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A Speech that Follows Things: Ways of Speaking in the Zhuangzi 莊子

par Van Daele, Raphael
Référence 24th International Society for Chinese Philosophy (ISCP) Conference (20-23.06.2025: University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Arts)
Publication Non publié, 2025-06-22

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Résumé :

Among ancient Chinese philosophical texts, the Zhuangzi 莊子 is characterised by a unique, playful, and whimsical use of language. Its peculiar ways of speaking indubitably serve the Zhuangzi’s profound philosophical insights. Scholars have argued that the Zhuangzi’s use of language both manifest and pertain to some of its core ideas. Some have argued that the Zhuangzi’s idiom goes together with its claim about the fluidity and transformative nature of all reality (Dirk Meyer, Stéphane Feuillas). Others stressed its effort to establish a language that respond to such fluidity (Wim De Reu, Chiu Waiwai). Still others have emphasised the transformative power of the Zhuangzi’s mode of communication (Lee H. Yarley, Youru Wang). Expanding on this scholarship, this paper further investigates the Zhuangzi’s philosophy of language. First, I shall focus on theoretical statements that relate the Zhuangzi’s views on language to a radical ontology of change. The Zhuangzi indeed asserts that there is no reality, whether material or immaterial, that is ever unchanging. Consequently, any discourse that aims at saying something about reality must be as fluid and changing than reality itself. Second, I shall suggest that the Zhuangzi’s deliberate and self-reflexive creation of a particular literary style is unique among ancient Chinese texts. In that regard, the Zhuangzi can be regarded as an unprecedented attempt to establish, theorize, and practice a distinctive kind of discourse.