Chuang Tzu: Mystic, Moralist, and Social Reformer

Note on the Philosophy of Chapters i-vii.

Lao Tzu original: Lao Tzŭ judges a mutilated criminal to be a greater man than Confucius. This is because the criminal's body was mutilated by man, while Confucius—though men do not realize it—is "filled with virtue" original: πεπληρωμένος πρὸς ἀρετήν by the judgment of God.

This protest by Chuang Tzu original: Chuang Tzŭ against "externality"—judging only by outward appearance—could easily be translated into Christian language. Christianity also teaches inwardness and, like all forms of idealism, resents limiting human life and knowledge only to "the things which are seen." In its opposition to a purely practical system like Confucianism, Taoism must have appealed to those deeper human instincts that Buddhism would appeal to several centuries later. In practice, Confucianism was limited to the finite. Action, effort, benevolence, and unselfishness all have a place in it, but their stage is the world as we know it. Its final word is worldly wisdom; not necessarily selfishness, but a broad form of cautious self-interest. To the Taoist, such a system has the flavor of the "basic principles of the world." The author is likely referencing Colossians 2:8-20, comparing Confucian rules to the "rudiments of the world." Its "charity and duty," its "ceremonies and music," are the "Do not touch, do not taste, do not handle" of a temporary state of existence, and they perish with use. Instead, the sage seeks the Absolute, the Infinite, and the Eternal. He seeks to attain Tao The Way: the ultimate reality or first principle of the universe.

It is here (in chapters vi and vii) that we reach what truly makes up the mysticism of Chuang Tzu. Heraclitus original: Heracleitus is not a mystic, though he is the founder of a long philosophical line. This lineage passes through Plato, Dionysius the Areopagite, and John the Scot John Scotus Eriugena in the ninth century, Meister Eckhart in the thirteenth, and Jacob Böhme in the sixteenth, reaching all the way down to Hegel. Heraclitus despises the world and avoids it, but he has not yet made "fleeing from the world" a formal doctrine. Even Plato, in a well-known passage in the Theaetetus,¹ when he advises fleeing from the present state of things, explains that he only means "flee from evil and become like God." Furthermore, Heraclitus never went so far as to aim for the absorption of the self into God. In Greek thought, the attempt to get rid of consciousness and become the unconscious vehicle of a higher divine light was unknown until the time of Philo A Hellenistic Jewish philosopher who lived in Alexandria. Yet this is exactly the teaching of Chuang Tzu: "The true sage takes his refuge in God, and learns that there is no distinction between subject and object. This is the very axis of Tao" (p. 18). Therefore, the road leading to Tao is the withdrawal from the self (chapter vi). The pure people of old did not love life and hate death. They were content to be passive vehicles of Tao. They had reached a state of sublime indifference,

¹ Theaetetus 176. A. "Therefore we ought to try to escape from here to there as quickly as possible. To escape is to become like God, so far as this is possible; and to become like him is to become holy, just, and wise." original Greek: διὸ καὶ πειρᾶσθαι χρὴ ἐνθένδε ἐκεῖσε φεύγειν ὅ τι τάχιστα . φυγὴ δὲ ὁμοίωσις Θεῷ κατὰ τὸ δυνατόν . ὁμοίωσις δὲ δίκαιον καὶ ὅσιον μετὰ φρονήσεως γενέσθαι.