Abstract: Naturalistic accounts of early Daoism and post-humanist interpretations of the uncanny sublime suggest that the everyday personal life of the individual is interrupted and dismantled by overwhelming impersonal powers that reveal the “human” to be a false construction and the world to be an aesthetic, natural, or mystical play of forces. I argue for a third option between anthropocentric humanism and impersonal naturalism by returning to the Zhuangzi. The ru tradition has produced two seemingly contradictory critiques of the text known as the Zhuangzi: (1) it suppresses rather than balances desires, thus inappropriately taking the perspective of heaven or nature (tian) rather than of humanity (ren), and (2) it advocates an aesthetic nihilism involving the arbitrary assertion of desires in a free-play in which one irresponsibly and selfishly does as one pleases. Contrary to Xunzi’s criticism that Zhuangzi forgot the human in prioritizing nature (tian), I argue that the Daoist sage (zhenren) is not absorbed in the dao as an impersonal force, much less shattered by its power and sublimity, but is perfected or individuated (zhen) in free and easy wandering in relation to it and the myriad things (wanwu).
Eric Sean Nelson, (University of Mass., Lowell, USA)