Xuanxue 玄學

Addendum: Footnote 24 on page 590 should be to pages 88-89 of the following:

Martin Heidegger. Bremen and Freiburg Lectures: Insight into That Which Is and Basic Principles of Thinking. Translated by Andrew Mitchell. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2012.

The Eastern Han philosopher Wang Chong's 王充 (27-100 CE) influence on the “pure conversation” (qingtan 清談) movement in the 3rd century CE is well known. His Lunheng 論衡 was prized and used by Cai Yong 蔡邕 (132-192 CE), Wang Lang 王朗 (d. 228 CE), and a number of others as aid in their argumentative pursuits, which largely followed the methods devised by Wang. The connection of Xuanxue to the qingtan movement is also well known. In this paper, I argue that WANG Chong’s view of the connection between nature (xing 性), generation (sheng 生), and their implications for ziran 自然 (spontaneity) influenced Xuanxue views of ziran, particularly those offered by Wang Bi 王弼 (226-249 CE) and Guo Xiang 郭象 (d. 312 CE). Wang used ziran primarily to make sense of causation in the absence of purposive activity. He minimized the role of purposive activity in the determination of outcomes of life based on allotment, in part to make sense of the frequent inconsistencies between effort and outcomes. This led him to a view of ziran as itself a principle of development and activity tied to the nature of a thing. This view is further developed by Wang Bi and Guo Xiang, both of whom adopt a view of ziran as the principle of development tied to the nature of a thing.

Note: this is a pre-publication draft, see final published version (chapter 15) in: David Chai, ed., Dao Companion to Xuanxue 玄學 (Neo-Daoism). Springer, 2020.

Abstract: The philosophy of Wang Bi 王弼 (226-249) was articulated in his commentaries on the Analects (Lunyu 論語), the Daodejing 道德經, and the Yijing 易經 (Classic of Changes). His Daodejing and Yijing commentaries shaped the reception and hermeneutics of these texts while his commentary on the Analects survived only in a fragmentary condition. Despite his prioritization of Confucius (Kongzi 孔子) as the ultimate paradigmatic figure of the sage, Wang's works offer a syncretist Daoist, or "neo-Daost" mysterious learning (xuanxue 玄學), reasons for this priority. This reconstructed Daoist notion of nothingness (wu無) functions as a key concept that informs his readings of the classics and his depiction of the relationship between language, imagination, and reflection. Wang interpreted the Yijing as a dynamic medium for reflecting on and interpreting nature, society, and one's own situation. This chapter elucidates Wang Bi's commentaries, focusing particularly on the relation between words (yan言), images (xiang 象), meanings (yi 意), and the forgetting (wang 忘) of words, images, and ideas in the context of Wang’s interpretation of responsiveness from nothingness. Nothingness cannot be thematically grasped as a thing or something, and it resists being treated as a determinate idea or propositional said. It is irreducible to words, images, and ideas. Its primordiality is disclosed and enacted in practices of emptying, forgetting, and letting go.

Philosophy, if it endeavors to have significance in the contemporary intellectual arena at all, must be able to confront the nagging issues of society while being able to go back to its foundational ontology. This study thus aims to confront the issue of the fragmentation of consciousness rampant in the 21st century, which leads to considerable conflicts both political and ethical.
In order to do this, this study looks at the Zhouyi, also known as the Changes of Zhou or Book of Changes for reasons that it presented reality as a coherent whole, and through its 64 hexagrams, which supposedly emulated the transformations of Heaven and Earth, conveyed the idea that there is an underlying pattern to the workings of the universe. The primacy of change conveyed here was what led the Chinese mind, guided by the Zhouyi, to envision the cosmos in general and man in particular as an undivided totality. In particular, however, this study aims to reveal the notion of wu 無 as that which makes change possible, articulated by the commentaries made by Wangbi otherwise known as Zhouyi zhu, and looks at it as an innovative work that can provide an apt ontological framework for an inclusive ethical worldview, precisely due to the continuity of the cosmos it advocates.
This study will therefore argue that the Zhouyizhu presents man as a microcosm of the universe which follows its own patterns and who must emulate the virtues of Heaven and Earth in order to achieve self-realization; and, that this discovery will inevitably lead us to understand the kind of humanist worldview it advocates, through an exploration of the relationship between the natural world and humanity wherein there is mutual respect, as well as the absence of domination, among man and nature. It will argue, moreover that this aspiration for harmony and equilibrium of forces should be the case both in the natural and human realm – that is, that extinguishing the individual self can be moral cultivation in as much as the sage must embody wu 無 in order to be united with the virtues of Heaven and Earth which, at the core, is also grounded in wu 無.

The question of ontological foundation has undergone a noteworthy revival in recent years: metaphysicians today quarrel about how exactly to understand the asymmetrical and hyperintensional relationship of grounding. One of the reasons for this revival is that the old quantificationalist meta-ontology inherited from Quine has been effectively criticised by leading philosophers favourable to a meta-ontology, the aim of which is to come to know “which facts/items ground (constitute the base of) which other facts/items”, thus to examine the relation of ontological dependence between beings (e.g. chemical properties depend on physical properties, the economic situation on the behaviour of individuals etc.), i.e. to explore the hierarchical structure of reality. I shall not discuss here the relationship of grounding in itself, but make some historical-formal remarks on the properties of the ultimate ontological foundational item itself and its aporetic nature. To do so I explore various more or less exotic philosophical ecosystems in the following order: Heidegger (Seyn), Plato (ἕν), Wáng Bi (道, dào). On the way I shall propose a new interpretation both of certain hypotheses in the Parmenides and of the nature of the opposition between Wáng Bì and Guō Xiàng in regard to the logical grammar of the expression “nothing (無, wú)”