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What Does it Mean to Be Self-So.: The Nature of Reality in Guo Xiang’s Commentary on the Zhuangzi

par Van Daele, Raphael
Référence XXIst International Conference for Chinese Philosophy (01-05.07.2019: Universität Bern)
Publication Non publié, 2019-07-05

Communication à un colloque

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Résumé :

There is no doubt that Guo Xiang’s philosophy claims to be a commentary on the Zhuangzi. From its title to its literary style, the Commentary on the Zhuangzi (Zhuangzi zhu 莊子注) is an explicit attempt to explain the meaning of the writings gathered under the name of Zhuang Zhou. For centuries, Guo Xiang’s interpretations dominated the study of the Zhuangzi and we should wait until the Southern Song to see explicit attempts to go beyond Guo Xiang’s hermeneutic. For modern scholars, Guo Xiang’s perspective often taste like a poor and one-sided perspective on the Zhuangzi’s rich and extravagant philosophy in which perspectives are everchanging and constantly overstepped. From these point of view, Guo Xiang’s commentary appears to be either useless or, even worst, harmful to the proper understanding of the Zhuangzi. There is, however, an important methodological issue in such perspectives: by breaking the essential link between the commentary and its base-text, it reduces Guo Xiang’s thought to a monist and simplistic philosophy of reality in which there is no place for any metaphysical concern. This paper attempt to understand Guo Xiang’s work not as a scholarly explanation of the Zhuangzi, but rather as a philosophical reaction to problems which arise from the writings attributed to Zhuangzi. The aim of this paper is to understand the main concept of Guo Xiang’s philosophy, the self-so (ziran 自然), in regard to an interpretation of the Zhuangzi’s philosophy of language and reality. I attempt to show what could be helpful within the Zhuangzi to understand Guo Xiang’s ideas. Through the understanding of Guo Xiang’s main concept, I hope to demonstrate how Guo Xiang tried to think with the Zhuangzi and how his philosophy is, in some way, faithful to the inspiration of the Zhuangzi.