Putting the World Outside Himself: Metaphorical Meaning in the Zhuangzi

The Zhuangzi was originally compiled around 350-300 BCE, or the Warring States period, during which many classic Chinese philosophical works were written. Like the Dao De Jing and other canonical Daoist texts written around this time, the Zhuangzi has been used as a meditative guide and self-cultivation handbook for people looking to escape the social pressures of traditional Chinese culture. The parables in the text are intended to lead the individual closer to alignment with an ineffable, monistic principle called the Way, the Way of Heaven, or Dao. In later Warring States Period debates, this alignment comes to be called wu-wei (non-doing or non-action). It is a term of art that describes not physical inactivity, but the phenomenology of individuals who act with a kind of unselfconscious ease (yet exceptional skill) in daily life. They are described as " having lost themselves, " " following along with things, " or " fitting. " Their psychology is metaphorically described as the fitting into the " hinge of the Way, " and from this state the Daoist sage is able to " respond endlessly " to the world that presents itself without being troubled by it. In many examples, getting to wu-wei is an apophatic process of eliminating superfluous attachments from one's consciousness such as social values or the Confucian rites. Edward Slingerland, P. J. Ivanhoe and others have argued that it is particularly important in early Chinese discourses to pay attention to 198 Chrestomathy: Volume 11, 2012 their metaphorical ways of describing human nature, wu-wei, and the means of achieving the best possible life. While generally metaphor has been considered no more than a flourish of language, or fancy rhetoric, there is growing scientific evidence that metaphor may be foundational to human thought. The contemporary Western linguist George Lakoff and philosopher Mark Johnson have recently developed a conceptual metaphor theory that places metaphor at the center of cognitive processes. They argue that our bodies and environments are the most structured and easily distinguishable areas of our lives, and that the constant exposure to these concrete, physical stimuli are metaphorically imported when we want to discuss something more abstract. In this " projection mapping, " we take a physical experience (the source domain) and metaphorically direct and extend our reasoning about the source towards some conceptual target domain (Fauconnier 9). In many early Chinese philosophical works these projection-mapping arguments are very common. …