Philosophy Compass 9/10 (2014): 663–671, 10.1111/phc3.12171 Daoism and Wu David Chai* Chinese University of Hong Kong Abstract This paper introduces the concept of nothingness as used in classical Daoist philosophy, building upon contemporary scholarship by offering a uniquely phenomenological reading of the term. It will be argued that the Chinese word wu bears upon two planes of reality concurrently: as ontological nothingness and as ontic nonbeing. Presenting wu in this dyadic manner is essential if we wish to avoid equating it with Dao itself, as many have been wont to do; rather, wu is the mystery that perpetually veils Dao while serving as the root and counter-balance to being, and yet, Dao also imbues things with wu to the extant that their physical makeup and usefulness, or lack thereof, can be traced back to their source in Dao. This does not only mean that Daoist cosmogony and metaphysics are inherently informed by nothingness/ nonbeing instead of being/beings but that it works to unground all moral and epistemological norms in play, a feat no other school of thought in ancient China could accomplish. Daoism sees within the rawness of nature and the expanse of heaven a means by which to expound the life-world of the myriad things therein. It has been variously called a school of monism, mysticism, skepticism, relativism, and fatalism, but these terms miss the mark in that they only touch upon the corners of its thought, leaving the core unaccounted for. As Daoist philosophy is concerned about letting go and letting be so as to achieve cosmological harmony and ontological self-enrichment, one would expect to find great importance attached to the themes of quietude ( jing ) and vacuity (xu ). Indeed, there is much to be said for each of these, and yet, it falls upon an even more profound one to inform the Daoist enterprise – wu (nothingness/nonbeing). This paper will thus give an account of Daoist wu, arguing that it acts as the ontological facilitator for Dao’s creativity while marking the absence of things ontically. Textual examples will be derived from the Daodejing, Zhuangzi, Liezi, and Wenzi. 1. Wu as Cosmological Creativity Ancient Chinese cosmogony differs from its Greek counterpart in one important aspect: the role of nothingness. In the case of Daoism, its cosmogonist argument lacks the ecstatically divine hues of the Greeks while its onto-cosmological1 holism holds wu to be the wellspring from which being arises: ‘The myriad things of the world are born from being and being is born from nothingness.’2 While wu can be understood as either nothingness or nonbeing, the semantic difference warrants careful attention when applying them to Daoism. To clarify, in the above example, nothingness is preferred over nonbeing in that the text is speaking to the creational unfolding of the cosmos. Selecting nonbeing instead would imply Daoism is espousing creatio ex-nihilo, which it is not: ‘Dao gives birth to the One, the One gives birth to two, two gives birth to three, and three gives birth to the myriad things.’3 Of the many ways to explain the One, cosmologically, it is a pre-bifurcated state of reality in which nonbeing and being are unnamed and undifferentiated as such; they co-arise as the dyadic number two. © 2014 The Author(s) Philosophy Compass © 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd 664 Daoism and Wu Primal nothingness thus persists alongside Dao as its holistic plenum of creative possibility, as the following account reveals: Brilliance queried nothingness, saying: Are you, sir, being or are you nothing? Brilliance, being unable to gain a response, carefully regarded the other’s appearance, which was a far-reaching vacuity. He gazed the entire day and saw nothing, listened but heard no sound, reached out but was unable to grasp anything. Brilliance said: How perfect! Who can be as perfect as this! I can grant the fact of nothingness but not the nonbeing of nothingness. As for nothingness, how can one realize such perfection!4 The above passage has been chosen for two reasons: first, the penultimate sentence is the sole instance in which wu appears in reduplicate in the Zhuangzi, making it a topic of much discussion in both ancient commentaries and contemporary discourse; second, the final sentence’s pronouncement that nothingness is perfection while the nonbeing of nothingness is not, reinforces the claim being made in this paper that wu qua nothingness, not wu qua nonbeing, possesses ontological qualities and as such should be taken as the authentic root of being.5 When speaking of this cosmogonist root in the context of the Daodejing, however, we must be mindful of the fact that it differs from the Zhuangzi. In chapter 25 of the Daodejing, we are told: ‘There is something undifferentiated and whole that existed before heaven and earth. Silent and empty, solitary and unchanging, it is found everywhere yet remains free from danger, thus it can act as the mother of heaven and earth. I do not know its name and so call it Dao.’ Similar descriptions appear in other Daoist texts too: ‘There is something undifferentiated and whole that existed before heaven and earth. It is only a formless resemblance, an abstruse profundity, solitary and indifferent, whose sound we cannot hear. Forced to give it a name, I call it Dao.’6 Before proceeding further, we should first take stock of what others have said about wu, which will place us in a better position to argue for a unique, phenomenological reading. Of what might be called a traditional line of interpretation, Hans-Georg Moeller notes ‘wu is simply the negation of you [being there, existence, being]. Accordingly, it means in verbal usage “not being there”…as a noun it means “not-existence” or “absence;” and as the negation of “being” it is sometimes also translated as “nothing” or even “nothingness.” ’7 Such a grammatical reading is without doubt correct; however, it offers little in the way of philosophical insight. David Yu, in a paper from 1981, argued that ‘creation is something positive…the positive is derived from the negative…[hence] nonbeing (wu or ‘nothing’) is both the origin of creation and the basis of ontology.’8 Minghua Fan echoes this: ‘The Dao itself is nothingness…nothingness is not only a specific characteristic of the Dao, but it is also a specific characteristic that the psyche originally has or ought to have.’9 Mario Wenning, on the other hand, stresses the link between consciousness and wu, noting: ‘Nothingness in the Daoist tradition encompasses experiential phenomena…[it] is understood increasingly as an inner subjective principle uniting the subject with the natural f low of the dao.’10 Katrin Froese’s evaluation is in-line with the spirit of Daoism, but her need to associate nothingness with knowledge and language robs it of its onto-cosmological significance.11 Nevertheless, her observation that ‘Daoism…illustrates that nothingness cannot simply be reduced to a negation of what is or once was…signifies openness to other beings, and therefore reminds us of our fundamental interconnectivity in addition to being described as cosmological point of origin’ is certainly insightful.12 Youru Wang noticed the doubling of wu in the Zhuangzi passage quoted above, ascribing what he calls its ‘denegation’ directly to Dao: ‘Here the doubling, the negation of negation, does not simply mean a return to affirmation. It does not presuppose © 2014 The Author(s) Philosophy Compass © 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd Philosophy Compass 9/10 (2014): 663–671, 10.1111/phc3.12171 Daoism and Wu 665 an essential being or nonbeing affirming itself ultimately by a double movement…it denegates itself, and, therefore, is not a total negation. Nothing ceases to be affirmed as it is in the ongoing process of interchanging itself and its other, in the dynamics of becoming toward its other…this is Zhuangzi’s Dao.’13 Geling Shang, too, picks-up on wu’s repetition and like those mentioned above, equates it directly with Dao: ‘Dao, as metaphysical reality or cosmological origin is simply nothing (wu), not nothing-ness as something primary or substantial, not non-being as being, but just is-not.’14 What is more, Shang also appears to confirm Wang’s thesis when he writes: ‘The perfect state of Dao is wuwu, the real wu that embraces the self-negation and self-destruction…[it] dismisses attempts to think of Dao as a transcendental being…Dao is-not being or nonbeing or wuwu but throughs or tongs as One.’15 And yet, all of these ways of explicating wu were touched upon by Charles Fu in a paper he wrote in 1976. It would seem, then, that we have reached a plateau in our understanding of wu, and if we wish to employ it in a manner wholly faithful to Daoism, it is perhaps time to cast it in a wholly different light. We can begin our recasting by returning to the Zhuangzi passage quoted above so as to demonstrate how wu-as-nothingness can be differentiated from wu-as-nonbeing. We are in need of such separation if we wish to satisfy Daoism’s strategy of portraying Dao as the source, unfolding, and self-embracing reality of things (i.e., Ultimate Reality). Having said as much, one must refrain from taking nothingness as akin to Buddhist emptiness (sunyata) whereby subject and object conjoin to form a state of oneness (samadhi). To thus postulate the nonbeing of nothingness as a form of self-nihilism – Dao’s negating foil – is to psychologize and reduce Dao to a state of mind that is no different from sunyata. Doing so, however, would starve Dao of its existence as the wellspring of onto-cosmological generation and return. In other words, what appears to be a double negation is actually a self-negating solipsism whose purpose is to release us from the chains binding our outmoded hypothesizing of what existence entails. It frees our imagination to ponder all the possibilities pertaining to a nondiscriminatory reality. In light of this, any new understanding of nothingness must ref lect the f luidly dynamic relationship it shares with Dao while at the same time capturing the phenomenology of that which it begets. Our new understanding hence entails nothingness to be the cosmological fabric through which Dao instantiates itself in the myriad things of the world without detracting from its own veiled mysteriousness. What is more, it is due to the pervasiveness of nothingness in the universe that Daoism can posit Dao to be the catalyst for all becoming, transformation, and return, without fear of being labeled a school of via negativa. It can confidently do so because the fashioning of things does not occur in a space external to Dao but through and in conjunction with nothingness. Cosmological nothingness is hence the in-between-ness of coming-into-being and returning-to-nonbeing. Since the myriad beings of the cosmos are transitory by nature, the perpetuity of Dao and nothingness offers a sharp yet balancing contrast as the Zhuangzi demonstrates: ‘There is being, there is nonbeing, there is a not begun to be nonbeing, and there is a not begun to be nonbeing’s beginning. Suddenly there is nothingness, and yet when it comes to nothingness I do not know if it is actually being or actually nonbeing.’16 The Zhuangzi’s inability to distinguish between the being and nonbeing of nothingness is due to the fact that it is both simultaneous; it is both in that from the perspective of Dao, all things are dyadic in nature. In order to demarcate the negative creativity of Dao and nothingness from the physical absence of things, including death, Daoism also employs the character wu in the sense of ontic nonbeing. Nonbeing in its ontic sense does not mark the finality or annihilation of ontic being though; on the contrary, it signifies a thing’s return to the ontological nothingness that sustains and shelters Dao. We can hence refer to the temporal presence of things as their ontic being and their non-presence as their ontic nonbeing.17 The non-presence of nonbeing, however, is not © 2014 The Author(s) Philosophy Compass © 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd Philosophy Compass 9/10 (2014): 663–671, 10.1111/phc3.12171 666 Daoism and Wu equivalent to nothingness, for while nothingness is pervasive throughout ontic nonbeing, nonbeing itself lacks ontological bearing and simply functions as a placeholder for what is now in absentia. This is why the term wu cannot be translated as void or emptiness for neither conveys the inherent possibilities it affords nor explains the onto-cosmological dialectic between wu and Dao. The Zhuangzi points to the inseparability of Dao and nothingness in this way: If not for these states of mind, I would not be; if I am not to be, there will be no one to experience them. This principle comes close to being true but from whence they appear, no one knows. Although there seems to be a true self, any hint of its presence remains unseen. Its manifestation may be trusted, though we cannot see its form; its reality though real, is no indication of its form.18 Although the Zhuangzi’s onto-cosmology stands out among all pre-Qin schools of philosophy, it nevertheless remains indebted to the initial postulations of the Daodejing. There, Dao is famously described in the opening lines of its first chapter; what most people overlook, however, is the third sentence that declares its onto-cosmological propensity: ‘Being without name, it is the beginning of heaven and earth; being named, it is the mother of the myriad things.’19 This idea might seem similar to the Zhuangzi’s but the difference in language between the two texts is attributable to the Daodejing’s tendency toward ontological matriarchalization (Dao-as-mother) whereas the Zhuangzi adopted the notion of unity through oneness. Indeed, many of the concepts used by the Daodejing to describe Dao also occur in the Zhuangzi. What is more, when examining texts such as the Wenzi, these linguistic paradigms continue to be used: ‘Empty nothingness is the idea of tranquility, the ancestor of the myriad things. Putting these three to use, one enters into formlessness and formlessness is also known as oneness…[oneness] is without form yet things having form are born from it. It is without sound yet all sounds emanate from it. It is without flavor yet all flavors are derived from it. It is without color yet all colors are produced from it. Therefore being is born of nothingness and actuality is born of emptiness.’20 Elaborating on the above, the text writes the following: The formless is great while the formed is small. The formless are many while the formed are few…The formed has sound while the formless is silent. The formed is born from the formless hence the formless is the beginning of the formed…the named is born from the nameless hence the nameless is the mother of the named. For Dao, being and nothingness produce one another while the difficult and easy complete each another.21 The Chongxu Zhide Zhenjing, written by Liezi, has the ontological connection between wu and Dao to be more phenomenologically situated: Thus there are things born and the begetter of such things; there are forms and the giver of such forms; there are sounds and the sounder of such sounds; there are colors and the giver of such colors; there are flavors and the giver of such flavors. However, all that is born of the begetter will die, yet that which does the begetting is perpetual; all that shaping shapes is indeed actual, yet the giver of shapes is not actually existent…22 These passages show us that nothingness not only lies at the core of all manifest phenomena, it compliments ontological being rather than act as its antithesis. Herein is where we are able to overcome the necessary condition of affirming nothingness so as to deny its presence in the face of being. We can do so because nothingness is immune to the question of the pre-existence of © 2014 The Author(s) Philosophy Compass © 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd Philosophy Compass 9/10 (2014): 663–671, 10.1111/phc3.12171 Daoism and Wu 667 the universe, for to say it existed before the world of being would imply it is no longer present in the world, resulting in its own nihilism; rather, primal nothingness is absorbed by the world’s myriad things in the form of the ever-present presence of Dao: Returning is the movement of Dao; softness is the operation of Dao. The myriad things of the world are born of being and being is born of nothingness.23 Having brief ly outlined the arguments for the ontological priority of nothingness over being, we can now look at how they engage one another on the level of ontic existence. What we will see is that Daoism holds the everydayness of nonbeing to be just as important as nothingness. Indeed, the constancy of Dao’s potentiality does not vary across the two spectrums of wu; it is, rather, an attempt to deemphasize the human element so as to allow a myriad others to come to the fore. 2. The Everydayness of Ontic Nonbeing Ontological nothingness, we have seen, is that which roots Dao cosmologically. Dao, however, is not restricted to acts of cosmogony alone but makes itself felt through the everydayness of life. What is more, although Dao unfolds as the coming-to-be of being, it nevertheless furls itself together as the reverting-to-nothingness of nonbeing. Such harmony between that which is and that which is not is vital for Dao’s self less spontaneity. Nothingness ensures the universe persists in equilibrium while nonbeing counteracts the propensity of being to dominate all it comes into contact with. But how does this drama play out in the world of mundane objects? One kneads clay to make a vessel, but it is from nothingness that the vessel gains its use. One chisels out windows and doorways to make a room, but it is from nothingness that the room gains its use. Thus existence gives things their benefit while nothingness gives things their use.24 The above account is indubitably famous because of Martin Heidegger’s analogy of the jug in his essay The Thing, which appears to be modeled after it.25 Be that as it may, from a Daoist perspective, though clay might be the material from which the vessel’s presence of being takes shape, what imbues said presence with usefulness is nonbeing. The limitation of the vessel’s physicality thus impels it to seek another means by which to transcend that which defines its receptivity to the world and this self-transcendence comes about due to the hollowness of its inner nothingness. Drawing near the hollowness of nonbeing, the vessel embraces this gift of nothingness as its root and so surpasses the limitations that arise from its ontic being. In this way, nothingness provides the vessel with the capacities of accumulation and loss, and yet what is accumulated and lost is not the vessel’s inherent nature but the distinction between fullness and emptiness. This is also what the Zhuangzi means when it speaks of the limit of things – ontic limitations that result from the fixity of artificial norms. By embracing the characteristics of Dao ), these (emptiness, stillness, and quietude) and its virtue of non-deliberative doing (wuwei detrimental values are subsequently transformed into interchangeably complimentary ideals of cosmic harmony, which is why the Daodejing says: ‘Being and nonbeing give birth to one another, so too does the hard and easy, the long and short…’26 By portraying ontic pairs such as these as interdependent, Daoism alleviates our fear of one term by showing how it naturally transforms into the other and vice-versa. In the case of living things, Zhuangzi’s story about cook Ding is unparalleled in the philosophical literature of China. Ding’s skill at carving oxen is so advanced that he has not © 2014 The Author(s) Philosophy Compass © 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd Philosophy Compass 9/10 (2014): 663–671, 10.1111/phc3.12171 668 Daoism and Wu had to sharpen his knife in 19 years. He is able to keep its blade as sharp as when it first left the grindstone because he adheres to the natural pathways and interstices within the ox rather than hacking his way through them. Only one as skilled as Ding can use the virtue of Dao to f low through the nothingness of the ox and this is the key to letting the ox undo itself. Indeed, Ding’s skill relies on nonbeing in that it uses that which is without (i.e., the edge of the knife’s blade) to enter into the nothingness connecting the ox’s f lesh, joints, and bones. Such empty spaces are hence pillars of nonbeing that prop-up the being of the ox. The cook’s ability to dance within such Dao-bearing elements while cutting the ox asunder is in a manner of speaking an anatomical co-habitation. Knowing the ox thusly, he wanders carefree through the great hollows and cavities that make each ox unique, internalizing the art of self-undoing through nothingness. A third example of the usefulness of nonbeing employs imagery of a mechanical nature: the wheel hub and hinge socket. The Daodejing says of the former: ‘Thirty spokes unite in one hub but it is the nothingness therein that gives the wheel its use;’ the Zhuangzi writes of the latter: ‘When the hinge is fitted to the socket, it can respond endlessly.’27 Normally, we take something such as a wheel or a socket for granted; indeed, their corporality is secondary to that making their movement possible. Such is the case because both the wheel hub and the socket are designed to accommodate something that is an otherness to themselves; we shape them to facilitate what is externally useful, altering their inborn nature in the process. Compared to the clay vessel whose capacity for fullness or emptiness defines its value, the hub and socket are presumed to be incapable of giving-forth, only embracing-near. This is far from the truth however. The thirty spokes of the wheel may very well give it its shape, but they are all oriented toward a central axis. Said axis marks the spot where the 30 become one; the many are transformed into the singular not because their being permits them so but because nothingness has enveloped them with the unified collectivity of Dao. From nothingness being emerges and to nothingness it returns. Thirty spokes revolve around a central instance of nonbeing, and it is this drawing near to nonbeing that nonbeing in turn gives forth the self-so motion of the wheel. Were the hub to be solid, the being of the wheel would grind that of the hub into oblivion; the wheel would facilitate its own nihilistic demise. Nothingness is hence essential for the wheel and its spokes to attain equilibrium and harmony. Turning to the socket, as it is akin to the wheel hub in terms of functionality, the Zhuangzi chose to stress its metaphysical import directly. Pivoting from one direction to another, the socket is able to endlessly respond to situational changes without being negatively affected. Going both ways is a central tenet of Daoism in that by clinging to the middle, one is able to observe any given situation in its entirety without the risk of abandoning or distorting one’s inborn nature. The same logic applies to nonbeing: if we wish to comprehend ontic being authentically, we cannot do so from the perspective of being but from nonbeing; conversely, if we wish to know of nonbeing, we cannot do so from the vantage point of nonbeing but from nothingness. To arrive at nothingness is hence to arrive at Dao, the perpetual hub and socket of the universe. Responding endlessly to change, therefore, is the task of nonbeing working in conjunction with being while that which initiates change is the tandem of nothingness and Dao. The hub, socket, and pivot thus allude to the dependency of things on the one hand and function as metaphors for the Daoist art of life-prolongation and enrichment on the other hand. Nonbeing, therefore, does more than merely explain being’s absentia; it mirrors nothingness as the creative conduit of Dao. In this way, Daoism can argue that nonbeing and nothingness share traits that are identical in function but different in application. Such a distinction is important if we are to truly grasp the philosophical import of wu as creative negativity. Nothingness, and its ontic guise of nonbeing, is hence neither causal nor reductionist for it is © 2014 The Author(s) Philosophy Compass © 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd Philosophy Compass 9/10 (2014): 663–671, 10.1111/phc3.12171 Daoism and Wu 669 Dao, the creatorless creator, that spontaneously gives rise to the possibility of being’s emergence and return. Whence being appears nonbeing retreats and whence nonbeing appears being retreats. This cycle of alternation, like the peaks and valleys of a mountain range or the rising and subsiding of waves on the sea, could not occur without nothingness’s symbiotic relationship with Dao. 3. Conclusion The everydayness of nothingness lends an air of mystery to the world and in so doing makes it all the more natural. Given our account of Daoism in the preceding pages, it would seem that the ontological capacity of nothingness – its meontology as I call it – is more than accounting for the unknown for the sake of its unknownness; it is, rather, about directing humanity to think of the world in a more comprehensive manner by ref lecting upon the nature of its true grounding in nothingness. Whether discussing cosmology, the physiology of the body, the usefulness of the useless, or the knack of things to give-forth and take-in without themselves being affected, Daoist proponents believed in, espoused, and put into practice, a unique vision of Dao embodied nothingness. It is a vision whose aspirations went against the intellectual currents of the time, and yet, Laozi and Zhuangzi are remembered and studied today for the profundity of their thought and the poetic beauty of their words; words they recognized as being as f leeting as life. Nevertheless, they saw nothingness as the life-ground of being, a milieu of potentiality wherein Dao was free to persist while staying true to itself beyond the out-stretched minds of humanity. In this way, nothingness is not only a counter-balance to being but serves as a constant reminder of Dao’s quiet darkness and unassuming ways. Short Biography David Chai is Assistant Professor of Philosophy in the Philosophy Department at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He specializes in classical Chinese philosophy, phenomenology, and comparative philosophy, and is the author of Early Zhuangzi Commentaries: On the Sounds and Meaning of the Inner Chapters (Verlag-Muller, 2008). He has published articles in journals such as Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy, Philosophy East and West, Review of Metaphysics, and the Journal of Chinese Philosophy. Notes * Correspondence: Philosophy Department, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin N.T., Hong Kong. Email: davidchai@cuhk.edu.hk 1 Chung-ying Cheng, in his extensive studies on the Zhouyi (Book of Changes), has developed a philosophy of onto-generation (benti) that speaks to the text’s onto-cosmology too. He writes: ‘Mutual which leads to both the determining and the indeterminate is called the dao. This leads to the formulation of an onto-cosmology of be-ing from non-be-ing which exhibits the principle of unlimited creativity of the dao in generating the world by way of the generation of yin-yang forces or qi.’ Cheng, 75. While Cheng mentions Laozi and Zhuangzi in this chapter, his discussion is rather brief. 2 Daode Zhenjing, ch. 40. The Daoist Canon (Daozang ) employs this formal title of The True Classic of Dao and De (Daode ); hereafter, I will refer to Laozi’s text as simply the Daodejing. All translations are my own. Zhenjing 3 Daodejing, ch. 42. 4 Nanhua Zhenjing, ch. 22. The Daoist Canon (Daozang ) assigns Zhuangzi’s work the official title of The True Classic ); hereafter, I will refer to it simply as the Zhuangzi. All translations are of Southern Fragrance (Nanhua Zhenjing my own. 5 For an initial sketch of how such ontological nothingness operates in early-medieval Chinese thought, see Chai 2010. © 2014 The Author(s) Philosophy Compass © 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd Philosophy Compass 9/10 (2014): 663–671, 10.1111/phc3.12171 670 Daoism and Wu 6 Tongxuan Zhenjing, ch. 1. In the Daoist Canon (Daozang ), Wenzi’s text carries the official title of The True Classic of ); hereafter, I will refer to it simply as the Wenzi, the name of its Penetrating Mystery (Tongxuan Zhenjing reputed author. All translations are my own. 7 See Moeller, 129. 8 See Yu, 485. 9 See Fan, 561–562. 10 See Wenning, 563. 11 For example, she writes: ‘Daoist thinkers suggest that it imbues the world with meaning because it is the space or opening that allows things to connect to each other’; and, ‘The experience of nothingness is necessary, in order to free us from an excessive attachment to words, because it can help reveal a truth that names all too frequently conceal.’ See Froese, 115 and 144, respectively. 12 Froese, 114. 13 Wang, 152–153. 14 Shang, 18. 15 Shang, 22. 16 Zhuangzi, ch. 2. 17 On the question of whether or not such actions take place in time, see Chai 2014b. 18 Zhuangzi, ch. 2. 19 Daodejing, ch. 1. 20 Wenzi, ch. 1. 21 Wenzi, ch. 1. 22 Chongxu Zhide Zhenjing, ch. 1. The Daoist Canon (Daozang ) uses this title, which translates as The True Classic of ), to describe its reputed author, Liezi. All Serene Tranquility and Highest Virtue (Chongxu Zhide Zhenjing translations are my own. 23 Daodejing, ch. 40. 24 Daodejing, ch. 11. 25 For more on the similarity of Heidegger’s jug to the clay vessel seen in the Daodejing, see Chai 2014a. 26 Daodejing, ch. 2. 27 See Daodejing, ch.11; Zhuangzi, ch. 2 respectively. Works Cited Chai, David. ‘Meontology in Early Xuanxue Thought.’ Journal of Chinese Philosophy 37.1 (2010): 91–102. ——. ‘Meontological Generativity: A Daoist Reading of the Thing.’ Philosophy East and West 64.2 (2014a): 303–318. ——. ‘Zhuangzi’s Meontological Notion of Time.’ Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy. Forthcoming (2014b). Cheng, Chung-ying. ‘The Yi-Jing and Yin-Yang Way of Thinking.’ History of Chinese Philosophy. Ed. Bo Mo. London: Routledge, (2009): 71–106. . 36 volumes. Shanghai: Shanghai Shudian Chuban She ( : ), 1988. Daozang Fan, Minghua. ‘The Significance of Xuwu (Nothingness) in Chinese Aesthetics.’ Frontiers of Philosophy in China 5.4 (2010): 560–574. Froese, Katrin. Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Daoist Thought: Crossing Paths In-Between. Albany: SUNY Press, 2006. Fu, Charles. ‘Creative Hermeneutics: Daoist Metaphysics and Heidegger.’ Journal of Chinese Philosophy 3.2 (1976): 115–143. . Daode Zhenjing . In Daozang . 36 volumes. Shanghai: Shanghai Shudian Chuban She Laozi ( : ), 1988. . Chongxu Zhide Zhenjing . In Daozang . 36 volumes. Shanghai: Shanghai Shudian Chuban She Liezi : ), 1988. ( Moeller, Hans-Georg. Daoism Explained: From the Dream of the Butterfly to the Fishnet Allegory. Chicago: Open Court Pub. Co., 2004. Shang, Geling. Liberation as Affirmation: the Religiosity of Zhuangzi and Nietzsche. Albany: SUNY Press, 2006. Wang, Youru. Linguistic Strategies in Daoist Zhuangzi and Chan Buddhism: The Other Way of Speaking. London: Routledge, 2003. Wenning, Mario. ‘Kant and Daoism on Nothingness.’ Journal of Chinese Philosophy 38.4 (2011): 556–568. © 2014 The Author(s) Philosophy Compass © 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd Philosophy Compass 9/10 (2014): 663–671, 10.1111/phc3.12171 Daoism and Wu 671 Wenzi . Tongxuan Zhenjing . In Daozang . 36 volumes. Shanghai: Shanghai Shudian Chuban She : ), 1988. ( Yu, David. ‘The Creation Myth and Its Symbolism in Classical Daoism.’ Philosophy East and West 31.4 (1981): 479–500. . Nanhua Zhenjing . In Daozang . 36 volumes. Shanghai: Shanghai Shudian Chuban She Zhuangzi : ), 1988. ( © 2014 The Author(s) Philosophy Compass © 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd Philosophy Compass 9/10 (2014): 663–671, 10.1111/phc3.12171