NATURE NATURING ZIRAN IN EARLY DAOIST THINKING A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE DIVISION OF THE UNIVERSITY OF HAWAI‘I AT MĀNOA FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN PHILOSOPHY MAY 2018 By Jing Liu Dissertation Committee: Roger T. Ames, Chair Franklin Perkins, Co-chair Steve Odin Chung-Ying Cheng David McCraw Kai Zheng Keywords: Nature, Ziran, Daoism ABSTRACT Due to the worsening environmental situation, the relation between nature and humans has been reflected on by environmental philosophers. However, we often find that the very meaning of nature has not been brought to light. So what is nature? My thesis shows that ziran in early Daoism offers us an alternative to the modern concept of nature as an object to be controlled and exploited for human purposes. Ziran is the very process of the transformation of dao and things, in which the intimacy of dao, things and humans is kept. My thesis presents ziran or nature as a way of life that penetrates dao, things, and humans. It is with the understanding of ziran that the nature of humans and all things are illuminated. Daoist ziran also sheds light on the creativity of a feminine power as the realization of nature which emphasizes the interplay between the female and the male (yin and yang), setting a contrast with any exclusively patriarchal principle of the relationship between humans and “nature.” While ziran offers us an alternative to the modern concept of nature, the investigation on ziran seeks dialogue with Western thoughts. By questioning the meaning of nature through the lens of Daoist ziran many important terms in western philosophy, e.g., being and nonbeing, permanence and transience, truth, reality, freedom and so on are reinterpreted and gain refreshed meanings. Therefore being and nonbeing do not exclude each other, but are playful and at one with each other; Freedom allows the spontaneity of nature instead of oppressing it; Truth is not the otherworldly shiny little beings, or the categorical necessity on my mind, but the lively creativity in this world. In fact it is life itself; Permanence and transience are not an antinomy but the same. My research aims to set the metaphysical ground for Daoist studies as well as Daoist environmentalism and ecofeminism. It anticipates the opening of a new way of life wherein human existence and the realization of human freedom take root in nature. Contents 1. Introduction……………………………………………………………………………1 2. The Ziran of Dao: The Self of Self-Soing -- The Root-Source Meaning of the Dao in Light of Be-ing (you 有) and Non-be-ing (wu 無)………………………………….14 2.1 Dao as the root-source………………………………………...…………............16 2.2 The light of Being in Western thought…………………………………………..20 2.3 The dark non-be-ing in Daoist texts……………………………………………...27 2.4 The play of be-ing and non-be-ing……………………………………………….34 2.5 Be-ing comes from non-be-ing…………………………………………………..43 3. The Ziran of Dao: The So-ing of Self-Soing – The Temporality and Place of Dao 3.1 Permanence and transience: the temporality of Dao……………………….……47 3.2 Ziran: the place of Dao…………………………………………………………..63 3.3 “Dao emulates ziran”…………………………………………………………….69 4. The Ziran of the Myriad Things: The Spontaneity of Things…………………......74 4.1 Spontaneity as creativity (de 德)…………………………………………………79 4.2 Spontaneity as sheng 生………………………………………………………….85 4.3 Spontaneity as freedom: nature prescribes laws to humans……………………...90 4.4 Spontaneity as equality: all the myriad things are equal………………………..101 5. The Ziran of Humans – On freedom 5.1 Freedom through the lens of reason…………………………………………….111 5.2 Non-knowing as not-knowing…………………………………………………..116 5.2.1 The Ontological and Axiological Non-knowing……………………………...117 5.2.2 The Existential Ignorance: The Death of Socrates…………………………...119 5.3 Non-knowing as knowing 5.3.1 The problem of knowing……………………………………………………...122 5.3.2 Freedom and knowing through non-knowing………………………………...124 6. Conclusion: Daoist Ecofeminism as A New Democracy 6.1 Development for whom? – land enclosure in China……………………………135 6.2 What is to be done? – Daoist ecofeminism as a new democracy………………144 6.3 A new enlightenment: taking root in nature (ziran)……………………………149 Bibliography…………………………………………………………………………...151 1. Introduction The world has lost the dao, The dao has lost the wosrld, The world and the dao have lost each other.1 世喪道矣, 道喪世矣, 世與道交相喪也.2 Thus says Zhuangzi3 in the chapter “Reviving the Nature” (ShanXing 缮性). Apparently Zhuangzi is only complaining about his time, in the face of the long-lasting upheavals and wars. Still, it is left to us to ask: how can the world lose the dao which exists nowhere but in the world? How can the dao that is the mother of the ten thousand beings lose the world? In what sense can we talk about the world and the dao losing each other? Right before these verses Zhuangzi talks about humans’ being in the world as “ziran 自然.” It is the loss of ziran that brings about the world and dao’s losing each other. Ziran 自然 are the two characters that are used to translate the English word “nature.” Yet when nature is grasped in a modern sense, these verses are obscure and unintelligible. For as long as both nature and the world are simply understood in the modern sense as the natural environment as an object external to human subjects, how can we even talk about the world losing nature? All the same, it is still pointless if one tries to grasp “the world” as a bigger category than nature. At the end of the day, it is rather dubious that a categorical way of thinking can be applied to Zhuangzi’s notion of ziran. Perhaps this way of thinking actually obfuscates the meaning of ziran. The problem here is not only the incoherence between the modern term “nature” and ancient Chinese term “ziran.” Neither is it the case that the problem will be solved if we translate “nature” with the Chinese term “wanwu 萬物” or the myriad things, which precisely presumes a narrow modern metaphysical understanding of nature and at the same time leaves the meaning of “the myriad things” in Chinese philosophy obscure. This incoherence reveals to us a matter of fact, that is, the meaning of nature has been obscured for us today, which itself is indicative of and rooted in the disconnection between our modern living and the cycles of nature. When nature 1 My translation. Unless specifically notified, the translation of the Zhuangzi in this thesis is my own. 2 The Chinese text of the Zhuangzi is drawn from Chen, Guying, A Contemporary Commentary and Translation of the Zhuangzi (陳鼓應, <莊子今注今譯>, 北京: 中華書局, 1983.) See Chen Guying, 1983, 435. 3 I agree with most scholars that the Inner Chapters of the Zhuangzi are written by Zhuangzi while the other chapters are written by his followers. I use “Zhuangzi” here for the sake of convenience. 1 becomes the resource and object for the exploitation for profit under the world capitalist system, it is only taken as that which is meaningless and for that reason, at the disposal of the humans. And as long as the meaning of nature is still concealed from us, we cannot even come to understand the matter of fact that dao has left us. So what is nature? In fact “nature” in Western philosophy has a long and varied history of uses significantly different from our current conception of “nature.” Even today “nature” in Western linguistic contexts is definitely not simply an object opposed to the human subjects. This modern metaphysical “nature” has its historical roots. The brief examination of the genealogy of “nature” below explores the root of the modern metaphysical “nature.” More importantly, it should reveal to us the historical possibility of a different understanding of nature. Many Pre-Socratic philosophers were intimate with and wondered about nature. This is salient in Heraclitus who underscored change and taught “All is flux, nothing stays still.”4 For Heraclitus, “The world, the same for all, neither any god nor any man made; but it was always and is and will be, fire ever-living, kindling in measures and being extinguished in measures.” [B 30]5 In this short sentence Heraclitus illuminates the sameness of permanence and transience, of the world in constant flux and the eternal peace, of order and life and death. Sameness and permanence is in the flux of “was”, “is” and “will be”, the world process that is illustrated by the ever-living fire. There is no god as the creator outside of the world. The world or nature is that which is the same for all. Also according to Heraclitus, “God is day and night, winter and summer, war and peace, satiety and famine, and undergoes change in the way that fire, whenever it is mixed with spices, gets called by the name that accords with the bouquet of each.” [B 67]6 Here Heraclitus tells us explicitly: Nature is god. It shows us that the one is kept in the particularity of the many. However, the intimacy with nature begins to change in Plato’s metaphysics, wherein the intelligible world is resolutely severed out of the becoming world. In his analogy of the divided line Plato constructs the hierarchy of reality: the eidos high above, science in the middle and the world that lies at the bottom. The immutable, independent, and completely self-sufficient ideas 4 “… πάντα χωρεῖ καὶ οὐδὲν μένει.” See Plato Cratylus 402a. Plato: Complete Works, edited by John M. Cooper, Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company, 1997. 5 Jonathan Barnes, Early Greek Philosophy, London: Penguin Books, 1987,122. 6 T.