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BOOK REVIEWS

Zhuangzi: The Essential Writings with Selections from Traditional

Commentaries. By Brook Ziporyn. (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing
Company, 2009. xviii, 238 Pp. Paperback, ISBN 978-0-87220-911-4.)

The Zhuangzi is one of the foundational books of Daoism of

the pre-Qin Period, a literary masterpiece that has continuously influ-
enced thinkers and writers up to the present. Brook Ziporyn presents
a translation of the Inner Chapters, of selections from the Outer1 and
Miscellaneous Chapters,2 and of excerpts from the traditional inter-
linear commentaries to the Inner Chapters. An introduction, a glos-
sary of seventeen essential terms, notes on the commentators, a
bibliography, and an index complete the book.
In addition, supplementary materials discussing the composition of
the Zhuangzi, translation style, Zhuangzi as a philosopher, the concept
of Dao in the Daode Jing , and further comments on five
passages of the translation are available on the publisher’s website.
This book stands in a line of English translations of the Zhuangzi,
beginning in 1881 with Balfour,3 followed by Giles and Legge,4 and
several others, among them such eminent translators as Watson,5
Graham,6 and Mair.7
The text of the Zhuangzi poses characteristic problems for the
translators. Foremost is an apparent incoherence of the text in many
places, and second, the fact that the author (authors) of the book was
(were) a poet and a philosopher—wielding superb writing skills,
wit, humor, and playfulness together with profound philosophical
thought. Graham was the first translator in the West8 to tackle the
incoherence of the text by questioning the assumption that the Zhua-
ngzi is expression of the voice of one author, Master Zhuang, or else
of one editor, Guo Xiang (252–312), who allegedly gave the
Zhuangzi its present shape in thirty-three chapters. Graham instead
pointed out different layers of text, and went on to rearrange the text
in his translation. While his research on the composite nature of the
text became influential, his rearrangement of passages of the received
text of the Zhuangzi remains contested. Ziporyn acknowledges the
composite nature of the text but follows the traditional chapter order
established by Guo Xiang. Accepting the Inner Chapters as a “single,
coherent work” that is “attributable to the historical figure of Zhuang
Zhou,”9 he presents his translation of selections from the Outer and

Journal of Chinese Philosophy 39:1 (March 2012) 157–165

© 2012 Journal of Chinese Philosophy
158 book reviews

Miscellaneous Chapters aptly as “a series of responses to the original

Inner Chapters.”10 The value of this approach to the Zhuangzi is that
it offers a reasonable middle way: while acknowledging the composite
nature of the book, it avoids the “iconoclastic” rearrangement of the
received version in search of a (possibly elusive) original text, which
tends to neglect the dimension of “Wirkungsgeschichte.”
The same rationale allows Ziporyn to include excerpts from the
traditional interlinear commentaries of forty-six commentators from
the third to the twentieth centuries as yet another, later series of
responses to the “stimulus”11 of the core text of the Zhuangzi. His
selection “focused on these commentators as interpreters rather than
as philosophers,”12 centering the book around the core of the Inner
Chapters, with commentaries that bring the most to the text, instead
of presenting original views. Including traditional commentaries as
integral part of the translation is a novelty.13 The aim was to offer the
English-speaking student of Zhuangzi “some sense of just how
many possible ways the text can be read.”14 This has certainly been
achieved. Moreover, Ziporyn’s use of language is powerful, imagina-
tive, and versatile. In fact, for this reviewer’s taste, he has, more than
any of his predecessors, managed to capture both the poet and the
philosopher15 in his translation.
However, from a scholar’s perspective, minor organizational
changes could have enhanced the value of the book considerably.
The commentaries are cited with the name of the commentator,
but without bibliographical reference and dates in the text. Although
biographic data of the forty-six commentators are provided in an
alphabetized list in the appendix, keeping track of the timeframe of
the excerpts is inconvenient. In addition, the bibliography is far from
exhaustive. Harbsmeier’s translations of commentaries16 are left out,
as well as Liu Xiaogan’s17 study and foundational Japanese research.18
It should also be noted that Ziporyn makes no attempt to address the
religious dimension of the text;19 introduction, explanations, and com-
mentaries are strictly limited to reading the Zhuangzi as a philosophi-
cal text.
It may be expected that these reservations will concern only a
minority of the potential readers. For the majority, in particular for
beginning students and a general audience, this translation of the
Zhuangzi is eminently readable, conveying the literary and philo-
sophical richness of the text. The addition of excerpts from commen-
taries offers an additional way of accessing the Zhuangzi, “one of the
most playful and witty books in the world.”20

Friederike Assandri
University of Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany
 book reviews 159

Endnotes

1. Chapters 8, 9, 10, 17, 19, 22; selections from Chapters 14, 20.
2. Chapters 23, 27, 33; selections from Chapters 24, 25, 26, 32, 33.
3. Frederic Henry Balfour, The Divine Classic of Nan-Hua; Being the Works of Chuang
Tsze, Taoist Philosopher (Shanghai: Kelly & Walsh, 1881).
4. Herbert A. Giles, Chuang Tzu: Mystic, Moralist and Social Reformer (London:
Bernard Quaritch, 1889); James Legge, The Sacred Books of China: The Texts of
Taoism, Part I + II. Sacred Books of the East, ed. Max Müller, Vols. 39 and 40 (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1891).
5. Burton Watson, Chuang Tzu Basic Writings (New York: Columbia University Press,
1964), and The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu (New York and London: Columbia
University Press, 1968).
6. Angus C. Graham, Chuang-tzu. The Seven Inner Chapters and other Writings from the
Book Chuang-tzu (London: Allen & Unwin, 1981; reprint: Chuang-tzu. The Inner
Chapters [Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 2001]), and Chuang-tzu: Textual Notes to
a Partial Translation (London: School of Oriental and African Studies, 1981), and
“How Much of Chuang-tzu Did Chuang-tzu Write?” in Studies in Chinese Classical
Thought, eds. Henry Rosemont, Jr. and Benjamin J. Schwartz, Journal of the American
Academy of Religion Thematic Issue 47, no. 3 (1979): 459–502.
7. Victor Mair, Wandering on the Way. Early Tales and Parables of Chuang Tzu (New
York: Bantam, 1994), and “Introduction and Notes for a Complete Translation of the
Chuang Tze,” Sino-Platonic Papers 48 (1994); cf. also Wandering on the Way: Early
Taoist Tales and Parables from Chuang Tzu (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press,
1998.)
8. In China, Guan Feng , “Zhuangzi wai za pian chutan ,” in Zhua-
ngzi chexue taolun ji , ed. Zhexue yanjiu bianjibu (Beijing: Zhonghua
shuju, 1962), 61–98, had proposed this idea. Compare Harold Roth, ed., A Companion
to Angus C. Graham’s Chuang Tzu. The Inner Chapters (Honolulu: University of
Hawaii Press, 2003), 182.
9. Brook Ziporyn, Zhuangzi: The Essential Writings with Selections from Traditional
Commentaries (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 2009), ix.
10. Ibid., Zhuangzi, ix.
11. Ibid., Zhuangzi, 10.
12. Ibid., Zhuangzi, xi.
13. Hackett’s editions of the Analects and Mengzi also included selections from commen-
taries. Edward Slingerland, Analects with Selections from the Traditional Commentar-
ies (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 2003); and Bryan W. van Norden, Mengzi
with Selections from Traditional Commentaries (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing,
2008).
14. Ziporyn, Zhuangzi, xii.
15. Different from Graham and Mair, who had to publish the textual notes to their
translations separately, Ziporyn’s translation contains explanatory notes, which allows
him to occasionally expand on philosophical issues.
16. Christoph Harbsmeier, An Annotated Anthology of Comments on Zhuangzi (Han to
Qing) Vol. 1: Xiaoyaoyou, Serica Osoloensia No. 1 (Oslo: Department of East Euro-
pean and Oriental Studies, 1991), and An Annotated Anthology of Comments on
Zhuangzi, (Han to Qing) Vol. 2: Qiwulun, Serica Osoloensia No. 2 (Oslo: Department
of East European and Oriental Studies, 1992).
17. Liu Hsiao-kan (Liu Xiaogan), Classifying the Zhuangzi Chapters, trans. William E.
Savage. Michigan Monographs in Chinese Studies, no. 65 (Ann Arbor: The University
of Michigan, 1994). Ziporyn refers to Liu’s work, but does not list him in the
bibliography.
18. Such as the translations of Akatsuka Kiyoshi , Sōshi (Chuang Tzu), in Zen-
shaku Kanbun Taikei (Tokyo: Shūeisha, 1974–1977), 16–17 and Fukunaga Mitsuji
, Sōshi (Chuang Tzu), in Chūgoku Kotensen, 3 Vols. (Tokyo: Asahi Shinbun-
sha, 1966–1967).
160 book reviews

19. About the religious dimension of the Zhuangzi, see, for example, Victor Mair, “The
Zhuangzi and Its Impact” in Daoism Handbook, ed. Livia Kohn (Leiden and Boston:
Brill, 2000), 30–52; and Isabel Robinet, “Chuang-tzu et le taoïsme religieux,” Journal of
Chinese Religions 11 (1983): 59–109.
20. Victor Mair, Wandering on the Way: Early Taoist Tales and Parables from Chuang Tzu
(Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1998), xi.
jocp_1709 160..168

Wennei Wenwai: Zhongguo Sixiang Shi Zhong de Jingdian Quanshi

(Intratextual and Extratex-
tual: Interpretations of Chinese Classics in Chinese Intellectual
History). By Lo Yuet-Keung . (Taipei: Taida Chuban Zhongxin,
2010. vii, 427 Pp. Paperback, ISBN 978-986-02-3705-4.)

It is well known that the Chinese have an enviable tradition of clas-

sical exegesis. For more than two millennia, numerous commentaries
and sub-commentaries have been written on the canons. Writing com-
mentaries on ancient texts is still widely practiced today, both in the
form of line-by-line exegesis and by way of summary and exposition.
Yet, despite this long and vibrant tradition, Chinese scholars have
seldom discussed what constitutes a text and what shapes a reader’s
perspective. They have not developed hermeneutics in the Western
sense of the word.
Focusing on what is within a text (wennei ) and what is beyond
it (wenwai ), Lo Yuet-Keung’s book is, in its essentials, an attempt
at applying Western hermeneutics to the study of the Chinese inter-
pretations of classics. Some chapters of the book have appeared in
English in anthologies and journals (e.g., Bulletin of the Institute of
Chinese Literature and Philosophy, Journal of Chinese Philosophy,
and Monumenta Serica). Using concrete examples, Lo shows how we
may gain a deeper understanding of Chinese thought by carefully
studying how texts have been read in China. Those who are frustrated
by the misleading language that some Chinese writers use to discuss
Western theories should rejoice in reading the book, in which the
analytical and conceptual nomenclature (including the terms of
“wennei” and “wenwai”) is either idiomatic Chinese or from Chinese
classical texts.
Central to Lo’s argument is the continuum of understanding and
interpretation. On the surface, the duo seems diametrically opposed.
The former is concerned with the integrity of the text by honoring
authorial intent (wennei quanshi ); the latter is the very
creative imagination of the reader who reinvents the text on the
audience’s behalf (wenwai quanshi ) (p. v). In terms of tem-
poral sequence, understanding precedes interpretation. It is only after
the reader comes to grips with the text’s original meaning that he/she