Philosophy East and West

Wang Bo’s Zhuangzi: Thinking Through the Inner Chapters is the first title of a new book series on “Contemporary Chinese Scholarship in Daoist Studies” by Three Pines Press, an independent U.S. publisher of academic literature on Daoism and scholarly translations of Daoist texts. It is also part of a larger current wave of translations of contemporary philosophical (and other academic) works by Chinese [End Page 1040] authors into English. In this new development, as in the case of Wang’s book, a publication is often sponsored by private donations and/or public institutions and organizations from China, and I believe it should be welcomed wholeheartedly. Books like Wang’s provide much-needed insights into current Chinese scholarship and open up the intellectual horizon of Chinese thinkers to a wider international audience. So far, “East-West Philosophy” has often been a one-way street, at least as far as translations have gone. Any Chinese bookstore is full of translations of books from foreign languages while, beyond the narrow range of Chinese classics (which, moreover, have often been relegated to the “New Age” or “Spirituality” sections of Western bookstores), Chinese texts have found it extremely difficult to find a larger Western readership. Despite (or perhaps more precisely because of) its globalization, the academic system, too, has been dominated by texts written in English. Therefore, translations like these are necessary to provide voices used to express themselves in other languages with an entry into academic communication. It is clearly the intention of their sponsors, translators, and publishers, as well as probably of their authors, that these newly published texts will broaden and thereby enrich the spectrum of current academic and non-academic discourses.

Translations like the present one are facing two language barriers at the same time: not only that between Chinese and English, but also that between a Chinese and an American academic writing style. Wang’s translator Livia Kohn accordingly deserves twofold praise: she has managed not only to render Wang Bo’s text in a highly readable fashion but also to adapt it stylistically to the expectations of Western academic readers. She states in an introductory note that she aimed at producing not a literal translation but a free translation in order to make the text more accessible. Her efforts in this regard have been most successful and are highly commendable.

Wang Bo’s book is an interpretative journey through the Inner Chapters of the Zhuangzi, preceded by a short introduction to Zhuangzi’s historical background and the knowledge we have about him as a person and the text that is ascribed to him. This introduction is followed by detailed analyses and close readings of the allegories and passages constituting each Inner Chapter. Wang begins his excursion with chapter 4, on “The Human World,” because he believes that, not only numerically but also with regard to its contents, it constitutes the centerpiece of the Inner Chapters. He then reads the Inner Chapters, which he views as a complete and original piece of work written by Zhuangzi himself, from “the inside out,” that is, in the following sequence: chapters 3, 5, 2, 6, 1, and finally 7. He believes that this concentric sequence was intended to display the “inner” (chapters 1–3) and “outer” (5–7) aspects of Zhuangzi’s teachings as encapsulated in chapter 4.

Many Western academics have noted the “pluralistic” nature of the Zhuangzi and the difficulty of identifying it with any particular philosophical set of claims or system of ideas. This problem has fueled a methodological approach currently dominant in North America that centers on debating which “ism” the Zhuangzi best represents. In the introduction to his translation of the Zhuangzi, Brook Ziporyn has already reflected these developments in Western Zhuangzi studies: [End Page 1041]

Is Zhuangzi, as represented in the Inner Chapters, a mystic? A skeptic? A metaphysical monist? A spirit-body dualist? An intuitionist? A theist...