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The Journal of Nietzsche Studies 28 (2004) 70-88



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Wandering Beyond the Bounds:

Nomadism, Health, and Self-Undermining

In the Northern Darkness there is a fish whose name is Khaon. Khaon is so vast—I do not know how many thousands of leagues. It transforms into a bird whose name is Phoeng. The back of Phoeng measures I don't know how many thousands of leagues. It becomes aroused and flies off, its wings like clouds draped across the sky. When the oceans begin their revolutions, this bird sets off for the Southern darkness, the lake of Tian ("heaven/nature").
Zhuangzi1

So begins the migration of the great oneiric beast, and so begins the first chapter of the Daoist classic, Zhuangzi. The chapter itself is entitled Xiao Yao You, which translates as "Free and Easy Wandering." But Zhuangzi's wandering is more than just an easeful saunter: it is a wandering beyond the boundaries, into the distance [yao], not just the horizons, but also the distance above. From this higher vantage point, there are new boundaries, new delineations: new "things" emerge; old "things" vanish. Boundaries blur, and blurrings become boundaries. One rises beyond one's situation: the water that was once the unseen condition of the possibility of life becomes an object of contemplation. Such a shift in perspective requires a metamorphosis. For a creature to free itself from its own situatedness is for it to re-create itself. Thus, the fish can free itself from the water only by transforming into a bird. Similarly, Nietzsche's domesticated beast, in casting off its burden, becomes a lion: its becoming-lion and its liberation from servitude are one and the same. Likewise, for a Mensch to free itself from its confinement is for it to become an Übermensch. But what does it mean to wander beyond the bounds of our humanity? When we are bitten by the urge to explore and to experiment, to deconstruct and re-create our very selves, how much self-overcoming can we endure? How do we distinguish the self-overcoming that is necessary for growth from one that is a senseless explosion of boundaries? And if we can distinguish them, how can we prefer one over the other?

As we shall see, versions of this problem arise for both traditions, Western and Chinese, though with different significances in each context. Moreover, we shall also see that in both traditions the nomadic experiment is motivated by a concern for a greater health, and it is this concern that seems to point in the direction of a [End Page 70] possible solution. But as we note in the conclusion, the solution is only partial, for the problem recurs even in the application of the search for health. We also suggest that, because of differences of cultural and philosophical significance, the problem is less extreme in the case of the Daoist. Specifically, the Daoist nomad is less prone to madness and excess because the Daoist nomad is not rebelling against an oppressive metaphysics that purports to be the source of all meaning. Meaning in early Chinese thinking is not grounded in an absolute, transcendent, or transcendental realm, and so there is no existential angst in the face of the loss of such a ground. Although we provide some textual evidence for our claims, a full justification of our reading of the Chinese texts is, unfortunately, beyond the scope of this essay. We hope rather to stimulate thoughts and further comparisons and new directions of research in the project of comparative philosophy.

I. Nomadism:2 Beyond Traditions and Between

An exploration of an idea such as "nomadism" ought, perhaps, itself to be nomadic. An exploration is, after all, not an analysis, not a dissection of the necessary and sufficient conditions that define a concept, but a journey without an itinerary, in which we hope to find something unexpected in an uncharted direction. Indeed, since it is the philosophical metaphor of nomadism that is the guiding idea, such "analysis" would...

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