Virtuosos of the Ordinary Comparative Interpretations of Daoist and Stoic Thought by David Machek A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of East Asian Studies University of Toronto © Copyright by David Machek, 2015 Virtuosos of the Ordinary Comparative Interpretations of Daoist and Stoic Thought David Machek Doctor of Philosophy Department of East Asian Studies University of Toronto 2015 Abstract “Virtuosity in the ordinary” is an idea, attributed by this work to the ancient Stoicism and Zhuangzi’s Daoism, that it is possible to achieve an extraordinary excellence in the realm of ordinary, mundane activities. This possibility is based on the view that there is a perfect fit between one’s psychological and cognitive faculties and the structure of reality. By achieving such a perfection, one not only achieves personal fulfillment but also fulfills one’s role in the overarching scheme of things. Within this interpretive framework, the work reconstructs two different versions of this idea in two different cultural contexts. By so doing, it pursues two goals. First, it seeks to use the comparative perspective to engage with existing interpretations of Stoicism and Zhuangzi’s Daoism. In particular, it challenges the view that Stoics were rigid moralists utterly indifferent towards the ordinary world and values, and the tendency to understand Zhuangzi as an anti-rationalist. Second, it tries to interpret the differences between Stoic and Daoist versions of the virtuosity in the ordinary in light of larger divergences between the two intellectual traditions. It suggests that the overarching conceptual dichotomy in the ancient Greek and Roman tradition was that of rational and non-rational, while in the Chinese tradition it was that of artificial and natural. ii Acknowledgments My most sincere thanks go to my academic mentors: to Prof. Vincent Shen, my supervisor, for his guidance and encouragement at different stages of the program; to Prof. Brad Inwood for helping me to recognize and plant the promising ideas and abandon the others, as well as for his commitment to make this work as erudite as possible in its presentation of Greek and Roman material; and to dr. Curie Virág for her effort to improve my discussion of early Chinese materials and to enhance my appreciation of the pleasures of academic rigor. I would also like to express my gratitude to my wife, Markéta, for her relentless patience and encouragement in the process of dissertation writing, as well as for her help with the final editing and formatting of this manuscript; and to my daughter, Anežka, who made me more sensitive of the pleasures of handling ordinary tasks. iii Table of Contents Introduction..........................................................................................................................vi 1. The Rationale of the Comparison ..................................................................................vi 2. The Goals and Agenda................................................................................................ xiii 3. The Comparative Method: Reason Versus Nature? ....................................................xvi 4. The Ancient Outlook: Embeddedness and Wholeness ...............................................xxv 5. Overall Structure and the Outline of Chapters............................................................xxx 6. A Note on Texts and Translations ........................................................................... xxxii Part One: The Top (or the Macroscopic Perspective) Chapter One: Freedom as Doing Necessary Things..........................................................2 1. Freedom in the Zhuangzi ................................................................................................4 2. Freedom in Stoicism .....................................................................................................10 3. Positive, or Negative Freedom?....................................................................................14 4. Underlying Assumptions: Authentic Self and the Structured Unity of All Things ......19 Part Two: The Middle Chapter Two: Ethics of Efficacy .......................................................................................27 1. Zhuangzi’s Archer Simile in Context of Early Chinese Ideal of “Non-action” (wuwei 無為) .................................................................................................................................29 2. Telos and Skopos: The Stoic Archer Simile in the Context of the Greek Thought ......34 3. Zhuangzi Revisited: Indifference Towards the External as the Pleasure from the Internal ..............................................................................................................................40 4. Stoics Revisited: The Aesthetic and Efficacious Dimension of the Wise Man’s Action ..........................................................................................................................................43 5. The Big Picture Difference in Light of Cross-cultural Comparison.............................48 Chapter Three: Ordinary Crafts and Extraordinary Wisdom ......................................54 1. The Craft of Living in the Zhuangzi : Yes, or No?.......................................................57 2. Zhuangzi: Virtuoso Craftsmen as Embodiments of Sagehood.....................................63 3. Stoics: The wisdom as perfection of first-order crafts..................................................67 4. The Upshot: Top-down vs. Bottom-up Approach ........................................................72 iv Part Three: The Bottom (or the Microscopic Perspective) Chapter Four: Ethics of Perception ..................................................................................76 1. Sense-perception in the Zhuangzi .................................................................................78 2. Stoics: Perception as Passivity?....................................................................................82 3. Eggs and Twins: “Expert Presentation” and “Grasping Presentation”.........................84 4. Expertise as a Unity of Mind and Eye ..........................................................................87 5. “The Wise Man Neither Mis-sees Nor Mishears” ........................................................90 6. “Training of Presentations” ..........................................................................................96 Chapter Five: Emotions that Do Not Move....................................................................102 1. The Overview of Evidence and Scholarly Debates ....................................................105 2. Emotions that Do Move Us: Passions as Excessive Additions ..................................111 3. The Emotions that the Nature Prescribes for Us.........................................................118 4. The Joy of the Wise Man............................................................................................124 5. Diverging Evaluations of the Involuntary/Self-Emerging/Natural Feelings ..............127 Conclusion .........................................................................................................................130 Bibliography......................................................................................................................134 v Introduction And if from the moment they get up in the morning they adhere to their ideals, eating and bathing like a person of integrity, putting their principles into practice in every situation they face – the way a runner does when he applies the principles of running, or a singer those of musicianship – that is where you will see true progress embodied, and find someone who has not wasted their time making the journey here from home. (Epictetus, Diss. 1.4.20) ‘Excellent’, said Lord Wenhui. ‘Listening to the words of the butcher, I have learned from them how to nurture life.’ (Zh. 3.1) And none of the virtuous men makes a mistake about the road or his house or his target. (Stob. Ecl. 2.11m=IG 102) The genuine person of ancient times slept without dreaming and awoke without worries; he simply ate what was put before him, and his breathing was deep and profound. (Zh. 6.1) 1. The Rationale of the Comparison In his opus magnum Sources of the Self, Charles Taylor coined a term “affirmation of ordinary life” as one of the major defining features of modernity. The “ordinary life” encompasses various activities associated with “production and reproduction, that is labour, the making of the things needed for life, and our life as sexual human beings, including marriage and the family” (Taylor 1989: 241). Historically, Taylor locates the tendency towards the affirmation of the ordinary life to early modern times and links it closely with the Reformation and the rise of Protestantism. The shift that he reconstructs consists in a relocation of the idea of the good life from the realm of high, noble activities such as major vi philosophical, political or military pursuits, to the realm of mundane, everyday concerns with economical and biological prosperity. The contrast that he draws, crudely put, is that of antiquity, which premised the human flourishing on extraordinary achievements, and modernity, which programmatically turned towards the here and now of the ordinary life. Perhaps the most exemplary representation of the ancient paradigm of the good life, according to Taylor,