mode is evident in both Kennedy and Bodde’s work, and their conclusions are in part determined by these constructed lenses of meaning. Consequently, Kennedy’s dependence on an Aristotelian conception and definition of rhetoric is a reflection of his problematic adherence to the definitional mode of inquiry and, like Bodde, his conclusion of absence (in the Chinese tradition) is in part determined by this hierarchy of meaning invested in Western analytic mode of understanding. Significantly, this understanding includes a systematic delineation of rhetoric from philosophy and moral conduct, in part justified by the definitional difference of the two concepts. In such a paradigm, the Chinese experience (which is grounded in an interconnected, correlative understanding and would not suffer such “artificial” separation or definition) appears to offer no “distinctive” concept of rhetoric or separate theoretical development; and in fact, this is exactly what both Kennedy and Bodde determine. However, this conclusion (left unexamined for its idealized and problematic standardization of the Western tradition) offers an imprecise picture of the actuality of Chinese “rhetoric.” Despite their good intentions and evident purposes, Kennedy’s and Bodde’s reliance on one tradition’s idealized paradigm of meaning or definition of terms to understand another leads to an artificial and erroneous theory of absence and/or deficiency. In other words, if there are universal implications to rhetoric, then finding such implications cross-culturally (as Kennedy calls for) requires careful consideration of what lenses, language, and modes of inquiry are employed to make sense of what is common to all, what is different. Employing idealized visions of one tradition’s meaning and terminology to understand another risks reducing the actual complexity and diversity of rhetorical meaning and practices in both traditions. Analytical studies categorizing and compartmentalizing cultural terms and practices without carefully considering those individual parts in light of the given culture’s contextual meaning undermines the complexity evident in all sites of meaning, cultural or otherwise. A reliance on the definitional mode of inquiry is equally deficient as correspondence of language terminology and meaning is not universal in cultural contextual practices or understanding. “Rhetoric” is present in the Chinese traditions, but it is their own unique conceptional understanding and theoretical development of the practice. To appreciate

28 this concept and practice requires at the very least a faithful representation and understanding of the unique Chinese cultural context of meaning. Said another way, it is problematic and unfaithful to impose Western terms and/or practices of analysis on this unique site if one is truly determined to find significant comparative moments. What becomes evident in the work of Kennedy and Bodde is that the quest for inclusive understanding is not without problematic moments of positioning as well. Kennedy’s call for universal significance and application, and his exploration of rhetoric as a natural phenomenon—like Bodde’s humanistic depiction of social and intellectual forces—are valuable efforts to finding new meaning across unique sites. However, they are not free from their own implications; implications that must be examined and studied in light of what they proscribe as meaning, as much as they derive. Conventional lenses of meaning and methodology in the West are a significant part of these implications, including the tendency to idealize the Western tradition’s actual experience and to rely on Western analytical and definitional paradigms of authority. I would suggest that this complexity is a reflection of the unique relationship of language, truth and meaning, as much as it is methodology or terminology. With the above cautions in mind, I offer the following provisional “definition” of rhetoric. To my understanding, rhetoric is the deliberative making and passing along of meaning. Rhetoric, as I intend it, does not necessarily entail a limited or specialized field of meaning or discipline, one that operates outside or against other constructed visions of meaning (e.g., Philosophy, Science, and Religion). Instead, I argue from the position that in its most inclusive, broadest sense ‘rhetoric’ is present in every site, including so-called objective sites of meaning such as science. Further, as these sites are never restricted to just one tradition, one culture, one time, or one described system of thought but found in all facets of human existence, rhetoric itself is present in all cultures and traditions. Finally, I feel that in suggesting rhetoric is the deliberative making and passing along of meaning, I have available a touchstone for the interconnected terms of language, truth, and knowing that is not as readily available to other conceptual terms, including “philosophy” and

29 “science.” As I am primarily focused on the means by which Kierkegaard and Zhuangzi create and pass along their meaning, I believe rhetoric serves my purposes more than, say, their “philosophy,” or their “language use” alone. As one of the goals of this work is to engage the meaning of—and behind—my understanding of ‘rhetoric,’ I offer this initial definition as essentially a working signpost of my own sense of the term and how I will employ it. I deliberately want to invest the term here with as broad an opportunity as possible, one that moves beyond just the traditional Aristotelian-based definition and leaves room for the various and unique moments of ‘rhetoric’ in all contexts (including other cultures and times; e.g., the Ancient Chinese tradition, and other forms: music, art, facial expression, etc.). Hence, I offer the “definition” here, only after my examination of comparative studies and only after my cautionary examples of Bodde and Kennedy. I want to inform my understanding with these cautions well in mind, however much they may complicate my own attempt at definition and use of this historically Western term. Consequently, “the deliberative making of and passing along of meaning,” I hope now suggests that rhetoric is more than just a moment of identifying “the best available means of persuasion,” though this will certainly be part of the “passing along.” One consequence of such a definition, I hope, is that it provides room for other practices of creating and passing along meaning that may not share the decidedly Western senses of the same term.13 That being said, however, I want to further complicate my own term and understanding by utilizing language from the Ancient Chinese context whenever possible and appropriate. At the very least this serves to remind me and the reader that differences exists between various sites of meaning; suggesting, too, that ‘rhetoric’ as a term (no matter how defined) remains still open to more, and various, nuances of understanding than mere definition can address. To aid me in this effort I will be using the term “ming bian”—a descriptive I borrow from Xing Lu, and one which she believes is more appropriate to the unique Chinese understanding of what I am calling rhetoric. In using this term I hope to illustrate my shared concern for faithful representation of what is unique to a given culture, to alert the reader to “contextual rhetorical meanings held by the Chinese” (Rhetoric in Ancient China 3) that may differ from other contextual sites, including

30 the Western tradition.14 One way to do so is by introducing language and concepts that are not part of the Western lexicon. To whatever extent ‘ming bian’ and ‘rhetoric’ represent a shared experience (and part of this study is to consider just that), their very appearance also alerts the reader in a pragmatic and demonstrative way to the uniqueness of each tradition’s context. Consequently, if my provisional definition of rhetoric is an attempt to situate the term in its broadest possible sense (thus, seeking inclusion), then the employment of ming bian represents an attempt to complicate this effort still further by reminding myself and the reader of the manifest diversity still evident within cultures and languages (thus, acknowledging diversity). There remains one further point to address. In this discussion it may appear that I am conflating rhetoric and language, and in truth I am not unsympathetic to this charge. I find it very difficult to separate the concepts of rhetoric and language. As I write this I am mindful of Nietzsche’s claim, that “language is rhetoric” (“Ancient Rhetoric” 21). While I feel there are significant distinctions of tone and philosophy between Kierkegaard, Zhuangzi, and Nietzsche, I do not believe Nietzsche’s sentiment would fall upon deaf ears with the primary subjects of this dissertation. That said, I feel that there is a sense of deliberation and informed action that separates the characteristics of rhetoric from the act of communication that is language—yet, I’m at a loss to define it adequately. This quandary of meaning, in fact, may reflect more of the cultural practices of meaning making I inherit from my comparative studies than it does any failure on my part to finally define the terms. In other words, my emerging understanding of the differing senses of language and meaning evident in the Chinese and Western experiences make fixing any term or concept in definition a difficult task. More than this, however, I think it also reflects my understanding of my primary subjects, Kierkegaard and Zhuangzi, and their philosophies regarding the paradox of language itself: its potential and limitation to reveal meaning. In such an understanding, it does not surprise me that my explication of language and rhetoric should appear conflated at times. In a very real way—as I hope to demonstrate in this dissertation—such

31 an understanding is indeed reflective of human communication’s true relationship to meaning and truth. In keeping with this point, if my attempts to explicate ‘rhetoric,’ ‘language,’ and ‘truth’ sound a bit conflicted, then in some ways it is a reflection of my general focus of study of these two paradoxical writers. To be specific, the messages of Kierkegaard and Zhuangzi tend to complicate rather than explicate the answers to language, truth, and meaning. Their influence on my own understanding makes fixed terms and concepts difficult and uncomfortable. This puts me in a paradoxical position of my own. While I share with Xing Lu the concern for faithful representation, I am equally drawn to what this might mean in light of Zhuangzi’s concerns of “knowing.” While I am determined to share my “meaning,” I want also to avoid imposing unnecessary conditions or exclusions on the potential of meaning across various times and contexts (including my ever changing self-perceptions and positions). In brief, I am not prepared to say—definitively—what rhetoric, ming bian, language, or truth, stand for (much less what they share, or differ with) in terms of meaning. I believe to attempt such definition presumes a knowledge that I do not possess. This is not to suggest that no sense of these terms is possible. Indeed, I hope in some ways I have grounded the terms truth, rhetoric, ming bian, and language enough to continue a more careful and intensive study of their implications. That these implications include the necessary cautions that must accompany any attempt to “define” universally critical terms of meaning (e.g., Bodde and Kennedy’s attempts with science and rhetoric, respectively) does not preclude any critical discussion of these same terms and concepts. It merely requires careful deliberation of possibly conflicting contextual meanings. Such a careful study, not surprisingly, almost inevitably includes a look at the perennial questions surrounding a search for truth (the meaning in, and of, life) from the general context of rhetoric (the making and passing along of meaning) and the role language (human communication) plays in regards to conveying and knowing such truth. This includes not only general comparisons between differing cultural sites of meaning, but between individuals across time and perspective, as well.

32 As I noted before I think it is no coincidence that many of the same questions and challenges surrounding the issues of language in Kierkegaard and Zhuangzi are addressed in comparative studies as well. When dominant traditions and histories are pulled from their hierarchy of meaning and examined alongside other traditions, then hidden implications of what is “common to all,” “universal,” what is considered “formative truth,” what is marked as “progression,” “developed,” and above all, “natural,” “correct,” or “proven,” are complicated by their situated natures. All of these sensibilities, as I hope to show, are present in Kierkegaard and Zhuangzi, as well. For it is my contention that Kierkegaard and Zhuangzi’s positions on the individual, language, and truth have a great deal to say about the questions of language and/or comparative studies itself. Not the least of which is Kierkegaard and Zhuangzi’s complication of the subjective individual’s experience of truth as an actuality, and what this might mean to comparative studies and the scholars who practice it. To this last point, no small part of Kierkegaard and Zhuangzi’s respective messages rely on the employment of unconventional rhetoric to illuminate the dangers of conventional thinking. These rhetorical strategies included an attempt to illuminate what could—and could not—be said in mere language, and were directly aimed at the individual reader’s experience of actuality in language and in truth. Their perspectives provide a compelling position from which to reexamine many of the concerns of comparative studies and the general discourse surrounding truth and language today.

33 Chapter Two

Introduction This chapter addresses the unique philosophical contexts in which Zhuangzi and Kierkegaard operated. It is not an historical examination. Instead, this chapter seeks to illuminate some of the critical distinctions that operate rhetorically and/or philosophically in each tradition, thus providing a necessary background to both writers’ rhetorical contexts. To aid me in this examination certain critical terms and concepts that attempt to distinguish, in a broad sense, differences between the Western and Chinese traditions of meaning are taken up and examined. These terms include the comparative distinctions, “casual” and “correlative,” often used in the field of comparative philosophy to distinguish general tendencies of emphasis in each culture’s world view. I will also offer a brief examination of the concept of transcendence The latter, in addition to offering still further clarification of differences, will also address the general difficulty of using conceptual language in determining said differences. Finally, I will offer two critical figures from each tradition as examples of the correlative and causal tendencies present in each tradition. The figures, Socrates and Confucius, in addition to being primary examples of both traditions’ tendencies, were also chosen for their significance to the primary writers, Zhuangzi and Kierkegaard. My use of Socrates and Confucius is an attempt to anticipate some of the unique elements of Kierkegaard and Zhuangzi’s own rhetorical positions. Thus, my reading of Socrates as an example of Western tendencies is developed with an eye to Kierkegaard’s subsequent perspective and interpretation. The same holds true for my interpretations of Confucius.15 Such perspectives enjoy unique insights but should also be understood for their situated positioning as well. Or, in other words, though my attempt here is to provide a strong foundation of what is unique to both cultures, I am in no way offering a complete picture of the various and diverse

34 experiences and practices in each tradition. Instead, I hope to identify certain critical elements that inform both the general tendencies and the work of Zhuangzi and Kierkegaard. Correlative and Causal Tendencies Comparative philosophy frequently distinguishes the Western and Chinese modes of thinking in terms of being vs. becoming, essence vs. change—conceptual tendencies further reflected in the “analytic-causal” and “analogical-correlative” descriptions of meaning. My interest in these terms is not so much from an ontological perspective, a determination of what is “Chinese” and what is “Western” thinking, but how certain sensibilities are emphasized and help shape each cultural tradition’s tendencies of meaning. Said another way, I believe the priorities of correlative or causal “thinking” can be used and understood as correlative or causal rhetoric.16 Though specific interpretations vary, the correlative or causal description is a common distinction among many early and current comparative scholars.17 This distinction has often been depicted as the emphasis of an “analytic” or “logical” tendency over a “metaphoric” or “analogical” tendency, and vise-versa. Emphasis, however, should not imply an absence of the other mode. From their philosophical study Hall and Ames note the distinction thus: “It would appear that something like the causal and correlative modes of thought will persist alongside one another in all cultures. Comparing a rational culture such as ours with one shaped by correlative thinking involves primarily recognition of alternative priorities with respect to the two modes of thought” (Anticipating 131).18 In other words, while the Ancient Chinese may have emphasized a more correlative approach, their experience should not be understood as absent of causal sensibilities, anymore than we can argue the Western experience showed no evidence of correlative and/or analogical tendencies. Rather, each culture developed a tendency to emphasize one mode more than another, often shaping in turn the other mode in light of the more dominant mode’s sensibilities. Said another way, Western correlative tendencies were by and large subsumed and cast in light of the more dominant causal/rational emphasis (though correlative tendencies still existed). Likewise, Chinese causal tendencies were depicted in light of correlative/analogical sensibilities, which came to represent the more pervasive and ‘accurate’ mode of understanding and meaning

35 for that context. As a consequence, each tradition recognized different valuations and understanding of the phenomenon of the world around them. These sensibilities manifested themselves in their literature, philosophy, and political thinking, thus shaping meaning and argument along correlative or causal lines of thought. For Hall and Ames, this meant a decidedly different world view for the Chinese tradition from the West: What has come to be called correlative thinking is effectively a nonlogical procedure in the sense that it is not based upon natural kinds, part-whole relations, an implicit or explicit theory of types, or upon causal implications or entailment of anything like the sort one finds in Aristotelian or modern Western logics. Correlative thinking employs analogical associations (Hall and Ames Anticipating China 124). While I find this description to be helpful in distinguishing the two modes in concrete terms, there remains a few critical language and interpretation points to address. These points have direct bearing on both my interpretation of this passage and my general claims regarding Sino/Western sensibilities. To be specific, the distinction of “nonlogical,” while illuminating for its attempt to distinguish, carries with it a dangerous assumption if left unexamined. It should not be read (nor do I think Hall and Ames intend it to be read) as implying an illogical sensibility to Chinese thinking. On the contrary, it is quite evident the Ancient Chinese were capable of, and used, logic. However, it is equally true that the Chinese emphasized a different mode of logical understanding, one which when compared to Western causal/rational tendencies might appear (to use Hall and Ames’ term,) “nonlogical.” That said, the use of nonlogical is not without dangerous sub-texts of its own, including hierarchal assumptions of presence/absence and positive/negative binaries.19 To that end, I want to make two distinctions of my own before continuing. First, I believe the emphasis of difference here should be understood in its prioritizing of meaning- making (what I’m calling rhetoric), not reasoning or thinking. For reasons that will become more evident with the primary writers, I want to leave the categorical characteristics of

36 Chinese/Western ‘thinking’ and/or ‘reasoning’ to the individual experience. Instead, my focus in this chapter is on the general tendencies of rhetoric in each tradition and what constitutes some of their various points of emphasis.20 Such tendencies, to my understanding, are well served by studying the differing priorities of meaning evident in the correlative/causal sensibilities but are not necessarily limited to them, nor even exclusive to either tradition. Secondly, I wish to shift the terminology of ‘nonlogical’ out of the correlative tendency description, instead emphasizing correlative’s own unique sensibilities of analogical and metaphoric meaning-making.21 My reasons for this are tied to the problematic binary distinctions often evidenced in comparative studies and which I believe contribute to unnecessary hierarchal value distinctions (i.e., presence/absence, logical/nonlogical, rational/non-rational) and which I have detailed in Chapter One. As I noted previously, such distinctions often hide ethnocentric power struggles in which one site ostensibly possesses a more correct or more present form of a universal opportunity. This includes an overemphasis on the causal/correlative sensibilities in either tradition. In other words, while Hall and Ames’ use of Aristotelian ‘logic’ is not without warrant for its influence on the Western tradition, it is certainly not the only influential form of meaning in that long and storied development, some of which were clearly of a ‘nonlogical’ nature.22 Similarly, use of ‘non-logical’ descriptions of the Chinese tradition does a disservice to the complex and evident modes of reasoning that were not only present in that tradition but helped shape its tendencies. Xing Lu makes a similar claim in her study of Greek and Chinese rhetoric: “Indeed, the Chinese system of logic does not replicate the Greek logical system; however, to claim that China has not produced a logical system is to succumb to the faulty logic of Orientalism” (32-2). Hence, my reading of the correlative priorities of Chinese rhetoric rest on what marks this correlation of various interdependent elements as present and emphasized, not as a distinction from Western sensibilities, but as its own, unique contextual tradition. That said, correlative sensibilities privilege a holistic world view and a processes orientation of becoming—a process understood by the Chinese tradition to be quite ‘logical’ in its application to reality. In this sense, logic is distinguished (from the West) in the Chinese

37 tradition’s differing notions of valid reasoning structures, but does not by consequence imply an absence of ‘logical’ thinking. Specifically, the Western tradition values systematic, delimitating, and objective definition of essences and concepts. The Chinese, on the other hand, appear to value fluid, interconnected, correlation of interrelated parts of a whole. Despite their differences, logic, read simply as ordered reasoning, is essentially present in both traditions. The difficulty comes in recognizing that one tradition’s “order” is sometimes seen as another’s dis-order: either artificial for its constrictive nature, or chaotic for its lack of delimitation of essences. Or in other words, what might be considered correctly reasoned ‘logic’ from the standpoint of one tradition could be viewed as restrictive or incomplete by the other.23 I believe such a perception is an imposition of a preferred tendency, not a reflection of superior understanding or knowledge. Finally, as an emphasized tendency correlative sensibilities would presumably be evident in Chinese efforts to create and pass on meaning, and further these tendencies might distinguish themselves from certain Western emphasized sensibilities. Such is indeed the case. As Hall and Ames note “ambiguity, vagueness, and incoherence” carry over into the more “formal elements of thought” in the Chinese tradition. Correlative tendencies, they go on to suggest, employ “image clusters” which insure “constituents richly vague significance.” By comparison, causal sensibilities tend to privilege “univocity” by employing objective, abstract definition. As a result, Hall and Ames believe the causal mode logic as understood in the West is ill-suited to address the metaphoric and analogical sensibilities of Chinese rhetoric (Anticipating 124). However, while Hall and Ames’ intention is to draw clear distinction between the two modes and at the same time remain faithful to the uniqueness of both traditions, I believe this distinction can be made without recourse to the nonlogical and “incoherence” descriptive. Instead, I prefer to emphasize the interconnected and fluid elements of correlative tendencies, allowing for the logic that is (to my mind) quite evident in metaphoric and analogical reasoning and, in light of this fluid nature, quite coherent. At the same time, this tendency is evidently distinguished from the systematic and single-order world of causal modes, whose particular brand of logic and coherence enjoyed different points of emphasis and different rhetorical

38 manifestations (e.g., the aforementioned systematic reasoning and reliance on analytic definition). Consequently, descriptions of correlative’s “ambiguous” and “vague” language must also be re-read in light of their productive and appropriate value to this unique mode of meaning—not (again) as deficiencies or departures from the so-called standard analytical and systematic language. Correlative rhetorical tendencies prioritize the interdependent and fluctuating nature of phenomenon and perspective, emphasizing “process over substance” or “becoming over being” (Anticipating 38-40). As a result, productive vagueness is vital to correlative tendencies, reflecting a world view that sees the evident flux and change of life and seeks to incorporate this in its own rhetoric. Contrarily, Western causal tendencies since Aristotle tend to emphasize a single-order world and ‘being over becoming,’ consequently relying more on abstract definition and objective logic to contain/demonstrate the essential, independent essence of a given thing. With all this in mind, it remains for me to offer my own concrete descriptions of those priorities I see evident in the causal and correlative modes of rhetoric. To that end: Causal rhetoric includes an emphasis on objective definition and an orientation to argumentation by analytic-dominant modes, including a valuation of systematic rationality over other appeals. These priorities reflect an emphasis on a single-order world whose independent nature of essences (being over becoming) can be analyzed and understood for their unique properties and classifications. Correlative priorities, on the other hand, reflect an interconnected and process-oriented world view (becoming over being) that seeks to understand the fluid changes and interconnected nature of life. Correlative priorities include an emphasis on analogical and metaphorical illustration of key concepts and positions, combined with an orientation to argumentation by interdependent, dialectic-dominate modes. The latter dialectic orientation, represented in the question/response dialogues of the Ancient Chinese works is not unlike some of the Western practices and conceptions of the same. It distinguishes itself from Western dialectic, however, by its horizontal fluidity and interconnected emphasis of the various forms of meaning. In other words, there is no confrontational resolution of essential opposites into a third, distinct category in Chinese

39 dialectic. Instead, the process is a balancing of interconnected parts to form a whole, seeking a holistic understanding of seemingly differing positions. Importantly, this includes a correlative understanding of all “forms of appeal” (e.g., emotion, ethos, and logic). To that end, Chinese ming bian emphasizes this interconnected and correlative element of each forms role in determining truth. In short, all appeals—including emotion—are seen as interrelated parts, and no one form holds dominance over another. One consequence of this correlative emphasis is the view that the separation of these forms of persuasion into distinct parts would be seen as artificial and flawed. Such is not the case for most of the Western tradition after Aristotle where logic enjoys a hierarchal relationship to the ethos and pathos. More of both sensibilities will be taken up later in the examples of Socrates and Confucius. Transcendence Before moving on to the primary examples, there remains one more subject to be addressed: the concept of transcendence. This term, and its accompanying connotations in the West, is particularly complicated in light of Chinese sensibilities, no more so than in the highly mytho-poetic depictions of the Zhuangzi (the work associated with the writer Zhuangzi). Therefore, a careful examination of the issues surrounding the concept and use of ‘transcendence’ is an essential element to any study of Chinese and Zhuangzi studies. In fact, for Hall and Ames the role “transcendence” plays in regard to knowing and truth is a critical—if not the critical—distinction between the Chinese and Western traditions.24 In their understanding, transcendental sensibilities are directly related to the social and philosophical concerns of disorder or chaos most evident in the causal and Western-rational thinking: “For the appeal to transcendence itself seems in large measure to be grounded in attempts to meet the challenge of the pluralism of beliefs and practices by recourse to objective, unassailable norms” (Hall and Ames Thinking From the Han 189). These norms include abstract concepts of truth that allow for common ground in reasoning, a condition Hall and Ames argue necessary for the diverse nature of Western tradition. In their “strictest sense of transcendence,” Hall and Ames identify this elemental characteristic as having its “implicit” roots in the Ancient Greek tradition and continuing

40 throughout the Western history (Thinking From the Han 191). Strictest transcendental thinking is defined by Hall and Ames as a tendency to see meaning determined by a transcendental relationship of two subjects: “A is transcendent with respect to B if the existence, meaning or import of B cannot be fully accounted for without recourse to A, but the reverse is not true” (190). Consequently, the Western tradition tends to emphasize dichotomous relationships, including the familiar Mind/Body, God/World distinctions, where each is explained in meaning by the transcendence of one over the other. Nor should this distinctive tendency be understood merely in terms of theological or philosophical concepts: “In logical, scientific, philosophical, and theological discourses, the concept of transcendence has usually been stipulated in the strictest terms” (Thinking From the Han 192). The tendency to assess pairings in light of one’s transcendence to the other extends to cultural assessment as well. Citing Robert Solomon’s “transcendental pretense,” Hall and Ames suggest the West holds the “conviction that the scientific rationality emergent at the beginnings of the sixteenth century names a universal norm for assessing the value of cultural activity everywhere on the planet” (Anticipating xiv). Such an understanding, they claim, undermines efforts to appreciate the unique experience and understanding of the Chinese. They suggest that the distinctive features of the “presence of transcendental beings and principles” are fundamentally and significantly different to the “polar, interdependent, yin/yang...relations of terms and concepts within the Chinese tradition” (Thinking From the Han 127). To push, then, “scientific rationality” or any Western-oriented sense of transcendence (theological, logical, philosophical or otherwise) onto the Chinese lexicon of cultural philosophy without careful consideration for their unique relationship to transcendence is to risk victimizing that experience’s actual nature (Thinking From the Han 193). Finally, Hall and Ames suggest that the only way to appreciate the Chinese world view is “to abandon appeal to a notion of transcendence” (232)—that such a notion is absent and irrelevant to understanding the Chinese. Consequently, any use of the “language of strict transcendence,” to their mind, can only lead to

41 misunderstanding, most significantly the “altogether too much common ground between the classical Western and Chinese cultural traditions” (228). Hall and Ames are not without dissenters in their depiction of transcendence and the relevancy it plays in regard to Chinese philosophical thinking. And while agreeing in part with their position, I want to suggest, as well, that there remains room for a sense of transcendence in the Chinese tradition. Particularly, as this relates to Zhuangzi’s sense of Dao. Despite its metaphysical nature, the sensibility of transcendence appears to be present and understood throughout the human condition. This feeling of understanding has often led some to believe that the notion of ‘transcendence’ can be defined objectively. While it is true that we are capable of offering an objective definition of such a term, it also remains true that such a definition is remains subjectively understood.Further, the sense of transcendence is a necessarily subjective experience. The latter often complicates the so-called objective definition as each individual context and understanding invests the ‘rising above’ with varying conditions and understanding. This does not necessarily preclude the general understanding of transcendence in any one culture, but neither does it insure that any one particular cultural site enjoys a universal understanding of the term. Transcendence (and similar conception terms) suggests an other-worldly understanding, one reflected in both the language surrounding its illumination, and the contextually, subjectively based nature of its meaning. Consequently, the “definitions” and expressions of transcendence are often as varied and paradoxical as the experience of transcendence is itself. In Hall and Ames’ determination to argue from a “strictest sense” I believe they fall to a misconception of their own: that such strictness exists.25 In terms of my own understanding of transcendence and how it relates to Zhuangzi’s expression of truth, I believe the nature of “transcendence” and its implications to truth can best be understood in terms of what Hall and Ames (somewhat reluctantly) allow: “It is possible, of course, to use the term transcendence simply to mean ‘surpassing,’ ‘going beyond.’... In another context, ‘transcendent language’ refers to the abstract and abstruse, something incomprehensible” (Thinking Through the Han 190).

42 If these are truly “simple” understandings, I believe they also represent far more relevant descriptions of what Zhuangzi is attempting to illuminate in his vision of truth. To that end, while there certainly remains differences in Kierkegaard’s transcendental “God,” Zhuangzi’s “Dao,” and Socrates’ “Absolute truth,” the language of transcendence—a state of going beyond, a surpassing understanding—is equally evident in all three. Distinctions, therefore, can be made without necessarily having to remove the sense of transcendence completely from any one perspective. In fact, such a position—the absence of transcendence all together—appears to me to be an unproductive limitation to a complex and varied site of meaning. This is particularly true of Zhuangzi, who is clearly engaged with something that is more than just the normative, conventional understanding of truth. To address this unconventional truth, he—like Kierkegaard and to an extent, Socrates—employs a highly unconventional, at times transcendent language. Consequently, to not use the term because it may or may not suggest unwarranted ties to Western notions is to limit or ignore an important essence of Zhuangzi’s unique ming bian. My differences with Hall and Ames’ position rest primarily in the fact that I do not believe the West alone owns ‘transcendence’ or transcendental thinking. Consequently, to remove the concept from the lexicon of meaning for any particular site, I believe, risks creating a disproportionate valuation of one cultural experience and understanding over the other. What remains to be addressed is how each site, or more appropriately for the primary writers, how each individual appears to invest this sense of transcendence with their own unique meaning. With these clarifications in mind, I turn now to examine more closely the rhetorical practices and philosophies of certain key figures from each tradition.26 Socratic Context Perhaps no figures in the Western tradition are more influential to its rhetorical sensibilities (and Kierkegaard’s) than the early Greek thinkers Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. Clearly, such thinkers as Hegel and Kant would play a more immediate contextual role in Kierkegaard’s work, but as many of their central rhetorical practices are also influenced by these seminal Greek thinkers it seems fitting to begin with this early source of Western tradition.

43 Indeed, Hall and Ames argue that the combination and evolution of Socratic, Platonic, and Aristotelian philosophies were critical to all of the subsequent Western discourse: Effectively, all of the major philosophical issues and problems which would influence subsequent speculation were formulated. Of equal importance, the copresence of the Platonic and Aristotelian visions provided distinctive strategies for the resolution of the subsequent pluralism of ideas and beliefs which would pattern the Western tradition (Anticipating 81). Critical elements of these strategies included the Platonic appeal to objective definition and the Aristotelian notion of ‘cause,’ including “efficient cause,” a central element to the scientifically oriented models of meaning. These strategies would help to establish the causal emphasis that would become such a dominant mode of meaning in the West, including the later contemporary figures of Kierkegaard’s own context and to some extent, Kierkegaard himself.27 Such being the case, it is important to note that Socratic sensibilities—particularly regarding the quest and understanding of truth—were an early blend of causal and correlative tendencies, and as a consequence reflect both modes to a degree that is not as evident in later thinkers (as for example, Aristotle). Socratic rhetoric begins to shift the understanding of knowledge to the emphasis of distinguishing causal characteristics. This includes objective, connotative definitions of key terms. Yet at the same time, Socrates employs correlative metaphor, dialogue, and analogy to draw out his distinctions of meaning and truth to a degree far more evident than later thinkers influenced by Aristotle’s example and philosophy. Hall and Ames note this dualistic (what I’m calling, rhetorical) nature in their “Seventh Anticipation”28 Socrates offered two apparently contradictory gifts to the development of the Western cultural sensibility. First, his concern for definition challenged that manner of thinking associated with giving accounts of things by appeal to instances or models exemplifying that which was to be understood. Socrates understood the definitional activity to consist in the search for what we now term objective connotation...[Secondly,] Socrates...insisted upon the openness of rational speculation which would postpone any claims to finality until such was demonstrably achieved (Anticipating China 74).

44 Hall and Ames suggest that the Socratic emphasis on definition “undergirded” the Western sensibilities of “essences” and “natural kinds;” tendencies of meaning most evident in a causal world view. They go on to suggest that this emphasis determined that the Western mode of rational thinking rejected the “subjective in favor of objective connotation.” The latter, however, was tempered by Socrates opened-ended pursuit of understanding, a condition (that for Socrates, at least) rejected dogmatic positions and closed systems of meaning (Anticipating 74). Interestingly, the Socratic mixed-bag of tendencies might be explained from at least two directions. On one hand, Socrates’ ‘conflicting” gifts can be read in light of their evolutionary implications. That is to say, Socrates (often considered a Sophist himself) reflects an early, developmental transition from correlative-emphasis to causal-emphasis, with the contradictory gifts explained in light of their subsequent conflation or rejection to an even more causal emphasis by later dominant sites of meaning, including science. Consequently, appeals through metaphor and analogy are eventually rejected or relegated to “subjective truths” (e.g. poetics) in light of the West’s evolutionary development of reasoning and knowing. For later thinkers such as Hegel, Socrates reflects this historical and evolutionary development of knowledge and thinking, one which (for Hegelians) appears to culminate in Hegel’s own systematic rendering of philosophical thought. But the dual nature of Socratic gifts can also be read as a teleological distinction between Socrates and other thinkers (including Aristotle) regarding language’s role with truth. Such a reading would understand Socrates to be in possession of all the relevant meaning and understanding necessary to determine his rhetorical and philosophical position regarding truth, regardless of context or time.29 If the latter is correct, then the Socratic gifts may not be so “contradictory” after all. I would suggest that Socrates gifts reflect the nature of his understanding of truth and how it manifests itself in the context of human interaction; a condition which includes the paradoxically transcendent and equally subjective relationship of truth to the individual. Socrates’ paradoxical presence of “conflicting” causal and correlative sensibilities can be understood, then, not as contradictory, but as a unique position and attempt to address the paradox by way of paradox. In

45 short, to address the problematic nature of communicating, in language, what appears to be outside language. Further, as a consequence of his understanding of truth, Socrates feels compelled to participate in the discourse of his own context regarding truth and knowledge; compelled by the necessity of setting the record straight for other individuals of his context and beyond. It is these conditions and responses of the “contradictory gifts” and truth’s compelling nature that I take up now in regards to the Socratic view of truth and language and their repercussions in his rhetorical meaning. Relativism and the Socratic Absolute Any discussion of Socratic rhetorical sensibilities inevitably includes Socrates’ historical dispute with the Sophists, particularly their criticism of the former’s understanding of truth and rhetoric. For most of Sophistic thought, truth was considered to be relative, and rhetoric a necessary tool for insuring success of the best relative truth for a given context. This was due in part to the rapidly shifting context of early Greek society, which was becoming more and more diverse in its elements and cultural practices. To address this diversity of thought, early Sophistic rhetorical practices included many correlative sensibilities such as metaphor and analogy that helped persuade the listener to a given position on a relative truth. For Sophists like Protagoras, language’s power to fabricate, even deceive, was a reflection of truth’s relative nature. Therefore, no absolute truth was available to humans. Hence, Protagoras’ famous proposition: “man is the measure of all things.” For Sophists, the best a society could do was recognize this subjective nature and set into practice a process of deriving a truth relative to the best interests of a given context. Consequently, Dissoi Logoi, or Opposing Arguments, was used to arrive at the best probable truth for a given context, not as discovery strategies for an absolute truth. Seen in this light, rhetoric—specifically the practice and understanding of rhetoric in regards to argumentation—became a critical and formative element to arriving at the best ‘truth.’ However, the notion of truth as essentially relative was untenable for Socrates, who believed the Sophistic consequent practices and understanding of rhetoric represented a harmful

46 disregard for the individual and Greek Society. For Socrates (and Plato and Aristotle), such relativity could only lead to chaos. What’s more, it failed to reflect (or deliberately ignored) what was for Socrates evident: the absolute nature of truth and the cosmos. In Socratic understanding there not only existed an “absolute” truth, it was manifestly evident, available, and critical to the individual well-being: Socrates: For the colorless, formless, and intangible truly existing essence, with which all true knowledge is concerned, holds this region and is visible only to the mind, the pilot of the soul. Now the divine intelligence, since it is nurtured on mind and pure knowledge, and the intelligence of every soul which is capable of receiving that which befits it, rejoices in seeing reality for a space of time and by gazing upon truth is nourished and made happy until the revolution brings it again to the same place. In the revolution it beholds absolute justice, temperance, and knowledge, not such knowledge as has a beginning and varies as it is associated with one or another of the things we call realities, but that which abides in the real eternal absolute...” (Phaedrus 150). In addition to such critical themes as an individual “soul” and the “recollection” of knowledge, Socrates also defines here the human-nurturing truth as “absolute” and “eternal.” Socrates positions the process of this truth as a recollection and a function of the mind and “pure” knowledge. To obtain absolute truth one must employ reason and the pilot of the soul, (the mind), in such a way that they become a “divine” intelligence, one that reveals a truth that does not ‘vary’ but is “pure.” Such purity is distinguished from knowledge that “varies” as a consequence of relative human positions to reality---not as truth itself. The significance of this absolute and eternal nature of truth is that “relative” human understanding can be seen in light of its failure to acknowledge its limited nature. As essentially human and contingent, relative truth fails to address the higher, absolute truth’s actuality. Socrates maintained that true essence and conceptions (of justice, love, etc.,) can be found in their pure state, unaffected by change and the vagaries of reality perceived solely by our senses. To obtain glimpses or “knowledge” of these ideal forms or ideas, however, requires an equally

47 divine or pure practice of recollection through reflection and dialectic. However, importantly this practice does not derive truth but merely, “...serve only to remind us what we know...” (Phaedrus). As a consequence, while a sense of transcendent truth is evident throughout Socratic philosophy, it is further grounded by a particular position regarding this authentic “truth’s” discovery. The latter is, in part, an attempt by Socrates to address what he saw as the moral relativism of the Sophistic movement. But just as importantly, it was also a reflection of Socrates understanding of how truth reveals itself authentically to an individual. In other words, the search for truth in a given context of human interaction is only authentic when it reflects the condition of that absolute nature. A critical element of this search is the Socratic emphasis on “objective idealism.” A hallmark of this objectivity is the quest for “[…] connotative definitions which cite the properties common to all members of the class designated denotatively by the term” (Hall and Ames Anticipation 66). This strategy was thought by Socrates to insure the most authentic understanding of a given concept or term and help contain the various and sometimes conflicting depictions of meaning evident in their time (Anticipating 74). In addition, Hall and Ames argue Socrates (along with Platonic and Aristotelian philosophy in general) established objective-rational knowledge over subjective, contextually- dependent knowledge, the latter being a critical tenet of the Sophistic movement’s claim for relative truth. Consequent to Socratic philosophy, appeals to “rational,” objective “definitions” are now validated against the Sophistic contextual and subjective appeals. Later, Aristotle would systematically establish a hierarchy of truth, from demonstrable proofs (including science and logic) to the more tenuous rhetorical persuasions (including appeals to ethos, logos, and pathos). For Hall and Ames, both efforts “...illustrate[s] the significance of knowledge as a function of enclosure. To ‘de-fine’ is to set finite boundaries” (Anticipating xxii). As such, objective definition was not only possible to Socratic understanding, it was essential to the truth search. Reflected in this is an emphasis of those causal sensibilities that privilege objective, part-whole, relationships and a tendency to determine meaning analytically.

48 Yet, this ‘causal’ emphasis is complicated in Socratic philosophy by the further presence of correlative practices. The latter, I would argue, is reflected in the use of metaphor and the general condition of becoming “aware” also prevalent in the Dialogues. Socrates is not content with simply establishing objective definition, but time and again employs poetic imagery and metaphor to awaken his listener’s to a higher level. The nature of this communication is not dependent on a concise or objective understanding with Socrates’ audience. On the contrary, it appears to employ highly poetic metaphor, analogy, and description in order to inspire meaning/understanding—not necessarily define it in explicit terms. The Phaedrus provides numerous examples, including the famous description of the soul’s “form”: “Soul...traverses the whole heaven, appearing sometimes in one form and sometimes in another; now when it is perfect and fully winged, it mounts upward and governs the whole world...” (Phaedrus 149). This metaphoric analogy can be explained by the unique Socratic understanding of a transcendent, absolute truth. In such an understanding, the rhapsodic moments of poetic rhetoric in the Phaedrus and Gorgias can be understood as an attempt to illuminate what is beyond mere/conventional language and argument. In other words, the poetic illumination offers a “reminder” to what is already known but cannot be said in direct language. It is not a new creation or relative notion of truth, but is another expression and form of what is absolute and infinite. In this reading, the presence of both the transcendent and the subjective in absolute truth’s relation to the individual are equally determinative of Socrates own rhetorical structure of illumination through causal and correlative moments. These sensibilities are, in fact, responses to the nature of truth and the individual’s relationship to it. Finally, a significant aspect of the Socratic rhetoric of truth is the individual’s relation to truth’s absolute nature. Because it is absolute, the truth must become a lived-condition, not merely a constructed and/or relative garment for the rhetorician to wear as it seems fit. In his own lifetime Socrates would demonstrate the critical nature of this relationship time and again by opposing the conventional forces that would undermine his understanding of truth. This includes his martyrdom. Though it is clear he had no desire for death, Socrates’ commitment was such that he risked everything for his defense of truth, including public ridicule, misunderstanding,

49 and eventually death (The Apology). No such absolutes, of course, were required of the Sophistic sensibilities who believed Socrates misguided, and to his enemies, ultimately “corrupt.” For Socrates, however, this particular Sophistic attitude only revealed the fundamental flaw of their rhetoric: they were not philosophers, “lovers of wisdom” living their truth, but mere “writers” of words without recourse to an authentic examination of truth (Phaedrus). As a consequence, Socrates’ search for an absolute truth stands in stark contrast to the Sophist moral relativism. For Kierkegaard, this relationship to truth will be seen as a necessary “intensification” in reflection: “it is apparent that the procedure turns out to be one of instituting reflection on a full level deeper and more inward, something like the change from...[wise men] to...[lovers of wisdom], simply because the task has become enormously greater” (Point of View 245). Kierkegaard believed Socrates represented one of the supreme human examples of what is required for this intensification of reflection: a paradoxically lived understanding of a truth that is at once both immediate and subjective and at the same time transcendent (even, viewed conventionally, to the point of absurdity) to the individual knowledge.30 Socratic Truth and Language Related to Socrates’ lived-process of truth is the correct understanding of the tenuous role language plays in truth’s discovery and the individual’s subjective nature. Socrates (and later, Kierkegaard) sees language and truth as tenuous partners, at best. In the quest for the absolute truth—a truth that ultimately, paradoxically, resides outside the flux and change of individual context and perception, and at the same time is made immediate, real, and personal in the individual’s relationship to it—language must be carefully understood for both its limitations and potential to illuminate truth. In this limitation and possibility is reflected the complex nature of Socrates’ gifts: his willingness to engage and shape the discourse, and at the same time question the extent to which the discourse can finally be said to answer the question. This is exemplified in Socrates own argument, which appears to be offering equally paradoxical (and from the standpoint of one or the other, “contradictory’) forms of control and open-ended search, pushing the audience at times

50 to agree upon certain terms/definitions, while at other times employing poetic/metaphoric illustration to illuminate esoteric elements of truth’s nature. Given this, Socrates appears to be offering a juxtaposition of rhetoric regarding truth. In other words, given his causal sensibilities Socrates is determined to clarify the right conditions for use of rhetoric: “...that is rhetoric is to be used for this one purpose always, of pointing to what is just...” (Gorgias 138). At the same time, Socrates is quite comfortable in using correlative-rhetoric to illuminate certain conditions/essences of truth that cannot be explicated by definition and/or objective language alone. My reading of this blurry juxtaposition is that Socrates is acknowledging the limits and potential of his knowledge and language in his own rhetoric. Truth, for Socrates, is available to the human experience, but is not easily determined or explicitly available to mere language/explication. Rhetoric, correctly employed, illuminates this condition. Moreover, this rhetoric can (again when employed correctly) help illuminate, or point to, certain elements of truth to be recalled, not derived. The two aspects are not hierarchal or progressive, but interrelated in a correlative sense and give an accurate representation of truth and language’s relationship to the individual. Aristotle, by contrast, appears to be content with leaving the art of rhetoric to probable truths and leaves the demonstrable (and higher order) truth to science and logic. For Aristotle, language and its vagaries of meaning hold no power over this latter truth. Thus, rhetoric is ‘rescued’ by Aristotle by its back door relegation to demonstrable truth. Such relegation controls language’s vagaries by subsuming it under the merely probable, a state necessitated in part by persuasion’s (and language’s) larger role in probable truth’s determination. As a consequence, no Socratic ‘contradictory gifts’ are necessary as Aristotle’s system addresses the individual relationship’s to truth in other elements of system (e.g., Ethics) and leaves the absolute to the essentially demonstrable.31 While Socrates and Aristotle share a great deal in common, the difference between the two is the emphasis of what can be known and how in rhetorical terms. While Kierkegaard was aware of the Aristotelian framework and admired much of this thinker’s work, it is the paradoxical (‘contradictory’) gifts of Socrates that play such a large role in Kierkegaard’s own rhetorical strategy. His fascination with them is more than philosophical.

51 He imbues the Socratic sensibilities in his own rhetoric, most prominently the concepts of Irony and Paradox and the individual’s relationship to truth. No small part of this influence is the paradoxical nature of the Socratic works themselves, a condition rising in part from their historical ambiguity of authorship (i.e., Plato as author of the “Socratic” Dialogues). Broadly speaking, Socrates’ viewed as both creative figure and actual person reflects a critical aspect of Kierkegaard’s own approach to truth and its illumination. As such, it is worth a closer look. Irony and the Socratic Authorship The nature of “Socratic” authorship has long been a point of contention and significance. The debate centers on the degree to which Socrates represents his own ideas and philosophy or is the product of Plato. We have no preserved written accounts by Socrates’ own hand, but it is clear that the “debt” Plato owes to his mentor is enormous. In addition, Plato uses the figure of “Socrates” in his Dialogues as an individual speaker among other speakers, characters. In other words, the Dialogues are a dialogue. This last rhetorical condition has created a conundrum of authority and meaning for subsequent interpreters of the “Dialogues.” The dilemma, in part, also reflects a central point of Kierkegaard’s own rhetorical position. Such a position rests heavily on the ironies arising from the Dialogues themselves. 32 A central irony of the Dialogues is its dual nature of written and oral account. The irony here rest in Plato’s ambiguous, if not antagonistic, depiction of the written word in his works. Plato, through Socrates, makes it clear that the written word is open to flawed understanding, particularly in regards to truth’s revelation by consequence of its “silent” nature. This is most evident in the Phaedrus where the figure of Socrates undertakes an examination of rhetoric in all its various forms, including the written word: “Writing, Phaedrus, has this strange quality, and is very like painting; for the creatures of painting stand like living beings, but if one asks them a question, they preserve a solemn silence”;...writing has “no power to protect or help itself”; “...he who has knowledge of the just” would not “...when in earnest, write them in ink, sowing them through a pen with words which cannot defend themselves by argument and cannot teach

52 the truth effectually” (Phaedrus 166-7). Finally, there is Socrates long discourse on writing’s relationship to himself: Socrates: But the man who thinks that in the written word there is necessarily much that is playful, and that no written discourse, whether in meter or in prose, deserves to be treated very seriously (and this applies also to the recitations of the rhapsodes, delivered to sway people’s minds, without opportunity for questioning and teaching), but that the best of them really serve only to remind us of what we know; and who thinks that only in words about justice and beauty and goodness spoken by teachers for the sake of instruction and really written in a soul is clearness and perfection and serious value, that such words should be considered the speaker’s own legitimate offspring, first the word within himself, if it be found there, and secondly its descendants or brother which may have sprung up in worthy manner in the souls of others, and who pays no attention to the other words—that man, Phaedrus, is likely to be such as you and I might pray that we ourselves become (Phaedrus 167). For “Socrates,” writing is necessarily lifeless (i.e., it cannot be questioned immediately, as is the case in oral dialogue) and therefore can only be understood in its complex limited potential. All words can only remind us of what we already know—the Ideal, the absolute truth of a thing—but written language lacks even the dynamic of discourse to help this illumination. As a consequence of its restricted nature it risks the ineffectual. Without recourse to engaged questioning (exemplified in Socrates own method) the written word is left solely to the author’s integrity and the reader’s ability to recall where words of truth authentically resides: their self. Though potentially productive, the path of writing is fraught with peril and potential misunderstanding by way of its lifeless nature. This specialized nature of the “word” is further defined by its metaphoric ‘birthing’ in the soul of the individual (where it is “legitimate”) and its filial relationship to similar “offspring” of other individuals engaged in the search for truth. Knowledge of truth is not found in the written words themselves. Words, particularly written words, can only aid the individual in recalling

53 their Ideal’s genuine nature in the individual’s own soul. They can, however, just as easily give rise to error by nature of their non-engagement. The tone and depiction of truth and language’s relationship here is one of careful and deliberative distance: language can be seen as a tool to truth’s recollection, but truth’s reality is in no way determined by language. Written accounts are doubly suspicious as the engaged, real time questioning of two or more ‘souls’ in an open dynamic of dialectic reasoning is reduced to an unchallenged and lifeless written account. And yet, Plato is clearly ‘writing’ the dialogues, creating two points of dilemma regarding authority of meaning. First, an apparent contradiction of “Socrates’” own position; secondly, a once-removed, re-telling of the “Socratic” notion of truth. The first, on the surface, might be addressed by the use of “dialogue” in the “writing” of the Dialogues, alluding at least to the significance (however removed by its written state) to the venue/meaning of “oral” language. To accomplish this, Plato uses writing to point out both the opportunity for further meaning in oral communication and the limits of written works to convey such meaning. Presumably, the reader is part of this awareness (or is made aware) and condition of writing/oral dialogue distinction by his or her own recognition of the writer’s referred meaning. In other words, the “contradiction” of voicing a valuation of oral meaning in writing is thus part of the affirmation/edification of Socrates’ own position: the Dialogues can only allude to what still remains possible in actual dialogue. The “lifelessness” of writing and the potential of oral communication are simultaneously argued for in the Dialogues. Similarly, the irony of Plato writing the character of Socrates is created in part by the conditions of causal objectivity (a position the individual, “Socrates,” supposedly supports), and the problematic underlying presence of correlative sensibilities evident in this metaphoric character-Socrates of meaning (i.e., the condition of Plato writing the figure of Socrates). There are a number of responses one can take to this later dilemma (including ignoring the problem of authority of meaning all together). For purposes of my work, however, I will address the one most favorable to Kierkegaard, as this anticipates a great deal of the later work. For Kierkegaard, Socrates, read as figure and actual person, reflects in actuality the concept of truth and its relationship to language and the individual. In such an understanding the Dialogues

54 are neither essentially Platonic nor Socratic, but are considered reflections of a particular philosophical position. Such a paradoxical position, for Kierkegaard at least, does not preclude actuality and/or meaning. Rather, it is an authentic response/illumination of the actuality of truth and the individual’s experience of the same. This includes the limitations of language to define explicitly and across individual experience, truth, while at the same time acknowledging the paradoxical possibilities of language to illuminate the experience rhetorically. It is the latter that Kierkegaard uses to explain the Plato/Socrates dilemma of meaning. Irony and Socratic illumination of Truth to the Individual For Kierkegaard, the paradox of the Dialogues’ authorship is, in many ways, a reflection of both Plato’s and Socrates’ understanding of truth and its relationship to the individual. This relationship is not straightforward, not without complications, but is invested with real human elements of freewill and commitment. One of these complications, for Socrates, is the position one individual must have toward another individual in light of truth’s nature. (For the time being, I am using the term “Socrates” here as a representative category, without addressing to what extent this is essentially Plato’s or his mentor’s creation of meaning.) Truth was not manifest in such a way that it imposed itself upon the individual without recourse to the individual’s own will. That is to say, though truth was absolute, it required a lived-commitment, an engaged relationship, on the part of the individual. The individual was free to reject or accept truth. Further, due to truth’s unique nature the individual could actually misunderstand truth. If the individual appealed to convention, and such convention was in error, the individual risked the delusion of truth without fully comprehending their position’s error. Sophistic moral relativism was seen by Socrates as just such a misappropriation. To address this, Socrates’ understanding of truth and its illumination included a careful positioning of the speaker in relation to the individual ‘listener’s’ understanding, particularly if that individual is apparently lost to convention. Socrates believed such a deliberate positioning—an awareness of the individual’s lost state—essential to helping the individual. Hence, the first requirement of illuminating truth was to position oneself in light of the other’s

55 degree of awareness.33 Often times this meant battling convention and the individual’s delusion of what is true before any real sense of truth could be fully recovered. To address this dilemma, Socrates developed a complex and unique understanding of the practice of dialectic: Now I myself, Phaedrus, am a lover of these processes of division and bringing together, as aids to speech and thought. And if I think any other man is able to see things that can naturally be collected into one and divided into many, him I follow after and ‘walk in his footsteps as if he were a god’...And whether the name I give to those who can do this is right or wrong, God knows, but I have called them hitherto dialecticians. (Phaedrus 160). What would distinguish the Socratic “process of division and bringing together” from the Sophistic sensibilities and “opposing arguments” is Socrates determination to find the absolute truth, not a relative, contextually-based “truth” for the times. As such, Socrates lengthy battle with the Sophists in the Gorgias is not merely a demonstration of his acumen as a rhetorician, but is an attempt to determine a true value for rhetoric in regards to the individual and this absolute truth. Consequently, rhetoric—understood by Socrates—is best employed when it leads to a corrective or strengthening of character for the individual or their loved ones, and then only when used in light of truth’s absolute nature. That is, the corrective must be authentic and in line with what is “true,” (for example true knowledge of justice, not just what is believed to be true by convention or mere persuasion): But among the many statements we have made, while all the rest are refuted this one alone is unshaken—that doing wrong is to be more carefully shunned than suffering it; that above all things a man should study not to seem but to be good both in private and in public; that if one becomes bad in any respect one must be corrected; that this is good in the second place,—next to being just, to become so and to be corrected by paying the penalty; and that every kind of flattery, with regard either to oneself or to others, to few or to many, must be avoided; and that

56 rhetoric is to be used for this one purpose always, of pointing to what is just.” (Gorgias) Importantly, the “one” and “always” purpose of rhetoric is not offered by Socrates dogmatically (at least, not to his understanding). Rather, it is derived by his engaged reflection and critical dialectic with his contemporaries, including the figures of Callicles, Polus, and Gorgias. Central to this dialectic is the Socratic revelation of improper or false use of terms by the Sophists (including justice, knowledge, and truth), and his subsequent quest for objective definition. But equally important is the necessity of understanding the subjective individual in light of the other and truth. What essentially marks the Dialogues as Socratically dialectic are the discourse of ideas: “the process of division and bringing together,” by subjective individuals in light of truth’s absolute nature. Through a lengthy process of questioning—aided by his framework of objective idealism—the figure of Socrates leads the discourse to this/his understanding of truth and knowledge: language and human perception allow for relativity; truth and virtue do not. In this way, he demonstrates the burgeoning tendency of causal thinking that will come to mark much of the Western tradition. It also separates him from what he considers ‘harmful’ Sophistic tendencies of moral relativism. While both Socrates and the Sophists derive their knowledge in part from the discourse of ideas—the dialectic of meaning—Socrates’ quest for authentic definition in light of absolute truth’s reality (a condition he discovers also through dialectic) is safeguarded from moral relativism by his determination to seek the most authentic truth, not the merely sufficient or personally self-serving truth. To arrive at this conclusion, however, Socrates presents a paradoxical questioner. He “knows that he does not know;” a condition which he believes separates him from others who apparently have forgotten or failed to realize this critical condition. Because of his unique understanding Socrates feels compelled to participate in the discourse with others, a process by which dialectically he hopes to recollect truth both for himself and his listener. To do so properly Socrates’ open-ended quest includes a causal determination to find objective definition of critical terms and concepts in order to most authentically approach its absolute nature. At the

57 same time his speech often includes the metaphorical and interconnected aspects of correlative sensibilities as Socrates tries to awaken (without explicitly defining or naming) the transcendent aspects of truth.34 The latter is as essential to the discourse as the causal tendencies, as the individual’s relationship to the truth is determined subjectively—a lived experience—or not at all. To impose or compel, then, an answer would be contrary to the nature of truth as Socrates understands it. This muddied water of subjective relation to truth (a lived truth), subjective knowledge of what is known and not known (subjective nature), a determination to find objectively connotative definition dialectically with his fellow seekers (the relationship of language to truth), and a transcendental belief in an absolute truth, is the paradox of meaning that makes up Socrates rhetorical strategy and understanding. As a consequence of their inter-related nature, his strategy is neither essentially causal, nor essentially correlative. It is neither dogmatic, nor relative. It is an open and unending quest for truth built on a foundation of what for Socrates (and later Kierkegaard) appears to be the most authentic position from which to begin the search for truth and to communicate with others: an individual’s becoming. An essential element of this becoming is the individual’s awareness of convention and truth’s tenuous relation and experience of that same. As a consequence, the “irony” of Socrates as figure and individual is due in part by the necessity of approaching the conventional bound, subjective individual in the best possible way for absolute truth’s illumination while still remaining essentially an individual (read this time as Socrates or Plato) oneself. As such, the point of Socratic rhetoric (figure or individual) is to awaken souls to the knowledge of absolute truth not compel them to belief. The transcendental nature of truth makes moot where the source of illumination comes from (i.e., whether it is Socrates qua individual, or Plato’s creative construct). The absolute truth makes itself available to the individual regardless of actual source, if that source is guided by a genuine love for truth and knowledge. At the same time, however, awareness of the individual’s own subjectivity (which can be garnered from reflection and dialogue) prohibits someone from simply dictating said absolute truth, as the conditions for such are contrary to truth’s explication in language.

58 Said another way, language renders impossible direct explication of absolute, transcendent truth experienced by the subjective individual. It remains only for language (human communication) of both tendencies—causal and correlative—to remind, or ‘awaken,’ the individual to their own remembrance of truth’s reality. Causal sensibilities are necessary to insure language and perspective are guided by moral imperatives (not relative necessity); correlative tendencies aid where causal becomes insufficient---the illumination of a transcendent nature of truth. Hence, the contrary gifts of Socrates as rhetorical figure and actual human reflect a paradoxical approach to rhetorically address truth, which is itself paradoxical to the individual and human conception in general. Later, echoing this position, Kierkegaard would distinguish between “misunderstanding” and “disagreement”: “At the base of all actual disagreement, there is an understanding; the baselessness of misunderstanding is that the preliminary understanding is lacking, without which both agreement and disagreement are a misunderstanding” (Point of View 113). Thus, Kierkegaard sees Socrates dialectic as a determination to find understanding with his audience, including the terms and conditions for truth and meaning, from which then “disagreement” could authentically arise. Without this step, one risked not disagreement, but misunderstanding. Hence, Socrates hesitation to say with finality what truth is for everyone, once and for all is balanced by his equally determined act of addressing misunderstanding. Further, the figure of Socrates was an attempt to address this misunderstanding rhetorically. A carefully, poetically constructed position in which one individual communicates to another on the subject of truth without imposing or engendering further misunderstanding. The Why of Socratic Rhetoric Of course this ‘reading’ of Socrates does not keep many from seeing the Dialogues as yet another subjective and relative position on truth and meaning, the characters straw-figures who’s responses are disingenuous for their constructed nature and the argument determined from the beginning by Socrates’ own position. However, such a reading requires that Socrates be seen only, or essentially, in light of his determination to win the audience to his truth. Complicating this reading is Socrates unique relationship to truth and his careful practice of not compelling

59 someone to believe (his) truth, but to become aware of truth’s nature on their own. In such a light, the Socratic dialogues can be seen as a benevolent act, a necessary warning or guide regarding those conventional forces which would chain the individual to a false truth, not a morally relative claim to truth. This last point reflects again the Socratic lived-truth and consequently offers an explanation of why Socrates participates in ‘rhetoric’ at all, given truth’s transcendent and absolute nature. Due to his subjective relationship to truth, Socrates, as the consummate seeker of wisdom, must in addition be the gadfly of his times. His quest for knowledge is necessitated in part by his love for the absolute nature of truth, his fellow humans, and their own need for such truth. Read this way, the “dialogues” are essentially necessary by nature of Socrates compelled nature for truth in his times. That is to say, a condition of lived-truth included awakening others to convention’s pitfalls regarding this truth. Hence, Socrates valuation of “dialogue” to find the absolute is not merely a clever rhetorical device. Dialogue implies that knowledge was derived solely from personal reflection but could be (at the very least) aided by discourse with other individuals. Because Socrates feels he has a responsibility to participate in truth’s dialogue in a genuine manner, he initiates a practice to allow—not compel—awareness of truth. An example of this practice is Socrates famous maieutic and its founding principle: to garner knowledge through questioning. Such questioning requires the presence of at least one “other,” however constructed that other might be. Hence, Socrates oft-quoted self description as “midwife” to ideas is more than a clever metaphor for the birthing of knowledge through discourse. It is also a symbol of human service, a guiding (though not determinative) hand to the birth of understanding. Similarly, as the self- described “gadfly” of Greek awareness, Socrates is compelled to engage his cultural times in an ongoing dialogue about truth, knowledge, and the conventions that would undermine them. In this light, Socrates feels morally bound—even at the risk of his own life—to challenge those forces that would cripple an individual’s opportunity to live the truth (The Apology). Consequently, as human discourse can aid in recollecting the absolute, argument must be seen as a matter of careful deliberation and integrity, including the use of persuasive language.

60 Virtue and knowledge are seen as one by Socrates, in that each informs the other. Read in this light, Socrates condemnation of rhetoric is equally a demonstration, however ironic and paradoxical it may be, of “good” rhetoric in defense of his cause. The distinction between “good” rhetoric and “bad” rhetoric for Socrates becomes one of intent and definition grounded by the individual’s commitment to truth. The necessity of his participation in the discourse is equally determined by the conditions of his understanding of truth. Socrates must participate (even at risk of his own life) because the nature of truth and his relationship to it is such that anything short of its defense and/or illumination (for others) would undermine the very integrity of his understanding of truth’s transcendent and absolute nature. * Like the early Greek thinkers, Ancient China also wrestled with fundamental questions of meaning and the nature of life. Significant figures in the Ancient Chinese tradition are numerous and varied. They include notable sages from the five most popular teachings of the Ancient Spring-Autumn context: Confucianism, Daoism, Mohism, Legalism, and the School of Ming (Lu 66). For purposes of understanding Zhuangzi’s unique position, however, I offer here a general review of the works and rhetorical positions of Confucius (Kongzi). Confucius is an intimate participant in the Zhuangzian rhetorical world as well as one of the dominant (if not the most dominant) figures in Chinese history. As such, a brief study of his ming bian (rhetoric) should provide a significant background of what marks the Chinese as rhetorically unique, as well as illustrate where and what conventions Zhuangzi was operating within and against.35 Confucian Ren-Dao Many scholars position Confucius in terms of his historical and cultural context, noting that his philosophical views arose from the contentious elements of politics and philosophy in which he (and Zhuangzi) lived. The time of his death is often marked as the beginning of the Warring States Period (479-221 B.C.E.), but the contentious nature of Chinese politics and philosophy was well established in the lifetime of Confucius. In this context of constant warfare and open engagement of conflicting points of view, Confucius developed many of his most notable precepts. Seeking “to reconstruct the social and moral order” he felt lost, Confucius

61 taught a return to Ren-Dao (Lu 157). Like most scholars of this period, Confucius developed his teaching around the unique concept-practice of Dao, a term most often translated as “Way”. According to Confucius teachings, Ren-Dao was a way of life and self-cultivation best exemplified in the old sages. Only by returning to their example could his society enjoy the Golden Age of harmony and prosperity he felt marked the ancients. There are at least three essential principles to Confucian philosophy: Ren “benevolence” (or in Hall and Rosemont Jr. terminology, “authoritative person”); li (rites); and, zhong yong (the Mean, the Middle Way) (Lu 157). Ren is “the fundamental principle of Confucian philosophy” and can be achieved by “cultivation of knowledge and self-examination;” li, or rites, “...the actualization of one’s moral attributes;” and zhong yong, “...the divine assumption of power and stability in running a government and maintaining he (harmony) in the world” (Lu 158-159). Though these descriptions are often complicated still further by individual interpretations, the basic sense of cultivation and actualization in both person and the government is consistent.36 It is important to remember that all of these principles are themselves interconnected and process oriented. The three principles are interdependent of one another, requiring a holistic and harmonious awareness of each and every person’s ability to become Ren-Dao. Therefore, the most central tenet of Confucianism is its social-orientation, the process of ordering society to the proper Way. This social ordering is intrinsically constituted by each individual’s proper conduct, and the ‘authoritative’ person (of various actualization levels ) is both the example and source of the proper way: 9.14: The Master wanted to go and live amongst the nine clans of the Eastern Yi Barbarians. Someone said to him, ‘What would you do about their crudeness?’ The Master replied, ‘Were an exemplary person (junzi)37 to live among them, what crudeness could there be?’ (The Analects 129)38 This process—both for individual and society—is ongoing and fluctuating, never fulfilled or complete in the sense of finished: “Confucius’ philosophical orientation does not tolerate a strict agent/act distinction, ‘[Ren]’39 is a process term that has no specific terminus ad quem” (Hall and Ames Thinking Through Confucius 115). An equally unique element of this

62 interconnected process-orientation is its relation to history which is viewed as continuing element of the present: Historical influence is bidirectional as is evidenced in Confucius himself; not only does a person’s influence in the world continue as the past gives birth to the present, but also the historical past is being revised and reshaped by the continual introduction of new perspective (Thinking Through Confucius 115). Consequently, Confucianism is a transformative philosophy, one that is on-going, historically interconnected, and to a very real extent socially and individually interdependent of one another. For Confucius, social context and surroundings—from the highest order of the Emperor or leading local official, to the more immediate relationships of friends, family and neighbors—are guided by a principle of interconnected influence. Confucianism, often noted for its socially-harmonious orientation, is so in part because social order as a whole (from government to the individual) is a consequence of the interconnected nature of all the correlative elements of his philosophy. However, this emphasis on communal interdependence could, and sometimes does lead to the imprecise conclusion that no sense of the Western “individual” as being—intrinsic and separate from the rest of the single-ordered world—is present in the Confucian world view. There is certainly a distinction in Confucian philosophy from the traditional notion of Western individualism, but this is primarily seen in the separation (in the West) between the “public” and “private” spheres of meaning. Such a separation is not as evident in Confucian philosophy. Confucianism is “neither predicated upon a contrast of private and public spheres, nor upon a distinction between social and political mode of togetherness” (Thinking through Confucius 152). Instead, Confucianism emphasizes the interconnectedness of all spheres, including individual and state, with no dependence on causal determinates to explain or answer a being’s essence distinct and unaffected by the other. Thus the distinction becomes not one of “public” or “private” sphere dominance, but a world view of interrelated, hierarchal relationships that constitute the pragmatic, rational reality of becoming. As a consequence, Confucianism evinces an “individual relativity” over “individual absoluteness” (Thinking through Confucius 152).

63 This unique interconnected nature is also a reflection of the correlative thinking dominant in the Chinese and Confucian world views. In such thinking, relativity—in this case, individual relativity—is a recognition of constant change and the situated nature of the individual in a holistic whole. The inter-related process of becoming is seen again in the Chinese emphasis of “how” over “what” in seeking truth, including the Confucian proscribed rites and rituals for attaining Ren-Dao. Significantly, this relative nature is not to suggest that “truth”—Confucian Ren-Dao—is relative; merely the conditions and individual abilities to achieve that truth. Such a relativity acknowledges a highly pragmatic understanding of reality and truth. Here truth is not understood conceptually (or, more accurately, essentially conceptual). Instead, it is understood in light of its role and expression in reality, both affecting and being affected by immediate context. As such, Confucius was not essentially a relativist. Rather, relativism as a condition of knowledge is only a repercussion of human nature and change, not a condition of the authentic Dao evidenced in Ren-Dao. As a consequence of his belief, Confucian (like many of the other schools) rejected the “sophistic” relativism of his times in favor of a more constant source/criteria for authentic Dao. Such relativism was most evident in the sophistic thinkers Deng Xi, Hui Shi, and Gong- sun Long. These thinkers, unique to the Chinese tradition and often associated under the “School of Names,” appear to delight in the use of paradoxical argument. Examples of their argument gymnastics include the classic debate. “Is a white horse not a horse?” The point of such verbal paradoxes was to demonstrate the seemingly inevitable conclusion of reason, combined with the language of things, leads to relativism. As a consequence, any side of a particular argument could be won through the power of rational and language interpretation. Thus, there remains no ‘source’ of ultimate truth that can be defended in language. Such a position was untenable for Confucius, who saw their arguments as irresponsible. Consequently, though both the Sophists and Confucius share a sense of constant change, what separates Confucian relativity from the Sophists is his position on the inter-relatedness of truth to society and the individual. In the Confucian understanding of Dao one cannot simply choose a

64 side and endeavor to win an argument, but must take into account the whole of all contextual and historical precedents. As a consequence, the enlightened person finds historical precedents and examples to provide critical guides to what are the best practices for a culture, and the more immediate condition of the individual is measured not by success of their argument, but how they conduct themselves in reality: 3.14 The Master said: ‘The Zhou dynasty looked back to the Xia and Shang dynasties. Such a wealth of culture! I follow Zhou’ (The Analects 85). 2.10 The Master said: ‘Watch their actions, observe their motives, examine wherein they dwell content; won’t you know what kind of person they are? Won’t you know what kind of person they are?’ (78). That Confucius could maintain and argue for a proper understanding of Dao despite this shifting change and relativity is indicative of his understanding of the Dao’s distinctive and continual nature—a nature he believed best exemplified in the Ancients but further reaffirmed and made new by its manifestations in his own time. In other words, the truth of Ren-Dao is in its practice and results, the latter being the harmonious condition of both the state and/or the individual, and such conditions were not open to relative practices and understanding of Dao but must be carefully modeled and guided by the practices of li (ritual), self-cultivation, and proper relational conduct with both the immediate and general context. Other schools of thought from the Warring States Period (including, to an extent, Zhuangzi) would share with Confucians a process driven truth; a condition of constant change and the Dao’s immanent nature within the same.40 However, each school would distinguish themselves from Confucius (and each other) by their respective interpretations of “Dao,” or the ‘how’ of the Way. Thus, Mozi would embrace a “how” of universal love; Laozi, a return to the natural; Hui Shi, a rational relativity. Each thinker, in his own way, was responding to the immanence of Dao and the interconnected, process nature of life. To take just one relevant example, while Zhuangzi would share many of Confucius’ sensibilities, including his concern with the sophist’s relativism, he would also take exception to Confucius’ reliance on cultural

65 convention to determine the authentic Dao. Instead, he would provide his own unique approach to authentic Dao realization in wu wei. Despite their differences, what appears to be consistent with nearly all early Chinese thinkers is their pragmatic approach to truth’s manifestation in life. Consequently, Chinese thinkers sought not the ‘what’ of truth, but the true Way to truth. Correlative tendencies were uniquely qualified for what the Chinese thinkers saw as the interconnected nature of truth’s manifestation in the world, and they are present in nearly every school of thought in Ancient China. For Confucius, this correlatively expressed ‘way’ was best addressed by the practice of shu. It provides an excellent example of how correlative tendencies both inform and help express the nature of Chinese sensibilities. Confucius Common Thread From his textual analysis, Graham depicts Confucianism as a “Conservative Response” to the question of “how?”—the Way-Seeking truth endeavors of the Ancient Chinese. To that end, Confucius sees himself as the “preserver and restorer of a declining culture, who would not presume to invent anything” (Disputers 10). Confucius role as a transmitter of an inherited knowledge is balanced by his determination to bring harmony to his own time and context, which—by nature of constant change and process—provides new contingencies and conditions. Such vagaries require a constant to guide the process toward Ren-Dao. Consequently, Confucius employs a “common thread” throughout his teaching, which he alludes to himself in more than one passage: “The Master said, ‘Tzu-kung, do you think of me as someone who has learned a lot and retained it?’” ‘Yes,’ he answered. ‘Is that wrong?’ ‘Wrong, I have one thread running through it.’ “Tzu-kung asked, ‘Is there a single word which one could act on all one’s life?’ The Master said, “Wouldn’t it be likening-to-oneself (shu)? What you do not yourself desire do not do to others.’” (15/24) (Disputers 20).

66 The thread that runs throughout Confucian teaching, shu, the “negative form of the Golden Rule” (Graham Disputers 20), is significant for its positioning of Confucian ideals of ceremony and rites in light of their redemptive and transformative power to shape human nature. Without this underlying thread, Confucius might “...give the impression of synthesising a view of life from the contemplation of rites, texts, pieces of music, person in legend or historical ideas...” (Disputers 20). In its most unflattering light this synthesization suggests a philosophy built upon proper form and convention without recourse to meaning or value. Viewed this way, Confucius’ conservative reaction would appear to rely on dogmatic determinates of meaning unattached to the lived-reality of everyday life. (Indeed, this is one of the very contentions raised against Confucianism by the Chinese Sophists, Laozi and, to some extent, Zhuangzi.) Anticipating this contention may be why Confucius draws so much attention to the “running thread” of his teaching. Without the Confucian understanding of shu, the practice of becoming Ren-dao via the proper adherence and practice of rites and ceremony would become “mere social convention” (Disputers 22). Instead, through shu, rites and rituals become guiding processes--- transforming practices necessary for attaining proper human nobility. The direct correlation of proper human relationships (shu, likening-to-oneself) also recognizes the inter-related state of human beings to one another, a relational principle that must be guided by the proper understanding of Dao, or in this case, the Confucian quest for Ren-Dao. As the interconnected nature of human life was (for Confucius) so clearly a condition of life, any teaching must incorporate a principle to address the whole of one’s actions to all the ‘world’ around them. Consequently, shu was as true for the family unit as it was the local administer or even the ‘father’ of the Empire, the Emperor. Though each person was unique for their situated position in the hierarchy of the state or family, all were responsible in their conduct for the well- being of both self and their contextual situation (i.e., the Emperor, by nature of his position, held both more power and more responsibility—influence). Proper conduct by any one individual, however, was necessary for achieving harmony (he) in the social context. To help guide the state and individual proper “relationships,” Confucius offered a hierarchy of filial and state relations reflected in the primary relationship of father to son

67 (analogically represented as Emperor to State) and so on. These relationships were natural to Confucius, he employs them both literally and metaphorically for their illumination of Ren- Dao’s presence, but does not feel compelled to defend their existence. What is more important (for Confucianism) is the proper guidance required for attainment of Ren-dao.41 This guidance included strict adherence to proper relational behavior and practice of ceremony and rites. Together, the practice of proper relationships and ritual helped to propel both the state and individual to a genuine condition of harmonious becoming. This included practicing shu in both relationships and the accompanying ritual and conventions surrounding them. For Confucius the instant in which you conquer self to see self and others in perfect proportion is an instant in which accord with conventions becomes effortless and the exercise of style within fixed forms is an uninterrupted flow. The achievement of [Ren] results immediately from ‘return to ceremony (fu li...)’, which may be understood as the recovery of meaning of ceremony by which it ceases to be mere formality” (Disputers 22). In other words, shu transforms what might be considered mere convention into a human- fulfilling practice of attainment (Ren-Dao). It is central to the teachings of Confucius as both cause and effect, but more properly understood for its correlative emphasis. Rites alone mean nothing without the proper spirit; simply ‘teaching’ inherited wisdom is not enough: 3.3 The Master said: ‘What has a person who is not authoritative (ren) got to do with observing ritual propriety (li)? What has a person who is not authoritative got to do with the playing of music (yue)? (82). 2.12 The Master said: ‘Exemplary persons (junzi) are not mere vessels’ (The Analects 78) In the interconnected nature of life, guiding practices of attainment are necessarily (if they are authentic) intrinsic to the person’s commitment and state of becoming. Contingencies, like human beings, vary from context to context, but an authoritative person can discern the proper way by studying the past and the immediate repercussion of any given situation. Further, and tied directly to knowledge of the proper way, the authoritative person practices and develops

68 their condition of Ren-Dao through proper relationships, shu, and ceremonies and rituals designed for authentic harmony. While some (particularly Zhuangzi) will maintain that Confucianism remains at heart too conventionally-bound to permit true experience of the Way, to understand Confucius in his best light it is important to recognize that for him proper ceremony is critical to the developing nature of human beings and the practice-guide of shu. In turn, shu represents a correlative-oriented response to the how of truth in life. Confucian ming bian From a rhetorical perspective, Confucius’ ming bian is “deeply embedded in his philosophical views and strongly characterized by moral and ethical concerns for the reconstruction of an orderly society capable of moral living” (Lu 160). Consequently, Confucian ming bing reflects the hierarchal and interdependent nature of critical self-actualizing relationships. Central to Confucian rhetorical notions is the “rectification of names,” or zheng ming. Given the social upheaval Confucius understood his time to be exhibiting, this rectification is reflective of his core philosophical belief that the social and individual nature of the Chinese were interconnected and needing to be reconstructed. For Confucius, “The rectification of names leads to a rectification of the social order as well as of human relationship...the aim of zheng ming was to regulate the public order by ensuring that everyone knew his/her place and acted accordingly” (Lu 161). Language, therefore, was tied to the “...(shi) actuality in social and cultural contexts,” and to insure the proper progression of becoming, Ren-Dao, must be rectified and invested with proper meaning. To that end, Confucius and his followers recognized that a given state, person, or context might prohibit the growth and actuality of Ren-Dao by their improper use of ming and the confusion of the true Way. In such a condition, it was incumbent on the follower of Confucius teaching to determine the possibility of enacting change: 15.8 The Master said, ‘To fail to speak with someone who can be engaged is to let that person go to waste; to speak with someone who cannot be engaged is to

69 waste your words. The wise (zhi...) do not let people go to waste, but they do not waste words either.’ (The Analects 186) This fluctuating nature of the Way’s presence and actuality played a key role in Confucius understanding of language’s role in conveying meaning as well. If the Way was contingent and flexible depending on a given person’s ability to achieve Ren-Dao, so too language’s role: 14.32 Weisheng Mou said to Confucius, ‘Why do you flit from perch to perch? Are you aspiring to be an eloquent talker?’ Confucius replied, ‘It is not that I aspire to be an eloquent talker, but rather I hate inflexibility.’ (The Analects, 179). For Confucius expressing the “Dao” is not only possible, but in fact a necessary condition for its actualizing power. But, as it resides in a constantly fluctuating world, Dao must also be approached with genuine, careful, deliberation. However, this is not the deliberation of the Western, causal-oriented Socrates, determined to find the right definition of conceptual terminology (or, at least to point out that such a definition is not currently in play). To express the Dao, for the immanently pragmatic Confucius, it is merely a matter of articulating simply and authentically one’s truth: “In expressing oneself, it is simply a matter of getting the point across” (15.41; The Analects 192). Glibness is not encouraged, or relativistic sophisms. As both Lu and Mao note, contrary to some scholarship, Confucian did not denounce speech in favor of written forms of communication (Lu 163; Mao 106-7). Instead, Confucius appears to develop his understanding of language and meaning consistently with his philosophy. The authoritative person has no need to fear their expression of truth; the authoritative person will inevitably guard against false words and invest their speech with the truth-revealed just as they do in their everyday conduct. The guiding principle that invests proper rites, human relations, and ceremony is thus equally evident and present in the authoritative person’s ming bian. This should not, however, suggest that the authoritative person must always talk, as it becomes apparent that where the Dao is not in evidence, words will not suffice and may, in fact, be risky:

70 14.3 The Master said, ‘When the way prevails be perilously high-minded in your speech and conduct; when it does not prevail, be perilously high-minded in your conduct, but be prudent in what you say’ (The Analects 171). Prudence and recognition of context are guiding forces in all elements of life, including the sage’s conduct and speech. Importantly, Confucius draws a distinction between relative behavior and silence—one does not sacrifice their conduct to poor society, but one does exercise responsible speech. To understand this last distinction it is necessary to appreciate the importance of context in the Confucian world view, particularly as it relates to the Dao. Confucian rhetorical sensibilities are grounded in the same pragmatic source as his understanding of Ren-Dao. For Confucius, the authority of his teaching is directly related to the social implications which they administer and produce both in society and the individual, and this includes proper speech conduct.42 This social orientation is most evident in the decidedly human-valuation of the Dao/Human relationship: “It is the person who is able to broaden the way..., not the way that broadens the person [15.29]” (The Analects). This human emphasis (which might suggest Confucius is in some fashion procreator of truth) is balanced by Confucius insistence that he was merely a conduit of authentic Dao to his own times: “Following the proper way, I do not forge new paths” (7.1).43 What is significant to Confucius conception of his role is both the contextual relevance to his own space and time, and the ongoing, historical roots of this truth. In other words, Confucius used this historical validation to support his own contextualized claims, thus rendering his Ren- Dao a source of legitimacy outside his own subjective limitations while at the same time acknowledging the role of context and individual perspective to affect the immediate experience of Dao. Reflected in this philosophy is an awareness of the constant flux and change of life and a unique belief in the proper human relationship and role to Dao, a relationship that is essentially interdependent. Because of its decidedly social-orientation, Confucianism relies on proper social conventions—particularly evident in his reliance and valuation of rites and ceremonies—to

71 insure proper development and practice of Ren-Dao. (This reliance on human convention and ceremony will be a critical point of contention with the works of Zhuangzi.) Thus the potentially confusing state of following a pre-established ‘Way’ while at the same time suggesting that it is the person who broadens the Way (and not the other way around) is best understood for its correlative sensibilities. It becomes a necessary response of Dao’s interconnected nature to balance the whole for true actualization of Dao. In other words, the interconnected nature of the immediate and pervasive Dao manifests itself in all elements of life (including speech, including human understanding of Dao) not as a causal, objective essence that resides outside human action and thought, but a fully participant element shaping—and being shaped by—human action and understanding. As a consequence of this understanding, Confucian rhetoric is also imbued with the correlative condition, relying on the authenticity of his instruction to be condition by, and demonstrated by, the same interconnected forces of Ren-Dao that aid all elements of proper conduct. There is no separation of essences in the Confucian world view, including speech, including the disciplines of ‘rhetoric’ and ‘philosophy.’ Rather, all things are essences formed, in part, by their interconnection with one another. Speech, as an element of life and subject to Dao’s influence, can and will manifest in varying forms (good or bad, glib or edifying) by consequence of the individual’s determination to accept and actualize authentic Dao for Confucius (Ren-Dao). Determination of speech’s authenticity, then, is simply a matter of observing (like all actions of a person) its affect—(“Watch their actions, observe their motives, examine wherein they dwell content; won’t you know what kind of person they are? Won’t you know what kind of person they are?). Confucian ming bian, like his philosophy, rests in its assurance that the authentic Dao (a harmonious state of being for individual and society) is validated by its manifestation in life—a condition directly tied to his correlative understanding of interconnected becoming. This reliance on ‘evident’ authenticity will be another contention with Zhuangzi, but for Confucius it was a critical element to his general philosophy, one built upon the example of the Zhou Dynasty

72 and also observable (to authentic Ren-Dao individuals) in the immediate context of his own times and society. One small (but significant) aside concerning Confucian ming bian and Chinese rhetoric in general. As evident in the citations above, The Analects are structured around the dialectic of question and answer, call and response. The “wise dicta” (Graham Disputers 7) of Confucius represents a hallmark of Chinese tradition, where sages were valued and sought after for their answers to those most pressing issues of life and society. Interestingly, The Analects represent a compilation of recorded Confucian statements drawn from the memories of his students. Unlike the Socrates/Plato authorship, however, there appears to be no compelling concern regarding what is the ‘Master’s’ words and what are his students. This is explained in part by the Chinese correlative sense of meaning, which given the interconnected and constantly changing nature of things would not worry over the recorded nature of Confucian teaching. What is important is the truth of the words themselves, a truth that is validated by their observable affect in society and the individual’s life. Consequently, the Master’s teachings represent a truth that is very much Confucian and true by its nature of authentic becoming when put in practice. The fact that these truths may have been ‘edited’ (over time or by consequence of further reflection) is merely a matter of the consequence of change and interconnected reality. Confucius and Confucianism are as bound to context as anyone or thing, a condition evident in the conversational mode and subject matter (conventions of society and best practices). Further, the truth of Ren-Dao does not need Confucius to remain true or evident in society: 17.9 The Master said, ‘I think I will leave off speaking.’ ‘If you do not speak,” Zigong replied, “how will we your followers find the proper way?’ The Master responded, “Does tian speak? And yet the four seasons turn and the myriad things are born and grow within it. Does tian speak?’ (208) Like all things, Confucius is neither source of, nor disconnected from, the manifestation of Dao in the framework of life and meaning. Such a position lets Confucius rest in the authority of an authentic Dao whose nature—while constantly changing in context—remains fixed in its

73 ultimate actualization, the highest form of which is Ren-Dao. Thus Confucius can remain silent (or speak) as context demands, not as condition of truth’s actualization. Confucian Dicta A final point regarding Confucius ming bian before moving on to an examination of Zhuangzi. The dialectical dicta of Confucius appears to privilege brief, concise answers to immediate questions of how. This is not uncommon to early Chinese thinkers (or for that matter, some pre-Socratic Greek thinkers such as Heraclitus). However, it does distinguish itself from the often layered and lengthy dialogues of Socrates. To that end, it might be argued that Confucius is not concerned with conceptual definition or involved debate of meaning. His answers reflect a more immediate and pragmatic response to complex questions of how. However, that said, it would be a mistake to equate Confucian brevity with a lack of depth or complexity altogether. Rather, these guiding conversations and observations are uniquely fitted to a world view that emphasizes a correlative sensibility. In other words, Confucius is not trying to arrive at the truth by a separate, complex argument of terms and meaning of what is truth, to then subsequently impose such conceptual truth upon the subject’s actualization of truth. Instead, the truth of Ren-Dao is evident in the actual conduct of society and people. Consequently, his short insights and depiction of proper conduct reflect an understanding of truth as manifestly evident in its actualization, not its explication. Further, the brevity of Confucian dictas also acknowledges the complexity (however paradoxical this may seem to a causal sensibility) of life, including the necessity of careful communication regarding truth, particularly in light of the interconnected state of humans and the sensibility of constant change. As such, Confucius is willing to say what can be said (or should be said) to a given question, but with care and caution. This is in part because he recognizes the inevitability of affecting others (by nature of life’s interconnected nature): 5.12 Zigong said, “I do not want others to impose on me, nor do I want to impose on others.” Confucius replied, “Zigong, this is quite beyond your reach” (The Analects 98).

74 This is not to imply that it is within Confucius reach, but is understood for the reality of human interconnected nature in becoming. Consequently, Confucius conciseness allows for and anticipates the reader or listener’s own full position in the actualization of Ren-Dao and the consequence of shifting context. To venture too much reflective explication (for Confucius) is to risk losing the Ren-Dao’s variable and shifting nature. In other words, to speak too much risks imposing unintended meaning on future (or past) varying contexts and thus enforcing an artificial paradigm of meaning that holds no connection to the real life situation, a fatal flaw to the actualization of genuine Ren-Dao: 2.16 The Master said: “To become accomplished in some heterodox doctrine will bring nothing but harm” (79) Though later Chinese thinkers (including later Confucians like Mencius and Hsunzi) will develop more discursive works (both in terms of philosophical explorations and rhetorical argument), their reliance on correlative sensibilities—including an emphasis on analogy— remains constant in their ming bian. Reflected in this emphasis is the determination to sort out meaning by balancing apparently conflicting conditions of life and the context of constant change. Analogy, by nature of its interconnected, flexible meaning is uniquely suited to the correlative sensibilities of constant change and interconnected, progressive becoming. In other words, rather than rely on the causal tendencies of essences and being (reflected in the Socratic determination to arrive at objective definition) of the West, Chinese thinkers developed and employed their own sensibilities to both their argument and world view. One of the more unique responses to this correlative sensibility in Confucian ming bian (and to some extent Chinese rhetoric in general) is the determination to acknowledge context and change through flexible and open—what Hall and Ames call “productively vague”—argument. Confucian dicta, its brevity, is just one manifestation of this understanding in his ming bian. While some later thinkers will develop still more extensive and discursive ming bian, analogy and the sense of flexible, contextually-aware argument will be a hallmark of Chinese rhetoric and distinguish it from the Western tradition’s more objective and causal tendency. In either

75 case, convention was both shaped by, and helped shape, the various tradition’s general sensibilities toward language communication and truth. Turning now to Zhuangzi and Kierkegaard, I will examine two thinkers who took particular interest in how convention determined a concept of language and knowing that they, at least, felt unreflective of the complicated potential and limitation of language to convey truth. As a consequence, Zhuangzi and Kierkegaard will take up and in many ways challenge the pivotal sources of Confucius and Socrates, respectively. In doing so, they not only build upon their respective tradition’s emphasis of causal or correlative meaning, but further push the bounds in which language and truth can be understood in light of one another.

76 Chapter Three

Zhuangzi: General Introduction The work, Zhuangzi, is generally associated with Master Zhuang (or Chuang Chou) from the fourth century B.C.E. Though many scholars regard the entire 33 chapters to be a composite of several hands, the opening seven “inner chapters” are traditionally thought to be written by Master Zhuang himself. The record of Zhuangzi’s personal life is very limited. What is known is that Zhuangzi lived in a “climate of vigorous philosophical debates over issues of morality, politics, and epistemology” (Lu 238). These debates included the schools of Confucius and Mencius, the sophist Hui Shi, Mo Tzu and the Legalists, among others. Rhetorically, although these scholars offered unique and various ideologies: “there was [among them] a general agreement regarding the power of symbols in shaping society and the life of the individual for the better” (Lu 238). Zhuangzi, however, challenged conventional thinking, pointing out what he saw as the abuse of such symbols and language by his peers. To that end, Zhuangzi believed the efforts of Confucius, Hui Shi, etc. in conventional language and argumentation inevitably failed, instead creating a culture of “endless disputations over truth and falsehood” (Lu 239). Seeking to counter this climate of unproductive disputation, which he saw as enslaving, he offered instead a paradoxical philosophy designed to engage the individual’s own sense of truth and freedom. To accomplish this task, Zhuangzi would employ an equally paradoxical ming bian (rhetoric), one that operated on multiple and complex levels of subjective reflection and open discourse. At the heart of both his philosophy and his ming bian lies a complex understanding of language and its relationship to knowing, truth, and the individual. Among other things, the work of Zhuangzi suggests that language represents a paradoxical opportunity: it is at once both a limitation and possibility regarding truth. Subject to the vagaries of individual meaning and interpretation, language represented a complex and difficult task for the philosopher. Further, unless the individual was made aware of this difficulty, they risked genuine understanding and participation in the Dao. For Zhuangzi, conventional forces represented such a risk: a chain of meaning imposed on, and enslaving, the individual from true participation in the Dao. That these forces were evident and pervasive—had

77 become in fact, conventional—meant that every individual was at risk unless otherwise made aware of the danger. Compelled by his own questioning-awareness (an unease with the seemingly unqualified positions of the other sages), Zhuangzi sought to offer a unique and liberating ming bian of awakened reflection; one designed specifically to participate with the individual’s own reflection on knowing, freedom, and self. In offering his awakening reflection Zhuangzi did not want to simply replace one form of conventional argument with another. He wanted, instead, to create a space for the individual’s own awareness and reflection and allow the reader to find their own truth. To do so, Zhuangzi believed he must first challenge those chains of meaning imposed by conventional language use and understanding. As a consequence, Zhuangzi’s paradoxical ming bian is as much a response to what can and can’t be said in language about truth (including his own position), as it is a deliberate strategy to awaken the individual to their own truth. This unique ming bian is described by Kuang-Ming Wu as “following along” or “participating in” language (174). ‘Following along’—like most of Zhuangzi’s work—is directly connected to his philosophy of wu wei. As such, his ming bian is a complex practice of rhetoric, one that does not impose but anticipates and addresses the difficulties of subjective knowing and language through indirect communication. It is the practice and presence of this indirect communication that will be the focus of this chapter.44 Daoism, Language, and the philosophy of Wu Wei Along with Lao Tzu, Zhuangzi is considered one of the most significant scholars of the Daoist philosophy and much of his wisdom reflects—and illuminates—many of its central elements. Among other things, Daoism is unique for its unconventional approach to meaning and knowledge, including its conceptions of Dao. Properly understood Dao—for Laozi and Zhuangzi—defies description: “If the Way is made clear, it is not the Way” (Chuang Tzu: Basic Writings “Discussion on Making All Things Equal” 40).45 Often the paradoxical nature of this claim leads some to suggest that Daoist philosophy is antagonistic to language and rhetorical expression. To the contrary, Daoism enjoys a significant, though complex and unconventional, relationship to rhetorical expression. More correctly understood, Daoism “does not condemn speech and argumentation but simply points out their limitations” (Lu 225). Further, from Zhuangzi’s perspective this limitation is not an ending point, but the start of what can still be known outside language.

78 This last notion is reflective of Zhuangzi’s general understanding of Dao as an interconnected and process-oriented philosophy. As a Daoist, Zhuangzi possesses what Hall and Ames term a “radical processive acosmology.” (their emphasis Anticipating 234), the essence of which is that all things are in a state of becoming.46 This process-oriented position is shared among most Chinese scholars of the time, including Confucius. What makes Zhuangzi’s understanding different is his Daoist interpretation of just how to participate in this becoming. To that end, Zhuangzi centers his Dao in the complex practice of wu wei;47 and it is this understanding of wu wei that allows Zhuangzi, ultimately, to illuminate that “which cannot be made clear.” Wu wei has been translated variously as “non doing” (Kuang-ming Wu 78), “doing nothing,” (Graham 288), “non action, spontaneity” (Lu 231) and “nonassertive, noncoercive action” (Hall and Ames 333). Significantly, all of the translators above are quick to point out that their interpretations should not suggest that the authors intended one to literally “do nothing.”48 Instead, wu wei suggests a deliberative response, one that takes careful consideration of the context surrounding a given event or person and, acting in accordance with what is best for the harmonious state, does not interfere or impose unnecessarily on the situation. The term was not unique to Daoism, but was used by a variety of Chinese thinkers, notably Confucius and Hui Shi. What distinguished Zhuangzi from Confucius or others, however, was the degree to which wu wei takes precedence in the scope of Dao, his “Way” to truth. Confucius, for example, saw wu wei as a relegated response to an already established state of harmony: “One who put in order by doing nothing [wu wei], would not that be Shun? What is there that he did? Just assumed a respectful posture and faced south” (15/5. Disputers Graham 14). As a consequence of understanding, the ruler does not impose or coerce his will on an already ordered world, but participates freely in its state (Hall and Ames Thinking Through Confucius 168). Here wu wei is an active and participatory ‘non-action’ designed to let the harmonious state continue its becoming. However, wu wei by itself could not bring about such a harmonious state. For that, Confucius advocated Ren-Dao and all its various forms of ritual, rites, and relational behavior. In such an understanding, the practice of wu wei could only be a responsible reaction; not a central, fundamental position of Dao. For Zhuangzi and Laozi, however, the concept of wu wei does take on a more extensive and radical role. According to both, wu wei is a central element to the individual’s most

79 authentic participation in life, freeing the individual from inhibiting convention or overly rational-dependent responses—responses artificial to the true Dao. As a consequence, wu wei is the fundamental practice to Dao. Wu wei, according to Daoism, is a recognition that life and people and instances are inherently complex and interconnected. Consequently, conventional appeals and rationalizations that fail to recognize this complex, interconnected reality are artificial. Convention often preconditions a ‘thing,’ ‘event,’ or ‘person’ by recourse to an objective standard arrived at through human reason. Ultimately, such a condition fails to bring about true understanding of Dao. Zhuangzi and Laozi’s wu wei, on the other hand, embraces the conditions of process and becoming by looking for meaning that is alive and contextually aware. Wu wei is a philosophy for rendering the complete perspective of a given thing or event, what Kuang-Ming Wu describes as “flexible, cautious, and alive” (79). This flexible, alive, state is both a perspective on perspective, and a deliberate self-catharsis of convention and fixed response. That said, to be truly open, “flexible, cautious, and alive,” wu wei itself cannot be a predetermined disposition of meaning or behavior. Instead, it must be constantly open to the circumstance and implications of an ever changing world. Consequently, Laozi and Zhuangzi believe wu wei cannot be artificially defined (that is, objectively reasoned and explicated) or systematized in response. Instead, as a radical response to what they see as Dao, wu wei must be constantly open to the various contexts surrounding each event and/or person. This includes Laozi and Zhuangzi’s own explanation of wu wei. As a consequence of its open condition, both Laozi and Zhuangzi employ paradoxical language and shifting, flexible descriptions of wu wei illuminations. Not only is this intended to unsettle fixed or conventional conceptions of meaning, it also represents a refusal to systematize their own conceptions of wu wei. As a result, wu wei is never “defined” as such in either text, but is a condition pointed to through indirection and illumination. While perhaps frustrating for the individual looking for definition and systematized meaning, the complex action of no-action requires Laozi and Zhuangzi avoid imposing such artificial and limited structures on what is essentially alive. However, they suggest, it is this very acknowledgment of shifting conditions that make wu wei such an empowering and necessary step to true freedom. A study of Laozi and Zhuangzi’s individual philosophies of wu wei, where they concur and where they differ, represents a complex and extensive project. Consequently, summations of

80 their differences risk reductionism and oversimplification. That said, there are differences. To expedite my own efforts with Zhuangzi and his ming bian, I will simply point out what has been noted by more than one scholar of both Daoists: there exists in Zhuangzi’s philosophy and ming bian a broader sense of practices as well as a different tone of meaning (Lu; Hall and Ames; Graham). The former is evident in Zhuangzi’s many different forms and styles of meaning. The latter is demonstrated by Zhuangzi’s unique tone of freedom and play that characterize much of his ming bian. This is distinctly different from the more serious and sometimes negatively- oriented ming bian of Laozi.49 Finally, while both Daoist share a need to communicate what, for them, cannot be made too explicit, too clear, their individual responses to this dilemma, like their various approaches to wu wei, remain unique. As A. C. Graham notes: This position sets both thinkers the problem of finding a language adequate to deal with a fluid whole with which we lose touch in dividing ourselves from it by the distinguishing, naming, and immobilisation of parts. To cope with it Chuang-tzu moves freely between many styles, Lao-tzu perfects just one. (Disputers 219) The style that Graham refers to is Laozi’s use of reversals. Lu describes Laozi’s “solution” this way: “Laozi’s philosophical and rhetorical views are conveyed not by a coherent explanation of concepts but through a deliberate twisting of normal thought patterns, including reversal of words” (236). A typical example of this practice is seen in Chapter 43 of the Dao De Ching: What is of all things most yielding Can overwhelm that which is of all things most hard. Being substanceless it can enter even where there is no space; That is how I know the value of action that is actionless. But that there can be teaching without words, Value in action that is actionless, Few indeed can understand. (Tao Te Ching Waley trans 93)

81 This reversal of convention and “thought patterns” reflects both the Ancient Chinese general correlative sensibilities and Laozi’s own unique position to Dao. Rhetorically understood, Laozi’s style embraces his wu wei philosophy, awakening the reader to the limitations of rationality and convention by reversing perceived values and conceptions of meaning and, as a result, revealing the interdependence of both. In addition, his reversals reveal the Dao without explicitly naming or defining it in the language of convention. What is ‘not said’ by Laozi’s reversals, but consequently revealed is derived from the space created in his ying-yang of meaning. Laozi’s reversals, including the passive over the active and a preference for the unspoken to spoken, facilitates a more complete illumination of authentic Dao. It is this space of meaning that Laozi wants the Chinese society to return to, if they are to most fully participate in the authentic Dao. Zhuangzi, too, will employ “reversals,” but of a significantly different variety. Like Laozi, Zhuangzi’s reversals are intended to liberate full understanding and awaken the reader to convention’s constraining chains. This includes an examination of language’s paradoxical limitations and possibilities. If there is a difference, however, between Laozi and Zhuangzi’s use of reversals, it is in the latter’s elaboration of the form and his unique emphasis of irony and humor.50 As such, where Laozi liberates through one profound rhetorical strategy—reversals of conventional thinking, utilizing “interrelated metaphors” (Graham Disputers 225)—Zhuangzi employs a variety of anecdotal paradoxes and poetic forms.51 To that end, Zhuangzi does not limit himself to the metaphoric “reversals” of Laozi, but instead delivers a tour de force of shifting ming bian perspective and reversals of conventional thinking and form, which includes (among others): anecdotes, dialectic argument, metaphor, and paradoxical self-reflection. As a consequence, in Zhuangzi figures of authority are often made the least authoritative, common conventions of time and perception are turned on their head, traditionally ‘dark’ subjects are recast in light-hearted tones, and seemingly straightforward argumentation explodes into paradoxical, poetical visions of non-logic and subjective dreaming. Zhuangzi blends all of these elements into his work, often within the same passage. Argumentation, Knowledge, Perspective, and Language Like most Ancient Chinese philosophers, Zhuangzi saw the world in terms of its correlative, interconnected nature. But unlike his contemporaries, Zhuangzi was not satisfied

82 with what he saw as dogmatic or relativistic approaches to understanding this interconnected nature. Instead, Zhuangzi sensed there was more to the world than what is evident in conventional arguments. Further, he was suspicious of its seemingly disconnected relation to the subjective individual experience. As such, Zhuangzi believed dogmatic and relativistic arguments were a refusal to understand the interconnected world and language’s role in it. Through an over reliance on language’s explicit nature or an equally problematic obsession with language’s tenuous nature, convention marked unnatural boundaries to what was essentially a fluctuating and alive consequence of meaning. In other words, arguments that sought to distinguish truths (whether absolutely or relativistically), provided only a limited and flawed perspective, one hiding its failures beneath a ming bian of language-dependent objectivity: ...So [I say] those who divide fail to divide; those who discriminate fail to discriminate. What does this mean you ask? The sage embraces things. Ordinary men discriminate among them and parade their discriminations before others. So I say, those who discriminate fail to see. (Chuang Tzu: Basic Writings “Discussion on Making All Things Equal” 39) What was needed, according to Zhuangzi, was a new understanding of argument and perspective: one that acknowledged and encompassed the interconnectedness and complexity of the world around us; one that repositioned language in light of its perspectival nature. In addition, it remained for Zhuangzi to illuminate how discriminations “fail,” and why his philosophical position was not yet another (however clever) “discrimination.” Finally, he must do so in a language that does not fall victim to the same pitfalls of his opponents. To accomplish the first task, Wu suggests Zhuangzi built his response around three fundamental principles of essence and interrelatedness. The first principle, “things are as they are, each in its own way responding to others” (Wu 174), determines the second and third. In the first principle Zhuangzi suggests that the ontological interdependence of each thing is revealed in the way they become apparent in the world around us. In other words, “the living self- arrangement among things is structured in a twofold manner: On the one hand, their self- arrangement bespeaks distinct non-collapsible identities of things. On the other hand, the fact that it is self-arrangement among things indicates that such arrangement obtains in their mutual interaction, to the extent of interdependence and interchanging of identities” (Wu 172). Through

83 the principle of essence and responding, Zhuangzi acknowledges both the thing-itself and its interdependence on the world around it. It is only as a consequence of the thing itself responding in its interdependence, we can know the thing-itself: Everything has its ‘that,’ everything has its ‘this.’ From the point of view of ‘that’ you cannot see it, but through understanding you can know it. So I say, ‘that’ comes out of ‘this’ and ‘this’ depends on ‘that’—which is to say that ‘this’ and ‘that’ give birth to each other. (Chuang Tzu: Basic Writings, “Discussion on Making All Things Equal” 35) From this primary principle of interconnectedness arise two additional principles involving judgment. The second principle argues that “things are so interdependent that universally valid judgment is impossible...” (Wu 174). As a consequence, the third principle suggests: “...the validity of judgment depends on the perspective from which it is made. And the perspective depends on the subject, which is [itself] not unchanging” (174). According to Wu the three principles conclude the individual’s only available valid perspective is essentially existential: If the specificity of things entails their specific relations with others (point 1), then such interdependence prevents a particular proposition and argument from being unqualifiedly valid (point 2). The validity of judgment and argumentation now depends on the life-situation of the subject (point 3). Validity is perspectival and existential (174) From the position of interrelated understanding, Zhuangzi suggests we can then respond in one of three ways. We can ignore the implications of interrelatedness (including the difficulty of maintaining an unqualified position) and respond “dogmatically.” Contrarily, we can become “obsessed” with it, and suggest that everything is “relativistic.” Finally, Zhuangzi suggests we can transcend both problematic dogmatic and relativist responses, and instead “participate” in the interrelatedness of the whole, “allow[ing] ourselves to freely respond to it” (Wu 174). In his ming bian on position, language, and truth, Zhuangzi was directly challenging two voices from his own contexts convention of thinking: Confucius (whom he respected) represented the first response; and Hui Shi (who was his friend) the second. In each case, Zhuangzi believed the thinkers held an inappropriate position on language’s relationship to truth.

84 The third response, his own, was an attempt to answer the question of language and knowing without falling victim to the problematic nature of either the first or second response. In his ming bian of these principles and responses, Zhuangzi demonstrates both where the first two responses fail, and what is still available to the individual. First Response: Confucian Dogmaticism Marked with its own correlative sensibilities, Confucius Dao justifies its practices of rites and ritual by the recognition of its truth actualization. In other words, Ren-Dao is necessary because Ren-Dao is evidently responsible for social and individual harmony. This is “evident” to Confucius and his followers by recognition of its essential nature in becoming: “Refinement is no different from one’s basic disposition; one’s basic disposition is no different from refinement” (12.8 The Analects 155). This conclusion, argue the Confucians, is determinable by their awareness of the exemplary person’s evident authoritative nature. Relying on a dogmatic (almost tautological) hierarchy of meaning, Confucianism determines its right to know what is true Dao by the enhanced nature of those achieving authoritative quality: “The Master said, ‘The authoritative person alone has the wherewithal to properly discriminate the good person from the bad’” (4.1 89); “The Master said, ‘In going astray, people fall into categories. In observing these divergencies, the degree to which they are authoritative can be known’” (4.7 91). For Zhuangzi, however, no common ground can be found in which to make this declaration. In other words, it is clear by the ongoing argument (which Confucius is participating in) that there is no consensus on this “authoritative” person and/or Dao. Further, Zhuangzi reveals the hidden nature of claiming common or known ground of meaning: Suppose you and I had an argument. If you have beaten me instead of my beating you, then are you necessarily right and am I necessarily wrong? If I have beaten you instead of your beating me, then am I necessarily right and are you necessarily wrong? Is one of us right or wrong? Are both of us right or are both of us wrong? If you and I don’t know the answer, then other people are bound to be in the dark. Whom shall we get to decide what is right? Shall we get someone who agrees with you to decide? But if he already agrees with you, how can he decide fairly? Shall we get someone who agrees with me? But if he already agrees with me, how can he decide? Shall we get someone who disagrees with both of us? But if he already disagrees with both of us, how can he decide? Shall

85 we get someone who agrees with both of us? But if he already agrees with both of us, how can he decide? Obviously, then, neither you nor I nor anyone else can know the answer. Shall we wait for still another person? […] But waiting for one shifting voice [to pass judgment on] another is the same as waiting for none of them. (Chuang Tzu: Basic Writings “Discussion on Making All Things Equal” 43-4) Consequently, there remains no “fixed point” (definition, method or otherwise) for Zhuangzi to measure a thing for what it is worth, good or bad, authoritative or not. Given the vastness and complexity of an interconnected but subjectively-realized perception of truth, no dogmatically derived position was viable. Consequently, Confucian dogmatic neglect of interdependence imposes a problematic “staticity” on the reality of life: “Such dogmatism locks us in our own illusion and prejudice” (Wu 174-5). It does not insure we are right, simply because we argue for a given position; particularly when we argue for a position that fails to address conflicting or complicating “truths” over and against our own. Said another way, the Confucian tenets of proscribed ritual and rites fail to address the natural state of life outside mere human understanding. In this light, Confucian Ren-Dao is not an immanent truth handed down from a “Golden Age” of Sagehood, but is dogmatic and dependent on an unqualified claim (by Confucians) that their understanding of the “truth” is the most qualified/best response to Dao. For Zhuangzi, at least, this was not apparent, particularly in light of what he saw as the convoluted and impractical nature of Confucian rules: “The way I see it, the rules of benevolence and righteousness and the paths of right and wrong are all hopelessly snarled and jumbled. How can I know anything about such discriminations?” (Chuang Tzu: Basic Writings “Discussion on Making All Things Equal” 41). Consequently, Confucian reliance on an historically ideal understanding of truth is undermined by the actual vagaries of the same. Faced with such a disconnected answer, Zhuangzi rejects any dependence on proscribed, dogmatic notions of truth.52 However, this did not necessitate for Zhuangzi an essentially relativistic answer either. In fact, he refused to give in to the essential relativism, noting that such a position was just another form of limited meaning. Further, Zhuangzi believed manipulating argument simply to win is just as deadly to the individual as an unexamined dependence on objective knowledge.

86 This included clever arguments to justify relativism as the essential state of all truth, a position held by Hui Shi. Second Response: Hui Shi’s Relativism Caught up in the seemingly endless possibility of denying any position in language, Hui Shi offered complex paradoxical arguments of space and knowing (e.g. “The south has no limit yet does have a limit” (Disputers 78)). He concluded by his logic that no position is tenable to truth, but that everything could be affirmed negatively. For Zhuangzi, however, there remained the possibility that there exists a truth outside the limitations of reason, logic, and argumentation to explicate. In such an understanding, then, Hui Shi’s endless disputation and clever arguments are revealed as equally limited, a construct of meaning that fails to acknowledge the possibility of truth outside human reason and argumentation. Again, perspective is crucial, though in this case, Zhuangzi turns Hui Shi’s relativism on top of its head, revealing it to be equally ‘dogmatic’ in what it says about another’s knowledge: Chuang Tzu and Hui Tzu were strolling along the dam of the Hao River when Chuang Tzu said, “See how the minnows come out and dart around where they please! That’s what fish really enjoy!” Hui Tzu said, “You’re not a fish—how do you know what fish enjoy?” Chuang Tzu said, “You’re not I, so how do you know I don’t know what fish enjoy?’ Hui Tzu said, “I’m not you, so I certainly don’t know what you know. On the other hand, you’re certainly not a fish—so that still proves you don’t know what fish enjoy!” Chuang Tzu said, “Let’s go back to your original question, please. You asked me how I know what fish enjoy—so you already knew it when you asked the question. I know it by standing here beside the Hao.’ (“Chuang Tzu: Basic Writings Autumn Floods” 110). The subtlety of this argument is not simply in the perspectival questioning of subjective knowing but the argument’s light-handed tone. Zhuangzi’s playful nature is reflective of his own position—a position that cannot ultimately be the authoritative voice of knowing, but is both singularly independent from, and interdependently related to, the other’s. It is Zhuangzi’s correlative sensibility of self-arrangement among others, his wu wei of not imposing yet

87 remaining open to all/everything, that answers the question of what can be known. In this case, Zhuangzi’s playful use of the “rational” argumentation of Hui Shi demonstrates both Zhuangzi’s acknowledgment of rationality, and his own unique perspective on its limitations. In the conversation Zhuangzi both acknowledges relativity and challenges the ultimate relativistic position of “no position” by Hui Shi, described by Wu as “universalized negation” (6). Such a position, Zhuangzi points out, applies equally to Hui Shi, leaving Hui Shi with nowhere to stand. This leads to an “indifferent withdrawal” that leaves the subject “an impotent observer detached” from reality, which is in itself unrealistic as “participating” in reality is exactly what we do as humans (even if it is to play the constant devil’s advocate and undermine all other positions) (Wu 175). Consequently, for Hui Shi to deny any and all positions and rest in clever argumentation is for him to withdraw from what is evidently all around, including his own being: we take positions as humans. For Zhuangzi, argumentation for argumentation sake, then, is just another form of the problematic dogmatic position, albeit this one is the paradoxically dogmatic contention of relativism. Zhuangzi respects the relative nature of human perception and truth, but unlike Hui Shi is not obsessed with it to the point of making it yet (another) dogmatic position. Consequently, for Zhuangzi meaning and knowing cannot be reduced to mere subjectivity or universal objectivity. Instead, the subject must acknowledge both the communal experience of shared meaning and its contingent individual perspective: “you already knew when you asked....” However paradoxical this subjective/communal experience may seem it cannot simply be dismissed by relativism, nor can it be grounds for universal meaning. Some things appear evident by what we share in common experience, including knowing. However, given this, are we then certain that knowledge is held universally? It appears, given our subjective nature and the constant state of change, we cannot be sure (Zhuangzi’s response to Confucius). That said, given this relative condition, are we then certain “we” cannot know “together”? Given our shared experience of recognizing a state however subjectively (Zhuangzi’s knowing the fish are happy and Hui Shi’s apparent recognition of the same) it appears we cannot, with certainty, say we do not know something together. (His response to Hui Shi). How then, in the end, can Zhuangzi know the fish are happy? Hui Shi knows already: by the fact that he is standing by the Hao watching them. His answer reveals the limitations of relativism and position as much as it affirms their existence. Graham makes a similar point in

88 Chuang Tzu: The Inner Chapters: “Chuang Tzu’s own final stroke of wit is more than a mere trick with the idiom An chih ....one of the standard ways of saying ‘How do you know...?’ What he is saying is: ‘Whatever you affirm is as relative to standpoint as how I see the fish while I stand up here on the bridge” (“Stories About Chuang Tzu, Note” 123). Consequently, Hui Shi’s relativism is in a sense as dogmatic as the dogmatist, refusing to acknowledge that his own affirmation of relativity is itself a denial of standpoint. Throughout the exchange Zhuangzi is careful not to allude to a source of knowledge or rely on argumentation to arrive at an ultimate, universal answer: “There is no answer to ‘How do you know?’ except a clarification of the viewpoint from which you know; which relates to the whole of your concrete situation” (Disputers 81). In this case, the “concrete situation” is Zhuangzi and Hui Shi on the bridge overlooking the fish from which Zhuangzi feels compelled to comment, “The fish are happy.” He makes the observation in the spirit of knowing that in this case, from his view point, it is “true.” In the end, the actual truth of Zhuangzi’s “knowing” is still up in the air, but now with a different emphasis: it could be that he does know. Neither relativism nor dogmatism offers a sufficient platform from which to judge the accuracy or inaccuracy of his observation. Relying exclusively on these two forms is to limit the actuality of the event: Zhuangzi’s observation moves beyond truth determined by relativism or dogmatism. Fundamentally the question becomes (and remains) for Zhuangzi: how can one know if anyone (including himself) know anything objectively enough to make it a universal truth? In his ming bian, Zhuangzi asks this question again and again and from a variety of positions, disrupting the assured dogmatic position of the Confucians, and the relativistic embracing Sophists, each in their own right by the one question that neither properly answers: how do you know (that is, finally, ultimately, the truth)? Third Response: Zhuangzi’s “Perhaps”; or ‘Practical’ Transcendence But of course, the final question applies equally to Zhuangzi’s own work. How can Zhuangzi know his position is correct? To answer that question, Zhuangzi opts not to provide a fixed position (which would be contrary to his wu wei sensibilities) but offers instead a flexible response that seeks to transcend dogmatism and relativism and remain within the “alive” Dao. Zhuangzi’s own answer, the third response, appears at first to be relatively simple and straight forward: the individual must freely respond. However, as his ming bian makes clear it is neither simple nor straightforward.

89 Allowing ourselves to ‘freely respond’ to a situation is an attempt to address the complexities of positionality and knowing in a reality that demonstrates, and is revealed by, its interconnected nature. Confucian Ren-Dao, and its fixed precepts of proper rites and ritual, ignore their own situated and fixed position of meaning. Such a position is unreflective of the interconnected actuality, and arguments unqualified position. Similarly, Hui Shi’s relativism precludes any sense of meaning, ignoring the revealed thing itself and leaving the thinker in an untenable (and ultimately equally fixed) rejection of meaning. In both instances, the thinker has crafted an unnatural limitation of fixed meaning on what is essentially alive, constantly changing, yet still (known) by its revealed essence in this unfixed state of change. Consequently, to fully appreciate and freely participate in such a world, our positionality must also remain unfixed. This “unfixed” positionality cannot remain essentially relativistic, as this is unreflective of what is ‘known,’ what is revealed (however paradoxically) by way of its interconnected response—its self arrangement—among others. Nor is it dogmatically flat; fixed and determined by the past or ideal. Zhuangzi’s own response, “following along,” is an attempt to keep alive, even in argumentation, the interconnected reality. For Zhuangzi, following along is opening up to the interrelatedness of things and seeking illumination in what is the subject’s own interrelatedness—“active and responsive”—to the way of things (Wu 175). Ames describes this unique position thus: “...[t]he ‘way’ in which the Daoist seeks to pursue personal ‘realization’— the highest quality of knowledge—is to coordinate one’s conduct with the emergent cadence and regularity of the world around one” (Ames 220). By recognizing the positioning of subject— it’s self and it’s self-interrelatedness to all things—Zhuangzi believes we can begin to understand the proper way to view life; we can free ourselves from the “fetters” of a dogmatic viewpoint or an equally problematic relativistic point of view. But how does one go about recognizing this interrelatedness and not fall victim to dogmatic or relativistic assumptions of meaning? How does one “freely respond” to the Dao? How does one participate freely and openly from their situated self perspective and interrelated self-arrangement? What “valid position” remains open to a subject who is in constant change? The Position of No-Position To answer this challenge, Zhuangzi poses a paradoxical challenge to both the reader and himself. He admits this tenuous position, while at the same time poking gentle fun at those who

90 think they have the “defined” answer anyway: “How can I be the only muddled one, and other men not muddled?” (Chuang Tzu: Basic Writings 33). More than a simple resignation to knowing’s impossibility, or an unqualified reliance on human reason to establish objective knowledge, this position paradoxically resides in the open engagement. Zhuangzi is not saying that he ‘knows’ and therefore others do not ‘know,” or vise versa. Nor is he saying that he can offer a way to ‘know,’ or that others have/have not offered a way. Rather, he is residing in what he feels is still the first and only position from which to understand the condition: open engagement, wu wei; what Wu calls a “position of no-position.” Wu describes Zhuangzi’s position of no-position this way: [Zhuangzi affirms] (by way of opposition) every view, including his ownwithout being stuck in it. Life is larger than logic; in life p is not exactly not-not-p. Insistence on p indicates an “orthodox” dogmatic affirmation; insistence on not-p is a sophistic iconoclasm. Assuming not- not-p indicates an affirmation without affirmation, an affirmation that accommodates opposition, a position of no position, an affirmative non- position (Wu 6). Thus, the position of no position builds on the “radical interdependence” of things, a central philosophical underpinning of Zhuangzi’s wu wei. Importantly, Zhuangzi is not residing in relativism, but is open to possibility. He is taking an active position in life/meaning (a position) by remaining open to the answer’s own complex presence. This is more than just a clever “argument” out of a rhetorical dilemma. Wu refers to Zhuangzi’s “positioning” as not just a stance, but a way of living (Wu 175). It is a way of fully appreciating and participating in the wonder of life by accepting and taking part in the interdependence of things. From such a position, fully engaged and open, the individual can then best respond to each and every instance of meaning freely. Wu translates this moment as “the Pivot begins to obtain its middle point” (175); Watson interprets this as “the hinge of the Way” (35). The “Pivot” or “Hinge” of the Way is, in fact, the wu wei response to life’s interrelated nature and represents the natural position (i.e., the position of no position) from which to judge and respond to all things, including truth, including language and argumentation, including knowing. In other words, for Zhuangzi, the Pivot or Hinge of the

91 Way is the positional solution to the dilemma of perspective, subjectivity, and the interrelatedness of all things. To illustrate his position of no-position, Zhuangzi returns again and again to his self- questioning of not-knowing knowing, often employing multiple voices and varying contexts to underline the fluctuating essence of perspective. This position is particularly evident in the section, “Discussion on Making All Things Equal”: Nieh Ch’ueh’s asked Wang Ni, ‘Do you know what all things agree in calling right?’ ‘How would I know that?’ said Wang Ni. ‘Do you know that you don’t know it?’ ‘How would I know that?’ ‘Then do things know nothing?’ ‘How would I know that?... (40) Later, the Shadow gives a similar response in his conversation with Penumbra: ‘How do I know why it is so? How do I know why it isn’t so?’ (44) Or, (though this by no means exhausts the whole of Zhuangzi’s discourse on position and perspective) there is Chü Ch’üeh-tzu conclusion with Zhuangzi himself: “Obviously, then, neither you nor I nor anyone can know the answer...If so were really so, it would differ so clearly from not so that there would be no need for argumentation” (43-4). This self-reflexive questioning of knowing in Zhuangzi operates in two directions. First, it challenges both the dogmatic assurance of ‘knowing’ and the relativistic stance of “never knowing.” In his own context, this meant challenging the dogmatic (to Zhuangzi) implications of Confucius’ Ren-Dao and the relativism of Hui Shi, the Chinese Sophist. Second, it provides the groundwork for what can’t be said in language and argumentation---the third response; freely responding; Zhuangzi’s wu wei of meaning. To that end, Zhuangzi remains in the constant of the Dao. Such a state is, for him, fundamentally “free and easy, roaming” in the truth. Referring to the happy fish story above, Kuang-Ming Wu describes the response as “not so much something to be found as an ever- present horizon and ambience in which to dwell and ambulate, as the fish in the water roaming in self-forgetfulness and mutual forgetting” (100). This is the ‘answer’ to Zhuangzi’s question of

92 knowing: it is to remain in the open, flexible state of, perhaps; a condition that, in part, makes language explication of truth highly paradoxical. Keeping to his Daoist principles, the Dao remains the inexpressible truth for Zhuangzi. A truth that can only be realized in the awareness of wu wei and participated most authentically, most freely, in an individual’s recognition of their limited ability to express or know all of life’s complex and changing forms of meaning. Paradoxically, this means that Zhuangzi can use the “truths” (and figures) of other schools of thought to reveal his own understanding. Zhuangzi recognizes that Confucianism is not without value, the Sophists are not necessarily “wrong,” and Zhuangzi is not necessarily “right.” He can use all of these resources to make and support his own point and at the same time reveal where they can still be challenged. The answer is not clearly contained in any one perspective but is suggested in perspectives’ multiplicity. Then again, truth may still be outside any and all perspectives. This complexity of multitudinous perspective, for Zhuangzi, is not a problem to overcome through reason and argument of distinctions, but is the truth of reality, knowing, and meaning. To accept this is not to fail to find an ultimate answer but to find an answer that is most suited to the truth of the interrelated, interdependent, constantly changing, Dao/reality. Zhuangzi’s question/position, then, is not intended as defeatist resignation. Instead, it illustrates a positive quest for true understanding and acceptance that allows for freedom, a hallmark of Zhuangzi’s message. It is to approach each new context and situation in light of what we can know in subjective experience without slipping into problematic relativism, and yet still remain open to what we cannot say, finally and objectively, is a universal truth. Or, in other words what Wu calls the position of no position, and what I refer to as the position of “perhaps.”53 Consequently, Zhuangzi’s style and rhetoric, his questioning of the conventional responses to those perennial questions of truth, his language and meaning are all intended to free the reader from the chains of conventional meaning, not fetter them in new chains of despair, fear or nihilism. For Zhuangzi, the complexity offers not hopeless resignation to relativism or the necessity for a dogmatic response of idealism or imposed constant universals, but rather the complexity reflects the reality of a constant, interconnected whole that is fluid and is best understood in light of this fluidity and interconnected nature. It offers freedom.

93 In keeping with his fundamental understanding of freedom, Zhuangzi is always careful to be paradoxically “careless” with his own position and message. He acknowledges the complexity of position (including his own), and his acceptance/participation (his “following along”) with this reality in his equally complicated ming bian . Consequently, nowhere does Zhuangzi rest in a definitive position and/or answer. The question of ‘knowing’ follows throughout the work, constantly reminding the reader that this, too, is but an individual experience/perspective, albeit one willing to fully engage with its perspectival nature. When Zhuangzi does “answer” the perennial questions with his own position on truth it is always wrapped within the paradoxical and inexpressible truth that resides in Dao. Thus, the conclusion of Chü Ch’üeh-tzu and Zhuangzi’s discussion of knowing: ‘But waiting for one shifting voice [to pass judgment on] another is the same as waiting for none of them. Harmonize them all with the Heavenly Equality, leave them to their endless changes, and so live out your years. What do I mean by harmonizing them with the Heavenly Equality? Right is not right; so is not so. If right were really right, it would differ so clearly from not right that there would be no need for argument. If so were not so, it would differ so clearly from not so that there would be no need for argument. Forget the years; forget distinctions. Leap into the boundless and make it your home’ (“Discussion on Making all things Equal” 44). Zhuangzi is not simply complicating dogmatic and relativistic positions, here. Such a practice would only open the door for his opponents to suggest that he is merely being argumentative and not offering his followers anything of substance. However, to offer an equally distinguishing answer in the morass of meaning created by the other schools would, for Zhuangzi, be only giving into the very same problematic determinations he is fighting. Instead, he offers insight designed to give possible direction or illumination to the truth, all the while resting in the awareness of the subjective individual’s paradoxical relation to that same truth. In the end, he offers the “leap into the boundless,” a tellingly similar rhetorical call to Kierkegaard’s “leap of faith” as we shall see in chapter 4 (though with obvious theological distinctions). It is a call that recognizes the subjective-interconnected paradox of knowing, as well as the condition that what-cannot-be-said in language might still, nevertheless, exist, and not insisting on naming it might, finally, be the truest expression of freedom.

94 The latter is in keeping with, and relies, on Zhuangzi’s position of no position. Zhuangzi employs language in all its various forms in an interrelated ming bian that calls for participation of the reader to his message. Turning now to the actual ‘language’ employed by Zhuangzi we can see how his philosophy is incorporated into his rhetoric, or ming bian, to create a message that illuminate in, and beyond, language. Beyond Mere-Language Many scholars have noted the “poetic” nature of Zhuangzi, his use of metaphoric stories, paradoxical language, and humor (Watson, Ames, Lu, Wu). These strategies are critical to his message and inform, critically, their meaning: “...Zhuangzi’s poeticity is so much a part of his philosophy that missing his poetic poeticity amounts to missing his thought” (Wu 26). I would suggest that this poetic (and often paradoxical) sensibility is Zhuangzi’s acknowledgment of the limitations and possibilities within language, and his participation in the wu wei of what is language. In short, his answer to the dilemma of illuminating the Dao in language. As I noted earlier, Zhuangzi is not anti-language, on the contrary he sees it as necessary reality of life. In fact, Zhuangzi’s position of no position allows him to see the opportunity present in language. This includes an understanding of perspective, the interdependent nature of things, and the available practice of wu wei to most freely participate in that which is beyond mere logical or rational argumentation to demonstrate. Such a perspective allows language to be a tool to illumination without falling to the erroneous belief that it has defined, ultimately, truth, or in Zhuangzi’s understanding, Dao. As a consequence of his understanding, Zhuangzi employed various types of ming bian strategies—a reflection of the very complexity he wants to illuminate—to illustrate his own ‘positions’ of/in language. Here again, “language”54 (or the strategies Zhuangzi employs) should be understood in the interconnected significance of Chinese sensibilities, particularly Zhuangzi’s view of Dao. Consequently, the ming bian strategies Zhuangzi employed cannot be objectively “discriminated” or “defined” as types independent of one another and of hierarchal value. Rather, communication as a whole manifests the complexity of positionality understood from the interdependent nature of a “non-collapsible identit[y]...among things” (Wu 172). In other words, the same understanding that marks Zhuangzi’s philosophy of knowing and perspective is carried over into his ming bian: things are interconnected selves among other things, both self-arranged, and arranged among other things. Thus the strategies Zhuangzi employs should also be

95 understood as interconnected, and not separate, intrinsic elements to be used independently of one another. On the other hand, Zhuangzi’s use of the three strategies is also an ironic attempt to recognize the limitations of language-communication. As language-communication is also a part of the world of interconnected selves-self-actualizing, it is also subject to perspective, and thus makes truth a problematic proposition to define explicitly. Thus, Zhuangzi’s general claim that one cannot “define” the “Way”—it is beyond definition by nature of its unfixed, alive nature: “If the Way is made clear, it is not the Way. If discriminations are put into words, they do not suffice” (“Chuang Tzu: Basic Writings” 40). This ‘insufficiency’ is most evident to Zhuangzi by the actuality of language’s performance in arguments for the Dao. Zhuangzi finds his peers’ reliance/use of language problematic. For Zhuangzi, these thinkers become either obsessed with language’s tenuous nature, or ignore it. Thus, in another critical passage from section two “Discussion on Making All Things Equal,” the roles of language-communication, and the fundamentally existential quality of knowing, are taken up and examined in Zhuangzi’s paradoxical ming bian of wu wei: Words are not just wind. Words have something to say. But if what they have to say is not fixed, then do they really say something? Or do they say nothing? People suppose that words are different from the peeps of baby birds, but is there any difference, or isn’t there? What does the Way [Dao] rely upon, that we have true and false? What do words rely upon that we have right and wrong? How can the Way go away and not exist? How can words exist and not be acceptable? When the Way relies on little accomplishments and words rely on vain show, then we have the rights and wrongs of the Confucians and the Mo-ists. What one calls right the other calls wrong; what one calls wrong the other calls right. But if we want to right their wrongs and wrong their rights, then the best thing to use is clarity (34). Zhuangzi’s open-ended questioning of “words” is intended to reveal conventional reliance on language’s ability to name, to distinguish “fixed” realities. That this is seldom the case, even among the most like-minded individuals is an indication of language’s limitations and misappropriate use in explication of certain truths, particularly the Dao. From such a position, the Dao can apparently “exist” in one school of philosophy (Confucianism) and not in the other

96 (Hui Shi, the Mohist, etc.) However, according to Zhuangzi, such a condition (the language of distinctions) is unreflective of the reality, where Dao is not subject to any one fixed articulation, school, word, or philosophy. It is in all and everywhere, fluid and responsive (or it is not the Dao). Of course, as all arguments are subject to this dilemma, Zhuangzi is prohibited from giving an unqualified, definitive, and constant description of the Way, as well. This would appear to present Zhuangzi with a problem: if language is limited, if perspective is constantly changing and subject to interrelated contexts, how can he argue for his own position? In other words, how can Zhuangzi employ language from outside his own perspective? He cannot. Therefore, Zhuangzi must find a solution in language (like his position of no-position) that allows for meaning to make itself fully available—including its open, flexible, alive nature— without succumbing to the danger of imposition. Zhuangzi’s answer is to intertwine his philosophy of interrelatedness, knowing, and positionality with the ‘actuality’ of language. Language, which is limiting if used to define (discriminate) the ways of knowing, can still be illuminating of the “truth” if given the proper understanding. In his ming bian, Zhuangzi develops and demonstrates an understanding of wu wei-communication, including a free and easy roaming in Dao illumination. One important element of this wu wei-communication is to use various rhetorical/ming bian strategies to awaken the reader to language’s limits, as well as its potential, to illuminate truth. That said, Graham, Wu, and Lu suggest there were three critical ming bian strategies used by Zhuangzi in illuminating Dao. Graham offers three translations: “lodging place;” “weighted saying;” and, “spillover saying” (Graham Disputers 201). Again, it is important to remember Zhuangzi does not use these strategies separately, but intertwines their unique natures and allows them to create still further meaning by resonating with one another. Each strategy builds on the other and is reflective of their interconnected nature, both in terms of style and position itself. Consequently, Zhuangzi employs all strategies/styles freely and without hierarchy or system of meaning. He often jumps from one strategy to the next in order to illuminate his own position. Consequently, ‘words’ or ‘saying’ (e.g., spillover saying) should not be read in the strictest Western rhetorical sense of (a) proper style for (a) proper affect (i.e., each style is distinct from the other and creating a similarly distinct effect). Rather, they are used in the Chinese correlative sense of interconnected meaning and position. Their ‘meaning’ (or

97 effect) is a consequence of the whole, not the individual moments or parts isolated from one another. Lodging Place Words According to Graham the first strategy, “lodging place,” is the “rhetorical act of temporarily lodging language in the other person’s standpoints, because the meaning they give to words are, for them, the only meanings, and debate is impossible on any other basis” (Graham Disputers 201). The emphasis here is on what is “meaningful” to a given person/context and expediting further discourse. As such, the practice of lodging words is often a matter of citing familiar conventional argument (including conventional voices and positions) to invoke the familiar: to create a temporary position of shared identity/meaning; to make a connection of meaning (however tentative) with the other. Zhuangzi repeatedly demonstrates this strategy throughout his work, often putting words in the characters of Confucius or Hui Shi to position the argument. This practice of lodging his words allows Zhuangzi not only to create identity with his audience, but paradoxically undermines this same process by pointing out how tenuous the practice can be in terms of actual meaning. In typical Zhuangzi fashion, neither Confucius nor Hui Shi are always incorrect, inevitably “straw characters.” On the contrary, Zhuangzi employs these characters from a multitude of positions, some contrary to the original author’s intent, some consistent. Consequently, “citing” Confucius (or Confucian argument) demonstrates the actuality of that particular argument/position, Zhuangzi’s awareness of it (including his own understanding), and the possibility of still more debate with those for whom these “words” are the “only meanings.” In short, Zhuangzi is prepared to argue in the ‘words’ of others (including conventional practices of ming bian), but wants to illuminate this precarious position, as well. He wants to remain in the flexible, alive state of wu wei. Because Zhuangzi refuses to give in to any one argumentative style or logic, the lodged words represent an illustration of how convention depends on meaning through fixed, limited language and form. It is not Zhuangzi’s intention, then, to merely gain ‘audience acceptance’ of the argument in question, but to create an awareness in the audience that this is a practice of meaning, not a genuine and universally understood reality. Nowhere is this more evident than when Zhuangzi shifts the voice of Confucius as authority to the voice of the unaware; or, in a similar vein, his frequent use of Hui Shi as a friendly foil to illustrate Zhuangzi’s own position

98 for, or against, Hui Shi. This ‘friendly’ nature (and it includes Confucius, as well) is significant. Zhuangzi does not want to dismiss out of hand the argument or meaning of the others. Instead, he want to participate in what he sees as genuine disagreement. One consequence of this friendly nature is that Zhuangzi appears to agree at times with both Confucius and Hui Shi. Though it is also apparent he is still prepared to move beyond their limited, conventional understandings where it is appropriate. To illustrate this last point, the shifting voices of authority in “lodging saying” are also often frequently marked by ironic implications. For example, names sometimes become symbolic of their personages nature and argument. “Mr. Jittery Magpie” wonders what is proper behavior for a working Sage (and is dully reprimanded for it). At other times, characters are living contemporaries. Laozi is present in The Zhuangzi, as well as Hui Shi, Confucius, assorted Emperors and various well-known figures. Still other times, Zhuangzi incorporates traditional legendary figures (e.g., the ‘river god’ and ‘Jo of the North Sea’). He also uses conventionally marginalized figures as voices of authority (‘the Nameless Man’; ‘criminals,’ marked by the removal of limbs). In the latter case, these figures often instruct the legendary Sages of Confucius, et al; a practice uniquely Zhuangzian and highly unconventional. Finally, as Watson notes in his introduction: “...[Zhuangzi] invents a variety of mysterious and high-sounding pseudo-technical terms to refer to the Way or the man who has made himself one with it...e.g., Great Clod, Supreme Swindle, True Man” (Chuang Tzu: Basic Writings, intro 20).55 All of these examples, in part, are a practice of ‘lodging saying,’ however complicated Zhuangzi intends this to be. They would be at once both recognizable and familiar to the reader and yet still carry with them the hint of something still more, something alive by nature of its ironic implications. In using both the conventional/familiar—and at the same time undermining the practice by his use of irony—Zhuangzi participates in language in both the immediate conventional understanding and his own challenging perspective. Such a perspective, however, cannot remain simply in the presence and challenge of “lodging saying.” This ming bian strategy is affective in garnering a connection, but that “still more” meaning that Zhuangzi seems to be indicating, seems to demand further explication. For Zhuangzi, this hinted meaning resides in the experience of the individual, which is both part of, and distinct from, conventional argument and/or positions of meaning. It is so because of its

99 unique nature as experience: that is, each individual is to itself a source of meaning and interpretation that cannot be solely determined or explicated by common convention. Consequently, the second type of strategy, “weighted saying” relies on the authority of experience: “It is what you say on your own authority” (Graham Disputers 201). This has particular significance to Zhuangzi as it privileges both the self-arranged individual and experience (a realization of the reciprocity of things to the subject). In “Supreme Happiness,” Zhuangzi offers his understanding of true “happiness” and the world’s failure to recognize it: This is what the world honors: wealth, eminence, long life, a good name. This is what the world finds happiness in: a life of ease, rich food, fine clothes, beautiful sights, sweet sounds. This is what the world looks down on: poverty, meanness, early death, a bad name. This is what it finds bitter: a life that knows no rest, a mouth that gets no rich food, no fine clothes for the body, no beautiful sights for the eye, no sweet sounds for the ear. People who can’t get these things fret a great deal and are afraid—this is a stupid way to treat the body...What ordinary people do and what they find happiness in—I don’t know whether such happiness is in the end really happiness or not. I take inaction to be true happiness, but ordinary people think it is a bitter thing. I say: the highest happiness has no happiness, the highest praise no praise. The world can’t decide what is right or wrong. And yet inaction [wu wei] can decide this...The inaction of Heaven is its purity, the inaction of earth is its peace. So the two inactions combine and all things are transformed and brought to birth....Heaven and earth do nothing and there is nothing that is not done. Among men, who can get hold of this inaction? (Chuang Tzu: Basic Writings “Supreme Happiness” 111-2) Significantly, throughout the monologue Zhuangzi remains in the in-between state of not knowing while responding, as his ‘self,’ to the what he sees around him. Here, “weighted saying” participates freely in the discourse surrounding happiness, reflecting on the nature of happiness as an interconnected self among others; aware of the convention but free to participate differently than the convention. Weighted saying dwells within the self experience of meaning. In Zhuangzi’s case this includes the paradoxical limits of a self among others; a perspective with both limits and opportunities to understand and share meaning in language, if only first

100 understood for its perspectival nature. Throughout his discussion of happiness, Zhuangzi is pointedly aware of his audience. Thus, this is a heartfelt reflection on a critical state of living (what is it that makes us happy), shared openly and with the necessary cautions of perspective, with the reader. It is Zhuangzi sharing his ‘experience’; an act that is significant by its ‘weighted’ nature of what he can, with some authority, speak on. Finally, Zhuangzi’s ming bian uses “spillover saying,” perhaps the most important of the rhetorical strategies he employs in his message (Graham Disputers 201). Spillover saying, or as Wu refers to them “goblet words” (21), demonstrate two important elements of Zhuangzi’s poetic style. First, it is consistent with his Daoist conception of meaning and language: “It is the speech proper to the intelligent spontaneity of Daoist behavior in general, a fluid language that keeps its equilibrium through changing meanings and viewpoints” (Graham Disputers 201). Secondly, it demonstrates a constantly self-reflexive articulation of meaning (Wu 23). By the continual use of paradoxical language, metaphoric stories, interchanging characters (some metaphoric, some based on real characters in history), poetic structure and a never ending exploration of meaning from multiple positions, Zhuangzi provides a message in a language that lets the reader respond to the messages limitations and opportunities. Spillover or Goblet words, then, incorporate both other languages (lodging and weighted) and moves in still another direction by its unconventional use of paradox and poetic language. Spillover, though often directly addressing the paradoxical, is nevertheless built around the presence of the other two sayings. To experience the full impact of spillover saying, the reader must experience the other two sayings; to illuminate what makes spillover ‘spillover.’ In other words, one can’t “spill” over if the jar is not already full. The presences of lodging and weighted words fills the jar of Zhuangzi’s message with recognizable material allowing for him to then depart from the familiar and move to what cannot be said within the convention. As such, spillover is not a distinct language from the rest, but is interconnected and builds upon the other languages. A critical element of spillover saying is its authorship of meaning. In the Zhuangzi, the reader becomes a deliberate co-author of meaning. To accomplish this, a definitive position is never articulated, but an overall “meta-message” arrives through the co-production of reader and Zhuangzi, spillover or goblet words, and the reader’s own experience. The “spill” of spillover saying is the additional meaning left unarticulated but nevertheless still present (and most

101 importantly, now acknowledged/pointed to) by the paradoxical and poetic nature of Zhuangzi’s ming bian. Said another way, by employing paradox and the poetic, Zhuangzi can illuminate what cannot be ‘said’ directly. Paradox opens a space for undermining convention yet still providing truth; poetic language remains alive, flexible, avoiding strict forms and expressions, playing in language and meaning. When the world’s smallest fish becomes a bird of impossible size (opening passage of “Free and Easy Wandering), more than just a clever metaphor on perspective is involved. The fact that the reader can participate in the conception of these unconventional, presumably impossible, situations is a testament to both human participation in meaning as well as its veritable nature. The condition recognized is not just the ability to imagine/experience the paradox, but what the paradox calls attention to: Zhuangzi is reminding the reader that language, like meaning and life, is eventful, alive. Hence, in a sense, all of Zhuangzi’s philosophy is evident in “spillover sayings.” It is both the culmination of the other two languages and the opportunity for still more: to illuminate truth without directly defining truth. It is in this way that Zhuangzi hopes to communicate a message of freedom without fettering, to point a way to the “Way” without proscribing, and to reveal the limitations of language while paradoxically employing the same. To that end, spillover sayings are an attempt to alert the reader to language’s limitations and possibilities; to invite the reader to participate in their own meaning by engaging the full potential of meaning. While Zhuangzi’s poetic metaphors are difficult to understand in their original form or translated,56 he hopes that the individual participates freely in the twisting, unconventional meaning (and does not insist on putting logic or conventional argument on the unfolding message). If they do so, then the “meaning” of Zhuangzi’s message becomes, not necessarily clear, but experienced, which ultimately is his point. In other words, to free the reader from convention, Zhuangzi must first overturn convention’s unquestioned prominence. His paradoxical metaphors and shifting voices of argument are purposely designed to do just that. One example of this practice has already been noted above: the unconventional use of “mysterious” terms/identifiers in lodging saying (e.g., “Great Clod,” “Supreme Swindle,” etc.) Throughout this unusual illumination of meaning, Zhuangzi is careful not to impose his own dogmatic answer on the reader, but to invite equal participation in the wonder of knowing (and equally significantly) not knowing; saying and not being able to say. Asking the reader to

102 “listen recklessly” as he recklessly speaks is the invitation of Zhuangzi to the reader to move beyond language. In typical Zhuangzi fashion, he uses dialogue and other ‘voices’ to convey his meaning. Referring again to the previously mentioned, “Mr. Jittery Magpie,” it is “Mr. Tall Dryandra Tree” who offers the following advice to his misdirected companion: “I’m going to try speaking some reckless words and I want you to listen to them recklessly (Chuang Tzu: Basic Writings “Discussion on Making All Things Equal” 42).57 This practice of “saying” and “listening recklessly” is possible, argues Zhuangzi, by evidence of the interconnected nature of being and the “still more” meaning outside convention, human reason, and language. In other words as things are both independent of, and interrelated to, each other, language cannot determine all experience any more than it can be dismissed from it. In spillover language, Zhuangzi calls to the reader to “leap into the boundless”; a position free from the chains of conventional meaning and dependence on reason and logic (and language’s ability to explicate the same). The latter, while also part of life, is too limited to explain all of life if depended upon solely to find meaning. Perhaps the most well-known of Zhuangzi’s ‘spillover sayings’ is his dreaming of the butterfly: Once Chuang Chou [Zhuangzi] dreamt he was a butterfly, a butterfly flitting and fluttering around, happy with himself and doing as he pleased. He didn’t know he was Chuang Chou. Suddenly he woke up and there he was, solid and unmistakable Chuang Chou. But he didn’t know if he was Chuang Chou who had dreamt he was a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming he was Chuang Chou. Between Chuang Chou and the a butterfly there must be some distinction! This is called the Transformation of Things. (Chuang Tzu: Basic Writings “Discussion on Making All Things Equal” 45) Often cited and examined (both for its philosophical implications of subjective knowing and its compelling imagery), this story provides an unexpected twist to ‘awakening’ in meaning and knowing. There are a number of possible interpretations and ways to approach this piece. My effort here is to point out some of the more significant implications of its ming bian. I believe this passage represents a culmination of all Zhuangzi’s ming bian: his shifting voice of authority; his “position of no-position”; his diversity of languages (particularly spillover), and, ultimately, his wu wei. It accomplishes this by providing the reader a flexible

103 position of determining truth, a (wu wei) of knowing (i.e., perhaps Zhuangzi is dreaming he is the butterfly, or maybe the butterfly is dreaming Zhuangzi). This is then accompanied by the ‘weighted saying’ (subjective experience/opinion) that there “must” be a difference between the two. Zhuangzi ‘awakes’ from the dream to reflect on the dream. He may not know who the dreamer was, but through subjective experience he does feel certain that there is a distinction from his time in the dream and his time now awake. Finally, this state of distinction is answered with the equally paradoxical conclusion (spillover) that this difference is the fluid “transformation of things.” The final statement not only suggests the correlative sensibility of constant change, but Zhuangzi’s unique understanding of what this constant change means to perspective and knowing. Chuang Chou is left with the experience of knowing he is “awake” but now with the further complication of not-knowing to what extent he was the dreamer, or the dream. Because of their qualified tone and wording, the final two stanzas are open to various interpretation. My reading is that they suggest some apparent reluctance on the part of speaker to name the distinction explicitly. The speaker’s tone suggests in some ways that they are still wrestling with the question and answer of who is the dreamer. Though they sense there “must be some distinction,” they are not certain of its clear resolution. In this reading, the conclusion of transformation of things, or what Wu translates as “things changing” (153), is then more a resignation to the reality of constant change, and not a definitive answer of whether Chou or the butterfly where the actual dreamer. Thus the two dreams, “interconnected though mutually exclusive” (Wu 176), represent a complex positionality that refuses to give into anything objective/universal, while still remaining open to the subjective experience of meaning. That it does so in paradox and parable is uniquely Zhuangzian. Further, Zhuangzi builds on the correlative sensibilities of Chinese culture to offer his own particular experience of knowing—a knowing that is individual, subjective, but also open and residing in a state of being alive, flexible. It is not a determined knowing (an objective definition) but a recognition of something experienced, something understood without being fully explained. It is an answer that answers only from the subjective without falling to the necessity of relativism, yet still remaining open to the experience of knowing that there is an answer. It is an answer, of sorts, that simply tries to recognize the question in all its legitimate limitations and possibilities.

104 Zhuangzi and his Ming Bian of Awakened Reflection But what, then, is the point to all this complexity of language and position? How is Zhuangzi’s ming bian of paradox “freeing”? The answer to that, I suggest, becomes clearer in light of Zhuangzi’s audience and his particularly unique brand of playful irony. I have held off until now to address these final two points as they are essentially dependent on the previous material. In writing for the individual and couching all of his ming bian in a gentle irony of self- reflection and concern (sometimes teasing, sometimes playful, sometimes paradoxically dreaming, always caring), Zhuangzi demonstrates two of his most critical distinctions in meaning. First, his philosophy, and the ming bian that accompanies it, is fundamentally designed to arrive at a truth that is real without being imposing. It is a truth for himself. Secondly, his search compels him to recognize that others, too, may be involved (or need) the recognition of the search’s possibility. In keeping with his wu wei sensibilities, Zhuangzi determines that these others cannot be a lifeless, objective, standards of human ideal, but must remain in the Dao, alive, and flexible. As a consequence, Zhuangzi writes for the only other person who could possibly “live” in the Dao—a real, genuine, individual. Irony, Humor, and the Individual To that end, unlike Laozi, Confucius, and many of the other Hundred school scholars, Zhuangzi was not particularly concerned with the proper social and political implications of Dao for the society and the ruler of the state. Where Laozi’s message is directed, primarily, as a political treatise to answer the question: “how [can] the small state and the small man survive in a world of murderously competing powers?” (Graham Disputers 218),58 Zhuangzi’s audience is neither politically or socially-oriented (i.e., in the Laozian sense). For Zhuangzi, any attempt to “pass judgment on the world” would be tantamount to replacing one form of convention with another (Chuang Tzu: Basic Writings intro 6). This includes his judgment of what his best for ruling the state or forming a convention of society. Zhuangzi is essentially a-political and contextually ambivalent and/or open, and his audience is primarily, essentially, the individual— the reader of his text, whoever that may be. That is not to say that Zhuangzi did not believe his message inapplicable for heads of states. Indeed, that his philosophy is also important to those in positions of power is evident by the chapter “Fit for Emperors and Kings.” However, even here the emphasis of audience as an individual human is paramount. As such, the Emperor—while remaining within a unique

105 context—is still an individual. Consequently, Zhuangzi’s philosophy is essentially the same for him as the farmer, the criminal, or the poorest of poor: awaken to the truth in you. Therefore, all of Zhuangzi’s most essential points remain intact, including the reversals of conventional thinking on who is “great” and who is “small.”59 It is “fit” for the context of Emperors in that (ironically) it repositions them in light of their fundamentally human condition. In other words, what applies to the criminal or poor is fitting material for the Emperor, as well. The nature of this fit also reflects Zhuangzi’s unique style. Rather than a heavy handed or serious address to what is significant to the Emperor as individual, Zhuangzi invests his message with irony and humor. These qualities allow Zhuangzi to present his message of awakening from harmful convention (even to Emperors and Kings) in a paradoxically self- conscious “non-serious,” “non-threatening” manner that reaches beyond the limitations of formal instruction and deliberation. One of the most significant examples of this practice is Zhuangzi’s cautionary tale in the aforementioned “Fit for Kings and Emperors”: The emperor of the South Sea was called Shu [Brief], the emperor of the North Sea was called Hu [Sudden], and the emperor of the central region was called Hun-tun [Chaos]. Shu and Hu from time to time came together for a meeting in the territory of Hun-tun, and Hun-tun treated them very generously. Shu and Hu discussed how they should repay his kindness. ‘All men,’ they said, ‘have seven openings so they can see, hear, eat, and breathe. But Hun-tun alone doesn’t have any. Let’s trying boring him some!’ Every day they bored another hole, and on the seventh day Hun-tun died. (Chuang Tzu: Basic Writings, “Fit for Emperors and Kings” 95.) This paradoxically fatal/humorous ending is in keeping with Zhuangzi’s overall ming bian and philosophy. Two things are immediately striking: first the somewhat fatalistic repercussions of those who seek to help another conform; and secondly the light tone and humor Zhuangzi uses to relate the story. The first is a reflection of Zhuangzi’ general sense of wu wei, where the action of imposing, however well-intended, a conventional form (“all men have seven openings”) could lead to disastrous results, particularly for the individual. The second quality, irony and humor, embodies Zhuangzi’s unique approach to life and meaning and its subsequent presence in his philosophy. Zhuangzi is not afraid to use either irony

106 or humor in his message. In fact, both are frequent, if not central, elements to his philosophy. This, too, is in keeping with his understanding of wu wei, which recognizes all elements of life as viable indications to the Dao. Consequently, just as surely as humor is evidently a condition in life, it must also be present in any philosophy of meaning. The lesson of Hun-tun, then, suggests two things: 1) Zhuangzi’s warning to the individual caught up in convention; and 2) his willing playfulness to accepting life and its consequences. Like the dream of the butterfly, Zhuangzi seeks to awaken the reader to the potential of life from an awakened perspective. Such a perspective does not insure eternal bliss, but does provide a more authentic condition for responding to life; a condition that includes the uniquely Zhuangzian sense of awakening to the joy in life. There are a number of ways to describe this awakened condition and Zhuangzi’s accompanying ming bian. Xing Lu describes Zhuangzi’s philosophy, his wu wei, as a type of “spiritual freedom”( 242); his ming bian as a “transcendental bian” (247) Kuang-Ming Wu suggests a playfully engaged “poeticity” with life, a style whose “thought is a delight; it is both frivolously profound and wholesome” (26). A. C. Graham suggests the Zhuangzi is marked by “perfect fearlessness,” a state attained “to the extent that people are aware of the their circumstances and each other” (Disputers 233). Whether the awareness generated by Zhuangzi is described as “perfect fearlessness,” or “spiritual freedom,” or a playful “poetic-engagement” with life, the condition reflects a position that rests on the embracement of sometimes conflicting, often counter-intuitive perspectives of truth and/or reality (i.e., dogmatic/relativism; fear/resting; strong/weak; death/life). Xing Lu argues that this embracing of the complexity of life, the differing realms of truth, is reflective of the central Daoist understanding of truth: “In the Daoist scheme of things, the dao resides in both these realms [absolute and relative]” (Lu 247-8). It is just such a condition that Zhuangzi is attempting to awaken the individual to in his work. Zhuangzi’s embracing response is to open the argument—and the form of argument—to the vast variety of possibilities available to human persuasion and communication. This includes the conditions of irony and humor, qualities he employs with ample ability time and again in his own work. For Zhuangzi, to fail to use irony and/or humor philosophically is to present an incomplete picture of reality, no matter how extensive and objective otherwise the treatise.

107 Thus, combining both a philosophical study of the implications of Order and Chaos with the comical repercussions of “good intentions,” Zhuangzi illustrates how philosophy gains further perspective when it allows itself to be “free” to “roam” in all of understanding, including irony and humor. The issue of what goes wrong when human rationality imposes itself on the natural order of things—“and on the seventh day, Hun-tun (Chaos) died” is told through a humorous anecdote. Consequently, Zhuangzi looks with humor and irony at the face of human error, perspective, and knowing. As such, his metaphors are intended to expose both the philosophical point and the human element of perspective. To accomplish the latter he offers his understanding in an irony. In the case of Hun-tun, this is literally the ironic ending of Chaos. This draws the reader into a response that is made more significant by its poignancy. In other words, rather than simply telling the reader that following convention blindly has dangerous, even fatalistic, repercussions, Zhuangzi uses humor and irony to touch on those conditions of truth that cannot be named but nevertheless still exist. The use of irony and humor to convey what is normally the domain of “serious” philosophy is in a very real way another aspect of Zhuangzi’s understanding of the Dao. Specifically, Zhuangzi employed rhetorical strategies that sought to “transcend” the relativistic or dogmatic perspectives of convention, replacing them with a ming bian that is uniquely carefree—or, perhaps more appropriately, freely caring. Lu suggests, that Zhuangzi’s ideal speaker, the truly “free” speaker, engages in an authentic bian “...free from limitations, illusions, and deceptions. Such freedom allows an open, inclusive, and transcendent mind capable of absorbing and harmonizing different opinions” (250). For Zhuangzi, this evidently includes a very real appreciation of living, regardless of circumstance, good or bad: I received life because the time had come; I will lose it because the order of things passes on. Be content with this time and dwell in this order and then neither sorrow nor joy can touch you. In ancient times this was called the ‘freeing of the bound.’ (Chuang Tzu: Basic Writings “The Great and Venerable Teacher 81). Zhuangzi’s ming bian reflects the “freeing of the bound” and is filled with an ironic wink and smile to all the perceived worries and joys of the world and—most particularly—to all he says. Missing the importance this humor plays in his general meaning, or failing to note its effectiveness in conveying his message, is to miss an essential element of his philosophy: “All in

108 all, to freely roam in frolic and in playfulness is what things originally are and what we ought to be—that is, to be ourselves, in the fun of soaring and roaming” (Wu 111). It is no accident, then, that Zhuangzi makes the personified metaphors of Brief, Sudden, and Chaos all too human in foible intention; that he teases both Confucius and Hui Shi (his respected peers); that he daydreams a philosophy of a subjective knowing Chou and butterfly; that his language is not one form, but three; and that his expression and understanding of even the most (conventionally) frightening conditions of life (disease, deformity, and even death) are treated with unconventional wisdom and paradoxical hope. Two passages from the “fitting” (and, again, ironic) chapter, “Supreme Happiness” illustrate this last point. In the first, Zhuangzi is found by his friends “beating a drum” after his wife’s death. His answer to their concern over this apparent impropriety: You’re wrong. When first she died, do you think I didn’t grieve like anyone else? But I looked back to her beginning and the time before she was born. Not only the time before she was born, but the time before she had a body. Not only the time before she had a body, but the time before she had a spirit. In the midst of the jumble of wonder and mystery a change took place and she had a spirit. Another change and she had a body. Another change and she was born. Now there’s been another change and she’s dead. It’s just like the progression of the four seasons, spring, summer, fall, winter. Now she’s going to lie down peacefully in a vast room. If I were to follow after her bawling and sobbing, it would show that I don’t understand anything about fate. (113) The second follows the first and again considers death but also challenges conventional understanding of what is “normal”: Uncle Lack-Limb and Uncle Lame-Gait were seeing the sights at Dark Lord Hill and the wastes of K’un-lun, the place where the Yellow Emperor rested. Suddenly a willow [or in some translations, tumor] sprouted out of Uncle Lame- Gait’s left elbow. He looked startled and seemed annoyed. “Do you resent it?” said Uncle Lack-Limb. “”No—what is there to resent?” said Uncle Lame-Gait. “To live is to borrow. And if we borrow to live, then life must be a pile of trash. Life and death are day

109 and night. You and I came to watch the process of change, and now change has caught up with me. Why would I have anything to resent?” (113-4) Freed for a moment from the traditional bonds of authoritative meaning, Zhuangzi employs his metaphoric tales and paradox not only to illuminate his philosophical points in general, but also the complexity of meaning in human understanding. To that end, meaning is not contained solely by human events, or by reasoning, logic and argument. Meaning is present in humor and irony (as well) and poetry and paradox, and dreaming. Further, these sites of meaning are not relegated to ‘fitting’ subject matters or conventions of thought, but are appropriate, and essential, to understanding all contexts and subject matter. Hence, what is “normal” in appearance or expectation (or even behavior) can be shown for its perspectival and conventional nature by employing the paradoxical, the unconventional. A person lacking a limb was conventionally thought in Ancient China to be a criminal; death was traditionally a somber and feared thing. Zhuangzi not only empowers the conventionally un-empowered, he reverses conventional notions of what is happiness, what should be feared. As a consequence, this ‘play’ (or ‘transcendence’; or ‘fearless spirituality’) suggests, for Zhuangzi, a more authentic understanding of the individual to contextual meaning; including truth, including the Dao. In other words, this “play” with language is (for Zhuangzi): “more ‘literal’ than the literal language, for play language subtly and truthfully changes with the ever changing situation” (Wu 376). It addresses both Zhuangzi’s wu wei philosophy, as well as his apparent desire to participate in dialogue with the reader. Play is both a manifestation and a consequence of his awakened reflection; a state that compels him to live freely and easily in the moment, neither imposing his will nor rejecting his experience. It is a state that is open to meaning without predetermining that meaning. As a consequence of his awakening, Zhuangzi is not disheartened or fatalistic of life’s complexity and immensity (“life is larger than logic,” or human reason) but paradoxically released from the conventional worry/need for an explicit answer. That an answer may exist is possible; that it is a necessity (or even possible) that human reason and/or language can contain that answer is, for Zhuangzi, a troubling and misdirected understanding of the Dao’s true nature. And it is this, then, that I feel is the message of Zhuangzi’s ming bian and what makes it “freeing.” It is his attempt not to define the truth, but to illuminate his subjective concerns for human understanding of that truth. It is his intention, compelled by his understanding, to awaken

110 the reader to the same. To achieve this ‘illumination’ Zhuangzi breaks free from traditional argument and employs his own unique ming bian of meaning, justified by the apparent actuality that he can do so, and significant for the same reason. This includes his overturning the convention of language practices and understanding. This is exemplified in Zhuangzi’s final passage regarding the dilemma of language, meaning, truth, and knowing. It is, not surprisingly, another paradox; one self-reflective and seeking a fellow student of life: The fish trap exists because of the fish; once you’ve gotten the fish, you can forget the trap. The rabbit snare exists because of the rabbit; once you’ve gotten the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words exist because of the meaning; once you’ve gotten 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? (Chuang Tzu: Basic Writings “External Things” 140) Though writing in another time and context and embracing a different understanding of “ultimate truth,” Zhuangzi might, I would suggest, have found such a man in the spirit of Søren Kierkegaard.

111 Chapter Four

Søren Kierkegaard: General Introduction Søren Kierkegaard was born in Copenhagen, Denmark, on the 5th of May, 1813. He died at the age of 42, in 1855. Despite the brevity of his life, he was an incredibly productive writer. In addition to his twenty published works in Danish, Kierkegaard kept an extensive journal nearly all his adult life as well as numerous unpublished papers. Though no memoir or autobiography exists, the journal and papers represent a valuable insight into this most subjective of thinkers, particularly as they concern his conception of his own life and authorship. Their value as an insight, however, must be equally balanced by the paradoxical and complex nature of Kierkegaard’s particular understanding of truth and the individual. Kierkegaard believed the nature of truth to be a paradoxical experience that went beyond objective language and reason to qualify or define. As a consequence, he deliberately tried to complicate any objective understanding of the experience with truth in his own works. He went to great pains to foster this complication of what can be known and, more specifically, what can be said regarding truth. This meant in his own time becoming a carefully cultivated figure of “mystery” both in his writing and personal life (Encounters “Preface” xi).60 Nor was this mystery reserved to his public life or publication. Even while examining and reflecting on the significant elements of his personal life (including the death of his father, his broken engagement with Regine Olsen, his public mockery at the hands of the local periodicals, and his struggle with truth and faith), Kierkegaard wraps his writing in a subtle blanket of irony. As a consequence, the clearest example of this web of irony comes from his qualification of those same journals and writing so detailed with personal reflection. Anticipating later interest in his thoughts and life—and the inevitable appeal to his personal journals for more insight—Kierkegaard deliberately undermines his personal writing as sources into his actual nature: “After my death no one will find among my papers a single explanation as to what really filled my life (that is my consolation)...” (Soul of Kierkegaard 85). Consequently, while it is possible to garner a great deal of further insight from the journals, the value of this material must be carefully measured against Kierkegaard’s own understanding of their relevance to what “really filled” his life. In many ways this reflects Kierkegaard’s core position on subjective

112 experience and the individual’s relationship to truth: a relationship that is built around paradoxical implications of meaning that complicate any objectively derived position. That said, the practice of complicating positions of authority is remarkably consistent in Kierkegaard’s authorship. Because of his understanding of truth and language, Kierkegaard chose to operate with unconventional rhetorical strategies, including what he called “indirect communication,” to illuminate his own message. The latter included his frequent use of pseudonyms and his orientation to the subjective, paradoxical, and ironic. In creating this rhetorical curtain between his own direct thought and the words/arguments of his characters and, like a curtain both hiding and indicating the presence of something behind it, Kierkegaard believed he was answering the dilemma of truth’s own paradoxical nature. Kierkegaard described this process as writing “without authority,” or becoming a “spy” in the service of truth. This complicated position of illumination was a deliberate rhetorical strategy to accomplish Kierkegaard’s fundamental goal: to awaken the single individual to the terms of becoming. This awakening was not an attempt by Kierkegaard to compel believe, but to create awareness: “Compel a person to an opinion, a conviction, a belief—in all eternity, that I cannot do [...] But one thing I can do [...] I can compel him to become aware” (POV 50). Such an awareness included freeing the individual from the illusion of misguided convention, particularly the popular (and to Kierkegaard, problematic) reliance on objectivity and reflection regarding personal choice and behavior. Kierkegaard believed this delusion was so soundly embedded in his own time, not only by convention but self-deception, that it could not be easily removed by ordinary argumentation. Nor, because of his personal understanding of the nature of truth, could Kierkegaard simply replace the delusion with his own objective answer: the individual must be allowed to address and engage the truth on their own terms. As a consequence, Kierkegaard crafted a paradoxical illumination of an “honest deception,” a rhetorical subjective-experience of truth through “indirect communication” that addressed his unique understanding of his audience (and purpose), “the single individual.” Before addressing this unconventional strategy and unusual audience, however, it is first necessary to position Kierkegaard in the context which helps shape it. Philosophical Context: The Reflective Age Part of convention’s “typical methods and objectives”—and what would represent for Kierkegaard, the “passionless reflection” of his time—were prominently on display in the

113 philosophy of the 19th century (Gardiner Kierkegaard 15). As a student of theology and philosophy, Kierkegaard was well-versed in the age of speculative thought, represented predominately in the popular works of Immanuel Kant and G. W. F. Hegel. Though elements of Kant and Hegel’s work were appreciated by Kierkegaard for their scope and insight, he believed certain aspects of their philosophies were erroneous by consequence of their positions on objective reasoning. Further, he believed a problematic reliance on objective reflection was pervasive in the culture of his more immediate context, his so-called “Christian Denmark;” which to his mind was a “whole generation...stuck in the mud banks of reason” (Soul of Kierkegaard 214). The nature of this reflective age arose, in part, from a conflux of the continuing Western search for objective truth and the (then) new findings and influence of natural science. The latter was offering new “objective” positions and insights regarding critical elements of human understanding and meaning (including human nature and phenomenon). These “scientific” positions appeared to challenge many of the long-held dogmatic and metaphysical positions in both religion and philosophy. This, combined with philosophy’s own Skeptical movement, recast the questions of what we can know as humans in terms of empirical and objective proofs. One repercussion of this movement was the undermining of truth conceptions derived without empirical support or evidence (e.g. belief in a Supreme Being). Sensitive to this trend of objective and empirical reason, Kant and Hegel developed their studies of reason’s relationship to the phenomenon surrounding us. Derived in part with an awareness (and constructive appreciation) of the new complications of science and the growing sense of objective standards, each incorporated a similar “objective” approach to their own work in philosophical reflection. However, both Kant and Hegel were equally concerned with just how far empirical dependence could go in terms of human understanding and experiences of thought and reflection. In his transcendental idealism, Kant tried to draw a fine line between what we can know from experience and what we can know from reason. In part, he denied the centuries-old reliance on dogmatic truths, but at the same time also rejected empiricist claims that such notions as a universal morality or religious faith were unsupportable due to their lack of empirical proof. Hegel took and extended the Kantian speculative thought on reason and experience and developed an evolutionary account of reason’s development in human history. Both (in their respective fashions) offered compelling philosophies that presented systematic,

114 objectively-derived, and highly complex arguments for the presence of a transcendent source(s) of meaning: i.e., the Absolute, God, Freedom, etc. As a consequence, Kant’s transcendental idealism and Hegel’s absolute idealism represent some of the highest and most systematic work on speculative philosophy, past or present, and their immediate and enduring affect on the subsequent development of both Western culture and philosophy has been well-documented. This was no less true in Kierkegaard’s immediate context where the new philosophy appeared to offer a legitimate support of certain long-held truths (e.g. religion). This included his most immediate context: “[S]ophisticated Danish thinkers...who had been deeply impressed by ‘the latest German philosophy’ and who maintained that Christian orthodoxy had nothing to fear from its implications. In their view this philosophy, far from threatening the cherished truth of religion, could be both preserved intact and at the same time fully harmonized with the demands of reason by invoking the mediating categories of Hegelian system” (Gardiner 33). From Kierkegaard’s position, however, the effect was not the generally accepted advancement of human understanding through objective reason but a misappropriated use of objective standards in an area outside its realm. He believed elements of Kant and Hegel’s work (and particularly his own context’s sublimation of their work) represented an erroneous imposition of objective reasoning on those experiences that are essentially subjective and paradoxical. Specifically, Kierkegaard had in mind the individual’s relation to particular experiences of truth, to knowing; more specifically, to the experience of faith. To Kierkegaard, Kant and Hegel, “had, though in very different ways, sought to assimilate or subordinate the notion of religious faith to other categories of thought—Kant by treating its claims as postulates of practical or moral reason, Hegel by regarding it as prefiguring at a pictorial or imaginative level of consciousness ideas that achieved rational articulation within the framework of his own all-encompassing philosophical theory” (Gardiner 55). Kierkegaard would distinguish himself from both their efforts by his further qualification of objective reason from subjective experience. His effort was to reveal how Kant and Hegel’s assimilation and/or subordination of thought and faith was an erroneous understanding of the category of “paradox,” as well as a misdirected valuation of reason over and above subjective experience.61 To that end, Kierkegaard believed Kant’s attempt to make room for faith was flawed in one important distinction. Specifically, Kierkegaard agrees with Kant that pure reason alone

115 cannot provide a viable proof of certain concepts (including faith in God and the transcendental nature of morality). However, he is less convinced that Kant’s description of the ethical is an indication that there remains some transcendental ideal that posits such truths outside pure reason or empirical proof. Instead, Kierkegaard insisted that paradox was itself a category of meaning, one that allowed for faith’s possibility: “There is only one mistake in Kant’s theory of radical evil. He does not make it clear that the inexplicable, the paradox, is a category of its own. Everything depends upon that” (Soul of Kierkegaard 117). Kierkegaard believed that Kant’s attempt to objectively create room for the transcendental was, in some sense, a false application of what we can and cannot know: Until now, people have always expressed themselves in the following way: the knowledge that one cannot understand this or the other thing does not satisfy science, the aim of which is to understand. Here is the mistake; people ought to say the very opposite: if human science refuses to understand that there is something which it cannot understand, or better still, that there is something about which it clearly understands that it cannot understand it—then all is confusion. For it is the duty of the human understanding to understand that there are things which it cannot understand, and what those things are. Human understanding has vulgarly occupied itself with nothing but understanding, but if it would only take the trouble to understand itself at the same time it would simply have to posit the paradox. The paradox is not a concession but a category, an ontological definition which expresses the relation between an existing cognitive spirit and eternal truth. (Soul of Kierkegaard 117-8). Kierkegaard’s interpretation of the “human” element of understanding reflects his general philosophical interest: the limits of reason and reflection regarding the individual experience and knowledge of actual truth. His concern with Kant is with the distinction of what we can determine from experience and/or reason for the individual, and particularly in terms of the condition of religious faith. In short, Kant’s conflation, or “assimilation,” of faith with the ethical is, for Kierkegaard, to do disservice to both categories (ethical and religious). The room for faith is not derived from observation of the ethical and its implications to human life, but by the seemingly impossible condition of something outside human reason. Faith, insisted Kierkegaard, reflected this condition of something outside mere reason. As a category of

116 paradox, it represented the experiential ‘knowing’ of something that could not be proven and/or reasoned objectively. In the new world of scientific empiricism and objective standards this appears to be an untenable position to maintain. In point of fact, as Kierkegaard himself describes the situation, the individual experience/claim of ‘faith’ is “absurd” to such a perspective. However, just because something appeared absurd to certain human standards of reason did not preclude the possibility of faith from another standard. For Kierkegaard, faith was not something to overcome or explain through objective reason (presumably in part what Kant was doing in his attempt to make room for faith), but a condition of its real nature. What was in error—and what needed to be acknowledged—were the current conventional perspectives of objective reasoning and speculative thought were inadequate (or misappropriate) to the subjective/paradoxical conditions of faith. In other words, Kierkegaard argued that an improper application of objective and rational thought on what was essentially outside its purview had occurred, and he aimed in his own work to correct it. Kierkegaard’s concern with the categories of ethics and religion becomes still more evident in his critique of Hegel. The form of this critique generally took the position that Hegel “failed to grasp the crucial distinction between essence and existence” (Gardiner 9). To this point, Kierkegaard cast the systematic philosopher’s efforts in sharp relief: If Hegel had written the whole of his logic and then said, in the preface, that it was merely an experiment in thought in which he had even begged the question in many places, then he would certainly have been the greatest thinker who had ever lived. As it is he is merely comic. (Soul of Kierkegaard 90-1) Here, too, Kierkegaard felt that Hegel had made the error of inappropriate conflation of categories (and in Hegel’s case, on the grandest of scales). In a statement that might apply to both Hegel and Kant, the pseudonymous, Johannes de Silentio, makes this metaphoric observation: “...our generation does not stop with faith, does not stop with the miracle of faith, turning water into wine—it goes further and turns wine into water” (Fear and Trembling 37). To Kierkegaard, Hegel’s grand system of speculative thought was just such a movement, turning the experience of life—particularly at the individual level—into a problematic system of categories that appear to overlook critical implications of the actual individual experience. This had particular significance in Hegel’s depiction of Christianity:

117 Christianity begins more or less where Hegel leaves off: the misunderstanding is simply that that is the point at which Hegel thought he finished with Christianity, and even thought he had gone beyond it. I simply cannot help laughing when I think of Hegel’s conception of Christianity, it is so utterly inconceivable [...] (Kierkegaard Soul of Kierkegaard 189-190). The critical nature of this observation points to the personal significance Hegel’s “misunderstanding” has for Kierkegaard and offers some insight into why he takes up his unique polemic with such practices. The uniqueness of this challenge is represented in Kierkegaard’s deliberate unconventional argument. To that end, it becomes clear in Kierkegaard’s works that his defense/presentation of this critique is not an argument with Hegelian specifics (i.e., addressing each conception and/or point of argument one by one), but a complex challenge to the general practice of deriving particular meaning from a distant point of reflection. As a consequence, the rhetorical form this critique takes is designed specifically not to participate at the objective-logical level of point by point argument, but to address the more evasive and larger consequence of explicating life in these terms: “As [Kierkegaard] himself presents [his positions/critiques], they take the form of an ironic and often diffuse commentary on certain key speculative assumptions rather than a step-by-step examination of Hegel’s particular arguments and inferences...” (Gardiner 81). In this argument by “commentary” Kierkegaard takes up again the “paradoxical” categories of meaning that are left over from where Hegel “finishes.” Specifically, this is the category of faith; and more specifically still, what is required of faith. Reversing what he believed to be a conventionally held hierarchy of truth, Kierkegaard suggests it is in fact the subjective that is the essential condition to understanding the world around us: “Objectivity is believed to be the superior to subjectivity, but it is just the opposite. That is to say, an objectivity that is within a corresponding subjectivity is the finale. The system was an inhuman something to which no human being could correspond as author and executor” (Point of View 185). In other words, the lived-experience (including the lived experience of the paradoxical faith) could not be understood in terms of human reason and/or ethics alone. Kierkegaard’s strategy, on the other hand, attempts to address this critical and overlooked (or ignored) condition—the actuality of experience (including the paradoxical experience of faith)—by making it a central element of his own writing. To address the error of objectively

118 “where no one lives,” Kierkegaard initiated a series of unconventional writings dealing with “the spheres” of actual existence, whose categories were represented by the esthetic, ethical, and religious (Gardiner 40). Kierkegaard’s Spheres of Existence as Subjectively-Actualized Experience Kierkegaard’s spheres of existence are complex, and each sphere receives extensive coverage from a variety of different points of view in Kierkegaard’s authorship. Consequently, a full philosophical study of any one sphere (like Zhuangzi’s wu wei) is beyond this paper.62 However, that said, insight into their complex and distinctive natures is still available by a focused study of their equally complex rhetorical presentation. To that end, one aspect of the sphere’s complexity is in their telling. Kierkegaard’s indirect communication alerts the reader to the important subjective quality of the spheres in actuality. Specifically, this is found in his use of pseudonyms to ‘indirectly’ identify nuances of meaning between the spheres. In doing so, Kierkegaard hopes to alert his reader to the conditions of subjectively knowing and living these spheres in the “age of reflection’s” illusion. To take one example, the pseudonym Frater Taciturnus suggests each sphere had its own sensibilities: the esthetic, the “immediate”; the ethical, “transitional” and “infinite requirement”; and the religious (paradoxical) “fulfillment” (Stages On Life’s Way “Letter to the Reader” 467- 7). The esthetic sphere is marked by its “immediate” application, not merely to pleasure for pleasure’s sake, but as a complex psychological application of the human desire to fulfill basic physical and mental needs (including “erotic love”).63 The esthetic sphere values the individual in terms of the immediate, the “momentary” (act and experience), and “possibility.” The ethical is related to the “universal;” it is the socially-oriented individual situating themselves in the ideality of actuality, transcendence, and “living responsibly.” The religious is the “single individual” in “absolute relation to the absolute;” the paradoxical actuality of faith.64 These categories and distinctions are, in their most general terms, fairly consistent in the indirect or esthetic works (i.e., those works in which Kierkegaard used a pseudonym). Here Kierkegaard is working through the specific qualities of each sphere. However, Frater Taciturnus is hardly the sole voice of meaning and insight into the spheres and when these positions are considered in light of other pseudonymous figures, nuances arise. For example, when Taciturnus’ more detailed assessment of the spheres is compared to the (ethical) “Judge’s” or the (esthetic) “A’s” of Either/Or, the differences of their respective experience and understanding of

119 the spheres is both subtle and significant by way of their highly subjective natures. As Patrick Gardiner notes, even a singular pseudonym can create this tension, as in the case of the Judge from Either/Or (who also appears in Stages) and appears to vacillate in his understanding of the distinctions between the ethical and religious spheres (53). The explanation to this changing perspective and variable positions is found in Kierkegaard’s understanding of subjective experience itself. It was not Kierkegaard’s intention to distinguish the spheres of existence in terms of systematic and objective qualifications (a condition he felt unreflective of their reality), but as actually existing experiences. The latter was not only a philosophical distinction with his age of reflection, but a central component of his overall rhetorical strategy to illuminate the conditions of actuality for the individual in each sphere, and more specifically, the requirement of each. Thus, Kierkegaard attempts to reflect the spheres of existence distinctive and complex natures by an equally complex rhetorical strategy of multiple perspectives and positions. His aim is to both illuminate what he sees as the distinctive qualities but at the same time resist reduction of those distinctions into lifeless categories and definitions. In a very real sense, Kierkegaard is trying to write in “actuality” the experience of the esthetic, ethical, and religious spheres in an individual’s life among other individuals. That the result is often nebulous and subjective is no accident, but a central purpose/position of Kierkegaard’s own position. This is particularly true in the case of the last sphere, the religious, and its paradoxical condition of faith. While Kierkegaard offers complex positions on all three spheres, it is to the conditions surrounding faith that he suggests his writing is ultimately directed. At the heart of his argument is the relation of the subjective (experience) to the objective (reflection). What was missing in the speculative thinking of his age was the essential nature of faith itself: the paradoxical subjective/universal calling/response beyond human reason and understanding to believe. For Kierkegaard, the condition of “becoming” (a Christian) required first and foremost understanding this condition of paradox, a condition that he described as an “inward deepening”: “But the ideality with regard to being a Christian is a continual inward deepening. The more ideal the conception of being a Christian, the more inward it becomes—and indeed the more difficult” (Point of View 137). Kierkegaard goes to great pains to make the requirement and paradox of this category clear in his works, particularly in Fear and Trembling.65 In his complex reflection on Abraham’s

120 call by God to sacrifice his own son—and the paradox this creates in terms of the ethical universal standard—he tries to distinguish what makes faith, faith: Faith is precisely the paradox that the single individual as the single individual is higher than the universal, is justified before it, not as inferior to it, but as superior—yet in such a way, please note, that it is the single individual who, after being subordinate as the single individual to the universal, now by means of the universal becomes the single individual who as the single individual is superior, that the single individual as the single individual stands in absolute relation to the absolute. (Point of View 118) It is easy for even the most conscientious and philosophically minded individual to get lost in the sub clauses here, but in his perplexing language and argument Kierkegaard is essentially arguing for a more accurate understanding of conditions regarding the spheres of life. In addressing the “absurdity” of Abraham’s act, Kierkegaard—through his pseudonym Silentio—does not wish to duck the bizarre nature (viewed universally/ethically) of Abraham’s action, but instead insists that ‘the error’ of his age is the condition of the category of this absurdity—i.e., faith’s paradox—has been inappropriately conflated with the ethical via reflection. Abraham, insists the pseudonymous Silentio, is not an ethical/universal (represented by the tragic hero), but a man of faith and by consequence of his paradoxical being/act, he teleologically suspends the ethical—an act that Kierkegaard ties to the concept of “the leap” (of faith)66. This distinction of “ethical understanding” from “paradoxical absurdity” is critical to Kierkegaard’s fundamental points regarding faith and “becoming.” For Kierkegaard, unless one understands and accepts the requirement is conditionally outside human rationale, one cannot fully participate in faith. Utilizing many of the popular terms and practices of his era, including the reflective quality of philosophy’s historical and current lexicon on knowing, Kierkegaard re- examines the implications of these distinct spheres and concepts in light of a subjectively- oriented experience and choice. The audience he directed this unconventional address to was grounded on this same sense of actuality: “the single individual.” Kierkegaard’s Audience/Purpose: The Single Individual Kierkegaard’s overall strategy to address the “passionless refection” of his times, particularly the popular philosophy of speculative thought, was in a very real way a

121 consequence/reflection of Kierkegaard’s understanding of his particular audience, the single individual: “Everyone who is at all dialectical will see that it is impossible to attack ‘the system’ from a point within the system. But outside there is only one indubitably seminal point: the single individual, ethically and religiously, existentially accentuated” (Point of View, “note **, 118). In The Point of View, Kierkegaard suggests the category of the single individual distinguishes itself from “the crowd” by its concern with actual truth. In terms that reflect his understanding of the problematic subjective thinking of his age, he suggests “the crowd” represents an order of unengaged-engagement, and by consequence, a faulty or true premise of actuality: Thus where there is a crowd or where decisive importance is attributed to the fact that there is a crowd, there is no working there, no living there, no striving there for the highest goal but only for some earthly goal. (Point of View 107) The “actual,” for Kierkegaard, is always the lived-truth built on choice and experienced by the subjective individual; not an abstract condition derived from reflection. The ‘crowd’—and by this Kierkegaard means the concept of ‘crowd’67—is an “abstraction,” (108) that “either makes for impenitence and irresponsibility altogether, or for the single individual it at least weakens responsibility by reducing the responsibility to a fraction’ (107). Follower’s of Hegel and Kant’s speculative tendencies, including Kierkegaard’s own immediate “Christian” context, were manifestations of the problematic “crowd” syndrome. Consequently, Kierkegaard’s category of the “single individual” is both his audience and his conception of truth’s actuality. His purpose as a writer was to reach the “single individual” in the reader and invite a similar recognition of truth’s subjective nature—or the “narrow pass” of awareness: “My task...to prompt, if possible, to invite, to induce the many to press through this narrow pass, the single individual, through which, please note, no one presses except by becoming the single individual...” (Point of View 118). In identifying the “single individual” as his particular audience, Kierkegaard believed he was following the path of another, earlier figure of irony: “...but formally, I can very well call Socrates my teacher..” (Point of View 55). Like his teacher,68 Kierkegaard did not delude himself as to the consequences of his action. He did not believe he could save the “age”; merely make clear the consequences: “One man alone cannot help or save the age in which he lives, he

122 can only express the fact that it will perish” (Soul of Kierkegaard 165). Nor did he believe that in expressing such positions he would remain unscathed in his challenge in his present life (Soul of Kierkegaard 229-230). Kierkegaard believed that to live his truth was to risk public martyrdom; if not in actuality, then by consequence of ridicule (Point of View 191): “This is why everyone who in truth wants to serve the truth is eo ipso in some way a martyr” (Point of View 109).69 But like Socrates, Kierkegaard also felt compelled to address the issue of truth (and more specifically, what he saw as an error of truth’s perception) in his time. To do so, he believed he must first understand and maintain the proper awareness. This included the possibilities and limitations of knowing as an individual human being in a world of human beings. Just as importantly, the extent to which one human can speak of truth: for themselves, and for others (Point of View 88-89). For Kierkegaard, the extent and actualization of this awareness was his audience: the category of “the single individual.” Said another way, the idea of “the single individual” is to awaken/remind/alert the individual to their freedom of choice in the life-lived. Such a choice requires Kierkegaard (the author and single individual) to walk a tightrope of meaning: not to impose, but to compel awareness; not to ignore or conflate the experience of the reader (the single individual) with his own; to serve the truth, without creating the truth. To accomplish this, Kierkegaard offered a complex, paradoxical reflection on reflection—a “doubly reflected ideality of a poetically actual author to dance with” (Concluding Unscientific Postscript, “A First and Last Explanation” 628). The image of dancing with is an apt description of Kierkegaard’s authorship. It is poetic, engaging, and fluid in nature. At one point Kierkegaard compares it to the rhetoric of politics: “As a category of audience, the “single individual is the category of spirit, of spiritual awakening, as diametrically opposed to politics as possible” (Point of View 121). While this “spiritual awakening” enjoys a different source and direction than Zhuangzi’s ming bian of freedom, the connection to an awakening from the mundane lifelessness of convention is fitting. The roots of this unique position, and the unconventional rhetoric that accompanied it, were first developed in his early dissertation on The Concept of Irony: With Frequent Referral to Socrates. It is a complex work, but significantly it is an early demonstration of Kierkegaard’s long-term battle with the “the typical methods and objectives of philosophical enquiry which had taken shape during the two hundred years or so before he wrote” (Gardiner Kierkegaard 15). Over

123 time the concepts and rhetorical practices of “indirect communication” were honed and developed by Kierkegaard to a remarkable degree, but their rhetorical roots were evident as his dissertation. As more than one of his committee members noted, despite its obvious success as an intelligent work, it was marked by his, “free and easy carelessness of composition” (Encounters With Kierkegaard “Comments on His Dissertation” 29-31). This free and easy rhetoric left more than one of its readers uncomfortable.70 Perhaps this should not have come as a surprise to his committee, given his subject matter and his own identity with this other historic figure of unconventional aims and means. Regardless, believing himself a Socratic-gadfly to his own “passionless” age of reflection, after his formal work in the academy, Kierkegaard set about awakening his particular audience—“the single individual”—on a much larger and more complex scale. He referred to this task as a “corrective.” Kierkegaard’s Response: The Corrective Due to the spheres’ distinctive and subjective natures (and in particular, faith’s paradoxical condition), Kierkegaard believed human reason alone incapable of addressing the actuality of the spheres in the single individual’s life. What was required—both in understanding and meaning—was an acceptance of the paradoxical nature of faith itself. That this was a highly unconventional response, he was well aware: “It is clear that in my writings I have supplied a more radical characterization of the concept of faith than there has been up until this time” (Point of View 253). This radical characterization is explained in part by Kierkegaard’s insistence that faith’s paradoxical nature is essentially paradoxical, to the point of absurdity in ordinary objective reason and argument; thus making his effort appear “radical” by consequence of its subject matter regardless of his context. Moreover, however, this radical characterization was also due to the particular nature of what Kierkegaard saw as his problematic context, “the age of reflection”: ...what was at stake here was something more fundamental than a particular set of cognitive claims. Rather, it was a pervasive way of looking at things and it had its source in an attitude to life from which a person could not be dislodged by intellectual argument alone” (Gardiner 37).71 Said another way, the conditions in which to understand faith (and the esthetic and ethical) spheres of existence were flawed in their apparent conflation and/or subjugation. An

124 error of illusion had been created. In short, the problem was more than simply a matter of terms and definition: it was a fundamental practice of perspective.72 Further, as an illusion, the error presented special difficulties: “...an illusion can never be removed directly and only indirectly” (Point of View 43). As a consequence, what was needed to break the conditions was something equally special; something purposely designed to draw attention to the illusion (without compelling belief). For Kierkegaard, this meant using indirect communication. Thus, Kierkegaard’s “corrective’ was a carefully constructed position of the subjective to illuminate (not attack) the error of the objective illusion: “With regard to an ‘established order,’ I have consistently—since my position has indeed been the single individual, with polemical aim at the numerical, the crowd, etc.—always done the very opposite of attacking. I have [...] always provided what is called a corrective”(Point of View 18). Specifically, for Kierkegaard this corrective took the form of alerting the “Christian” to “what in truth Christianity’s requirement is” (Point of View 16). To do so, Kierkegaard takes the ironic form of using what is in error to correct the error: “Everything is cast into reflection....The issue itself is one belonging to reflection: to become a Christian when in a way one is a Christian” (Point of View 55). Thus, to correct the error of illusion of being a Christian in Christendom by consequence of problematic objective reflection (i.e., disconnected with actually existing), Kierkegaard positions “reflection” from the subjective, calling attention to the subjective-actual experience of truth that is sometimes ignored in objective reliance. It was not to upset or overturn the established order that Kierkegaard wrote (he was no revolutionary in the traditional sense in politics or philosophy) but simply to correct an error in conventional perspective. To create this awareness without imposition the corrective required, for Kierkegaard, “a godly satire” (Point of View 17). The satire—developed in part by his pseudonymous writers—was his deliberate (if not paradoxical) attempt to awaken his audience to the implications of choice and freedom without imposing his own view. Thus, “a godly satire” offered on multiple levels a rhetorical strategy reflective of his personal understanding of truth and the complicated conditions of illuminating such truth (without imposing) in language. This included Kierkegaard’s complicated position that he must be true to those same paradoxical conditions of knowing and language that he accused the systematic, objective thinkers of ignoring. In other words, if the nature of the esthetic, ethical, and religious had been

125 erroneously muddied by systematic application of the spheres over and above actuality, how was Kierkegaard’s “corrective” going to avoid the same mistake? To address this, Kierkegaard’s “indirect communication” (the form of his “godly satire”) embodies the ironic and paradoxical sensibilities of an “honest deception” or the “teleological suspension of the truth” to illuminate without compelling. Crafting this honest deception involved using pseudonymous. As noted earlier Kierkegaard believed his multi-perspective and shifting positions of pseudonymity addressed, authentically, the actuality of subjective-experience’s diversity regarding the spheres of living. However, this was not the only consequence or intention of Kierkegaard’s indirect communication or his deliberate use of pseudonyms. Kierkegaard wants the reader to experience the paradoxical implications of the pseudonymity itself, as well. Specifically, he wants the reader to become aware of the implications to authority that the pseudonymous authors represent. To draw attention to this fact, Kierkegaard insists repeatedly that the pseudonyms enjoy their own “identity” and positions, and cannot (according to his wishes) be assumed to be Kierkegaard’s own position: Anyone with just a fragment of common sense will perceive that it would be ludicrously confusing to attribute to me everything the poetized personalities say. Nevertheless, to be on the safe side, I have expressly urged once and for all that anyone who wants to quote from the pseudonyms will not attribute the quotation to me.... (Point of View 288). This separation of pseudonymous character from himself is a critical element to Kierkegaard’s “godly satire.” It compels the reader to notice the “authority” of authorship and/or meaning by nature of its “duplexity” or “equivocalness” of sources. Such a complicated argumentative stance is bound to raise the question of what is what, and which is which, to a reader. It is this question—a question Kierkegaard wants the reader to ask—that informs a critical element of his paradoxical indirect communication; and it is this question that is addressed in his “doubly-reflected” rhetorical strategy of awareness. The Double-Reflection of Imaginatively Constructed Pseudonyms The “doubly reflected communication,” for Kierkegaard, is the complicated experience of the reader’s subjectively reflecting on the imaginatively constructed pseudonyms own diverse and subjective reflections. It is a deliberate rhetorical strategy on Kierkegaard’s part to create

126 awareness through the reader’s own involvement of meaning. It is a consequence that he feels compelled to protect on the most fundamental level: “A single word by me personally in my own name would be an arrogating self-forgetfulness that, regarded dialectically, would be guilty of having essentially annihilated the pseudonymous authors by this one word” (Concluding “A First and Last Explanation” 626). Consequently, though Kierkegaard calls his pseudonyms and characters “imaginative constructions,” each displays his own personalities, leanings, and habits in regards to the spheres and Kierkegaard is insistent that each must be taken on its merit and (paradoxically) “face” (pseudonym) value.73 I have no opinion about them except as a third party, no knowledge of their meaning as a reader, not the remotest private relation to them, since it is impossible to have that to a doubly reflected communication (Concluding 626). Kierkegaard believed this mixed-bag of characters and arguments paradoxically mirrored the “factually actual” reality of life more than much of the objective, speculative thinking of his age. Consequently, his use and creation of pseudonyms is Kierkegaard’s attempt to reflect actual human conditions of meaning: My pseudonymity...an essential basis in the production itself, which, for the sake of the lines and of the psychologically varied differences of the individualities, poetically required an indiscriminateness with regard to good and evil, brokenheartedness and gaiety, despair and overconfidence, suffering and elation, etc., which is ideally limited only by psychological consistency, which no factually actual person dares to allow himself or can want to allow himself in the moral limitations of actuality” (Concluding “A First and Last Explanation” 625). Kierkegaard derived this conclusion (and the diversity of his individual characters) from his own observation and from his understanding of truth’s unique nature. To the first point, Kierkegaard was an astute observer of human nature (he described the process as “getting in touch” with people) and what he garnered from his life-study he applied in his pseudonymous creations.74 As such, part of the poetic-sensibility of his pseudonymous works is his ability to make each pseudonym original and subjective in voice and opinion. In short, to create an “actuality” out of the “imaginative construction” of pseudonym. Kierkegaard creates this complex series of “indiscriminate” personalities through a variety of clever idiosyncrasies, both in manner of speech and presentation of argument.

127 Consequently the differing points of view differ not only in positions on life’s meaning, but in their rhetorical expression, as well. For example, the Judge’s examination on the universal ethical’s distinction from A’s immediate esthetic is represented not only in the former’s “universal, social-orientation,” but in both “writers” respective tones and argument styles. The Judge’s deliberate epistles contrast sharply with esthetically-bound “A’s” loose and freewheeling assortment of styles and subjects (including “The Seducer’s Diary) (Gardiner 41-2). Where the former is conventionally straightforward, the latter is apparently designed to “arouse puzzlement” (41).75 Each imaginatively constructed pseudonym’s distinctive and flexible nature (both as pseudonyms and as positions) is called attention to (and later protected) by Kierkegaard. Thus, the “actuality” of subjective experience is represented on the level of each pseudonym’s unique rhetorical expressions and habits, as well as their stated positions. Secondly (and significantly to the purpose of indirect communication), Kierkegaard believed these various paradoxical positions of ‘imaginative actualities’ offered a revealing counterpoint to the systematic, objective rendering of all human nature evident in the speculative thinkers of his time. Specifically, Kierkegaard believed this subjectively nuanced experience (even to the point of its rhetorical expression) was an “essential” condition of individual nature; a nature that is neither fixed nor consistent and must therefore be equally indiscriminate in its rhetorical reflection. Kierkegaard believed the systematic renderings of such writers as Hegel offered a ‘lifeless’ examination; a “truth” that had little to do with the subjective individual’s actual experience but was, instead, situated in the disconnected world of speculative thought. By contrast, Kierkegaard believed his “imaginative constructions” more reflective of actuality by way of their (paradoxically) poetic-actualization of the subjective experience in truth. Kierkegaard’s imaginative constructions call attention to the subjective experience of truth: its complex and diverse positionality in actuality, and the reader’s own freedom of choice in this experience. It accomplishes the latter by its paradoxically double-reflective nature of having the reader reflect on the reflections of imaginatively constructed and varying positions on truth’s experience. To take one specific example, the arguments of the pseudonymous Silentio of Fear and Trembling are complex and detailed, but two overarching rhetorical elements draw the reader’s additional attention. The first, like Kierkegaard’s other pseudonymous works, is the unconventional nature of the writing’s authorship itself. Silentio, the pseudonym—a self-

128 professed “non-Christian” and “non-traditional philosopher”—presents in his own ironical imaginative construction a compelling and paradoxical element to Kierkegaard’s overall rhetorical strategy to illuminate the conditions of faith in Fear and Trembling. Specifically, by using this “indirect” voice to illuminate the distinctions of the ethical and religious spheres, Kierkegaard presents the reader with the additional charge of deciding to what extent the indirect communication informs Fear and Trembling. Secondly, in writing his ‘reflection,’ Silentio demonstrates a highly poetic/subjective temperament and style. This poetic mode relies not so much on logic, systematic objectivity, and concretely derived definition of terms, but rhetorical illumination of subjective experiences (terms such as “absolute,” “infinity,” “paradox,” and “faith” are not so much defined as edified by consequence of analogy, example, and dialectical reflection). Such a language, combined with the overall subjective quality of Silentio’s reflection, draws attention to the systematic language and form of the overly objective. By situating the argument in subjective and poetic terms/style, Kierkegaard hopes to awaken the reader to their own relationship with language and truth; to call attention to the subjective-experience of truth by a language that (if not more reflective of truth’s nature) at least distinguishes itself from the conventional objective and systematic language of his day. In doing so, it also points out the limits of such objective language to qualify actual experience for the individual. Kierkegaard described this rhetorical process as “writing without authority.” Writing Without Authority and the Poetic-Sensibility Writing without authority builds upon Kierkegaard’s sensibility of his poetic temperament as a writer. In contrast to the “absolute method” of Hegel (which makes of history a “fixed idea;’ an immediate “concretion of the Idea”), the imaginative constructions of the poet works from the possibilities of actuality (i.e., not beginning with the Idea as concrete, but trying to arrive at the ‘ideal actuality’) through careful consideration of the actual (Philosophical Fragments 78-79).76 That is to say, the poet makes clear what is the actual experience (of life) by addressing that experience subjectively, reflectively, and in a manner that does not try to impose meaning, but harvest it: The task of the poet includes the philosophic task of casting private and shared experience into reflection, of penetrating it and grasping its internal coherence and meaning, the universally human...What distinguishes the poet is a kind of

129 imagination that shapes the possibles [sic] in palpable form, in the form of ‘ideal actuality.’ The poet’s mode is not the discursive, demonstrative, didactic [docerende] mode of the scientist and philosopher or the strict narrative mode of the historian. His mode is that of imaginative construction in the artistic illusion of actuality... (Fear and Trembling “Historical Introduction” xxiv-xxv) Kierkegaard’s stated intention, then, to create awareness was accomplished in part through his “poetic” use of pseudonymous voices, each voice engaged with one another and the reader subjectively, pointing to those experiences left out or ignored/conflated by over dependence on the objective and systematic.77 This practice of open-ended authority, what Kierkegaard will call at various times writing “without authority” and “armed neutrality,” is a centerpiece of his general position and strategy as a writer (Point of View 118). The dual presence of indirect and direct works in his authorship was just one attempt by Kierkegaard to address the conditions of truth and meaning in the most authentic terms; the poetic actualization of the pseudonymous writers another. However, and importantly, the poetic-esthetic writing (without authority) is also a reflection of Kierkegaard’s own lived-truth (which he believes resides in the religious sphere). As a consequence, the poetic-esthetic writing is only a precursory step to the actual truth of paradoxical faith, and is in fact, deceptive. Thus, Kierkegaard describes his overall authorship and connection to the poetic “writing without authority” this way: The task that is to be assigned to most people in Christendom is—away from ‘the poet’ or from relating oneself to or having one’s life in what the poet recites, away from speculative thought, from having one’s life imaginatively (which is also impossible) in speculating (instead of existing) to becoming a Christian. The first movement is the total significance of the esthetic writing in the totality of my work as an author; the second movement is that of Concluding Postscript, which, by drawing in or editing all the esthetic writing to its advantage in order to throw light on its issue, the issue of becoming a Christian, itself makes the same movement in another sphere: away from speculative thought, away from the system etc., to becoming a Christian. The movement is back, and even though it is all done without authority, there is still something reminiscent of a policeman when he says to a crowd: Move back! This is indeed why more than one of the

130 pseudonymous writers calls himself a policeman, a street inspector. (Point of View 78) The significance of this “movement back” to his own life and authorship (and why he believed these works must also be understood as “without authority,”) is Kierkegaard’s belief that he subjectively working through the same conditions as everyone else. His use then of the poetic-esthetic works on two fronts; the illusion of his age and his own lived-truth search: The process is this: a poetic and philosophic nature is set aside in order to become a Christian. But the unusual thing is that the movement begins concurrently and therefore is a conscious process; one gets to see how it happens; the other does not commence after a separation of some years from the first. Thus the esthetic writing is surely a deception, yet in another sense a necessary emptying. The religious is precisely present already from the first moment, has decisive predominance, but for a little while waits patiently so that the poet is allowed to talk himself out, yet watching with Argus eyes lest the poet trick it and it all becomes a poet. (Point of View 77). Rhetorically, this meant for Kierkegaard an explication of his truth’s (faith) requirements by way of “emptying” the poetic-esthetic. A condition of this poetic-esthetic nature was that he write without authority. Kierkegaard is himself going through the process (a condition of truth’s subjective nature) and therefore cannot assume authority over what he is still becoming. As a consequence, Kierkegaard’s explanation of the totality of his authorship reflects a rhetorical form of the “process”: The first division of books is esthetic writing; the last division of books is exclusively religious writing—between these lies Concluding Unscientific Postscript as the turning point. This work deals with and poses the issue, the issue of the entire work as an author: becoming a Christian. Then in turn it calls attention to the pseudonymous writing along with the interlaced 18 discourses [the direct works] and shows all this as serving to illuminate the issue, yet without stating that this was the object of the prior writing—which could not be done, since it is a pseudonymous writer who is interpreting other pseudonymous writers, that is, a third party who could know nothing about the objects of writing unfamiliar to him. (Point of View 31).

131 Thus, even in the “turning point” Kierkegaard’s careful description of what is pseudonymous and what is direct, including what he or the pseudonymous authors can say of one another (a “third party who could know nothing about the objects of writing unfamiliar to him”) is consistent with his overall strategy to awaken through indirection and to write ‘without authority.’78 Maintaining the separation and illusion of what is said, and by whose authority, “hints” to the indirect communication’s significance and to Kierkegaard’s understanding of truth and his works in general. Concluding’s authorship mirrors in “authority” what is exemplified in the authorship as a whole.It is not quite esthetic, nor religious; it is not signed nor unsigned, but rests somewhere in the equivocal in-between—the turning point. The dialectical nature of the “duplexity” or “equivocalness” of Kierkegaard’s writing reflects the actuality of life’s experiences, including a “turning point” of experience that is exemplified in the authorship as a whole. All that being said, however, there remains a puzzling consequence to all of this multilayered, unconventional, and seemingly paradoxical “non-authoritative” authorship. Specifically, this is the attempt by Kierkegaard to illuminate by indirection when considered from Kierkegaard’s stated position as a “religious author,” and “making clear the requirement” (of Christianity). What is, puzzling given this position, is the apparent “deception” the esthetic writings represent in regards to his overall purpose. Kierkegaard himself acknowledges this complication, and in fact describes the condition as part of his general strategy: “But from the total Point of View of my whole work as an author, the esthetic writing is a deception, and herein is the deeper significance of the pseudonymity”(Point of View 53). To understand this deeper significance it is important to understand how Kierkegaard’s indirect communication was unconventional in both position and application. Significantly, this again involves his approach to truth itself: an approach that emphasized not the “what” of truth, but the how. Kierkegaard’s Rhetorical Dance with Truth: “The How of Truth” As I have tried to show above, the first condition of Kierkegaard’s dance centers around his relationship as a writer with the reader. For Kierkegaard, this relationship includes starting from a position where the individual resides (in Kierkegaard’s understanding of his own times and context, a residence sometimes of illusion). As a consequence of this condition, Kierkegaard believed he must practice a maieutic argument which begins first from the familiar state of

132 reflection in which the individual perhaps resides: “...‘communication in reflection’ is: to deceive into the truth...It began maieutically with esthetic production, and all the pseudonymous writings are maieutic in nature” (his highlights Point of View 7). This maieutic ‘illumination’ to truth was from Kierkegaard’s position, “...the teleological suspension related to the communication of truth (temporarily suppressing in order that the true can become more true)....” (Point of View 89).79/80 However, fulfilling the duty to truth indirectly—particularly by the teleological suspension of that truth—appears to require a unique, if not paradoxical, position and style of argument: specifically, one designed to “deceive.” Deception of this order was, for Kierkegaard, not necessarily a new or essentially flawed action, and again he turns to a familiar figure: “Do not be deceived by the word deception. One can deceive a person out of what is true, and—to recall old Socrates—one can deceive a person into what is true” (Point of View 53). The distinction of “deception” here is in regards to the conditions of awareness in the individual: In other words there is a great difference, that is, the dialectical difference, or the difference of the dialectical, between these two situations: one who is ignorant and must be given some knowledge, and therefore he is like the empty vessel that must be filled or like the blank sheet of paper that must be written upon—and one who is under a delusion that must first be taken away [...] Now, on the assumption that someone is under delusion and consequently the first step, properly understood, is to remove delusion—if I do not begin by deceiving, I begin with direct communication. But direct communication presupposes that the recipient’s ability to receive is entirely in order, but here that is simply not the case—indeed, here a delusion is an obstacle. That means a corrosive must first be used, but this corrosive is the negative, but the negative in connection with communicating is precisely to deceive. (Point of View 53-4) Writing in his particular context (the age of reflection) and to his particular audience (the subjectively-oriented single individual), Kierkegaard crafts his rhetorical illumination through negative deception to fit the need of his situation. To illuminate the illusion of his times, to provide the corrosive to its removal, Kierkegaard feels he must practice a benevolent deception to the truth. In other words, to put aside the truth for a time in order to better reveal it. (Thus, Kierkegaard’s deliberate decision to use pseudonymous, subjectively-oriented, and ironic

133 discourses on the subject matter of the day; Kierkegaard’s paradoxical insistence that the pseudonymous works contain no word of “his own,” but were, nevertheless, written by him.) These exercises in “deception” are part of the “dance” to reveal further insights (and/or to remove the delusion) of human reflection. They are a call to the reader to become aware of the condition of delusion through an ironic dialectic of indirect communication, calling attention to the limits (and possibilities) of reflection and language to engage the truth. As a consequence of their unique rhetorical nature, reading these indirect communications as definitive explanations and definitions of Kierkegaard’s own concepts of ethic, esthetic, and religious living is risky. Rather, they reflect his determination to reveal just how dangerous “definitive” categories of objective reflection are to the subjectively living human. Dependence on such reflection for full meaning carries with it the chains of delusion regarding subjective experience. That is to say, esthetic, ethical, or religious living is not contained within the objective and systematic reflections of human reason—it is only partially understood by this vehicle. What is further required is the acceptance of that paradoxical element of experience that appears to lie outside of mere human language to contain it. Indirect communication, then, including the teleological suspension of the truth to reveal the truth, was not just a clever way to unbalance convention, it was an appropriate manner by which to approach the terms of paradoxical knowledge itself. It reflected in its paradox of left over meaning the very same condition of actuality. Consequently, it was important to Kierkegaard that the entirety of his work be understood as a deliberate rhetorical strategy to create awareness and freeing from illusion: And what does all this mean when the reader now gathers together the elements developed in the various sections? It means: this is an authorship of which the total thought is the task of becoming a Christian. But it is an authorship that from the beginning has understood, with dialectical consistency has pursued, what the implications of this are that the situation is Christendom, which is a category of reflection, and therefore has cast all the Christian relationships into reflection. In Christendom—to become a Christian is either to become what one is (the inwardness of reflection to the reflection of inward deepening), or it is first of all to be wrested out of a delusion, which again is a category of reflection (Point of View 55-6).

134 Kierkegaard’s rhetorical dance steps to accomplish this “wresting out of delusion” are as complex as the authorship’s intentions: So when [...] a religious author whose total thought is the task of becoming [...] wants to make it possible to make people aware (whether it will succeed is of course something else), he must begin as an esthetic author and to a certain point he must maintain this possibility. But there must be a limit, since it is being done, after all, in order to make aware. And one thing the author must not forget, the number carried, which is which, the religious the crucial, the esthetic the incognito—lest the dialectical interaction end up in babbling. (Point of View 53)81 In developing a rhetorical strategy to address this positionality of “maintaining” the ethical (and esthetic) possibilities, while still remembering “the number carried” (his goal as a religious author), Kierkegaard offered one of the most complex—at times paradoxical— authorships in Western history. Working against the illusion of reflection, he deliberately worked within illusion—creating an “honest deception” he felt necessary to the totality of his purpose and authorship, which included making clear what it means to choose in life. Using both direct and indirect communication, simultaneously and in dialect with one another, he created a rhetoric of awareness, one that awakens in the individual the implications of choice, the spheres of life, reflection, and language. In such a way he believed “the dialectical structure of this whole authorship is complete” (Point of View 31). Taking all of the elements together—the spheres of existence, indirect communication, the corrective, and the single individual—Kierkegaard created for his purposes a multi-layered, at times paradoxically ironic, rhetoric of meaning; one which he hoped would dance with the reader in a compelling reflection of awareness: The communicator is defined in reflection, therefore negatively [...] in other words, the communicator is in the background, helping negatively, since whether he succeeds in helping someone is indeed something else. (Point of View 56). As I noted in Chapter Two, one of the common forms of distinguishing the unique qualities of Western and Sino cultures is to situate their search for truth as an emphasis on “what” and “how,” respectively. Certainly, Kierkegaard’s transcendent “God” is a causal- emphasized “what” of truth, while Zhuangzi’s correlative-emphasized “Dao” reflects a focus on “how.”

135 That said, however, Kierkegaard’s use of indirection and his understanding of faith as paradox offers a compelling complication of that how/what distinction of Sino/Western tendencies and suggests similar sensibilities to Zhuangzi’s own correlative sensibilities. To be specific, in his understanding and approach to faith and becoming, Kierkegaard challenges his tradition’s tendency and reverses the paradigm of objective/subjective, what/how at its most rhetorical level: In all that is usually said about Johannes Climacus [a pseudonym] being purely subjective and so on, people have forgotten, in addition to everything else concrete about him, that in one of the last sections he shows that the curious thing is: that there is a ‘how’ which has this quality, that if it is truly given, then the ‘what’ is also given; and that it is the ‘how’ of faith. Here, quite certainly, we have inwardness at its maximum proving to be objectivity once again. And this is an aspect of the principle of subjectivity which, so far as I know, has never been presented or worked out” (Soul of Kierkegaard 177-178). Regardless of his understanding of his own work’s uniqueness, it was clear that the ‘how’ of subjectivity was immanently important to Kierkegaard. This includes the ‘how’ of saying, which, again, seems to take precedence over the ‘what’ of truth: “What makes a difference in life is not what is said, but how it is said” (Soul of Kierkegaard 191). The rhetorical implications of this “how” of truth expression, and what remains most important for Kierkegaard in his understanding as a writer, is to create awareness of those conditions concerning knowledge and expression of that truth. In fact, these conditions elevate the “how” of something said to the point of primary significance. This position relies on truth’s eternal nature which needs no help in creation, but in the circumstance of misunderstanding or delusion may require a special communication of awareness. The result is the significance of the paradox to its rhetorical edification is its unique “silent” nature. Silentio, the pseudonymous author of Fear and Trembling, puts it this way: “The tragic hero, who is the favorite of ethics, is the purely human; him I can understand, and all the undertakings are out in the open. If I go further, I always run up against the paradox...silence” (88). This “silence” is “divinity’s mutual understanding with the single individual” (88), a condition itself which is itself paradoxical as the single individual is higher than the universal but comes back to the universal via its new relationship to truth (the paradox of faith). It is not an accident, then, that to articulate this silent

136 nature Kierkegaard employs indirect communication (including the significance of the pseudonym’s non-Christian, non-philosopher) to address the issue of becoming in the religious sphere. What underlies the ironic double-reflection of Kierkegaard’s indirect communication is a call to awareness by an imaginative construction (the pseudonym) which admits itself unable to participate in that condition. Running throughout this “argument” is the unconventional dialectic of the how and what: “...that there is a ‘how’ which has this quality, that if it is truly given, then the ‘what’ is also given; and that it is the ‘how’ of faith.” The paradox of faith is illuminated by Kierkegaard’s paradoxical ‘how’ of articulation through indirect communication. In his Concluding Unscientific Postscript, Kierkegaard’s description of the subjectivity of being a Christian emphasizes, again, the ‘how’: The decision rests in the subject; the appropriation is the paradoxical inwardness that is specifically different from all other inwardness. Being a Christian is defined not by the ‘what’ of Christianity but by the ‘how’ of the Christian. This ‘how’ can only fit one thing, the absolute paradox [...] to have faith is specifically qualified differently from all other appropriation and inwardness. Faith is the objective uncertainty with the repulsion of the absurd, held fast in the passion of inwardness, which is the relation of inwardness intensified to its highest. (611) This inwardness is different than any other relation (including “lovers,” “thinkers,” and “enthusiasts”) and is marked by the “one who has faith, who relates himself to the absolute paradox” (611). Again, the emphasis “how” informs the “what”; a condition that reflects the nature of faith’s paradoxical essence. Kierkegaard’s articulation of this paradoxical emphasis is reflected in his equally unconventional and paradoxical writing, including his unconventional position of how something is said over what is said. As a consequence of his emphasis and the contexts of his time, Kierkegaard believes his “how” of truth must employ indirection and paradoxical/poetic language to exemplify both the paradox and remove the illusion of reflection. This emphasis of “how” something is lived and said is strikingly different from the emphasis of “what” (is truth) exemplified in his context (and the dominant Western tendency of causal rhetoric, including the work of Kant and Hegel). In other words, rather than merely address the conventional dialectic of definition and objectivity in more definition and objectivity, Kierkegaard deliberately employs a language of ‘how’ that does

137 not try to impose truth, but clarify the conditions of knowing truth. As he suggests: “Thus where a mystification, a dialectical redoubling, is used in the service of earnestness, it will be used in such a way that it only wards off misunderstandings and preliminary understandings, while the true explanation is available to the person who is honestly seeking” (Point of View 34). Thus, Kierkegaard’s “how” of indirection is not simply a clever rhetorical move to engender interest, but is a reflection of his personal (subjective) experience to truth and his determination to authentically address truth’s actual nature in life. In its complex grounding in the paradoxical nature of its source and the “silent” or incommunicable nature of its illumination in actual human experience—a condition that requires equally paradoxical language when addressing illusion/misunderstanding—Kierkegaard not only overturns the conventions of his time philosophically, but rhetorically. In this he shares a remarkable similarity with Zhuangzi.

138 Chapter Five

Concerning the Significance of Comparison In this, my final chapter, I attempt to draw some conclusions and implications. There are a number of directions this could take, or, to borrow a line from Kierkegaard, “...what does this all mean when the reader gathers together the elements developed in the various sections?” (Point of View 55). To begin with, clearly there are similarities in both Zhuangzi’s and Kierkegaard’s approach to and understanding of language. Both writers chose to operate with unconventional, paradoxical forms of argument. Each writer appears to base this decision in part because of their understanding of language’s complex nature to truth and the individual’s experience in life. Additionally, each writer felt compelled to engage this issue in order to awaken other individual’s experience to the dangers of conventional understanding. What to make of these similarities? What implications do they suggest to language, truth, and meaning? And to rhetorical studies in general? I see these questions (and some of the conclusions I draw from them) as a start to a long term project with language and meaning, and particularly with the significance of paradox and poetics. This includes their presence, role, and identity within various systems of meaning, including those generally not associated with such language (e.g., objective reasoning, science, etc.) More specifically still, I am interested in the implications that arise when indirect communication and the paradoxical/poetic sensibility are considered across differing contexts and sites of meaning, such as a comparative study of Kierkegaard and Zhuangzi. Of course, the sources for exploring the language of paradox and subjective individual experience are not limited to these two writers, or to the Western or Sino cultural traditions. The varieties and forms of subjective/poetic expression and positions are as complex and vast as the world at large. They are neither bound by context or time. In fact, from the perspective of language and truth and the individual, they are practically endless. To list just a few examples, in the West, Nietzsche’s work comes to mind almost immediately, but so, too, (though from different directions) the works of Russell, Wittgenstein, and analytic thinkers like W. V. O.

139 Quine (The Ways of Paradox). Certainly, many Feminist writers, including Virginia Woolf, Adrienne Rich, and Hélène Cixous explore the issues of subjectivity, often employing unconventional word play to illustrate their point. Their unique positions would complicate still further the repercussions of both Kierkegaard and Zhuangzi. Nor is this turn to subjectivity/poeticity necessarily a “modern” movement. There is Zeno’s classic paradoxes as well as the subjectively oriented complication of “...the Aeolian lyric poets Sappho and Alcaeus [who] address a more particular audience, for they express the individual’s inner life itself” (Glenn Rhetoric Retold 26). Then there is the “storytelling” writing of Leslie Marmon Silko and other Native American writers, as well as the African culture of “life force,” Nommo, and its roots/emphasis of the spoken/lived word. To take just one example from the former, Silko writes in terms that suggest subtle points of comparison with Zhuangzi’s interconnective ming bian and Kierkegaard’s indirect communication: “Pueblo expression resembles something like a spider’s web—with many little threads radiating from the center, crisscrossing one another. As with the web, the structure emerges as it is made, and you must simply listen and trust, as the Pueblo people do, that meaning will be made” (Woman and Beauty of the Spirit: Essays on Native American Life Today 48-9).82 These are but a few examples of the diverse sites of meaning and they all complicate, in their respective fashions, a one-world or universal view of truth, language, and meaning— including any general conclusions that might arise from a study of two or more sites of meaning regarding paradox and subjective experience. While many of these share similar aspects of meaning with others, their nuances of positioning and meaning offer still more “awareness” to the complexity of language and in the end, I would argue, cannot be conflated to fit any general theory of language. If there is a general ‘first’ conclusion, then, to my comparative efforts of just these two sites and writers it would be that the complexity of meaning and the nuances that are present in every site—and, most significantly—individual, is so vast that, like Silko’s spider web metaphor, we can only trust that meaning will be made, if we are determined to have meaning at all. Just as each spider web is unique but also bears structure, and just as each individual strand is important to the overall web but can be understood both in its single nature and its place in the overall design of structure, understanding the ‘whole’ of meaning across various cultures is more than a matter of perceiving the patterns of web strands. The esthetic of the design, the functionality of

140 its purpose, the complexity of its diversity from web to web, spider to spider, place to place, cannot be conflated or reduced to fit a general structure—the “Web” of meaning—but must be appreciated for its diversity and nuances as indications of meaning’s actual ambiguous nature. Kierkegaard and Zhuangzi are just one example of the diversity and connections that are present when various voices of meaning are studied in comparison. The fact that there exists connections (however significant) should not draw attention from their obvious differences, as well. Awareness of these differences and the diversity they represent may leave the individual in search of general meaning (an ‘Answer’ if you will) with a sense of impossibility. Yet, the seemingly human obsession for answers might be explained in part by our recognition, however tenuous, of a structure (esthetically, functionally, and structurally) to the web of meaning. This recognition may occur on the immediate level of an individual living in a particular context and tradition, or broader still as more than one context and culture are examined together. In either case the call for an Answer seems to be available in the most general sense of meaning’s structure (humans of all contexts communicate effectively and with purpose). Yet, when considered from a position of difference, this same structure appears to be complicated to the point of impossible complexity. This, at least, was what I learned from the immediate examples of Kierkegaard and Zhuangzi. They are clearly not like any other writer, including one another (for no two individuals are exactly the same—a point each tries to make clear in his respective works). Yet, at the same time, both work within and help create by their individual messages a web of meaning that bears structure, purpose and functionality, and this web appears at time to share similar patterns and/or esthetics to both their own immediate contexts and each other. Said another way, the web viewed from a strand is complicated by the strands individuality; the strand’s individuality, viewed from the web, is complicated by its purpose of structure in the general scheme. Either perspective, however, cannot be conflated to the other to the point of ignoring their respective essences. In short, both the nuances of difference and the general structure of meaning must be accounted for if the breadth of actual human experience in communication and knowing is to be appreciated. Similarly, to take the strands of Kierkegaard and Zhuangzi and suggest they somehow answer the whole of meaning, is like plucking two strands from the web and offering them as the structure’s overall design. You only succeed in

141 ruining the web. To suggest, however, that either Kierkegaard or Zhuangzi were so iconic that they represent a web of their own is to miss his obvious presence and purpose within a larger frame of design/meaning. Consequently, any conclusions regarding this comparison of differing writers/cultures must be situated in the further complexity of webs, strands, individuality, and still other sources of meaning. That said, and remembering Zhuangzi’s helpful adage that “knowledge is unlimited, your life is limited” (and to use the latter up on the former is to invite “trouble”), I have to start somewhere. Fortunately, in these two writers and their particular claims/use of language, I believe I have a significant starting point to begin building more awareness, more meaning. As I hope the preceding chapters have demonstrated, Kierkegaard and Zhuangzi exemplify—and emphasize—a certain awareness of life’s complexity and the repercussions that arise out of such complexity regarding truth or knowledge. This awareness is highly productive when dealing with multiple sites of meaning. Further, these particular thinkers address this complexity in startling depth and execution. In short, Kierkegaard and Zhuangzi provide a unique opportunity to appreciate the complexity of life and language without necessarily proscribing a limited (intended or otherwise) field of meaning. They both constantly invite the condition of awareness and reside carefully (if not paradoxically) in that limit, even while holding to their own conceptions of truth. The following “conclusions,” then, represent an attempt to draw further awareness of language and truth, not to derive a universal paradigm of meaning for either. Consequently, this chapter examines in more detail those actual “nuances” (similarities and differences) that appear in the preceding, and seeks further meaning by comparison. No universal claims are made or, as I am arguing, available. Such a position would fly in the face of the diversity still left unexamined above, and just as importantly, is contrary to the primary writer’s positions on subjective experience and life/language/truth’s complexity.83 Finally, to provide a backdrop from which to understand how Kierkegaard and Zhuangzi’s indirect communication and paradoxical/poetic sensibilities complicate still further the issues of Sino and Western distinctions of the “what” and “how” of truth, I will return again to those categories of meaning popularly attributed to each context, including the causal and correlative sensibilities. For it is the nuances that I am concerned with here: nuances of how

142 Kierkegaard and Zhuangzi differ from each other and share similar concerns; nuances that also complicate current depictions of Western and Sino tendencies of meaning. To that end, another tentative conclusion that arises from my comparative study of these writers is that their mutual reliance on paradox and poetics is a unique form of truth illumination, one that requires its own sensibility and is—in Kierkegaard and Zhuangzi—language’s way of speaking about something outside of language. The presence of Indirect Communication Any conclusions drawn from comparison must also address differences. And there are certainly compelling distinctions between the two writers in question; distinctions that not only inform their obvious philosophical differences, but underlie many of their rhetorical similarities, as well. First and foremost of the distinguishing characteristics between Kierkegaard and Zhuangzi is each writer’s respective nuances of contextualized truth. To that end, despite the complications he throws around identity, Kierkegaard is arguing from a world view that includes a heavy presence of Judeo-Christian values. Zhuangzi, on the other hand, is a Daoist (again, complicated by his unique interpretation), writing in the Ancient Chinese Warring States period. Consequently, any implications regarding similar positions or strategies (for example, both position their audiences as seekers of meaning possibly unaware of convention’s hold), must also be considered in light of each author’s respective contextual positions. As such, though both writers are concerned with the individual’s relation to convention, Kierkegaard sees his “single individual” in light of their relationship to Western-Christian ethos and cultural history. In fact, though Kierkegaard is not writing ostensibly to “convert” to Christianity (at least, not directly), he is writing in a context that is aware of, and often holds to, Christian ideals. As a consequence, to accomplish his task of awareness, Kierkegaard takes up those conditions surrounding central Western philosophical epistemology (including the esthetic and ethical spheres of understanding) that would bear the most meaning and significance to a person dwelling in that same context. Though he describes his audience in metaphoric terms as “the single individual” that can “mean the most unique of all, and [...] can mean everyone,” as a consequence of his own Western context and time, the development (rhetorically) of this “single individual” identity carries with it certain seminal cultural and philosophical positions.

143 One such position is Kierkegaard’s “transcendent” sensibilities regarding truth and its manifestation in faith—specifically, the concept of a Supreme Being (in Kierkegaard’s case, God) as ultimate “causal” source of creation and life (and for Kierkegaard, the paradoxical truth of faith). Though Kierkegaard will examine the conditions of truth from multiple perspectives and with convoluted levels of irony (including at times from positions antithetical to the “Christian ideal”), he does so always, as he notes, with an eye to “the number carried” (the religious sphere.) As a consequence, Kierkegaard’s argument in totality utilizes at times Hall and Ames’ concept of strictest transcendence: “A is transcendent with respect to B if the existence, meaning or import of B cannot be fully accounted for without recourse to A, but the reverse is not true” (Thinking From the Han 190). While Kierkegaard is prepared to talk about (and does so with surpassing understanding and insight) spheres of living outside such a position (e.g., the esthetic in Either/Or), the presence of transcendent meaning is still very much apparent in his works. Even in his pseudonymous “esthetic writing” Kierkegaard calls on Biblical figures to illuminate his meaning, treating them on multiple levels, including philosophically, psychologically, and historically (e.g. “Abraham” in Fear and Trembling; “Adam” in The Concept of Irony; “Jesus Christ” in Philosophical Fragments). Running throughout these various writings, including the esthetic writing, is the sense of the religious sphere—the “number carried”—and what it takes to “become” (a Christian): “If, then, a religious author wants to touch on that illusion, he must in one swoop begin with simultaneously being an esthetic and religious author. But one thing above all he must not forget, the number carried, which is which, that it is the religious that is to come forward decisively” (Point of View 49). This “number carried” carries with it the presence of a transcendent causal meaning as the ‘God’ of Kierkegaard certainly enjoys a transcendent relationship to humans and creation (i.e., humans and creation are given meaning by ‘God,’ not the other way around). As a consequence, even when it is “teleologically suspended” in the esthetic writing the number carried is an underlying presence which Kierkegaard is trying, indirectly, to illuminate. For example, Silentio, the self described ‘non-Christian,’ discusses the conditions of “faith” in the example of Abraham.84 While Kierkegaard’s indirect communication may complicate the rhetorical expression of this causal-transcendent source (i.e., God)—a condition I will address shortly—the presence of this Western sensibility is very much a part of his fundamental position.85

144 Such was not the case with Zhuangzi, whose correlative sensibilities invested his Daoism and understanding of the individual without recourse to another transcendent source for meaning. As a consequence, Zhuangzi’s Daoism does not rely on a causal sensibility for meaning in his explications of the Dao. His is a loose (or purposely vague) appreciation of the Dao’s myriad forms on earth-present; a correlatively derived illumination of an interconnected world view. It calls awareness to the complexity of life now, interconnected and ever changing, but with purpose. To illuminate these conditions Zhuangzi uses a combination of loosely interconnected insights about the truth of life and its complex, interconnected, and changing nature. Kuang- Ming Wu describes it this way: “[Zhuangzi’s] montage of story-bits tells least lies to life, being unorganized as life is, giving us not the meaning of life but tantalizing glimpses [...] The looseness of his story-telling has its justification [...] Since the Great [Dao] does not declare itself as such, it is now declared as not-such” (68). This non-transcendent (Hall and Ames “strictest sense”) identity of the Dao which, while similar to Kierkegaard’s “number carried” in the sense that it is always running throughout the interconnected story bits, is nevertheless not treated as a causal source of meaning in transcendent relationship of A to B. Instead it is illuminated in its interconnected, relational presence with all and each. Thus any comparison of Kierkegaard and Zhuangzi’s rhetoric and ming bian must acknowledge these fundamental points of emphasis and how they imbue their respective works. Kierkegaard’s rhetoric includes the conceptual identity of faith in a causal-transcendent understanding and his indirect communication relies in part on the presence of this conception in his own audience. His work may be in part a complication of the conventional sense of what this means to the individual, but it nevertheless is a central component of his discourse. Similarly but from a different direction, Zhuangzi’s ming bian addresses the correlative condition of Dao and manifests itself throughout his ‘story bits’ by its call to its interconnected nature. Yet, despite their differing emphasis, both writers employ the practice of indirect communication to illuminate their respective truths. Kierkegaard’s “number carried,” however present it may be, cannot be expressed directly to his particular audience due to the nature of illusion in his context. Zhuangzi’s correlative Dao cannot be “made clear” to his own context and audience: “Since the constant [Dao] cannot be [dao-ed] (identified and expressed clearly) as constant, it is now [dao-ed] as not constant. And the book of Zhuangzi is born—irrelevant, inconstant, allusive” (Kuang-Ming Wu 68).

145 Given this, it appears that neither the nature of a causal nor correlative sensibility is a necessity for (or against) indirect communication. Thus, one conclusion regarding this comparative effort can be stated thus: indirect communication is not restricted to any particular time or context by consequence of a truth’s nature.86 Said another way, if indeed all the conditions of contextual meaning (causal, correlative, transcendent) used currently to identify and distinguish the Western and Sino traditions were, in fact, actual and comprehensive, it still would not remove the presence of indirect communication in both sites of meaning. Commonsensical as this conclusion may first appear, I believe it still remains significant. First of all, it argues against the problematic absence/presence mode of reasoning. As I noted in Chapter One, this reasoning sometimes seeks to identify one culture from another by consequence of a particular category’s presence (or lack thereof) in a given tradition’s tendencies of meaning (e.g. Bodde’s “logic” distinction). The presence of indirect communication in both sites argues against such a distinction. But still more significantly, indirect communication’s presence across two differing sites of meaning (contextually and philosophically) suggests that there is an actual call/need for this type of meaning that spans context, time, and philosophy. That said, obviously Kierkegaard and Zhuangzi bring nuance to their particular forms of indirect communication. This nuance works on a two-front level: distinguishing one writer from the other, but at the same time complicating the conventional tendencies of their own respective contexts. The clearest example of their distinctive rhetorical natures, as I suggested above, is derived from the God-truth/causal emphasis of Kierkegaard and the correlative/Dao-truth of Zhuangzi. Yet, at the same time, certain elements and concerns of each writer’s indirect communication position creates a dissonance with their own conventions. Thus, Kierkegaard’s position on the “how” of truth appears to challenge his own contextual tendencies. Similarly, Zhuangzi’s paradoxical wu wei distinguishes itself from his own convention’s reliance on preexisting value systems. Significantly, some of these elements and concerns appear to be shared, particularly their mutual reliance on the paradoxical/poetic sensibility in their respective indirect communications.87 As a consequence, I believe that Kierkegaard and Zhuangzi complicate the general Western/Sino distinctions of causal/correlative, Being/becoming, what/how (of truth) both in

146 their own contexts and in general. They do so by their mutual use of the paradoxical/poetic sensibility. To demonstrate this I will take up some of those ‘nuances’ that make these writers unconventional to their own times and similar to/different from one another. Along the way I hope to illuminate a sense of what this paradoxical/poetic sensibility entails for Kierkegaard and Zhuangzi; where they share similar conceptions, and where they differ. 1. Comparing the “How” of “What” As I noted in the last chapter, Kierkegaard’s use of indirection and his understanding of faith as paradox offers a compelling complication of the how/what distinction of Sino/Western sensibilities and suggests similar sensibilities to Zhuangzi’s own correlative sensibilities. As a consequence of his emphasis and the contexts of his time, Kierkegaard believes his “how” must employ indirection and paradoxical/poetic language to exemplify the paradox and remove the illusion of reflection. In other words, rather than merely address the conventional dialectic of definition and objectivity in more definition and objectivity, Kierkegaard deliberately employs a language of ‘how’ that does not try to impose truth, but clarify the conditions of knowing truth. Importantly, Kierkegaard’s concern here is for the unique actuality of the truth of faith (and, specifically, becoming Christian) and to articulate this in actuality. As the condition of this truth rests in its paradoxical nature, and as his context appears to be in illusion, Kierkegaard feels compelled to position his rhetoric in terms that address both conditions. Consequently, Kierkegaard’s point of indirect communication is not to “trick” his particular audience, “the single individual” into a belief, but to carefully remove misunderstandings “without authority”; to set the record straight, as it were, as to how to find and live (and for Kierkegaard, articulate) the “truth” of this paradoxical faith. In its complex grounding in the paradoxical nature of its source and its unconventional illumination in “actual” human experience—a condition that requires equally paradoxical language when addressing illusion/misunderstanding—Kierkegaard shares a remarkable similarity with Zhuangzi. To that point, Zhuangzi’s ming bian of constant self questioning (“how do I know, how do I not know I know?”) inevitably leads his reader to consider the same questions, thus making them aware of the paradoxical condition of “knowing” not-knowing. Similarly, Zhuangzi suggests the equally paradoxical conclusion that wu wei, “the action of no-action” is the

147 appropriate response to the complexity of life that is interconnected, multi-layered, and constantly shifting. This includes using the language of paradox and poetics that illuminates “without authority” but with purpose: to draw awareness. Thus the “story bits” of Zhuangzi--- Zhuangzi dreaming the butterfly, the butterfly dreaming Zhuangzi; the legend/example of the smallest fish transforming into the largest birds; Cook Ting’s description of something more than skill---all involve an awareness of something unconventional, something paradoxical, to draw attention to the limits of conventional meaning. In other words, to create further awareness through his indirect, paradoxically/poetic, communication. Interestingly, this brings up another tentative connection between the two writers. Such awareness, suggests Zhuangzi, can make of the individual (in light of their relation to the convention) a “singular person”: “The singular man is singular in comparison to other men, a companion of Heaven” (Chuang Tzu: Basic Writings “The Great and Venerable Teacher” 84). Again, “Heaven” here must not be conflated with Kierkegaard’s Western sensibilities, but is itself a unique correlative concept. However, there is a transcendent quality to the singular man’s awareness that is very much in keeping with the paradoxical “single individual” of Kierkegaard. This includes Zhuangzi’s use of the paradoxical/poetic sensibility to illuminate the quality of this awareness. Tian (heaven) may not be transcendent (to earth, to humans) in Zhuangzi’s understanding, but the singular person’s awareness of its presence in the interconnected world of being does appear to acquire a transcendent nature (making the singular, singular—a point to which I will return shortly). Despite their different contexts, both authors position their choice and use of indirect communication in terms of their own “how” to expressing—and living—truth. What remains unique to both is their respective understandings of what this truth entails. Thus, Kierkegaard’s Western causal-transcendent sensibility of the Christian God is different from Zhuangzi’s correlative, interconnected, Dao. The emphasis of ‘how’ (to communicate, to say) does not conflate these differences. Yet their mutual decision to illuminate truth with indirect communication does suggest another critical similarity in their rhetorical strategies. For Zhuangzi, this includes awareness of the interconnected and constantly changing nature of Dao, and the impossibility of “definitive,” objective arguments for truth (Wu, Companion to the Butterfly, 249). A condition of truth which he believes is best addressed by a wu wei sense of “clarity” (Basic Writings “Discussion on Making All Things Equal” 35). The

148 subjective experience of the actuality of truth is also addressed in the how of living/saying in Dao by the “singular” person: “Only the man of far-reaching vision knows how to make them into one. So he has no use [for categories], but relegates all to the constant. The constant is the useful; the useful is the passable; the passable is the successful; and with success all is accomplished. He relies upon this alone, relies upon it and does not know he is doing so. This is called the Way” (36). For Kierkegaard, truth’s actuality and the subjective experience are reflected in the sensibility of “existence communication”: “...speculative thought plays no role, since, as objective and abstract, it is indifferent to the category of the existing subjective individual and at most deals only with pure humanity. Existence-communication, however, understands something different by unum [one] in the saying unum noris, omnes [if you know one, you know all], understands something different by ‘yourself’ in the phrase ‘know yourself,’ understands thereby an actual human being and indicates thereby that the existence-communication does not occupy itself with the anecdotal differences between Tom, Dick, and Harry” (Concluding 571-2). Though Kierkegaard does not name “the single individual” here, it is clear that the “actual human being” is that category of subject. What he shares with Zhuangzi is the emphasis of actuality: in living and in the communication of what it is to live. Tellingly both writers feel this “actuality” in communication requires the use of paradoxical/poetic indirect communication. That said, even here there remain important distinctions, as well. First, Zhuangzi does not have to overturn the how/what distinction of his own time. Nor does it appear Zhuangzi is determined to bring a causal sensibility to his world view. Consequently, his “how” of truth is not the unconventional by way its emphasis over a “what” emphasis of truth (a condition of Kierkegaard’s context and writing). Because of this, Zhuangzi is not as determined to elaborate the difference of the how/what distinction (in his correlative context no such distinction is necessary). Zhuangzi, however, does complicate the “how” of his contemporaries by examining Dao at the individual experiential level. Freedom plays an essential part of this examination. Zhuangzi does not want to rely on prescribed cultural values (e.g., Confucian rites) for meaning. Consequently, Zhuangzi deliberately situates his message in terms of ‘how’ it impacts the reader,

149 not just the overall society. Zhuangzi desires awareness and questioning; not an imposed answer. He seeks to point to truth, to illuminate some of the conditions that surround it. This is reflected in both his paradoxical position of no position and his use of paradox and unconventional ming bian. In this he also shares with Kierkegaard the sensibility of not imposing, but illuminating. Kierkegaard, on the other hand, writing from a context that tends to emphasize the ‘what’ of truth, often positions his illumination in light of the how/what distinction, arguing both directly and indirectly that what is important is “how” something is said. Thus, his argument through pseudonyms and the esthetic writing is in part a demonstration of something that he feels is overlooked in his particular context (i.e., experience, subjectivity) by consequence of an objective focus of “what” is the “truth.” In summary, the emphasis of ‘how’ in communicating and living truth (and the living of that truth in communication) is evident in both writers and points to yet another significance (in comparison) of the paradoxical/poetic sensibility of indirect communication. In short, it appears that indirect communication posits an emphasis on the condition of communicating (the ‘how’ of saying) equal to, if not over and above, the ‘what’ nature of truth. Both Kierkegaard and Zhuangzi share a significant concern for the way truth is—not only lived—but communicated. In fact, both appear to see the ‘lived’ condition as intimately tied to the ‘how’ expression. 2. The Paradox of Poetic Awareness Another nuance of difference and similarity that sheds light on the conditions of indirect communication and the paradoxical/poetic sensibility for these particular writers is the previously mentioned complication of transcendent sensibilities. Specifically, Zhuangzi’s understanding of transcendent awareness appears at times to complicate Hall and Ames’ strictest interpretation of transcendence as “the” Western purview. Further, it also appears to move beyond the efforts of correlative sensibilities alone to contain its meaning. In this regard, it shares similar concerns with Kierkegaard’s “dialectical relationship” of meaning for the individual and a(nother), paradoxical, though interconnected, source (i.e., faith). For Zhuangzi transcendence suggests the conditions of a higher awareness developed in part by a recognition of something that is more than just conventional self, society, or the everyday, immediate, phenomenon around us. Again, in Zhuangzi’s case, this ‘more’ is not a

150 transcendent A to B relationship, vis-a-vis Hall and Ames, but nevertheless this awareness acquires a sense that moves beyond just ordinary awareness. That is, it contains a (simplest) transcendent sensibility in its awareness. In regards to this last point, as I noted in Chapter Two I do not believe the correlative- contextual underpinnings of Ancient China precludes, altogether, a sense of transcendence in the Zhuangzi; quite the contrary. That transcendence—not grounded in the “strictest interpretation” of Hall and Ames—instead resides in the experience of rising above to return again once more, but with better/fuller understanding. The practice of wu wei, and the examples used by Zhuangzi to illustrate its manifestation, are numerous in the Zhuangzi, and the sense of transcendence is evident throughout.88 Consequently, Hall and Ames’ (however reluctant) attempt to remove the sensibility from Chinese experience altogether would leave the experience of Zhuangzi’s Dao- awareness underdeveloped in its actuality. There is evidently a sense of transcendent awareness that is conditioned by the wu wei of Dao. This sense of transcending bears a remarkable similarity to Kierkegaard’s own subjective rising above the objective to return again with more/fuller awareness. In Kierkegaard’s case this is represented by the subjective “knight of faith’s” return to the objective (universal) but with fuller understanding by consequence of his paradoxical faith (Fear and Trembling 38-41)89 What’s more, illumination of this awareness of Dao—like Kierkegaard’s paradox of faith—remains for Zhuangzi a matter of resting in the constant “knowing” of uncertainty: “If the Way is made clear, it is not the Way. If discriminations are put into words, they do not suffice [...] Therefore understanding that rests in what it does not understand is the finest” (40). The paradox of this position of no-position is not simply a consequence of the Dao’s nature, but the human freedom to participate in that Dao. To wit, the highest form appears to be an awareness of something “unspeakable” but still present: “So I say, those who discriminate fail to see [...] The Great Way is not named; Great Discriminations are not spoken [...]” (39). The freedom to act, “to say,” what cannot be said, results in failure. As a consequence, the freedom to paradoxically “not-say” (but still illuminate) what cannot be said, is an authentic awareness of the actuality of the relationship of Dao to the individual. As a consequence, Zhuangzi, like Kierkegaard, appears to participate in something more than the conventional correlative/causal sensibilities, employing, instead a paradoxical/poetic ming bian that alludes to more than just the interconnected, historical, future, present-now,

151 constantly changing, Dao. Like Kierkegaard, his indirect communication points to a condition of paradoxical awareness; a condition that transcends—in “simplest” form—the conventional sensibilities of his time and place. It appears, then, that both Kierkegaard and Zhuangzi situate and emphasize the role of individual human experience with truth as a connection with and freedom from its essence. Each believes that this freedom/experience of their respective truths includes the paradoxical ability to clarify what can and cannot be known and/or said about a given truth. Transcending the conventional is part of both the experience and condition of illuminating. Thus, another tentative conclusion that be reached from this comparison is as follows: The difficulty of expressing certain “truths” can be seen as a consequence of human freedom and the paradoxical nature of the relationship of the individual to truth; a condition that appears to be cross-culturally present and (for these thinkers at least) requires an equally paradoxical, unconventional approach to articulating its awareness: that is indirect communication. In their specific manifestations of this paradoxical articulation of what can be said only indirectly, and its transcendent qualities for understanding, both writers tend to emphasize the imaginative. This suggests, in part, a unique quality of indirect communication (and these particular writers’ paradoxical/poetic sensibility). Specifically, it is the need for each writer to introduce the category/experience of imagination to further illuminate their respective positions on truth. This is not to suggest that their truths are creations of their imaginations, but that the imaginative is a critical element to how they articulate their truth’s paradoxical natures. The necessity for introducing this imaginative quality is not to go away from the actual subjective- experience of the individual, but to encourage. It does so by not prescribing “ideal” knowledge and/or experience on the part of Kierkegaard or Zhuangzi. For example, much like Zhuangzi’s fantastical “story bits,” Kierkegaard uses his own double-reflection of ironic pseudonyms (e.g., a non-Christian setting the record straight on faith, Fear and Trembling) to articulate what remains, paradoxically silent/inexpressible but still present/available in truth. As a consequence, Kierkegaard’s description of the knight of faith is only a subjective imaginative reflection by Silentio (who is himself an imaginative construction) of what Silentio cannot find, but imagines must be like in actuality (Fear and Trembling 38-41). This multilayered and paradoxical actuality is described by Kierkegaard as the poetic-sensibility

152 of the ideal. It reflects by way of its poetic nature and doubly-reflected awareness (reader/imaginative construction) something more real than the objective definition of the same: In this way no fanaticism develops; the poet or, more accurately, the poet- dialectician, does not make himself out to be the ideal and even less does he judge any single human being. But he holds up the ideal so that everyone, if he has a mind to, in quiet solitariness can compare his own life with the ideal” (Point of View 133). Similarly, “[t]he ‘actuality’ that Chuang Tzu describes [...] is an imagined one. He does not describe what has happened but what had better happen, had better be lived. The reader must himself reconstruct it as he lives it” (Wu 25). In both cases, neither writer is situating himself as an ideal example of a Christian or Daoist. Rather, both are holding up their works as illumination of truth’s subjective conditions of actual experience; asking the reader to consider their own existence/relationship to truth in light of those conditions. Further, each writer uses his paradoxical/poetic indirect communication because, for them, this authentically represents their own subjective understanding, and living, of truth. As such, Kierkegaard’s “writing without authority” is reflective of Zhuangzi’s constant self-questioning and refusal to identify himself (or another) as central authority (thus, his constant shifting of voices and themes). Both represent a position by the authors not to be authorities of meaning, but to relate their own subjective-experience in a form of communication that allows for the reader’s own subjective-experience. Thus, for Kierkegaard and Zhuangzi, the imaginative qualities of their paradoxical/poetic indirect communication are a position that articulates and addresses a truth about truth that is beyond conventional language’s ability to name it explicitly—to define it, objectively. Such a position takes into account the actuality of human experience, including the freedom of the individual to choose. It also acknowledges—and comes from—a subjective experience of this point of view. A point of view that both Kierkegaard and Zhuangzi believe critically, if not, categorically, the essential position from which a person can actually operate in understanding and communicating truth. One implication of this conclusion is the challenge it offers to reliance on objective understanding and argument alone. To be clear, neither Zhuangzi nor Kierkegaard is advocating an exclusively subjective platform of meaning, nor dismissing the value of objective orientation

153 and argument. Rather, they both attempt to complicate what this objective position can ultimately accomplish regarding the individual’s relationship to certain truths of meaning. Said another way, Kierkegaard was no enemy of science, but he would find imposition of scientific reasoning alone on the individual’s experience of truth (including the truth of their own subjective experience) a misappropriate conflation of meaning. Similarly, Zhuangzi would question to what extent the objective qualities of Confucius’ Ren-dao (its reliance on prescribed ritual and rites) have for the immediate experience of the individual in a world that is alive and ever-changing and wholly interconnected to nature as well as humans. The fact that both Kierkegaard and Zhuangzi choose this paradoxically/poetic indirectness, plus their respective emphasis on the subjective/inwardness of experience, is strikingly significant. If the ‘how’ of saying is as important (given truth’s paradoxical nature) as the “what” of truth, then their respective rhetorical and ming bian practices—particularly their similar use of indirection and the paradoxical/poetic—takes on new significance. Both choose to “argue” the importance of ‘how’ we say truths (or more accurately, create awareness) by use of indirect communication, including their paradoxically/poetic rhetoric and ming bian to reach the subjective experience. Their use of this sensibility illuminates the limits of objective reason (or again, perhaps more accurately, the opportunity of subjective and paradoxical/poetic reason) to address truth completely/authentically. 3. The Tone of Indirect Communication Another illuminating nuance between Kierkegaard and Zhuangzi is the tone each writer takes regarding his message and philosophy. As more than one scholar has noted, Zhuangzi appears to enjoy a more “free and easy” approach and philosophy than Kierkegaard. Hall and Ames, in comparing the ‘irony’ of Kierkegaard with Zhuangzi, suggest: There is an ultimate seriousness in the ironic sense that precludes it from expressing the lightheartedness of the Daoist sage. Irony, in Kierkegaard’s phrase, ‘masters the moment,’ permitting the ironist to accept the tragic way of things without recourse to mask. The Daoist does not seek to master the moment, but to yield himself up to it through the sort of lighthearted deference with which Master Li, lolling against Master Lai’s door, proclaimed, ‘Extraordinary, these transformation! What are you going to be made into next?’ (Thinking From the Han 76).

154 Similarly, Kuang-Ming Wu suggests Zhuangzi’s “frolic” with life (including the consequence of death) is in contrast with the “...prevalent mood in some existential literature, such as Kierkegaard’s ‘sickness unto death’ (despair)...” (15).90 As noted in Chapter Three, Zhuangzi’s style is marked by the sense of “play.” Zhuangzi’s wu wei suggests a profound appreciation of what life has to offer to the individual if they but participate in it most freely, most naturally. Treating the “answers” to life’s meaning and truth as both serious and playful, profound and simple (for the questions, like the answers are but a reflection of life’s complexity and interconnective, perspectival nature), Zhuangzi moves effortlessly from point to point with a style that is never grounded in one tone, one expression of meaning. This is reflected in a ming bian (rhetorical) tone which is as equally full of wry humor and gentle teasing as it is profound and thoughtful argument. The difference between Kierkegaard and the freewheeling, “jocular” style of Zhuangzi is evident in many of the themes and titles of their works (Wu 86).91 This includes Kierkegaard’s aforementioned Sickness unto Death, as well as Fear and Trembling. But to take the more immediate example noted earlier, there is a presiding difference in each author’s tone to irony. Specifically, Kierkegaard, the “master of irony,” often likens irony to an ultimately fatal occupation, including: “Irony is an abnormal growth; like the abnormally enlarged liver of the Strassburg goose it ends up killing the individual” (Soul of Kierkegaard 58). Compare this with Zhuangzi’s Uncle Lack-Limb’s own ironic response to his “tumor”: “Do you resent it?” said Uncle Lack-Limb. “No—what is there to resent?” said Uncle Lame-Gait. “To live is to borrow. And if we borrow to live, then life must be a pile of trash. Life and death are day and night. You and I came to watch the process of change, and now change has caught up with me. Why would I have anything to resent?” Though both instances have the quality of fatality to it, there is a sense of transcendence through despair (e.g., The Sickness Unto Death) in Kierkegaard’s general approach to “corrective” irony that is not reflected in the transcendence of understanding—marked by frolic—that imbues Zhuangzi. Consequently, though both writers deal with doubt, death, illness, etc., Zhuangzi’s answer and ming bian are a constant source, a wellspring, of gentle, playful irony. Kierkegaard’s, on the other hand, is marked by a sense of seriousness that invests even his humorous rhetorical undertakings.

155 For me, the significance of these differing tones of irony reflect the variable nature of irony itself; a nature that is not limited to any particular point of view or cultural context’s conditions of rational meaning. Thus, both Kierkegaard’s tone of despair and Zhuangzi’s wu wei tone of “play” are both present/available to indirectness. Secondly, the use of irony (whatever its form) is, at least in these two differing instances, a key strategy to indirect communication’s purpose: creating awareness. Both writers work deliberately with ironic expression and themes; both feel compelled by their subjective experience of truth to use these forms to reside in the uncertain, a condition most available to the ironic sensibility. That said, in terms of specific conclusions regarding each writer’s unique tone of irony there remains a great deal of nuance and significance that might be explained in terms other than personal disposition. For example, though distinguished from Kierkegaard’s rhetoric, Zhuangzi’s apparent difference in tone raises interesting comparisons with the Western tradition as a whole. From this broad perspective one possible explanation to the tonal difference is how the different cultural contexts addressed the rational/objective condition of meaning. If the Western development of thought reaches a crisis in “monolithic rationality” with the advent of the Enlightenment and subsequent 19th Century writers like Kierkegaard and Nietzsche (Hall and Ames, Anticipating 105), it might be argued that the rhetoric of writers such as Kierkegaard was shaped, in part, by the crisis of discovering a deeply entrenched, “monolithic” system of belief that was being questioned, indeed overthrown. This left the responders of the Enlightenment to struggle with both the loss of meaning and the need to replace it with something else.92 But no such crisis is evident in the works of Zhuangzi (and other writers such as Laozi). In many ways, the Ancient Chinese writers anticipate this “crisis” in their philosophies and take a pragmatic approach to its source early on. They see the vagaries of language and its implications on truth not as a failure of truth’s ultimate reality, but as a consequence of language’s inability to convey this truth explicitly. That is to say, for Zhuangzi, the “challenge” to the “hegemony of objectivity” was evident early on in their formative discourses and was not a reaction to a long historical tradition’s crisis in meaning (Hall and Ames Anticipating 106) . Consequently, his work reflects an understanding of “truth” that is not rational-dependent and is not predicated on a world view of being. It did not depend on necessary and separate essences of meaning or understanding, developed or discovered independently from each other. Rather, Zhuangzi’s answer is an “answer” that is interdependent and in a constant state of becoming.

156 Thus, his Dao is prominently built on his understanding of this interconnected world, including his emphasis of ‘how’ in living and communicating the Dao. Comparatively, Kierkegaard will also write from the position of “becoming,” but his is, in many ways, a response to the crisis developed in his Western context’s reliance and emphasis of causal rationality and conceptions. To that end, the illusion of speculative thought—a condition that arises in part from an over-reliance on objective reasoning—removed the experience of living, the actuality, and created a crisis of understanding. Kierkegaard’s ‘how’ of truth was, in part, a “corrective” of that understanding. Thus, one explanation to the differing tones of each writer is his contextually situated nature. As a result of Zhuangzi’ own interconnective sensibility, the “crisis” of rationality was not situated in terms of prominence (though the Ancient Chinese certainly considered and debated ‘reasoning’s’ conditions, objective and otherwise), and as result is not manifested to the same degree or tone in the works of Zhuangzi. Zhuangzi certainly shares the Ancient Chinese correlative sensibility regarding language and reasoning’s interdependence, but in his unique way further nuances his underlying positions by his own playful ming bian. In other words, because of his unique Daoist nature, Zhuangzi’s answer was essentially positive, preserving a truth while correcting the error of language/reason’s crisis in helpful and “playful” tones.93 Comparatively, Kierkegaard’s own “corrective” to his context’s reliance on “monolithic rationality” was often marked by a noticeable “mood” of despair that recognized this as a moment of crisis in his particular time. Said another way, Kierkegaard’s tone of despair arises, in part, from an historical crisis of context.94 While I believe these contextual implications to be helpful and do create further understanding, I also believe that a certain caution must be used in applying them too liberally. Namely, caution must be used regarding general cause and effect claims to each specific person; otherwise unhelpful generalizations and reductionism occur. To that end, I believe Kierkegaard and Zhuangzi’s essential philosophies and nuances of tone demonstrate the need for such caution. While Kierkegaard may in fact suggest a tone of “despair” and Zhuangzi “frolic,” over- reliance on a contextual condition as source for this tendency might overlook the role of other more immediate factors (including personality, or subjective experiences of truth). My position, instead, is to allow the nuances of each writer to create meaning that does not prescribe universals, but points to the diversity of meaning itself.

157 To illustrate what I mean by the latter, let me return again to the causal/correlative distinction and address one of its specific interpretations regarding language. In doing so I hope to show what is possible and what remains still questionable in our determination to find general answers to specific experiences—a concern that I believe is equally evident and demonstrated by Kierkegaard and Zhuangzi. Indirect Communication and the Languages of Presence As Kierkegaard and Zhuangzi’s unique rhetoric and ming bian still carry a Western/Sino context each writer’s use of indirect communication might be explained by calls to that tradition’s particular tendencies of meaning, including the use and understanding of language. In this case, Kierkegaard’s indirect communication might be understood in terms of that tradition’s causal sensibilities. Specifically, what Hall and Ames call the “language of absence,” one of “two sorts of language” that they suggest has dominated the West, the second being the “language of presence”—terms they identify with Jacques Derrida’s “deconstruction” (Anticipating 228). Such a language, the language of absence, “...uses indirect discourse to advertise the existence of a nonpresentable subject” (229)—certainly a condition of Kierkegaard’s rhetoric. However, this language, they argue is still predicated upon the causal sensibilities of having a “referent, real or putative, beyond the act of referencing” (229). By contrast, Hall and Ames go on to suggest that the Chinese tradition (and by extension, Zhuangzi) employs a language of “deference”: “the recognition of mutual resonances among instances of communicative activity. There is no referencing beyond these acts of communication as they resonate with one another and with the entertained meanings of the models from the tradition” (229). The language of deference embodies the interconnected sensibility of the correlative, and is thus purposely loose, productively vague, and not focused on univocal definition of causal conceptions of meaning. In such a reading, then, Kierkegaard’s use of indirect communication is understood as using an alternative (but still causally-emphasized) language, which is distinguished from Zhuangzi’s own correlative language, both philosophically and rhetorically, by the former’s need to establish essence and definition for a single-ordered world and the latter’s productively vague response to life’s interconnected, changing nature. This appears to enjoy some validation as Kierkegaard continually examines conceptual terms (e.g., esthetic, paradox, faith) for their meaning to a degree that is not evident in Zhuangzi’s explorations.

158 Nevertheless, Kierkegaard and Zhuangzi’s use of indirect communication, and particularly their work with the paradoxical/poetic sensibility, complicate this reading of Hall and Ames. First, the “univocity”-quest suggested by Hall and Ames is not clear in Kierkegaard’s highly subjective accounts. By addressing truth from, in, and for the subjective experience of the individual, Kierkegaard’s creation of awareness seems to resist any ‘univocity,’ particularly in light of his confrontation with his contexts reliance on objective and systematic renderings of meaning and history. Time and again Kierkegaard challenges the systematic, objective reasoning’s relevance to the actuality of individual experience. “The truth for me...” position of Kierkegaard (while not arguing for relative truth) is always suspicious of imposing any objective meaning onto the individual experience—including, most importantly, his own. Instead, as was noted in Chapter Four, Kierkegaard reverses the hierarchy (process and standard) and suggests that the actuality of truth posits the subjective to arrive at the objective. While Kierkegaard might be determined to help the individual to awareness of the conditions of faith, he does not appear to equate this awareness with a sense of universal understanding or agreement. On the contrary, his indirect communication appears to undermine any such attempts. Thus as I noted, Kierkegaard’s complex and varied use of pseudonyms, and their respective differing positions, are not merely a clever rhetorical move to “handle” differing points of view (i.e., to make his own truth clearly the victor—“compel a belief...this I cannot do”), but in light of the individual’s freedom to choose and conventional objective language’s limits to convey subjective experience, and it is an attempt to poeticize the actuality of the ideal. As a consequence, Kierkegaard’s highly subjective “single individual” and his paradoxical/poetic rhetoric does not seem to fit in the univocity, and the objectively determined languages of presence and absence. This includes Kierkegaard’s unconventional reversal of the how/what distinction of truth. Second, the distinction of Western languages, viewed rhetorically, does not appear to preclude a similar rhetorical/ming bian approach to illuminating through indirection. It is not clear to me that the lack of “referent” in “the language of absence,” is in any meaningful way so rhetorically different as to preclude a sense of indirectness in one or the other contexts. In other words, Zhuangzi’s indirect communication is not essentially different in purpose from Kierkegaard’s own—from a rhetorical/ming bian perspective. Both are striving for awareness through indirection. Zhuangzi is certainly using this indirect communication to advertise

159 “something” which is “nonpresentable.” Such being the case, the definition of “indirect discourse to advertise...a nonpresentable subject” could be applied equally as well to Zhuangzi’s “unsayable” Dao. My point is that the use of indirection in language (absence/presence, deference or otherwise) is evident in both Kierkegaard and Zhuangzi’s work, thus making the distinction of “languages”—while informative of certain underlying sensibilities—not a precluding factor to the presence or use of indirectness. Further, the use of the paradoxical/poetic sensibility by both writers appears to strain the bounds of the causal/correlative distinctions alone. Though the causal/correlative sensibilities are present in their respective emphases, they are not enough (or, inadequate) to explain the paradox/poetic sensibility of meaning evident in these two writers. In other words, though causal/correlative sensibilities are present and emphasized to differing degrees, they do not completely address the ‘additional’ meaning of paradoxical/poet rhetoric or ming bian. This ‘additional’ meaning—a creation of awareness to something outside language— relies on (and appears to call for) unconventional articulation, including (in these two instances) the use of paradoxical/poetic language. Therefore, one needs neither the “crisis” of Western Enlightenment, nor the correlative anticipation of that crisis and its answer to employ/position (their brand of) indirect communication. Nor does the causal/correlative distinction or the languages of presence/deference completely address the use and understanding of Kierkegaard and Zhuangzi’s indirect communication and its paradoxical/poetic sensibility. Instead, I would argue that the difference in tone between these two writers is best understood in light of Kierkegaard and Zhuangzi’s basic premises of subjective-experience and meaning. That is to say, Kierkegaard’s tone of despair is not just a repercussion of his time and context (the ‘crisis’), but is (may also be?) a consequence of his person. Similarly, Zhuangzi’s tone represents his personal disposition as much as it does his fundamental philosophy and own context. Separating the two (context and person) or imposing one over the other is to miss the nuances of both, and just importantly complicates experiencing the value of their messages personally, without recourse to a prescribed ‘authoritative’ meaning/answer. I think this is the point of Kierkegaard and Zhuangzi’s respective writings and indirect communication. *

160 I have argued above that the indirect communication of Kierkegaard and Zhuangzi and its paradoxical/poetic sensibility suggest more meaning than what is “on the page,” so to speak. Specifically, the paradoxical/poet sensibility calls attention (as in Zhuangzi’s ‘spillover saying’ or Kierkegaard’s ‘honest deception’) to the actuality of language: its eventful, alive condition. It may be true that all communication (objective, scientific, narrative, exposition, etc.,) conditions the reader’s engagement as a co-author of meaning. But what is unique to the paradoxical/poetic sensibility demonstrated in these writers is its call to additional meaning in the reader by consequence of its unconventional form and expression. In other words, what makes the ironic ironical, the paradox paradoxical, the poetic poetic, is also what it engenders in meaning. It is purposely (if not opposed) outside the conventional forms of objective and logical argument. Where the conventional argument details and explicates meaning, the paradoxical/poetic sensibility of Kierkegaard and Zhuangzi’s indirect communication teases it out. Despite this tentative and esoteric nature, the ironic, paradoxical, and poetic remains, for these writers, an invaluable source of truth. I have touched, somewhat, on the ‘ironic’ in the previous section of this chapter and Chapters Three and Four. Until now, however, I have deliberately left paradox and poetic ‘undefined,’ intending (hoping) that in working through the works of Kierkegaard and Zhuangzi that the connotative nuances of these terms (like their respective senses of irony) will gain more substance and complicate strict ‘definitions’ of the terms. Thus, for example, paradox is defined in Lanham’s “Handlist of Rhetorical Terms” as “Paradox: “(Greek “contrary to opinion or expectation); […] A seemingly self-contradictory statement, which yet is shown to be (sometimes in a surprising way) true” (107). Clearly, this simple definition—though superficially accurate—fails to capture the breadth of how both Kierkegaard and Zhuangzi invest them; a point both authors would be quick to point out. Nor would other sources (dictionaries, scholarly treatise, etc.,) necessarily address this “insufficiency.” This again, they would argue, is only the actuality of communicating, and specifically communicating along unconventional lines. Paradox and poetics resist definition, containment, and stuck artificiality. To that point, as I noted in the introduction there is an “unexpected” experiential sense of meaning—what Lanham calls the “toggle switch”—in the practice of irony, paradox, and similar unconventional forms. It is this sense of toggling additional experience that offers Kierkegaard

161 and Zhuangzi a unique tool for illuminating what they feel is being overlooked regarding truth. As in a certain sense each writer believes truth’s actuality has been buried by convention, his intention is to get to the ‘more’ of meaning—the actuality of truth—by way of the unconventional, the turning upside down of what is expected and familiar. To be specific, these writers are not attempting to address in objective terms the conditions and evidence of paradox/poetics in life and literature. Rather, they want to illuminate the subjective-experience of truth by the only vehicle left open to them in a world of convention: the use of paradox and poetics. For Kierkegaard and Zhuangzi the sense of “further meaning” engendered by the experience of paradox and poetics was critical to making the reader aware of their own subjective-experience actuality with truth. And for these writers, experiencing the truth in actuality (including subjectively) was the only real value to truth for the individual. Thus the paradoxical/poetic sensibility of ‘more’ was a call by both writers to that subjective potential in their reader. Yet that being said, there remains still further nuances and differences between the two writers’ sense of paradox and poetics. These differences are important to understanding the overall complexity of the paradoxical/poetic sensibility in general. Comparatively examining Kierkegaard and Zhuangzi’s respective rhetoric and ming bian of paradox and poetics, then, will not only help to edify tentative overarching conditions of the paradoxical/poetic sensibility, it will also create awareness of its ever present condition of complexity. The diversity of meaning present by this comparison is, I believe, one of the central values to comparative work in general. Nuances and Connections of the Paradoxical/Poetic Sensibility The first condition of nuance in the paradoxical/poetic sensibility is, again, tied to each writer’s respective contextual identities. To be specific, Kierkegaard by way of his causal roots makes of “Paradox” a concept—a “category unto itself”—as well as a rhetorical strategy to awareness. Zhuangzi, on the other hand, remains in his correlative sensibilities. The correlative sensibility may condition that the concept and ming bian are both interconnectively present, but does not determine that Zhuangzi must argue (like Kierkegaard) for Paradox as a category of and in itself. Thus, in Kierkegaardian terms, the Paradox is present as his truth, and “paradox” is required for its illumination. Kierkegaard’s “Paradox as category” has its source in, and makes its presence known, by way of its paradoxical sensibility (i.e., the absurdity/truth of faith). Zhuangzi’s use of paradox, on the other hand, does not share the “categorical” nature of

162 Kierkegaard’s paradox. Zhuangzi does not posit his ‘authority’ of truth in the paradoxically historical specific conditions of “Christianity,” nor the “authority” (i.e. Kierkegaard’s God) of its source/being. His paradoxical/poetic illumination is a manifestation of the Dao’s actuality in life (human, heaven, earth, nature, et al, interconnected and changing). Zhuangzi does share a similar sense of the use of paradox to illuminate his own truth, Dao. Too, Zhuangzi’s Dao (like Kierkegaard’s “faith”) is paradoxical to the conventional position of rationality. In this instance, both writers turn to paradox as a means by which to “intimate,” or illuminate, the actuality of living/becoming their respective truths in language. The significance (in both cases) is that paradox comes closer to the actuality of actuality than the conventional-objective language of definition and logical explication: “Paradoxes are no longer disasters to be dissolved, but an expression of our experience. Chuang Tzu’s Ch’i Wu Lun [Sorting Things Out] chapter is an understanding of living actuality in such language” (Companion to the Butterfly 259). Language, for Zhuangzi, is the awareness of “the living vibration of the universe,” developed in part from our paradox-awareness. Similarly, Kierkegaard sees the pathos of paradoxical experience as a condition for awareness. Though, again, couching it in categorical terms, Kierkegaard shares with Zhuangzi the expansive, and yet immediate, sense of living vibration of the universe: “The paradox is really the pathos of intellectual life, and just as great souls are exposed to passions it is only the great thinker who is exposed to what I call the paradoxes, which are nothing else than grandiose thoughts in embryo” (Soul of Kierkegaard 58-59). Thus, while each writer remains in his respective nuances of context (Zhuangzi correlative/Kierkegaard causal), each also moves beyond these distinctions in a shared understanding of paradox’s role in illuminating truth. Said another way, each writer seeks to create the awareness of ‘more’ (to truth) by consequence of his use and understanding of paradox’s value. Or, as Kuang-Ming Wu suggests of Zhuangzi: For the understanding of living actuality to take place we must lose our set mind (ch’eng hsin) which dogmatically judges paradoxes to be rational aberrations, for we prejudge here that our logical apparatus should monitor reality without being rocked, much less jarred. We must instead quietly let in the vibration that shakes our mind chamber (hsin-shih), and we are received into the recesses of actuality. The Ch’i Wu Lun chapter is one report on such cosmic waves, as it were, by the

163 perceptive mind of Chuang Tzu...Such reception is a dynamic one. (Companion to the Butterfly 259). Certainly, Wu’s characterization applies equally well to Kierkegaard’s rhetorical position, and the latter’s paradox of “absurd” faith shares a similar ‘rocking’ of convention’s reliance on logic for meaning. In a similar fashion, both writers’ sense of poetics (or poeticity) enjoys both nuance and a shared sense of meaning. For Kierkegaard, the poet and his poetic practices in the esthetic (indirect) writings is a deliberate practice, and shares with Zhuangzi’s three-fold ming bian strategies a developing sense of awareness. What distinguishes Kierkegaard’s poetic “nature” from Zhuangzi’s is the former’s tendency to again identify, in this case the “poet,” as both a category (identity) and a practice. For example, in The Point of View Kierkegaard describes the poetic as a form of living that must (to live religiously) finally be understood for its limitations regarding the paradox of faith. As an essentially esthetic movement, poetic language is an illuminating tool. It is not, however, a condition of faith’s actuality (which requires the paradox of moving beyond poetic-esthetic and ethical human norms of meaning). This can be done through poetic-language’s call to awareness of the conditions of faith, but is not the condition of faith itself. The awareness is created in part by the ‘positioning’ of the poetic (i.e., the rhetoric of indirect communication) in light of what separates the spheres of esthetic, ethical, and religious living in actuality. Thus, the poetic is necessary in order to appreciate the finer distinctions and subjective experiences of the spheres of living. In the final sense, however, the poetic form becomes a “working through” of the requirements for becoming (in Kierkegaard’s final sense, religious)—a move away from speculative thought: The task that is to be assigned to most people in Christendom is—away from ‘the poet’ or from relating oneself to or having one’ life in what the poet recites, away from speculative thought, from having one’s life imaginatively (which is also impossible) in speculating (instead of existing) to becoming a Christian. (Point of View 78) This includes Kierkegaard’s conception of his own authorship and person: “In a certain sense, it was not at all my idea to become a religious author. My idea was to empty myself of the poetic as quickly as possible—and then out to a rural parish” (Point of View 86). But the rural parish was not to be (as circumstances determined), and instead, as he noted above, he

164 engaged on a two-front (his private and his public person) battle of becoming aware: “Here the reader readily perceives the explanation for the duplexity of the whole authorship, except that this duplexity was also assimilated in the author’s consciousness. What was to be done? Well, the poetic element had to be emptied out—for me there was no other possibility” (Point of View 85). Thus, in reflecting later on his authorship and person, Kierkegaard positions the practice of poetic language with the category of being poetic-esthetic in living, a condition he feels both he and those who proclaim to be Christian must work their way through. Zhuangzi, on the other hand, does not write of his “poeticity” as a vehicle or condition to “overcome” in Kierkegaardian terms. There is no sense of despair to awareness (see above), but, as Wu suggests, a “frolicking” poeticity that engages the reader in the potential of life lived to its fullest awareness in actuality: “Chuang Tzu’s writing embodies rhythm in his self-expression of ideal actuality, manifesting its inner affinity with our life rhythm; yet it is too ‘bombastic’ and ‘goblet-like’ to become codified” (Companion To The Butterfly 25). In other words, Zhuangzi’s poeticity is a ming bian manifestation of his philosophy of wu wei. It shares with Kierkegaard a sense of being necessary to articulate his message, including the creation of further awareness. It differs, however, in its contextually created nuance of the correlative Dao (reality), which does not separate or distinguish the category of being “poetic” in writing from the actuality of living (in Zhuangzi’s case) poetically . Said another way, Zhuangzi embodies his philosophy of living with his poeticity throughout the work without recourse to a dialectical working through, but as a continuing expression of his wu wei understanding of Dao. These distinctions notwithstanding, what remains tantalizingly interconnected between these two unique appreciation of ‘poetics’ is their deliberate use as a form of unconventional illumination and what this has to say about the language of objectivity. That is to say, both Kierkegaard and Zhuangzi use the form of poetics to illuminate (each from his own position of truth) over/against conventional norms. This is not to say Kierkegaard and Zhuangzi refute those norms, or the value of their knowledge-production. Rather both hope to create awareness of, if not touch, that space of meaning that is not available to the objective/rational (dogmatic or relative, empirical or logical-theoretical) paradigm. This is directly tied to the subjective- experience orientations of existing. As Kierkegaard’s pseudonym, Johannes Climacus, suggests: “Scientific scholarship wants to take charge of the dialectical and to that end bring it over into the medium of

165 abstraction, whereby the issue is again mistreated, since it is an existence-issue, and the actual dialectical difficulty disappears by being explained in the medium of abstraction, which ignores existence”(Postscript 556). Or as Kierkegaard more directly states: “Now how are the sciences to help? Simply not at all, in no way whatsoever. They reduce everything to calm and objective observation—with the result that freedom is an inexplicable something.” (Soul of Kierkegaard 188). In a similar vein, Zhuangzi notes: “You can’t discuss the Way with a cramped scholar— he’s shackled by his doctrines” (“Autumn Floods” 97). This shackled condition is not by consequence of being a “scholar” but being a “cramped” scholar. The latter is represented by a dependency on set norms or prescribed values that, again, limit the freedom of the individual to participate most authentically in the Dao. Science and the cramped scholar—and the objective language/reason that they conventionally work in—are not flawed or erroneous in their respective endeavors; they simply are limited in approaching the subjective-experience of truth in actuality. And it is this actuality of experience that both writers are trying to re-situate in the practice of understanding life, including the actuality of truth’s paradoxical/poetic element. Thus, Kierkegaard re-posits the pathos into the intellectual pursuit, Zhuangzi reminds us of the “living vibration,” and both poeticize their works. Frequently, this includes calling on paradox and irony to address that “which cannot be said” (but for these writers at least cannot be forgotten or ignored either) for the full awareness of truth to be lived. That is not to say that either author feels he has discovered, finally/objectively, in his paradoxical/ poetic messages the meaning of life. This, in keeping with their positions of non- authority, is beyond their ability and own situated natures. Kierkegaard: “If someone gave me ten rix-dollars, I would not take it upon myself to explain the riddle of existence. Indeed, why should I? If life is a riddle, in the end presumably the one who has proposed the riddle will himself explain it”(Postscript 451); Zhuangzi: “Your life has a limit but knowledge none. If you use what is limited to pursue what has no limit, you will be in danger. If you understand this and still strive for knowledge, you will be in danger for certain!” (“The Secret of Caring For Life” 46). Instead, as Zhuangzi suggests in his final passage of “External Things” Kierkegaard and Zhuangzi appear to have discovered the value of “the fish trap,” and in this case words: “Words

166 exist because of meaning; once you’ve gotten 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?” (140). In Kierkegaard’s paradoxical/poetic sensibility of indirect communication, Zhuangzi may have found a person who shares his understanding of creating awareness of life’s fullest actuality, without proscribing (remaining in the fish trap of words) that “unsayable” meaning.

167 Works Cited

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168 ---. The Point of View for My Work as an Author. Ed. and Trans. Howard V. Hong & Edna H. Hong. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1998. ---. The Soul of Kierkegaard: Selections from His Journals. Ed. Alexander Dru. Mineola: Dover, 2003. Lanham, Richard. Handlist of Rhetorical Terms: 2nd Edition. Berkley: University of California Press, 1991. Laozi. Tao Te Ching. Trans. Arthur Waley. Ware: Wordsworth, 1997. Lu, Xing. Rhetoric in Ancient China, Fifth to Third Century B.C.E.: A Comparison with Greek Rhetoric. Columbia: South Carolina, 1998. Mao, LuMing. Reading Chinese Fortune Cookie: The Making of Chinese American Rhetoric. Logan: Utah State UP, 2006. Nietzsche, Friedrich. Ancient Rhetoric. Friedrich Nietzsche on Rhetoric and Language. Ed. and Trans. S. L. Gilman, C. Blair, and D. J. Parent. New York: Oxford UP 1989. Plato. “Gorgias.” Trans. W. R. M. Lamb. The Rhetorical Tradition: Readings from Classical Times to the Present: 2n Ed. Eds. Patricia Bizzell and Bruce Herzberg. Boston: Bedford/St. Martins, 2001. ---.“Phaedrus.” Trans. H. N. Fowler. The Rhetorical Tradition: Readings from Classical Times to the Present: 2n Ed. Eds. Patricia Bizzell and Bruce Herzberg. Boston: Bedford/St. Martins, 2001. ---. The Dialogues of Plato. Trans. Erich Segal. New York: Bantam Classics, 1986. Kennedy, George. Comparative Rhetoric: An Historical and Cross-cultural Introduction. New York: Cambridge UP, 1997. Segal, Erich. Introduction. The Dialogues of Plato. Trans. Erich Segal. New York: Bantam Classics, 1986. Silko, Leslie Marmon. Woman and Beauty of the Spirit: Essays on Native American Life Today. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997. Watson, Burton. Introduction. Chuang Tzu: Basic Writings. Trans. Burton Watson. New York: Columbia UP, 1966. Wu, Kuang-Ming. The Butterfly as Companion: Meditations on the First Three Chapters of the Chuang Tzu. Albany: New York Press, 1990. Zhuangzi [Chuang Tzu]. Chuang Tzu: Basic Writings. Trans. Burton Watson. New York:

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170 End Notes

Chapter One 1 Unless otherwise noted all of my citations of Zhuangzi are from the Burton Watson translation, Chuang Tzu: Basic Writings. Zhuangzi is the Pinyin translation of the individual credited with writing the text of the same name; Chuang Tzu is the Wade-Giles translation. For ease of reading I will use the translators or scholars preferred translation in citations. 2 Zhuangzi translator and scholar Burton Watson makes the same point in Chuang Tzu: Basic Writings: “The central theme.. .may be summed up in a single word: freedom” (3); “to awaken the reader” (5). Similarly, Kierkegaard scholar and translator, Thomas C. Oden suggests, “...Kierkegaard’s purpose was not simply to amuse, but to edify, to upbuild..., to draw his readers into self-awareness...” (Parables of Kierkegaard intro xii). 3 Kierkegaard ponders the paradox time and again in his journal and writings, including: “Has a man the right to talk to any other man on the highest matters? (The Soul of Kierkegaard 203). Similarly, Zhuangzi also complicates his own discourse with a deliberate recognition of the Way’s complexity including the famous “Words are not wind” passage (34) and: “If the Way is made clear than it is not the Way” (40); “How can I be the only muddled one, and other men not muddled?” (“Discussion on Making All Things Equal” 33). All of these passages will be discussed in greater detail in Chapters 3 and 4. 4 Though such an explanation appears to me to be beyond simple definition or brief description, a short discussion here might help clarify what I mean (and don’t mean) by the term, truth. Hopefully this will move the study along to a more pointed discussion of both Kierkegaard and Zhuangzi’s respective notions of this most difficult of “words.” That said, a careful and more extended discussion of this term’s history and connotations (both Western and Chinese) follows in the next chapter; a discussion which I believe will provide a necessary backdrop to appreciating where Kierkegaard and Zhuangzi both operate within and outside of their respective traditions. 5 A more detailed discussion of the Western understanding of conceptual truth will be taken up in Chapter 2, including an analysis of Hall and Ames deliberations on truth as a concept in the West and the differing tendency evident in the Chinese experience.

171 6 See for example Bodde’s “Conclusions”: “The definitions of science that follow have been chosen deliberately because they are Western and modern, as well as authoritative....”; And, “Only in an environment both modern and Western (or at least Western-oriented) could this consciousness [the awareness of the ‘laws of nature] have happened...” (Both citations are from Chinese Thought “Conclusions” 358). 7 If there is a “scientific” revolution in the Chinese tradition, it may more likely be found in a paradigm that does not reject or undermine the sensibilities of social science, though this, too, must be reexamined in light of the unique Chinese experience and understanding of “social” and “science.” As a brief illustration of what might be left out, it is no accident that the Western science of medicine is now re-evaluating its understanding of traditional Chinese medicine. The latter tradition, developed over centuries of holistic experimentation and understanding, may in fact offer new areas of development from (and in) the Western tradition. 8 “...the fact that these comparisons seem, scientifically speaking, to be most unfavorable to China may lead some readers to suspect that their partial or primary purpose has been to exalt the West at the expense of China.. .I can only deny it in the most emphatic terms” (Bodde Chinese Thought intro 3). I take Bodde at his word here and am not trying to insinuate a deliberate Western bias on his part. However, I do believe his use of ‘science’ demonstrates an unintended and problematic language determination, one whose implications undermine his otherwise notable work. 9 From the perspective of language’s role in meaning, the list is varied and extensive. For example., in the West: the Socratic dialogues, the Sophists, Aristotle’s Rhetoric, the work of Nietzsche, de Beauvoir, Wittgenstein, Heidegger, Austin, Cixous, Rorty, Derrida, Dewey and Grice—to name just a few. Equally diverse are the “Hundred Schools” of Ancient China who argued as much over what could be said in language, about the Dao as they did their various interpretations of it. If we expand the scope to include any significance the “Word” might have for meaning (to/of/in life) then the list becomes nearly endless: the Hebraic “Word” of God; the Ancient Egyptian “Nommo” (the “Creative Word”), and the oral creation stories of Native Americans—again to name just a few. In modern (Western) contexts there are,

172 according to Richard Rorty, “two sources for the discipline presently called ‘philosophy of language’ (Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature 257). There exists now, too, a formal ‘science’ of language study, Linguistics, which is also subdivided into various disciplines and foci. Whether their respective approaches are metaphysical, philosophical, or scientific, all of these can in some fashion be seen as addressing language and meaning and what we can know in language. 10 Among other things, Zhuangzi will conclude that truth—the Way—“made clear, it is not the Way”; and, more revealing still: “If discriminations are put into words, they do not suffice” (“Discussion on Making all Things Equal” 40). For more on this, see Chapter Three of this dissertation. 11 As I will show in Chapter Two, even in its “inception” period the role and understanding of “rhetoric” was highly contentious—Aristotle’s definition of rhetoric is not the same as many of his peers, particularly the Sophists and to some extent even his mentor, Plato. Certainly, the unfolding history of rhetoric shows a highly unstable interpretation of what “rhetoric” is and/or “means,” including its sometimes highly valued role regarding the search for truth, and its more often dismissive role as a means to subterfuge or trickery. 12 More of this will be taken up in the subsequent chapters, particularly Chapter Two. 13 My definition is not that unique, and varieties of it abound in the history and modern discourse on rhetoric. Nor do I wish to imply that Aristotle’s is somehow the quintessential definition of the West. That the latter enjoyed tremendous influence on the subsequent Western tradition is well documented (particularly as it relates to its positioning of rhetoric to philosophy). However, it was certainly not the only definition of rhetoric derived in the Western tradition, a great many of which in more recent history shares with mine the sense of “created meaning.” At present there are available 967,000 different sites pertaining to the definition(s) of rhetoric on one search engine (Yahoo!) alone. Even a casual survey of these sites reveals how diversified and complex this term can be. 14 Xing Lu, Rhetoric in Ancient China, Fifth to Third Century B. C. E.,: “For a better understanding between peoples and cultures, it is necessary to critique and evaluate discourse which has until now been subject to the limitations of Orientalism, on the one hand, and Occidentalism, on the other. Both Eastern and Western scholars need to challenge their own

173 biases and assumptions of Eastern and Western cultures. Both need to learn from each other, not only in terms of subject manner but also in efforts to construct appropriate modes of inquiry (19).

Chapter Two 15. Other scholarly studies, to offer an alternative perspective, may provide a different perspective or more intensive or broader focus to these figures of Antiquity. My purpose, however, is to develop an understanding of Zhuangzi and Kierkegaard’s perspectives and understanding of these figures, and how the latter influence or determine in part some of their own rhetorical strategies. 16. Again, to be clear, I am not so interested in defending in this dissertation whether these distinctive “thinking” modes are evidentiary in the Chinese or Western “minds” per se. I am interested, however, in what these distinctions might tell us regarding trends in rhetoric. To that end, I am studying what the works of the Chinese and Western traditions have to say about meaning and how they express that meaning. Whether this is socially constructed, linguistically determined, a historical phenomenon, or something else altogether, I will not attempt to address or determine in this work. Instead, I will examine the distinctive emphasis each tradition appears to demonstrate in their most recognized voices and those dominant tendencies of meaning they conveyed. 17. See Hall and Ames, Anticipating, note 22 from Chapter 2 for a brief discussion of the possible origin of “correlative thinking,” and the various works and scholars who have employed it. They cite Graham’s treatment as: “By far the most sophisticated philosophical treatment of correlative thinking...” (295). Though some may disagree with their valuation, Graham does offer a compelling and thoughtful study of this terms implications. 18. Though, as will become evident, I take issue with some of their methodological practices and conclusions, particularly regarding the extent of influence each mode had in shaping the Chinese and Western “thinking” regarding truth concepts, I share Hall and Ames’ conclusion that both correlative and causal modes are evident to some degree in every culture. I would add further, however, that “correlative” and “causal” are not necessarily the only ways of describing these unique tendencies, nor in fact the only modes present in any culture. In this regard, perhaps, I separate myself from Hall and Ames and their determination to deal only with what they

174 consider dominant trends. This point, however, does not detract from our mutual sense of the emphasized mode of the Western and Chinese traditions. 19.To that end, from what I consider the most favorable point of view, Hall and Ames’ description of the two modes is not an examination of each tradition’s divergence from a universal, denotative and essential definition of Logic, but a comparison of two unique contexts and their varying world views. In this light, I do not believe that Hall and Ames are exhibiting the same absence/presence problematic evident in Bodde’s work but are trying to distinguish two unique and distinctive perspectives of the same condition. 20. In this I may appear to be separating, again, the fields and interests of philosophy and rhetoric. Quite the contrary, I want to blur what has traditionally been the boundaries of philosophy and rhetoric, but at the same time challenge some of the long held notions of meaning and meaning making. Specifically, I want to examine the similar positions of Zhuangzi and Kierkegaard to the considerations of language, meaning, and truth and how these positions complicate what can be said, in general, about the human subject and their ‘thought’ experiences. 21. While Hall and Ames deserve credit for their attempts to illuminate these tendencies and their call to approach each tradition from its own context, I do take exception to and find it ironic that in their attempts to free the “lumber” of the Western perspective they subsequently impose a Western-pragmatic methodology to both ‘remove the lumber’ and approach the uniqueness of the Chinese tradition. No small part of this irony is their insistence on the conception of truth as absent in the Chinese tradition. A claim that they make in part based on their reading of Western conceptual models and the relative absence of the same when reviewing Ancient Chinese literature and philosophy. At best, this conclusion is based on a highly Western mode of methodology (which, however ‘right’ it may appear to Hall and Ames) strains at their stated core objective to approach the Chinese in their own terms. That said, the efforts of Hall and Ames to genuinely approach the Chinese tradition from a perspective less encumbered by Western-bias is evident, and their work stands as a valued call to better methodological awareness, if not practices. My issues, then, are in some of their applications, not their intentions. Nor should my questions be read as a refutation of their work in general, which as will become obvious, I find extremely insightful and valuable to my own understanding of the issues surrounding Western and Sino philosophical thinking. My contention, though important, would not I think preclude

175 critical agreement in many of the areas most important to comparative study of the Ancient Chinese and Western traditions. 22. Touchstone though they might be, Plato and Aristotle were only two voices in the discourse surrounding truth, language, rhetoric and meaning in the Ancient Greek culture. To ignore or subsume the work of Isocrates, Heraclitus, Aspasia, the Sophists, et al, under the Platonic/Aristotelian conceptual framework, would risk conflating the complexity of rhetoric and language that was present in the Greek culture. Evident in the Ancient Greek discourse are various notions of truth, language and rhetoric, though these are sometimes overlooked or relegated to the footnotes of scholarly anthologies. Significantly, their philosophical positions are often defined by how they relate to the other, more dominant voices of the Platonic and/or Aristotelian systems, rather than to any inherent quality to their own respective truths. Consequently, Bizzell and Herzberg note Isocrates role as a “minor philosopher,” is attributed as much to his relation to Platonic directives (or, in this case, his distance from them), as it is for any qualified merit or depth in his own philosophical work: “...[B]ecause he is not concerned with the pursuit of absolute or transcendent knowledge of the Platonic kind” (70), he is, consequently, listed in history and traditional scholarship as a “minor” voice, with all the connotative implications that surround such a label. Relegation of this nature reveals as much (if not more) about “traditional scholarship’s” attitude to truth and transcendental knowledge than it does the actuality and validity of Isocrates’ position. 23.For example, one could, like Bodde, read the history of each tradition in light of their apparent success and/or failure to achieve a given cultural quality (hence, Western logic is correct as it achieved the scientific revolution evident in that cultural experience). 24. For Hall and Ames, transcendence is a central consequence and factor in the Western purview of meaning, one which they argue has no such dependency in the Chinese tradition. For an understanding of the significance “transcendence” and “transcendental thinking” in the West (and lack thereof in the Chinese experience) see: Thinking from the Han, 189-285. 25. Again, I find this somewhat ironic and conflicted, particularly in light of their assessment of Socrates’ “gifts” to the Western tradition, which is discussed in more detail shortly in the Chapter. My primary concern is that in their strictest sense position I feel Hall and Ames have fallen to the same error they so succinctly note in their own work: “One of the of the unfortunate

176 developments in the Western philosophy and science was that Plato’s claim that rational knowledge existed only when contextualized by principles defining the most general system of ideas led later thinkers to make unjustified claims to knowledge based upon their belief in the universality of the systematic theories they constructed” (74). 26. I hope here to demonstrate not only how these seminal tendencies are evident in each tradition, but also illuminate how they help inform Zhuangzi and Kierkegaard. This includes those tendencies and contextual realities that distinguish Zhuangzi, the Daoist, from Kierkegaard, the Christian. While my basic premise is to argue that there is a striking comparative similarity in Zhuangzi and Kierkegaard’s rhetorical strategy, the significance of this similarity can only be understood in light of the divergent cultural, rhetorical, and philosophical contexts each enjoys as well. To be clear, I am not arguing, nor wish to imply, that these two writers share essentially similar philosophical positions. Daoism and Christianity, even in the hands of these iconoclastic writers, cannot be completely conflated into the other without disservice to both. That said, I believe it all the more compelling that each writer should share similar notions of truth and language regarding their respective positions of what, ultimately, they understand to be that truth. 27. Certainly, Socratic sensibilities played a major role in Kierkegaard’s work. This includes Kierkegaard’s rhetorical strategies and understanding of the individual’s relation to truth. Indeed, such was the influence of Socrates on Kierkegaard that the latter considered the Greek thinker a seminal role of understanding: “...but formally I can very well call Socrates my teacher...” (Point of View, 55). Kierkegaard wrote his dissertation on The Concept of Irony: With Continual Reference to Socrates and made frequent references to Socrates throughout his later works. Because of his prominent role in Kierkegaard’s own rhetorical strategy, it is with Socrates (and Kierkegaard’s understanding of Socrates) that I will focus most of my study here. 28. Hall and Ames make 12 such “Anticipations,” designed in part to identify the tendencies of thinking in the West that dominate that tradition and that might prohibit proper understanding of the varying Chinese sensibilities if not first comprehended for their seminal influence on the Western mind. See Anticipating China, introduction, xx-xi. 29. I would argue these differing interpretations are still evident today. For example, I would suggest that Bodde’s reading reflects a evolutionary development, by the West, of the causal sensibilities (including his interpretation of logic and reason). This evolutionary development

177 allows Bodde to read the Chinese relatively stable correlative experience as a hindered development of culture and thought. By contrast, however, a teleological explanation might suggest that the Chinese correlative tendency, like the Western causal emphasis, reflects a purposeful design to their respective contextual experiences. Hall and Ames’ understanding is more complex for its examination of the causal/correlative thinking, but can, I think, still be seen as an evolutionary reading; particularly as their ‘contradictory’ description of Socrates’ gifts seems to anticipate the subsequent development and dominance of Aristotelian causal and Christian transcendental sensibilities. In other words, the contradictory nature of objective connotation and open-ended search in Socrates rests, in part, on Hall and Ames’ understanding of how Socrates’ gifts appear to complicate the eventual dominant tendencies of Western tradition. Kierkegaard, at least, would suggest another explanation for the contradiction; one based in part on his own correlatively subjective understanding and interpretation of Socrates, and one that is teleological in nature. He would see the contradiction as a reflection of productive illumination of truth and one that relies on the correlative sensibilities of fluidity and becoming. Such fluidity could never be completely “contained” in objective reason but can be pointed to through a careful balance of objectively derived definition of terms and metaphoric and analogical illumination, causal and correlative sensibilities. (Interestingly, this raises the possibility that such principals of meaning such as Socrates and Kongzi or Zhuangzi are not so far apart as would first appear.) Hall and Ames’ use of “contradictory,” however, is a reflection of their determination to separate the Chinese and Western experiences: “The broad traditions of Plato and Aristotle are unlikely to have any true counterparts in classical China” (Anticipating 81). This position raises a troubling question: given these are “broad” traditions why must it be ‘unlikely’ they have no counterparts in any other tradition, including the Chinese? In part, I think the “contradictory” nature of Socrates is in fact a compelling moment of correlative and causal blending and one which does resonate with the Chinese sensibilities and principals. Further, I do not think that suggesting a ‘counterpart’ is detrimental to understanding either tradition; on the contrary, allowing such a possibility may go a long way to understanding a more complete and less determined reality of the world. Kierkegaard, for one, appeared to favor such a teleological explanation and sees the Greek thinker as a member of a continuum of meaning, historical in time but not by necessity

178 historical in understanding’s development. For Kierkegaard, subsequent historical ‘events’ might change the details of Socrates’ understanding of truth (e.g., Christianity as absolute truth), but it would not dramatically alter the fundamental conditions of that truth’s relationship to the individual. The significance of this distinction reflects Kierkegaard’s own break with his context’s conventions, particularly as it related to the individual and truth. An historical, evolutionary reading of reason’s development requires (for Kierkegaard) an untenable objective position that would make of meaning a systematic construct. However, reflection and reason alone, for both Socrates and Kierkegaard, are not always enough to derive truth. This understanding rises in part, and is based on, Kierkegaard’s unique understanding of the complex (or “contradictory”) Socratic gifts to Western philosophy. To understand, then, Kierkegaard’s own rhetorical strategy it is important to unravel the complex contradiction of Socrates’ gifts. In doing so, too, the concepts and sensibilities of the Western causal tradition become more apparent as Socrates attempts to elevate his understanding of truth above (what he considers) the problematic conventions of his time. For more discussion see notes 7 and 8. For more on Kierkegaard’s understanding see chapter and Chapter Four on Kierkegaard, particularly references to “absolute thought,” “pure thought.” 30. See: “Postscript to the ‘Two Notes” from The Point of View: “Jesus Christ, to name the extreme example, truth itself [...] and, to name a human example, Socrates” (Kierkegaard 125). 31. To further illustrate the unique Socratic understanding, Aristotle, by comparison, is both alike and different from this notion of absolute truth. To that end, Aristotle represents both a continuation of Socrates’ (and Plato’s) “rhetorical” battle with the Sophists, and an attempt to further define and position rhetoric as a productive tool for argument. Aristotle emphasized a hierarchal, demonstrative truth that positioned rhetoric in light of its potential to discuss matters that were merely probable. In this Aristotle, like Socrates and Plato, sought to distinguish the potential of rhetoric from true philosophy (including Aristotle’s emerging sense and valuation of science). Aristotle’s efforts included an attempt to contain the potential of rhetoric in a limited field of proper influence. For Aristotle, absolute truth exists but is only available through scientific demonstration. Rhetoric, on the other hand, deals only with those probable issues for which demonstration or logic remains impossible. Hence, rhetoric becomes an “art” of

179 persuasion, not a source of knowledge. In this, Aristotle’s system of rhetoric is as much an effort to control the search for truth—and rhetoric’s role in that search—as it is a treatise for proper oral and written performance in argument. If his rescue of ‘rhetoric’ differs from Socrates’ condemnation of the Sophistic practice, it is in part a reassignment and re-defined conception of the practice, as well. In other words, Aristotle addresses the problematic of rhetoric’s relationship to truth by removing it from the absolute (demonstrably proven) and into the realm of the merely probable. Socrates, on the other hand, refutes the conventional practices of rhetoric and demonstrates, instead, good rhetoric. That said, while finding the truth was essential to Aristotle, it differs importantly from the Socratic absolute. Specifically, the sense of Socrates’ lived-process of truth was subsumed in the Aristotelian system by other fields of meaning (such as Ethics) where they could be addressed more efficiently and appropriately as yet another part of the whole. As a consequence, in the Aristotelian world view the human relationship to truth becomes a moment of proper disposition by the individual to manifest demonstrability (i.e., the acceptance of scientific proof), or the most ethical probability (i.e., proper rhetorical practices in light of ethical behavior and understanding). Any investment in absolute truth by the individual’s part is a matter of recognition and human quality (i.e., quality developed through reason). The distinction, then, between Aristotle and Socrates lies in more than a simple systematizing of meaning in the former. It is also represented in Socrates’ emphasis of truth’s subjective relationship to the individual as essentially meaningful and necessary to both life and truth. Aristotle might hold that truth is essential to the individual, but his ‘absolute’ truth is by degree of its hierarchically demonstrable nature different from Socrates’ lived-truth in that it remains essentially outside of the individual’s subjective nature to affect said truth (even in the individual’s own life). Said another way, truth may be important to the individual for Aristotle, but the individual was in no way essential to the absolute nature of truth. For Socrates, however, such a truth’s transcendental nature (while remaining paradoxically outside the individual) conditioned a necessary “response” (of seeking, acceptance, and commitment) by the individual subjectively. In other words, absolute truth becomes demonstrable (for Socrates) in part by the lived- condition of the individual’s commitment.

180 32. See The Concept of Irony ps. 29-31, including: “But what is the relation between the Platonic and the actual Socrates? This question cannot be dismissed” (29). I will return to this issue in the later chapter on Kierkegaard. See also, Segal, “The Dialogues” introduction: “The continuing debate about what is Socratic, what purely Platonic, and what an admixture will rage eternally” (x). To be clear, it is not my intention here to solve the dilemma of how much is Plato and how much is Socrates. Instead, I want to point out the conditions and implications surrounding this issue. That said, my effort here will not be one of determination, but expression. My use of “Socrates” then is as both figure and individual, letting the conundrum exist as a continuing and (I believe) ultimately indeterminate state of being. 33. As we shall see, this is also an essential part of Kierkegaard’s own position. See Kierkegaard’s Second condition to “The Esthetic Writing” in Point of View: “If One Is Truly to Succeed in Leading a Person to a Specific Place, One Must First and Foremost Take Care to Find Him Where He Is and Begin There” (45-47). More on this condition will be developed in Chapter Four. 34. Consider for example the rhapsodic, transcendent images of the “the greatest of blessings... through madness” in the Phaedrus (148) and Socrates famous “winged horses and charioteer” description of the immortal soul. Which, in Socrates understanding, requires figure and metaphor to briefly glimpse its true nature: “Concerning the immortality of the soul this is enough; but about its form we must speak in the following manner. To tell what it really is would be a matter for utterly superhuman and long discourse, but it is within human power to describe it briefly in a figure; let us speak in that way. We will liken the soul to the composite nature of winged horses and a charioteer” (The Rhetorical Tradition 149). Or, another more lengthy example, the legend of Zeus, Poseidon, and Pluto in the Gorgias on rhetoric and its relationship to “good,” including Socrates qualification of truth in what is considered in his convention, fable: “Give ear, then, as they say, to a right fine story, which you will regard as fable, I fancy, but I as an actual account; for what I am about to tell you I mean to offer as truth” (135); and, “Possibly, however, you regard this as an old wife’s tale, and despise it; and there would be no wonder in our despising it if with all our searching we could somewhere find anything better and truer than this...” (138).

181 While it might be argued that these are mere tales to illustrate a point, two conditions must still be addressed. The first is Socrates repeated claim that they are in fact true to him. The second, that the truth is made evident in the discourse: “But among the many statements we have made, while all the rest are refuted this one alone is unshaken—that doing wrong is to be more carefully shunned than suffering it” (138). My explanation of these conditions is that they reflect Socrates correlative sensibility in addressing the transcendent and absolute nature of truth, a truth that cannot completely be explicated by causal, objective rhetoric alone, but must also employ those ‘awakening’ practices of metaphor, figure, etc. most identified with the correlative tendency. 35. In the next chapter I will examine Mozi, Laozi, and Hui Shi more closely in light of Zhuangzi’s particular rhetorical distinctions. In particular the Daoist, Laozi, will be examined more directly as this thinker is so directly tied to many of the same critical elements evident in Zhuangzi’s work. Legalism, represented by Han Feizi, though significant to the Chinese tradition, will not be considered at this time in light of his later appearance (280-233 B.C.E.) to Zhuangzi, and his complicated response and connection to Confucianism, Daoism, and Mohism viewed in light of his subsequent position to these early critical philosophers (see Lu 262-267 for more details). 36. For comparison purposes, Hall and Rosemont translate Ren as “authoritative conduct”; li as “observing ritual propriety.” They offer a defense of their (to them) important shifts in terminology in their introduction (The Analects: A Philosophical Translation, 48-54). I find Lu to be in relative agreement with most of their translations and so use both sources for my own work. 37. For most humans, the highest state of attainment possible. Shengren, the sage, is more lofty still, but nearly impossible for the human to attain. Confucius’ disciples believed he attained shengren, though he himself believed he only attained junzi. See, The Analects: A Philosophical Translation ps. 60-63 for more details. 38. Unless otherwise noted, all selections of Confucius are from The Analects: A Philosophical Translation, Hall and Rosemont, translators. 39 Ren is sometimes written as “Jen.” I have tried to render a consistent use for reading ease.

182 40. Mozi, for example, sought a socially-oriented philosophy, but unlike the Confucians he did not hold with the valorization of the Zhou dynasty as a source of authority and Ideal. Rather, Mohism advocates a philosophy of “universal love” or more accurately, “Concern for Everyone” (Disputers 41) 41. A consequence of this “natural” hierarchy was the well-documented sexism that marked most of China’s history. For further discussion on this complicated tendency see Hall and Ames, Thinking from the Han “Chinese Sexism” 79-100. 42.“...while in the West a scientific law of nature, just as much as a divine command or a Platonic form, loses its authority if not declared transcendent, unchanged by changes in phenomena to which it applies, Confucius knows no obstacle to recognizing that principles ‘have their source in the human, social contacts which they serve’” (Disputers 30). 43. From Hall and Ames’ translation, The Analects of Confucius: A Philosophical Translation. Page 111. The notations refer to book (7 of 20) and passage 1. See note, page 66.

Chapter Three 44. While the ultimate goal of this chapter is to call attention to the implications of Zhuangzi’s message, examining along the way various practices and implications of his work that allow him to accomplish his goal, I do so with a necessary caution. In keeping with Zhuangzi’s philosophy, I must also admit the limitations of such an examination. To be specific, however instructive or incisive a study of Zhuangzi might be, there remains the subjective experience of the individual to be still addressed. And it is this critical experience that remains tantalizingly outside of language to explicate, even (perhaps especially) academic language. If Zhuangzi is right, language’s limitations and the subjective nature of the individual’s knowing suggest works such as this dissertation cannot, finally, define the experience of Zhuangzi’s message. At best, I can merely point to some of its repercussions. Ultimately, I believe Zhuangzi’s message remains outside the traditional lens of academic meaning, or any language, to explicitly and/or comprehensively address. Like a piece of art or musical composition, understanding and examining the techniques and individual elements of its construction does not imply that one has fully contained or demonstrated the essence of its being, its significance, or its various unique experiences with each individual. Yet like music, understanding gains still another perspective

183 by academic study. It is with this hope in mind that I offer the following academic examination of Zhuangzi’s unique and compelling message. 45. Unless otherwise noted all translations are from Watson’s Chuang Tzu: Basic Writings. Translated by Burton Watson and published by Columbia UP in 1964, 1996. Individual chapters or sections will be identified by title to provide context and ease with locating specific passages. 46. The conception of “becoming” (as opposed to the Western emphasis on “being”) has tended to be a prevalent theme in much of the scholarship regarding Chinese philosophy, but it is important to note that the becoming-individual is itself a unit, however vaguely understood in consequence of its relation to other(s), and as such the sensibility of choice and “self” remains in the Chinese tradition. Consequently, to suggest that the role of the individual and society enjoyed different modes of emphasis and thinking is bore out in both the text and cultural experiences of the Western and Chinese traditions. To suggest, however, that there exists no sense of ‘individualism’ in the Chinese tradition is to conflate all other philosophical endeavors under a decidedly weighted (and perhaps inaccurate) Confucian Ideal. This is particularly telling in light of Zhuangzi’s repeated attempts to engage the individual in counter conventional thinking regarding the dogmatic tendencies he sees in Confucian philosophy. In point of fact, a case can be made that the Chinese individualism is understood best as an effort, like the West, to make sense of both the public and private spheres in their lived-reality, and this sense of “individual” is neither universally understood nor practiced in the Chinese tradition any more than it is in the Western. However, unlike the West, the Chinese efforts are not guided by or depended on a dominant tendency to incorporate transcendental, single-ordered world conceptions; rather, it is one that more often incorporates correlative meaning between interrelated principles. Interestingly, this latter effort often leads to a shifting sense of being evidenced in face-saving practices that operate differently in the public and private spheres, much like the West, but with a different conception of the individual’s autonomy. That is, for the Chinese the sense of individual is always relative to the context and various forces (in Confucian terms, human relations) that affect them. The individual then is understood as both self and self-other, a consequence of what the Chinese see as the reality of life, not a reflective theoretical conception. See Chapter 2 for more details on the Chinese tradition of “becoming” as compared to the Western dominant tradition of “being” (as in a single-order cosmos).

184 47. Like all such terms, direct translation is difficult. Other similar Western conceptions (e.g., ‘go with the flow’) or semi-literal translations (do-nothing, no-forced-action) come close, but in the end fail to completely understand this unique concept and practice, particularly as Zhuangzi understands it. Perhaps only in reading and contemplating the entire work of Zhuangzi can this concept be understood for all its nuances and implications. It certainly is significant the Zhuangzi does not offer a succinct definition of wu wei, but rather illuminates Dao’s meaning in the tapestry of threads he joins to create his message. What follows in this dissertation is a small attempt to identify both difficulty of this concept and its basic meaning. What should be remembered in this explanation is the fundamentally positive role wu wei plays in life—it is to participate, to do, to engage, openly and, foremost, carefully with life. It is not to impose convention or humanly constructed meaning on the world around you, yet at the same time to appreciate and be aware of one’s human subject, however interrelated that may be with the rest of the world, including other humans. 48. For example, “In proposing wu wei, Laozi was not advocating that people do nothing. He was concerned with achieving a kind of balance or equilibrium...in other words to be in harmony with dao, one must abolish all artificial restraints and comply with the laws of nature” (Lu 231). Faced with translating the action of allowing natural and/or open ended awareness to be a first, positive step in determining the propriety of any given situation or context—to the point that one is guided in principle first and foremost by inactive activity—most translators rely on paradoxical qualifications of “non”-activity or problematic approximations. Consequently, “spontaneity” as a direct translation does not really capture the deliberative sense of wu wei; nor does the negation of action always illustrate its positive, natural process. However, as guidelines these various interpretations/translations do serve to illuminate the practice of wu wei, if one keeps in mind their limitations and proper connotative spirit. 49. Xing Lu describes this negative orientation in terms of comparison with the West, as well: “Unlike the Western mode of inquiry, which emphasizes the affirmative, Laozi’s emphasis was on the negative” (237). This ‘negativity’ should be understood in light of Laozi’s attempt to reverse perceived conventions of thought and understanding. It is not necessarily a nihilist position, but a position from which to evoke unconventional understanding (e.g., weak is strong, dark is light, etc.).

185 50. The final point should not be read as criticism of Laozi’s philosophy (which I see as positively intended, albeit, ‘negatively’ achieved). Rather, it should serve as a point of emphasis between the two. While Laozi resides in the ‘positive’ of a more natural understanding, Zhuangzi incorporates a sense of “boundless freedom” that elaborates the “natural” and “plays” with understanding and life equally. Said another way, there is a decidedly more somber tone to the Dao de Ching than that of the Chuang Tzu. Hence, while Laozi’s rhetorical strategy appears “negative” in light of Zhuangzi’s own strategies, it is also important to note that Laozi’s essential goal is to return to a more natural, more authentic site of understanding and being. To his mind this represents an essential, affirmative move to achieving true harmony, though this return requires that Laozi first remove the trappings and chains of conventional meaning that inhibit this understanding. Seen in this light, Laozi might insist that his philosophy is in fact a positive, affirmative philosophy. 51. Graham will argue that the Laozian “inversion is hardly found in Chuang-Tzu”(Disputers 223). But as I will try to show, the “reversals” of Zhuangzi are both broader in form and less determinative of value than Laozi’s inversions. The latter, I believe, is in keeping with Graham’s own point. To elaborate then, my use of “reversals” here, with Zhuangzi, is to indicate a reversal of conventional thought for purposes of revealing positionality in thinking; not (as with Laozi) a means to value the unconventional as more authentic. I am not attempting to take issue with Graham’s depiction of “reversals” as essentially Laozian, but merely building on the connotative spirit (and similar tendencies of paradox) that are found in both writers 52. To be clear here, it is the manifestation of Confucian ideals and principles (not the intention of searching for Dao) that Zhuangzi takes issue with. He is not suggesting that Confucius is wrong, per se; merely, that Confucius cannot claim—nor does the manifestation of Confucian teachings necessarily demonstrate—any claim to certainty when it comes to truth, Dao. Zhuangzi never insists that there is no overarching principle (quite the contrary), but holds firm to the contention that no one can “know it” (Wu 190). This paradox of believing a thing must be, while denying the ability of any human understanding to know it, is the crux of Zhuangzi’s position. What can be “known,” and what apparently cannot, is the reality of life, not a temporary problem to overcome. Confucius believed he had overcome the not-knowing and offered his Ren-Dao. Aristotle, Socrates, Plato, Hegel and Kant—each in their various and respective philosophies—

186 also believed they had overcome the obstacle of “knowing” and consequently offered their understanding as universal truths. Zhuangzi (and in a similar but necessarily different fashion, Kierkegaard) would (both) challenge this practice at its most fundamental level: the ability to know and to express this knowledge in language. 53. If I may venture a brief aside here, my distinction here with Wu is not so much in the details of his position of no position described above, but in an attempt to move still further in the realm of flexibility. That is, the term ‘perhaps’ suggests to me a still more open and flexible connotation to Zhuangzi’s wu wei ming bian. The difference between Wu’s description and mine is not one of meaning, but aesthetics. I prefer ‘perhaps’ for all its similar connotations with the “position of no position,” while still remaining (for me) more open, less (however tenuously) contrived as a wu wei experience. In other words, while I agree with Wu’s assessment, I prefer to use a term that is more poetic, less conventional. I feel Wu is deliberately (and with good reason) using traditional Western philosophical forms and language here (i.e., ‘position’‘not p,’etc.). His goal is to make available the distinctions of Zhuangzi for his audience (which will undoubtedly include Western philosophers) in terms that are clear and significantly illuminating. I use his description above for the same reason, including his astute insights. That established, however, I want to build on his insight and offer a slightly different tone for purposes of my own subjective preference. I believe “perhaps” suggests a less contextualized response. That said, the position of no position or, “perhaps,” are fundamentally the same, particularly as it relates to Zhuangzi’s ming bian. 54. Read as communication, not as a phonetic or semiotic units. See Chapter One. 55This final use of voice incorporates not only the practice of ‘lodging words,” but also relies on the practice of “spillover words,” which will be addressed shortly. 56. My work at Shanghai University with graduate level linguistic students has confirmed Zhuangzi’s “difficulty” in the Ancient Chinese language. This is more than just a matter of linguistic displacement of time, but is a mark of a deep and paradoxical philosopher who seeks to illuminate the most esoteric of life’s questions with an equally esoteric ming bian. That being said, both the Shanghai students and freshman students of Miami University in America showed a genuine willingness to engage the work and many noted later in their reflective papers a truly

187 ‘liberating’ experience. In regards to the latter, I have often found Zhuangzi’s work to be a compelling heuristic to finding ‘voice’ in the composition classroom. 57. I’ve used the Wu translation of names here as they are more illuminating than the Watson strict Pinyin offerings. In regards to names, Zhuangzi often complicates his characters by choosing ironic names that reveal still more meaning to the context. In this case, it is no accident that ‘jittery magpie’ is receiving the ‘wisdom’ from ‘tall dryandra tree.’ See, Wu Companion, line 230, page 149 and notes 139, 230 on pages 163 and 167 for some of the further potential ironies of these names. However they are rendered or understood, the use of other voices and the irony of names is a consistent ming bian practice of Zhuangzi to complicate straightforward language/meaning. 58. Unlike Confucius, however, Laozi believed Dao was most authentically recognized as the controlling influence of humans (ren) and the mandate of Heaven (tian), and wu wei was thus the most appropriate of approaches to obtaining harmony with the Dao, the controlling influence. This included the proper form government should take. To achieve harmony, the state— manifested in the person of the Emperor or local official—must shed himself of the inhibiting obstacles to the Dao, including the conventional dependence on reason, discourse and language that would distract him from the natural order of things. Wu wei, practiced by the Emperor or local official, would presumably enable the state to achieve harmony: “So long as I ‘do nothing’ the people will of themselves be transformed/So long as I love quietude, the people will of themselves go straight/So long as I act only by inactivity the people will of themselves become prosperous/So long as I have no wants the people will of themselves return to the ‘state of Uncarved Block’” (Tao Te Ching “Chapter 57" Arthur Waley trans., 121). The ‘Uncarved Block’ referred to in the last line is also translated as “no government” and is sometimes accompanied by the line “there will be no names” (Chapter 32). Presumably, the Carved block is a metaphor referring to the fact that “distinctions” have now arisen. These distinctions arose as a consequence of the people turning away from Dao and thus needing law, reason and a language of distinctions, all of which in fact fail to provide harmony but, contrarily, serve to distract from the natural order, the Dao. It is this consequence that Laozi is attempting to address.

188 59. In the chapter “Fit for Emperors and Kings” the ‘madman’ Chieh Yü is once again a voice of wisdom and instruction, and the “Nameless Man” given authority to instruct even Kings and Emperors (Chuang Tzu “Basic Writings” 90-91)

Chapter Four 60. Kierkegaard was a mass of eccentricities and deceptions. At the height of his writing production, which often involved hours of work, he would dash from his house at opportune times to be seen in the public eye, cultivating the air of an elite socialite. This included attending popular plays and musical performances for short periods of time, simply to be seen, then returning unnoticed to work again at his writing. Kierkegaard also maintained a perplexing and paradoxical relationship with friends and acquaintances. To many of his contemporaries he appears to be a witty and seemingly carefree spirit of intellectual satire and esthetic behavior. Yet, even while he was displaying his public side of frivolity, he was a friend and benefactor to the poor in his community and held them equally—if not more—in esteem than the social elite class of his more immediate contemporaries. He maintains this dual existence by insisting on anonymity and, again, went to great lengths to hide his philanthropic acts. His most infamous deception, of course, was his break with Regine Olsen, who he clearly held a great deal of affection for, but—to the bafflement of his contemporaries—seemed to heartlessly turn his back on in ending the relationship. What becomes clear in Kierkegaard’s journals is the cost his act of casual disinterest and rejection has for him (a deception he believed necessary for Olsen’s own good). Kierkegaard was devastated and torn by his decision to break the engagement, writing at one point, “What I have lost, the only thing I love” (Soul of Kierkegaard 75). Kierkegaard believed his motivations, however confusing (and some might argue misguided) they might appear, where completely selfless. In his understanding his contrary behavior was a sacrifice to protect and free Regine Olsen from what he believed would be a crippling and unfair relationship with him. In a similar fashion, though from another motivation, Kierkegaard allowed himself to be the “clown” in the Corsair Affair, which was to mark his most public, and in many ways, most humiliating contemporary performance. Some of this will be touched on in the Chapter, but in short Kierkegaard deliberately projected a crafted public persona that (he suggests) accepted the “mockery” and a position of “martyrdom” for the truth in his engaged editorial

189 battle with the local periodicals. While suffering heartless scorn and ad hominem attacks (“even the children feel free to mock me”), Kierkegaard hid his despair and hurt behind bravado and satire. Finally, in his well-documented attack of the Church, Kierkegaard appears to be the antithesis of a Christian defender/writer. But, like much of his life, the perception created by the appearance was a deliberate attempt to illuminate through a type of dialectical irony the truth. This included for Kierkegaard living at times an apparent life of esthetic and ethical behavior while all the time believing and acting in his genuine self “religiously.” For more on Kierkegaard’s life personal writings see The Soul of Kierkegaard: Selections from Journals, Alexander Dru, editor and translator, and Encounter with Kierkegaard: A Life as Seen by His Contemporaries, Bruce H. Kirmmse, editor, and Kirmmse and Virginia R. Laursen, translators. 61. Kant argues the latter in his Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, where he suggests morality—specifically the human continuing quest to understand and practice principles of morality over and above our sensual natures (a refutation of Hume’s skepticism)—could only be explained by reference to the supersensible, the transcendental: in this case, the transcendental ideal of reason. But such supersensible elements cannot be located in the human nature alone, since they go beyond human nature/senses. Consequently, human nature alone cannot explain the human determination to will and reflect on moral principles. From this Kant appeared to “make room” for a source outside of pure human nature/drives: i.e., the ‘possibility’ of God. 62. In essence the spheres represent a categorical relationship between the individual and their way of life. They are complex by consequence of their distinctive emphasis of other interrelated (and equally esoteric) categories of meaning, including: the finite and infinite, subjective and universal, dialectic and absolute, experience and reflection, and the role of choice (between the spheres) of each individual. Each of these sub-categories are in turn examined and distinguished from one another, often by way of highly reflective dialectical comparisons of two differing points of view (as in the case of Either/Or). Examining all of these philosophical categories in light of their individual and interconnected natures would take a work nearly as long as Kierkegaard’s total authorship. 63. Patrick Gardiner suggests this is “frequently reminiscent of nineteenth-century Romantic attitudes” (Kierkegaard 43).

190 64. For more on the esthetic, ethical, and religious spheres see Either/Or, I and II, and Fear and Trembling and Repetition. For a shorter reference see: Either/Or “Historical Introduction” (xii- xiii). Despite the size of the previous citing, it is consistent and reflective of Kierkegaard’s general authorship and position on the spheres, which make a concise or general explanation of any one sphere a problematic reduction of their complexity and interconnected actuality. 65. Here he uses the figure of Abraham (and his willingness to sacrifice his son at God’s command) to distinguish faith from human reason and ethics. Written under the pseudonym, Johannes de Silentio, it examines the implications of faith’s presence in the human condition. Using the categories of “tragic hero” (exemplified in the example of Agamemnon’s ‘sacrifice’ of his daughter) and a “knight of faith” (Abraham), Silentio considers in detail the different natures of these two figures call to sacrifice. Though extremely complicated and dense in its descriptions of each call’s nature, ultimately Silentio suggests that Agamemnon, the tragic hero, is justified by his relation to ethics, which can contextually “understand” and even “admire” his sacrificial action (Fear and Trembling 120). However, “no one can understand Abraham” (119); at least not in terms of human standards of reason and ethics. Briefly put, the actuality of Abraham’s call does not enjoy the humanly understood ethical support of “sacrificing” for a higher cause (Agamemnon’s duty to state—i.e., he must sacrifice his daughter in order to launch the war on Troy). Abraham’s call is beyond human ethics, as no compelling universal reason (however complicated by context) can be provided for by the actuality of the call. Yet, the condition, “Abraham had faith,” was understood and celebrated as a high example of something altogether important and essential to the particular world view of the religious sphere; in Kierkegaard’s time and context, Christianity. Consequently, Silentio concludes that Abraham’s call is rooted in a condition of paradox. Viewed from the human standard Abraham’s action must be seen as either insane or inhumanly absurd to the point of murder. Viewed from the paradoxical conditions of faith, however, it manifests itself as something higher than the ethical/rational condition of human reasoning alone. Said another way, Abraham is not outside the ‘temporal realm’ (which includes ethics), but has now understood this realm, and ethics, in light of faith—a condition that appears absurd in light of human understanding, but is somehow all the more real to Abraham. In fact, Silentio suggests Abraham’s example can only be understood as superseding the ethical universal standard of

191 meaning by consequence of his paradoxical faith—his relation to the absolute: “Thus, either there is a paradox, that the single individual as the single individual stands in an absolute relation to the absolute, or Abraham is lost” (Fear and Trembling 120). Any other explanation reduces the condition of Abraham to either insanity or murderous intent: “Therefore, Abraham is at no time a tragic hero [the ethical sphere] but is something entirely different, either a murderer or a man of faith” (57). As a man of faith, Abraham has acted above the universal (the ethical)—in fact, “teleologically suspended the ethical”—due to his relationship to the absolute, thus embodying the paradox. 66. A complex conception on Kierkegaard’s part to try to explain the nature/significance of the single individual’s choice in the faith-act. Built upon the “paradox” of faith, the “leap” suggests the required “passion” element that is necessary to make the movement in infinity. “Reflection” cannot produce this movement. Kierkegaard will spend a great deal of time illuminating this condition in Fear and Trembling (and later, Concluding Unscientific Postscript), including a challenge to Hegel’s conception of “mediation” in life/history of humans. What is significant to this work is the distinction of im‘passion’ioned(reflection) from (passionless)‘reflection’ and how this informs Kierkegaard’s rhetorical strategies. For more on its philosophical implications, see Fear and Trembling, “Preliminary Expectoration,” 27-53, including note “*”: “...Every movement of infinity is carried out through passion, and no reflection can produce a movement. This is the continual leap in existence that explains the movement, whereas mediation is a chimera, which in Hegel is supposed to explain everything and which is also the only thing he never has tried to explain [...] What our generation lacks is not reflection but passion” (Kierkegaard’s italics 42). 67. Kierkegaard is using conceptional language and identity to distinguish categories of knowing and living for the individual: what can be ‘known’ as actual (the individual subjective experience) as the single individual, and what is practiced when “individuals” form a crowd (and actuality for the individual is lost or removed by distance of engagement): “Therefore the reader will recall that here by ‘crowd’...is understood a purely formal conceptual qualification [...] No, ‘crowd’ is number, the numerical [...]—as soon as the numerical is operative, it is ‘crowd,’ ‘the crowd’ (Point of View 107).

192 68. Kierkegaard’s references to Socrates as his mentor/example are frequent. Another example: “It may truly be said that there is something socratic about me” (Soul of Kierkegaard 174). 69. It is not clear to what extent Kierkegaard anticipates this public ‘martyrdom,’ or (albeit indirectly) encourages it. As a consequence of his disposition as a ‘religious writer’ writing to awake in a time of error, he appears to accept his public rejection as a necessary requirement to illuminating truth. To that point, in his chapter “Personal Existing and Religious Writing” from The Point of View, Kierkegaard makes frequent reference to the constructed nature of his public behavior in support of his indirect communication of truth, including his understanding of his own ironic figure: “The costume was right”; “...so I would become the object of everyone’s irony—alas, the poor master of irony”; (Point of View 66-7). This figure, though he claims not initially designed or intended by him, was recognized as a possibility in his initial brushes with the editors of a local publication in the infamous Corsair Affair. The publication (well known for its biting satire) engaged in a highly personal attack on Kierkegaard, mocking not only his works and use of pseudonymity, but his personal habits and appearance, as well. (The attacks were highly ad hominem at times, including the lengths of his “trousers” and stooped physique (Point of View 96)). The significance of this pillory is Kierkegaard’s interpretation of the experience as an opportunity and consequence (i.e., the martyr to truth) to pursue his purpose as an author. Kierkegaard appears to have ‘encouraged’ the attacks: “I realized that in order to serve my idea this was the right thing to do, and I did not vacillate. The consequences of that, for which certainly no one at that time envied me, I therefore historically claim as my legitimate possession, the perspective value of which my eye easily discovers” (Point of View 66). That value (in its service to truth) was to insure that “not much too directly gain adherents to me” (Point of View 67). 70. His committee members generally approved of his “intellectual liveliness” but were nearly universal in their critique of Kierkegaard’s “free and easy carelessness of composition” (Encounters With Kierkegaard “Comments on His Dissertation” 29-31). Interestingly enough they also agreed any attempt to correct these excesses would be fruitless, “[g]iven the particular nature of the author and his preference for these elements” (31). The nature of these troubling elements, as another committee member put it: “testify to the author’s occasional inability to

193 resist the internal temptation to leap over the boundary that separates both genuine irony and reasonable satire from the unrefreshing territory of vulgar exaggeration” (32). Or, as another commentator put it: “Despite the fact that I certainly see in it the expression of significant intellectual strengths...it makes a generally unpleasant impression on me, particularly because of two things, both of which I detest: verbosity and affectation” (32). 71. See for example The Point of View: “...that my whole authorship pertains to Christianity, to the issue: becoming a Christian, with direct and indirect polemical aim at that enormous illusion, Christendom, or the illusion that in such a country all are Christians of sorts” (23). See also Point of View, pages 8 and 51-54. 72. This was apparent to Kierkegaard on the most immediate level of his own “Christendom” in Denmark. Writing in his journal he offers one of his most “direct,” if not least sympathetic, commentaries on the error of reflective illusion in his specific context: The predicate ‘Christian’ is ridiculous when it is applied to Denmark. Take an illustration. If a man comes dragging along with the most miserable nag of a horse there is nothing ridiculous in his saying it is a horse. If on the contrary he comes along with a cow and says it is a horse, then it is ridiculous. It is no good his being willing to admit that is a poor kind of horse—it is a cow” (Soul of Kierkegaard 241). This commentary illustrates both Kierkegaard’s assessment of the error and his particular rhetorical strategy in addressing it. The error in the understanding of the requirement (of the esthetic, of the ethical, of the religious), and by consequence its application in life made of one sphere (in this case the religious) a “cow” depicted as a “horse.” In Kierkegaard’s understanding, the reflective age had ironically, and erroneously, gone too far in the reflective. In its attempt to contain all the spheres in objective understanding (including the religious) it had artificially conflated or subsumed conditions of being—specifically, the subjective experience of knowing and the paradox of belief. When the “Christian” individual believed themselves to be “Christian” by consequence of living in an age where “all” were such in name but not actuality (‘not a poor horse, but a cow’), there was but one recourse, a corrective of perspective. To accomplish this, Kierkegaard must draw attention to the fact that it was a cow, not a horse, which was being paraded around.

194 73. “Therefore, if it should occur to anyone to want to quote a particular passage from the books, it is my wish, my prayer, the he will do me the kindness of citing the respective pseudonymous author’s name, no mine—that is, of separating us in such a way that the passage femininely belongs to the pseudonymous author, the responsibility civilly to me” (Concluding Unscientific Postscript “A First and Last Explanation” 627). 74. For more, see The Soul of Kierkegaard, introduction, including: “With a single look at a passer-by he could, as he expressed it, ‘put himself in touch with him [...] [Hans Brøcher] walked down whole streets with him while he explained how one could make psychological studies by ‘getting in touch’ with people; and while he explained his theory he put into practice with almost everyone” (9). 75. The level to which Kierkegaard develops these layers of identity is remarkable. For example, Kierkegaard developed and carefully chose each individual “imaginative construction” for its appropriate disposition to a sphere (e.g. the Judge as ethical representative), while still allowing for the indiscriminateness of meaning (the Judge vacillates between Either/Or and Stages) in their subjective reflections across time and works. 76. Specifically, see note “*” on page 78. 77. The breadth of these voices includes such figures as “Victor Eremita,” pseudonymous editor of Either/Or; “Johannes de Silentio,” pseudonymous author of Fear and Trembling; “Constantin Constantius,” author, Repetition; “Johannes Climacus,” author, Philosophical Fragments; “Vigilius Haufniensis,” author, The Concept of Dread (Prefaces by “Nicolas Notabene”); Stages on Life’s Way, edited by “Hilarious Bookbinder”; Concluding Unscientific Postscript, by “Johannes Climacus” (but edited by Søren Kierkegaard—the first such acknowledgment in his indirect works); The Sickness Unto Death, by “Anti-Climacus” (published by Søren Kierkegaard); and Training in Christianity, “Anti-Climacus” (published by Søren Kierkegaard). Nor does this exhaust the levels of creative characters as each book often contains further ‘voices,’ including reappearances from previous works (e.g. the “young man” in Repetition and, perhaps, Stages; the Sermon by the “pastor of Jylland”—sent by the “Judge” to another pseudonym, A; and the five characters of Stages, including “Johannes, called the Seducer,” “Victor Erermita,” “Constantin Constantius,” and “two more whose names I have not exactly forgotten, which would not have been important, but whose names I did not learn” (Stages 21).

195 When taken as a whole (as Kierkegaard suggests he intended), then these diverse parts represent a strikingly complex attempt to address the diversity—the “indiscriminateness”—of experiences available to the individual with regards to the spheres of existence. That they are, in addition, pseudonyms (distinct from Kierkegaard’s own person, though paradoxically arising from him nonetheless) is a hallmark of the rhetorical nuance Kierkegaard brings to his general position of illuminating the truth of the spheres actuality. This includes the dialectical nature of meaning and the subjective experience of choice in regards to actually living in a sphere. A condition that is a constant moment of choice and subjective experience, to the point of making explicit edification of this experience, objectively, an error of perception and ability. That is to say, the truth of the spheres and the individual’s choice/experience of them is far too complex and subjective for any thinker to explicate in objective and/or systematic terms. 78. The turning point is best understood as a designed (albeit, contextually influenced) element of his authorship—a necessity first conditioned by his deliberate use of indirect writings in his total authorship. Feeling at the time that his poetic authorship was at an end (although, as it turned out, erroneously), Kierkegaard concluded his first division, the esthetic writing, with the turning point/acknowledgment of his hand in the pseudonymous works in a “A First and Last Explanation” (Concluding Unscientific Postscript). Consequently, even before the events that revitalize his “authorship” occurred, Kierkegaard was carefully orchestrating his rhetorical message: “Concluding Unscientific Postscript is not esthetic writing, but strictly speaking, neither is it religious. That is why it is by a pseudonymous writer, although I did place my name as editor, which I have not done with any purely esthetic production—a hint, at least for someone who is concerned with or has a sense of things” (Point of View 31-2). In such a light, Kierkegaard’s turning point is as much a rhetorical move to enlighten (“the hint”) as it is an attempt to conclude the ‘esthetic writing’ and make room for a more open, “purely religious” emphasis. 79. For Kierkegaard, the religious writer, it was further: “...a plain duty to the truth and is part and parcel of a person’s responsibility to God for the reflection granted to him” (Point of View 89). 80. This is not to suggest that Kierkegaard believed the truth lost to direct communication. Rather, he saw the edification and explication of truth as two uniquely interdependent states of meaning, each requiring particular positions from which to address truth’s relationship to the

196 individual. In the first instance, to address the problematic of passionless reflection, he believed an indirect communication was required in order to create awareness, not compel belief. In the second instance, the direct communication of truth, he believed that his ‘witnessing’ was a form of expression the subjective individual could employ to illuminate truth’s (in this case, religious truth) presence in their life—not, a proof of truth itself, but a shared expression of an individual experience with that truth. Thus, the two forms of language in his authorship: ‘direct’ and ‘indirect’; esthetic and purely religious. Despite their different form and style, Kierkegaard believed both his direct and indirect communications helped further the edification of truth. Kierkegaard saw this dual publication as consistent with the distinction between his two “sources” of inspiration: the human sagacity (represented in his teacher Socrates) and divine inspiration (represented in his faith): And the question here is purely dialectical—it is the question of the use of reflection in Christendom. Qualitatively two altogether different magnitudes are involved here, but formally I can very well call Socrates my teacher—whereas I have believed and believe in only one, the Lord Jesus Christ. (Point of View 54- 5).

81. Despite Kierkegaard’s intentions and understanding of the authorship, the nature of his complicated indirect communication has left some puzzled by the seemingly conflicting positions taken between earlier and later works. To take one short example, Patrick Gardiner suggests (Kierkegaard) apparently shifts (his) understanding of the “ethical” sphere from the early work Either/Or to the later Concluding Unscientific Postscript. In the former the pseudonymous “Judge” appears to juxtapose the ideal of the ethical with the individual’s recognition and choice to practice the same: “The task the ethical individual sets for himself is to transform himself into the universal individual” (Either/Or II 261). Later, however, in Concluding Unscientific Postscript, under the pseudonym “Johannes Climacus,” the emphasis appears to shift to an essentially individual choice, without recourse to objectification or ideal: “The individual’s own ethical actuality is the only actuality” (327). Gardiner describes the difficulty we these seemingly conflicting points of view this way: “What are we to make of this? Although his employment of pseudonyms admittedly tends to complicate matters, it would be

197 hard for even the most sympathetic of Kierkegaard’s commentators to contend that his writings are invariably conspicuous for their consistency and precision” (Kierkegaard 86). Of course, it is a distinct possibility that Kierkegaard’s works represent shifting points of position on critical categories. My contention, however, is that these shifting positions are not necessarily a result of Kierkegaard’s own changing mind (at least, not in the sense that a radical or categorical distinction has come into play), but a repercussion of Kierkegaard’s general understanding of the spheres relationship to the single individual. In other words, Kierkegaard use of pseudonyms is not just, to use Gardiner’s description, a ‘complication’ on the matter (i.e., a position on ethics)—it is the matter. It is a deliberate creation of meaning to point to the individual’s relationship to the ethics (esthetics, and religious) sphere(s). For Kierkegaard, the point to the indirect communication is to ‘correct’ a misunderstanding regarding the nature of the categories and the individual’s understanding/relationship to them. In short, to reveal the reflective-reliance error. In doing so he deliberately addresses the spheres in subjective accounts, accounts that are further complicated by the ironical use of pseudonyms to expound those subjective positions. In other words, Kierkegaard does not want to engage the spheres in an objective, categorical reflection of meaning, vis-a-vis the popular speculative thinking of his age, but offers instead a deliberately shifting perspective on what these spheres mean to the individual. I would argue that in one unique sense Kierkegaard’s works are indeed “invariably conspicuous for their consistency and precision.” That “sense” is their continuing position of the subjective, including the “shifts” and nuances of meaning when two or more figures (even if they be pseudonyms from the same author) engage their understanding of the categories over time. To that end, Kierkegaard reiterates time and again—directly and indirectly—“Subjectivity is the truth” (Concluding Unscientific Postscript). Consequently, no objective, systematic position on the “esthetic,” “ethical,” or “religious” sphere is, in the final analysis, sufficient. Such a position will inevitably remove the significance and actuality of choice in the subjective individual (Concluding Unscientific Postscript 129). In this light, Kierkegaard has no intention of naming the esthetic and ethical (or religious) categorically, objectively, and systematically as a “truth decided,” and thus the single individual can then decide to accept it or reject it. The room within each sphere is too broad (in light of the

198 subjectively experienced nature of each) to define truth categorically and objectively as a universal condition. That would be to repeat the same mistake as Hegel. Rather, it is Kierkegaard’s intention to draw awareness of each category’s essential nature as it relates to the single individual’s choice. Seen in this way the apparent “shift” is not so much a change of categorical distinctions, but a consequence of subjective relation to the category of the ethical. In the first instance (the early account of Either/Or), the emphasis was on the distinction of the sphere of ethical to esthetic in relation to the “Judge’s” perception of understanding the requirement (i.e. the condition of living ethically). In the later work, where the Kierkegaard is working through a different pseudonym and examining a different emphasis of meaning, the ethical is seen in light of its relationship to the single individual and truth. It should also be remembered that Kierkegaard sees Concluding as a “turning point” in which the question of “becoming” is brought to the forefront. Actuality is a central requirement of this becoming, and “truth” viewed through the category of the single individual requires that actuality be a lived- experience, not just a reflection of objective understanding. In this understanding, Kierkegaard has moved (“shifted”) the emphasis of understanding rhetorically, not changed his position on the categorical ethical sphere. Therefore, it is not surprising that an apparent shift in understanding occurs between the writings (understood as subjective experiences of two different pseudonyms, or as a shift in emphasis of Kierkegaard’s own mind). It would only be surprising if there was not.

Chapter Five 82. Or, in a position that raises compelling moments of comparison with Kierkegaard and Zhuangzi’s own positions on “awakening”: “In fact, a great deal of the story is believed to be inside the listener; the storyteller’s role is to draw the story out of the listeners” (Silko Women and Beauty of the Spirit 50). See also Wu’s description of Zhuangzi’s poetic nature: The Chuang Tzu is poetic in that its thoughts cluster in a web—one thought points to another which

199 explains it, then the pair point to another, and the movement goes on—and back” (Companion to the Butterfly 23). 83. In keeping with this position, the conclusions are not offered in any specific order, but do try to develop in sophistication from the superficially apparent to the more complex and nuanced. In regards to the latter, the further afield these conclusions and implications go the more complex and tenuous their support and articulation. Nor is it a coincidence that complexity develops in tandem the closer I draw to the subject of paradoxical and poetic language. 84. Additional examples include Kierkegaard’s description of Jesus (the “God-man”) and “Governance’s” role in Kierkegaard’s work. For example: “[Jesus] did not need people, but they infinitely needed him” (POV 248). And, “...therefore [Christianity] or Governance took the liberty of arranging the rest of my life in such a way that there would be no misunderstanding...as to whether it was I who needed Christianity or Christianity that needed me” (Point of View footnote 93). 85. Thus, Kierkegaard positions his Christian ethos against, among other things, “paganism”—a category carries Western sensibilities regarding the causal “God.” Writing about the conditions of his context, Kierkegaard illustrates the conditions of Christianity with allusion to paganism: “By going further than to be a Christian (which everyone supposedly is), we have reverted to or have passed into a sophisticated esthetic and intellectual paganism with an admixture of Christianity” (Point of View 78) To be fair, Zhuangzi is unaware of the Christian ethos, and does not (cannot) offer a response in kind. Nor, working from his correlative sensibilities, does he address the causal-transcendent “Supreme Being” most often depicted in the West. Rather, his ‘transcendence’ in regards to Dao is a condition of knowing, or more accurately, awareness, of Dao’s actuality. There is no evidence that Kierkegaard is using paganism pejoratively, but it is clear that he sees a distinction between the two categories (Christianity, Paganism). The repercussions of this distinction, rhetorically, are evidenced in Kierkegaard’s use of one category to distinguish another, including the causal-transcendent sensibility of a “Being” that transcends human/earthly existence. “Paganism,” for Kierkegaard, can be overcome by the category of ‘the single individual’ used dialectically: “The single individual—this category has been used only once, its

200 first time, in a decisively dialectical way, by Socrates, in order to disintegrate paganism” (Point of View 123). As I said, it would not be fair to impose this term (pagan) or its Western-sensibilities on Zhuangzi’s work, nor to look for a ‘counter’ claim in a context that is unaware of Christianity. What is significant, for this study, however, is the fact that neither the causal-transcendent or the correlative sensibility preclude either author from seeing their role and subject in terms of indirect communication. 86. It may be proven later that it is “restricted” to Kierkegaard and Zhuangzi’s (as I am only dealing with these two writers/sites at present), but I am almost certain that indirect communication is a practice (though, again, nuanced by context) that resides in every culture and time. My hesitancy to make this a universal claim might seem overly cautious, but ‘universals’ of this nature, as Kierkegaard and Zhuangzi would both point out, are something that imposes more than it illuminates. In other words, the presence of indirect communication may very well be in every time and context, but those nuances that each culture might invest in that indirect communication must still be considered on their own merits. They can (and probably will) offer still further illumination into the general complexity of life and language. For now, the fact that indirect communication appears to reside in at least two distinct cultural times and contexts argues that its presence is not predicated by either writer’s particular sensibilities of truth. Thus, the causal/correlative distinction often used to identify these two broad contexts does not preclude the presence of indirect communication. 87. As much of the next section concerns the causal/correlative distinction I thought it might be helpful to remind the reader again of my own sense of these concepts in terms of rhetoric: Causal rhetoric includes an emphasis on objective definition and an orientation to argumentation by analytic-dominant modes, including a valuation of systematic rationality over other appeals. These priorities reflect an emphasis on a single-order world whose independent nature of essences (being over becoming) can be analyzed and understood for their unique properties and classifications. Correlative priorities, on the other hand, reflect an interconnected and process- oriented world view (becoming over being) that seeks to understand the fluid changes and interconnected nature of life. Correlative priorities include an emphasis on analogical and

201 metaphorical illustration of key concepts and positions, combined with an orientation to argumentation by interdependent, dialectic-dominate modes. 88. To offer just one example, there is the story of Cook Ting from “The Secret of Caring for Life” section. Cook Ting was a legendary cook, whose art of cutting meat was so great that he drew the amazement of Lord Wen-hui. Cook Ting’s explanation for his skill includes his transcendence of ordinary skill and training: “Perception and understanding have come to a stop and spirit moves where it wants. I go along with the natural makeup...follow things as they are” (Chuang Tzu: Basic Writings 46-7). To arrive at this level, Ting found meaning in the Way (Dao), “which goes beyond skill.” Another example is the opening of “Discussion of Making All Things Equal”: “Tzu-ch’i of South Wall sat leaning on his armrest, staring up at the sky and breathing—vacant and far away, as though he’d lost his companion” (31). Yen Ch’eng Tzu-yu (like Lord Wen-hui) is amazed by the sight and asks how it is achieved. Tzu-ch’i answers with a long metaphor about “losing oneself” to the “piping of Heaven” (31). Heaven should not be understood here as the Western transcendental concept, but is an interconnected element of meaning which resides with Earth and Humans to makeup the Dao. The point to both these (and other) examples in the Zhuangzi is the transcendent nature evidenced by those most aware; transcendent not in relationship to another (i.e., Hall and Ames strict interpretation) but to their own self awareness. 89. “He belongs entirely to the world....He finds pleasure in everything, takes part in everything, and every time one sees him participating in something particular, he does it with an assiduousness that marks the worldly man who is attached to such things...(39); “And yet, yet...and yet this man has made the movement and at every moment is making the movement of infinity. He drains the deep sadness of life in infinite resignation, he knows the blessedness of infinity, he has felt the pain of renouncing everything, the most precious thing in the world, and yet the finite tastes just as good to him as to one who never knew anything higher, because his remaining in finitude would have no trace of a timorous, anxious routine, and yet he has this security that makes him delight in it as if finitude were the surest thing of all. And yet, yet the whole earthly figure he presents is a new creation by virtue of the absurd. He resigned everything infinitely , and then he grasped everything again by virtue of the absurd” (40) (Fear and Trembling).

202 90. From the above, it might be concluded that in his open and constant question of knowing that Zhuangzi is in essence, a nihilist. This, however, is not the case. In his study of the Ancient Chinese, A. C. Graham argues that the intention of writers like Zhuangzi (and Laozi) was not to create a condition of extreme skepticism, a denial of any knowable truth, but to “reduce the negative impact of language on human behavior” in order to allow Dao, the Way, to be fully realized and experienced (Disputers 233). Consequently, neither thinkers are nihilists in the Western tradition’s sense of the term (Lu 232). Using their unique (and respective) understandings of the Ancient Chinese notion of wu wei, Zhuangzi calls for a “paradoxical” answer to living, including his understanding of language and meaning as it relates to Dao. In such a light, Zhuangzi (and Laozi) do not see the breakdown of meaning and communication as indicative of an ultimately nihilistic world view; that is to say, a world of ultimate skepticism where nothing—including principles or a fundamental truth (read, Dao)—has real existence. Rather, they see the multitudinous and conflicting discourses around them as a result of language’s limitations to name that which is ultimately real, Dao. Hence, wu wei is not another form of nihilism or relative skepticism; instead, it is its own unique and responsive answer to the dilemma of knowing truth in a world of positional perspective, limited language, and constant change. 91. Wu repeatedly notes the “jocular” freewheeling nature of Zhuangzi and often compares this with both Nietzsche and Kierkegaard; for example: “Roaming and Laughing” (“The Chuang Tzu is not terrifying” —in comparison with Kierkegaard’s “Abraham” stories in Fear and Trembling); and, “This [Zhuangzi] contrasts with the prevalent mood in some existential literature, such as Kierkegaard’s “sickness unto death...(15); “The roaming frolic (yu) reminds us of repetition (Kierkegaard), recurrence (Nietzsche)....But yu differs from [both]” (80). 92. To what extent Kierkegaard and Nietzsche’s respective works were shaped by the ‘crisis’ (or, in some ways, marked the crisis) is a matter of perspective, interpretation and debate. Nor should it be understood here that Kierkegaard or Nietzsche are essentially marked by “despair” or gloom. There works are complex, including (as I will tried to show in Chapter 4 with Kierkegaard) an underlying, but critically important, allusion to the happiness of “freedom.” There remains, however, a decided difference in tone and mood of the “challenging” voices of the West compared to the similarly questioning voices of the East. Though all four writers are

203 considered unique for their questioning of rational-dependence and objective “fact,” the Western writers suggest a tone of angst that is not as prevalent in the works of the Daoist. 93. For more on the significance of the history and development of the two traditions respective approaches and understanding of meaning see Chapter Two, and for a detailed study see Hall and Ames series on Chinese and Western culture and philosophy, including Anticipating China and Thinking from the Han. My intention here is to note the rhetorical tendencies of Zhuangzi, not to develop and exhaustive study on what their respective contexts and histories had on the subsequent development of each respective tradition. 94. In saying this I am not suggesting that there is no “joy” to Kierkegaard’s work (and his humor, though more often than not wry, is evident), but that this joy requires, and his rhetoric is invested in, a purging of chains by recourse of despair’s awareness. The Sickness Unto Death is an address of despair’s condition as/in sin and its paradoxical connection to awareness (in Christian terms, faith). That said, Kierkegaard’s “purely religious” works—the direct, witnessing writing—cannot be forgotten. The tone of such works as Works of Love, though not possessing the frolicking nature of Zhuangzi, nevertheless suggest at times a tone of peace and confident joy in its ‘answer.’ The difference resides in the level of despair’s presence to each writer’s rhetoric/ming bian.

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