Zhuangzi’s Religious Ethics

Eske Møllgaard

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/jaar/article/71/2/347/759550 by guest on 21 September 2021

This article considers the ethics of the early Chinese thinker Zhuangzi. In
both the Chinese tradition and among western sinologists the consensus is
that Zhuangzi offers little in regard to ethics. It is often suggested that
Zhuangzi relies on a kind of aesthetic perception to do the right thing in
changing situations. The article argues, on the contrary, that Zhuangzi
presents us with a genuinely religious ethics that is comparable to that of
the Gospels. Furthermore, it is shown that Zhuangzi has his own moral
imperative and that several important features of his ethics are comparable
to Kant’s moral picture. The article first explains Zhuangzi’s critique of
Traditionalist (Confucian) moralism; then it shows how Zhuangzi tran-
scends the aesthetic point of view; finally, it compares Zhuangzi and Kant.

ZHUANGZI LIVED IN THE late fourth century B.C.E. and wrote at least
the first seven chapters of the book that bears his name. The Zhuangzi has
long been admired for its philosophical depth and perhaps even more for
its unsurpassed literary style. In regard to ethics, however, the general
consensus is that Zhuangzi has little to offer. It is often assumed that no
genuine ethical point of view can be found in Zhuangzi, that Zhuangzi is
an amoralist, if not outright immoral. The great twelfth-century Tradi-
tionalist Zhu Xi said that “Laozi still wanted to do something, but Zhuangzi
did not want to do anything at all. He even said that he knew what to do
but just did not want to do it.” Because he was perceived as someone who
shrinks from the task of imposing a moral order on the world, Zhuangzi,
as Wing-tsit Chan points out, “was so much rejected by Chinese thinkers
that since the fifth century, his doctrines have never been propagated by
any outstanding scholar” (178–179). Several modern western scholars also
see in Zhuangzi an ethical relativist or an amoralist. Two recent examples
are Robert Eno, who argues that for Zhuangzi “butchering people might
provide much the same spiritual spontaneity as the dao of butchering

Eske Møllgaard is an assistant professor in the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies,
Hofstra University, Hempstead, NY 11549-1150.
Journal of the American Academy of Religion June 2003, Vol. 71, No. 2, pp. 347–370
© 2003 The American Academy of Religion
348 Journal of the American Academy of Religion

oxen—as many a samurai might testify” (142), and Chad Hansen, who says
that Zhuangzi is unable to censure even the worst atrocities beyond saying
“it happened”: “The Nazi exterminations were indeed horrible from our
human moral perspective. If we were cockroaches we might have the same
view of scientists who devise hormonal spray which could result in extinc-
tion of cockroaches. . . . Zhuangzi’s relativism does not allow us to say that

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/jaar/article/71/2/347/759550 by guest on 21 September 2021

Hitler’s perspective is just as good as our own. All it says is ‘Hitler happened.’
It was a consequence of natural laws that it happened” (290).
The aim of the present article is to turn our view of Zhuangzi in a new
direction so that, perhaps, a more fruitful discussion of his ethics may
begin. I believe that we have in the Zhuangzi a profoundly religious ethics
that is as yet little understood. By a “religious ethics” I mean an ethics that
transcends positive morality; the exercise of prudence; ends such as util-
ity, propriety, and social harmony; and even a certain conception of hu-
manism. This does not mean that Zhuangzi is indifferent to human beings.
On the contrary, like Christian ethics, Zhuangzi’s ethics is above all aimed
at transcending the violence that characterizes human interaction. The aim
here is not to give an exhaustive account of Zhuangzi’s ethics—we are still
far away from being able to do that—but only to accomplish two tasks.
First, I explain the crucial importance of Zhuangzi’s critique of Tradition-
alist “concern” (you). It is in recognizing the limitations of Traditionalist
concern that Zhuangzi attains the genuine ethical point of view. With
profound irony Zhuangzi gives voice to his ethical point of view through
a number of mutilated characters, who are the victims of the Traditional-
ist concern with building a culture-state. Second, I highlight the features
of Zhuangzi’s thought that are comparable to Christian and Kantian eth-
ics. We will see that Zhuangzi does in fact have his own moral impera-
tive, a moral law that does not conform to the law of noncontradiction
but nevertheless is perfectly able to be a guide for humane action.
To appreciate this Kantian reading of Zhuangzi we must distance
ourselves from the prevalent view that Zhuangzi is antirational. Recently
Karen L. Carr and Philip J. Ivanhoe have argued that Zhuangzi is anti-
rational in the sense that although he believes that it is possible to make
universal and objective truth claims, he also believes that “the improper
use of reason is harmful in the pursuit of religious truth” (xv). Presum-
ably, Kant would have nothing to object to in this. Carr and Ivanhoe,
however, also claim that instead of relying on reason Zhuangzi seeks guid-
ance “in our prerational intuition and tendencies” (34), and they add that,
according to Zhuangzi, abstract reflection and generalization neglect the
specificity of a given situation, which requires skillful flexibility and spon-
taneous responding rather than reasoning. On this view, which is shared
by many sinologists, Zhuangzi is decidedly un-Kantian. Zhuangzi is not
 Møllgaard: Zhuangzi’s Religious Ethics 349

interested in general rules and principles (this is his antirationalism) but,

rather, relies on some kind of situational coping or some unspecified
“prerational intuition.” In short, Zhuangzi is happily living in the moment
and responding to situations as they arise. On this common reading,
Zhuangzi hardly gets beyond what Kierkegaard calls the aesthetic stage,
and he certainly is not a religious thinker in Kierkegaard’s sense. Part of

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/jaar/article/71/2/347/759550 by guest on 21 September 2021

the present article is devoted to showing that this aesthetic reading of
Zhuangzi falls short of understanding what really is at stake in Zhuangzi.
There are decisive differences between Zhuangzi, who is ready to “burst
into the infinite” (zhen yu wujing) (2/92), and Kant, for whom the reli-
gious must be “within the limits of reason alone.”1 But to decide who is
more rational is just as difficult as deciding who is more religious. As we
will see, Kant’s central notions of the Gesinnung and the good will may
appear incoherent and paradoxical, and Kant’s “fact of reason,” which is
supposed to explain how practical reason can be practical, may seem ob-
scure, as if it is a kind of miracle, and, so, irrational. Zhuangzi thought,
on the other hand, as Jean-François Billeter points out, is “strong, and
rational like all thought worthy of the name” (1993: 545). I hope that the
present article will serve to free Zhuangzi from the label of antirationalism.
Perhaps the confrontation with Zhuangzi can also make us reconsider
Kant. We should understand, at any rate, that following rules is not the
essence of rationality and that Kantian ethics cannot be reduced to the
rationality of following rules. What is at stake in Kant as well as in Zhuangzi
is something infinitely more demanding than following rules and mak-
ing generalizations. It has to do with the very constitution of the ethical
subject and its relation to a law—that is to say to the real as opposed to
our own imaginary constructs. Therefore, both Kant and Zhuangzi would
consider Traditionalist “concern” (you) pathological—Kant in his tech-
nical sense of the word, Zhuangzi in the psychological sense to be ex-
plained in the following—and, so, clearly irrational.

TRADITIONALIST “CONCERN” (YOU)

“Concern” (you) was the hallmark of the committed Traditionalist
scholar-official, and today it still informs the self-understanding of many
Chinese intellectuals.2 In the Chinese tradition concern may be consid-

1 References to the Zhuangzi are to chapters and lines in Zhuangzi yinde, Harvard–Yenching

Institute Sinological Index Series, 20.

2 I prefer the term Traditionalists rather than Confucians because the latter term is invested with

confusing and dubious connotations. The original meaning of the term ru, which was used for the
followers of Confucius, is uncertain, and in later periods it is perhaps best rendered with “scholar.”
350 Journal of the American Academy of Religion

ered the functional equivalent of rationality on the western tradition.

The dark side of western rationality has often been pointed out (one need
only mention Nietzsche, Foucault, and Adorno and Horkheimer), but
Zhuangzi was the first, and one of the few, in the Chinese tradition to
provide a truly radical critique of Traditionalist concern. According to
Zhuangzi, the Traditionalist’s concern with achieving an ordered state and

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/jaar/article/71/2/347/759550 by guest on 21 September 2021

a particular cultural formation presents the greatest threat to humanity.
The Traditionalists distinguish between two kinds of concerns. On the
one hand, there are concerns about poverty, hardships, and the like, which,
according to Confucius (551–479 B.C.E.), are petty concerns (Analects
6.11).3 It is in regard to these petty concerns that Confucius says that “the
humane person is not concerned” and “the brave person is not appre-
hensive” (Analects 9.29). However, if the “noble man” (junzi) is free from
common worries and anxieties, then he is burdened by much more lofty
concerns: “the noble man is concerned about the Way not about poverty.”
The noble man is “concerned” (you) about the cultivation of “virtue” (de),
“learning” (xue), “righteousness” (yi), and correcting his faults, and, says
Confucius, he has nothing else to be concerned or “apprehensive” (ju)
about (Analects 15.32, 7.3, 12.4).
Mencius (371–289 B.C.E.) also distinguishes between these two kinds
of “concern” (you), but in Mencius the lofty sense of concern is more
directly linked with a concern for “the empire” (tianxia) and political
power. Mencius says that the noble man is “concerned” (you) all of his
life but does not have sudden “anxieties” (huan)—that is to say, he does
not have common worries and apprehensions. The concern of the noble
man is that the sage ruler Shun, a man like himself, “became a model for
the empire,” whereas he himself remains “a common fellow” (xiangren).
“This,” says Mencius emphatically, “is something to be concerned about!”
(Mencius 4.B28).
In the idealistic political philosophy of Mencius, this lofty sense of
concern immediately translates into the benevolent exercise of state
power. Mencius says that a ruler who is “concerned about the empire”
(you yitianxia) is sure to be a “true king” (wang); he will come to rule “the
empire” (tianxia) and not just one state among others (Mencius 1.B4).
Furthermore, it is this lofty sense of concern that distinguishes “those who
labor with their minds” (laoxinzhe) from “those who work with their
physical strength” (laolizhe). According to Mencius, the sage rulers were
constantly concerned with organizing and protecting the social realm and
teaching “the common people” (min) “human relationships” (renlun).

3 Translations from The Analects and Mencius are the author’s; page references correspond to

D. C. Lau’s translations of these two works (1983, 1984).

 Møllgaard: Zhuangzi’s Religious Ethics 351

Therefore they had no time for physical labor: “When the concern of the
sages for the common people is like this,” asks Mencius, “how could they
have leisure to plow the fields?” (Mencius 3.A4). Mencius makes sure that
this lofty concern of the Traditionalists is strictly separated from the con-
cerns characteristic of everyday life: “He who makes it his concern that a
hundred mou field is not managed,” says Mencius with contempt, “is a

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/jaar/article/71/2/347/759550 by guest on 21 September 2021

mere peasant” (Mencius 3.A4).
In Traditionalist discourse different levels of concern justify the so-
cial order. The concerns of everyday life are petty and must be subordi-
nated under the higher concern of the ruler; the practical concerns of the
ruler are still limited and must in turn be subordinated under the supe-
rior, global concern of the Traditionalist. It is this self-assumed total con-
cern that gives Traditionalist discourse its harshness and disregard for
other points of view. Mencius explicitly says that when he argues against
competing doctrines, then, it is not because he is fond of “disputation” (bian)
or rational discourse; rather, it is out of a lofty “apprehension” (ju) for the
state of “the empire” (tianxia) only matched by Confucius himself. In the
light of this lofty concern, Mencius relegates his opponents to the realm of
wild beasts. Like the sage-kings of old, who always appeared when the world
of human beings was threatened by brutish nature, Mencius wants to “op-
pose” (ju) the competing schools; he wants to make their teachings “cease”
(xi) and “banish” (fang) their excessive words (Mencius 3.B9).
With Xunzi (ca. 330–230 B.C.E.) Traditionalist concern becomes
even more focused on the wealth and power of the state. The Xunzi opens
with chapters on “learning” (xue) and “self-cultivation” (xiushen), but
it continues with chapters on “the regulations of a king,” “enriching the
state,” “the principles of warfare,” and “strengthening the state.”4 In
Xunzi this concern for the universal state is so overriding that it justi-
fies even the most cruel punishments. Thus, Xunzi argues against the
view that because the good societies of antiquity did not employ “cor-
poral punishments” (rouxing) but relied on more humane ritualistic and
symbolic measures, contemporary rulers should also avoid cruel pun-
ishments. No, says Xunzi, a well-ordered society must rely on punish-
ing mutilations such as black branding, cutting of the nose, amputation
of the feet, castration, and the death penalty (see Knoblock: 3: 36–37).
Zhuangzi regards the Traditionalist’s obsessive “concern” (you) with
the “empire” (tianxia) as a particularly pernicious expression of the drive
that encloses human beings in a world of their own making, the world of
“man” (ren), and makes an experience of “Heaven” or “Nature” (tian)

4 Chapter titles are from John Knoblock’s translation.

352 Journal of the American Academy of Religion

impossible.5 Therefore, the Zhuangzi does not tire of pointing to the petti-
ness of Traditionalist concern in view of the infinite Open of the world. The
“Autumn Floods” chapter says: “What the [Traditionalist] man of humanity
is concerned about” and “what the committed scholar toils over” is insig-
nificant compared to the “boundlessness” (wuqiong) of the world (17/13).
Zhuangzi’s critique of Traditionalist concern is more specifically expressed

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/jaar/article/71/2/347/759550 by guest on 21 September 2021

in a long dialogue between Confucius and Yan Hui, who wants to go to the
state of Wei in order to reform its brutal ruler. Here Yan Hui’s concern, his
eagerness to “save” (jiu) the world, exemplifies the lofty concern of the
Traditionalists, and Zhuangzi’s Confucius gives his diagnosis of this dis-
turbed state: “Now we do not wish to mix up the Way. If it is mixed up,
then it is fragmented. When it is fragmented, then you are agitated. When
you are agitated then you are concerned” (4/4). Zhuangzi presents a gene-
alogy of Traditionalist moral sentiment: far from being a distinctive and
noble sentiment, Traditionalist concern originates in the “disturbed” or
“agitated” (rao) state that results from the “mix-up” (za) and “fragmenta-
tion” (duo) of the Way (dao). According to Zhuangzi, Traditionalist con-
cern is the symptom of disorder rather than its cure. Zhuangzi tells the
Traditionalists who want to save the world—and their followers through-
out the Chinese tradition, who were concerned with “saving the country and
the people” (jiuguo jiumin)—that they themselves are beyond saving: “When
you are concerned, then you cannot be saved” (you er bujiu) (4/4).
Zhuangzi sees that when the Traditionalists project their “concern”
(you) onto the “empire” (tianxia), then the shift from perfectionism to
moralism occurs: the self is no longer properly brought into question, and
morality becomes a mere technique in the service of power. The moral-
ists, who think that they can influence the tyrants, are utterly self-deceived;
for in their disturbed state nothing real “exists” (cun) in themselves that
could possibly be a counterweight to the force of unbridled power. As
Zhuangzi’s Confucius points out, with the ancients it was different: “The
perfected people of old, first made it exist in themselves, and only then
did they make it exist in others. If that which they made exist in them-
selves was not yet settled, what leisure did they have to confront the
conduct of a tyrant?” (4/4–5). Accordingly, at the end of the dialogue,
Confucius prescribes to Yan Hui the exercise of “fasting of the mind”
(xinzhai), which withdraws cathexis from the world of “man” (ren) and
the self inscribed in that world and returns us to the ground of authentic

5 I translate ren as “man” because the word is used by Zhuangzi in his technical sense to indicate

that which is opposed to “Heaven” or “Nature” (tian). In this technical sense ren cannot be trans-
lated with “human being,” for the term indicates a limitation of the human to pure artifice, tech-
nical mastery, and domination. For Zhuangzi, the aim is to raise human beings from their fall into
the realm of “man.”
 Møllgaard: Zhuangzi’s Religious Ethics 353

being. This exercise is the proper cure for Traditionalist concern, for it
stills the fragmented and anxious efforts that bind tyranny and moralism
together, and it restores the sanity and unity of the Way (dao).
On an even more somber note, Confucius, in the same dialogue, tells
Yan Hui that “knowledge” (zhi) is an “instrument of evil” (xiongqi).6 Here
Zhuangzi has in mind the “sage knowledge” (shengzhi) with which the

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/jaar/article/71/2/347/759550 by guest on 21 September 2021

Traditionalists propose to rule the empire. Zhuangzi’s denouncement of
sage knowledge could only have been seen as prophetic by his later fol-
lowers, who experienced firsthand how the moralists provided the justi-
fication, the “wedges” and “pegs” in the cangues and shackles, without
which state power would not hold. Thus, in a later text collected in the
Zhuangzi, we get a snapshot of the conditions that prevailed soon after
the completion of the Chinese imperial state:
In the present age the executed are piled up on top of each other. The
shackled in cangues [are so crowded together that they] bump into each
other. The massacred lie staring at each other, and yet the Traditionalists
and the Mohists begin to put on airs and roll up their sleeves among the
shackled. Ah! How extreme is their shamelessness and their having no
sense of disgrace. It is too bad! I have never yet known sage knowledge
that did not become the wedges in cangues, and humanity and righteous-
ness that did not become the pegs in the hole of the shackles. (11/25–28)
A. C. Graham dates this text to the time of the civil war that followed the
death of the first emperor of the Qin in 210 B.C.E. Whether this dating is
correct or not, Graham rightly notes that the author of this text (and other
texts in the same group) “views the usurpation of the state as a crime which
puts morality in the service of the victor” and that one notices here “some-
thing of that vicious contempt for moralists which emerges in periods
when the contrast between moral pretensions and political realities has
become insupportable” (1989: 197–199).
The same tension between Traditionalist moralistic pretensions and
the political realities is also evident in China today. In The Trouble with
Confucianism, William Theodore de Bary recounts how the Chinese gov-
ernment, only weeks after the massacre at Tiananmen Square, celebrated
the birthday of Confucius in a building next to the square itself. Here the
leader of the Communist Party, Secretary General Jiang Zemin, “spent
two hours recollecting fondly his own Confucian upbringing,” and in his
keynote speech the scholar Gu Mu explained how Chinese traditional
culture, which he claimed to be essentially Confucian, could ensure har-
mony and prosperity for the state and counteract western influence. In

6 I adopt Victor Mair’s translation of this term.

354 Journal of the American Academy of Religion

his “marvelous cultural ballet,” writes de Bary, Gu Mu “presents both

Chinese tradition and the current regime as enlightened, progressive, and
open to the world, while still relying on the Confucian values of harmony
and social discipline as the criteria for excluding decadent libertarian in-
fluences from the West—screening out the ‘spiritual pollution’ already
identified as responsible for the alleged unbridled disorders of T’ien-an

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/jaar/article/71/2/347/759550 by guest on 21 September 2021

men” (107–108).

THE MUTILATED
Traditionalist moralism and Legalist statecraft combined to create the
traditional Chinese state, which, if only because of its persistence even to
this day, must be regarded as one of the great achievements in human
history. However, in the view of Zhuangzi this unprecedented “achieve-
ment” or “completion” (cheng) violates “life” (sheng). Concretely this
violated life shows up in the Zhuangzi in the form of mutilated persons:
the mutilated criminals, punished by the state, return as exemplary char-
acters to haunt the moralizers. For “someone with a foot cut off is not
restrained by laws and regulations, because he treats blame and praise as
outer. The convict in iron chains will climb high up without fear, for he
has left life and death behind. They have continually been intimidated but
are not ashamed, and they have forgotten about the others. Having for-
got about the others they then become ‘men of Heaven’” (23/76–77). The
irony is that the very punishment that marks the criminal as an outcast
from the world of “man” (ren) transports the mutilated person to the
realm of “Heaven” or “Nature” (tian). Accordingly, the mutilated takes
on the characteristics of Zhuangzi’s perfected person: he is unaffected by
the praise and blame of others; he does not cling to life or fear death; and
the moralists are not able to shame him—in short, he has become a “man
of Heaven” (tianren). Far from being weakened by the punishment, the
mutilated takes on a new “fullness of power” (dechong), namely, the power
that pertains to everything that is heterogeneous in relation to the realm
of man. We see here the connection between the heterogeneous and the
sacred that is well known in anthropology and has been especially em-
phasized by George Bataille.
Zhuangzi himself tells two stories of mutilated persons from the state
of Lu, where Confucius had been police commissioner. There was, writes
Zhuangzi, a man from Lu with a chopped foot, who attracted just as many
followers as Confucius. In fact, Confucius himself acknowledged that there
was something “unique” (du) about this mutilated person, who perceived
the “unity” (yi) of things and “looked at the loss of his foot as casting off
some soil” (5/1–8). In the other and longer story Zhuangzi says that once
 Møllgaard: Zhuangzi’s Religious Ethics 355

a man from Lu with a chopped-off foot, Shushan the toeless, “came walk-
ing on his heels to see Confucius,” but Confucius refuses him instruction
because he has been unable to preserve his body “whole” (quan).7 The
mutilated answers Confucius: “I just did not understand the affairs of the
world and was careless in using my body, and therefore I lost my foot.
Now I have come here, for I still preserve something that is more pre-

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/jaar/article/71/2/347/759550 by guest on 21 September 2021

cious than the foot, and that is what I seek to keep whole [quan]. Now
heaven covers everybody, and the earth supports everybody, and I con-
sidered you, Master, as being heaven and earth. How could I know you
would be like this?” (5/25–27). Shushan the toeless is a perfected person
in Zhuangzi’s sense: he is “clumsy” (zhuo) in the “outer” (wai) world (he
does “not understand the affairs of the world”) but skillful in preserving
the “inner” (nei), which, of course, is much more important than any outer
sign of wholeness. Confucius, the moralist, is only able to see the outer,
and therefore he at first denies instruction to the mutilated. For if the
mutilated was not able to preserve his body, then for the moralist that in
itself, and regardless of circumstances, is a sign of moral deficiency.
After he has heard what the mutilated has to say, Confucius, however,
realizes that he has been “crude” (lou); he changes his mind and invites
the mutilated in to be instructed. But the mutilated has already left, and
Confucius can only say to his followers: “Exert yourselves my disciples!
That toeless had his foot chopped off, and still he was seeking learning in
order to mend his former bad ways. How much more should people whose
virtue is whole [quande zhiren]!” But the flaw is with the moralist: he can
only see “outer” (wai) “wholeness” (quan)—the preservation of the physi-
cal body, which was a moral imperative for the Traditionalists—not the
“inner” (nei) wholeness, that is to say, the transcendent, religious point
of view attained by the mutilated.
Meanwhile, Shushan the toeless, who now realizes that Confucius is
far from the perfect Master he had expected, has gone to seek instruction
from Laozi, and he asks him: “In his attempt to become a perfected per-
son, Confucius has not quite got there has he? Why then does he so ur-
gently teach his disciples? He seems to be seeking bizarre and deceptive
fame. Doesn’t he know that the perfected person considers this as put-
ting shackles on himself?” (5/29–30). Here the reversal is complete: it is
really the moralist not the “criminal” that is punished—only the moralist
has shackled himself. By “seeking bizarre and deceptive fame” the moral-
ist shows himself to be caught up in the “outer” (wai) world of “man”
(ren) and incapable of preserving the “inner” (nei) unity of the Way (dao);

7 I adopt Victor Mair’s translation of names and chapter titles in the Zhuangzi.
356 Journal of the American Academy of Religion

and therefore he has put himself beyond saving. Laozi, however, suggests
that perhaps the moralist could still be saved. He says: “Could we not just
have him consider life and death as one strand and consider affirming [ke]
and denying [buke] as a single string, and free him from his shackles?” In
other words, could Confucius not be set free by absorbing a bit of Daoism?
No, says the mutilated—and this above all shows Zhuangzi’s hand: here

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/jaar/article/71/2/347/759550 by guest on 21 September 2021

there is no recourse to the facile solutions characteristic of later Daoism—
for when “Heaven has punished him, how can he be set free?” (5/30–31).
In Zhuangzi the mutilated criminal is expelled from the community of man
but by the same token transported to the boundless realm of “Heaven” or
“Nature” (tian), and so he attains ultimate freedom and realizes that no
judgment imposed by man is ever completely binding. The Traditionalist,
on the other hand, is obsessively concerned with the world of man; he en-
tirely encloses himself in a world of his own making, and for him there is
no way out. For, says Zhuangzi, when you neglect the other of the world of
“man” (ren), then there is no longer a saving power to remove the shackles
of your own self-fashioning. That is the punishment of Heaven.

FROM THE AESTHETIC TO THE RELIGIOUS

POINT OF VIEW
In the stories of the mutilated characters Zhuangzi situates authentic
ethics in a realm of freedom and grace beyond the positive law, and here
we in the West should begin to think of Kant and Christian ethics. In the
following, I first consider Antonio Cua, who recognizes Kantian and Chris-
tian features in Zhuangzi but ultimately settles for a basically aesthetic view
of Zhuangzi’s ethics. I argue that this aesthetic view of Zhuangzi’s ethics is
mistaken. Then I turn to Jean François Billeter, who finds in Zhuangzi not
only a religious ethics comparable to that of the Gospels but also a moral
law comparable to the Kantian moral law. This will lead us to a consider-
ation of Zhuangzi’s moral law and the comparison with Kant.
Cua argues that the prominent theme of “forgetting” (wang) moral-
ity in the Zhuangzi actually has moral implications. Cua first points out
that in Zhuangzi forgetting distinctions does not mean to condemn dis-
tinctions but to embrace them in what Cua calls the “tao-experience” or
the experience of “a unique, harmonious totality” (305). In the same way,
for Zhuangzi to forget a moral distinction does not mean to negate that
distinction; it means, says Cua, “being free from certain ways of caring,
and this freedom from care is not a denial of care in the sense of not-
caring or indifference,” it is simply to care for moral distinctions in a
different way than the “ordinary moral agent” (311). What Zhuangzi
proposes is to adopt a certain attitude in which moral distinctions, far from
 Møllgaard: Zhuangzi’s Religious Ethics 357

being abolished first, really come to view. For, paradoxically, the moral
experience is lost in our concern with morality. Or, as Cua puts it, moral
doctrines have a tendency “to regard all human actions and affairs as sub-
sumable within a corpus of moral principles and rules, thus blinding us
to the heart of moral experience as a live and significant experience. To
abide by moral distinctions, whether they are embedded in moral tra-

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/jaar/article/71/2/347/759550 by guest on 21 September 2021

dition or a product of reflective analysis, is to fall into the trap of words,
contentions and disputes which bear little relevance to the experience
of problems and perplexities” (313). Therefore, according to Cua, for
Zhuangzi to “forget” moral distinctions is not to deny morality but pre-
cisely to regain the moral experience.
Cua calls Zhuangzi’s position a “meta-moral attitude” or a “tao-
attitude,” which suggests to the moral agent no norms but “the import of
an ideal orientation or perspective for conducting moral thinking,” and
in doing so the tao-attitude “elevates rather than depreciates or abrogates
the importance of moral distinctions” (317). Cua explains that, like the
western notion of forgiveness, the tao-attitude “preserves the import of
the distinction [wrong was done] in the light of an ideal perspective. Here
what is transcended is not the distinction but the normal focus on the
notion of blame that commonly attends the judgement of wrong-doing”
(317). On Cua’s reading, Zhuangzi is close to the Kantian position. For
when we embrace the wrongdoer in forgiveness or in the tao-attitude, we
accept him or her as a person and so, in spite of the wrongful deed, as a
moral agent. “It is as if,” says Cua, “we forgot, in the sense of ceasing to
care for, his deed and are now ready to enter into a relationship with him
as a moral agent qua moral agent” (318). We give to the person “the sta-
tus of equality,” for the tao-attitude involves “an attitude of taking men as
persons rather than things” (Cua: 318).
Cua’s claim that a certain kind of concern for morality can obscure
the moral experience is in line with Zhuangzi’s critique of Traditionalist
“concern” (you)—a notion Cua, surprisingly, does not mention. As we
have seen, it is precisely because of his concern with morality that Con-
fucius is unable to give the mutilated person equal status as a moral agent.
One wonders, however, if what Cua calls the “ordinary moral agent”
would be as crude. For it is the self-assumed, superior concern of the Tra-
ditionalist that not only sets him apart from the ordinary moral agent but
also gives his moral judgment a harshness not usually found among or-
dinary people. Or, to put it another way, it is precisely in asserting the
morality of his culture that the Traditionalist bars himself from attaining
that higher ethical point of view described by Zhuangzi.
When Cua describes this higher ethical point of view in terms of Chris-
tian forgiveness and Kantian equality, then, this, as we will see shortly, is
358 Journal of the American Academy of Religion

very close to the ethics we find in the Zhuangzi. We must, however, dis-
agree with Cua when he takes Zhuangzi’s “tao-attitude” to be a kind of
“perceptual intuition of doing the right thing in particular situations and
contexts” (314). This view is mistaken for at least two reasons. First,
Zhuangzi is arguing not against a morality of principles but against Tra-
ditionalist morality, which itself is largely context dependent and relies

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/jaar/article/71/2/347/759550 by guest on 21 September 2021

on a kind of perceptual intuition to do the right thing in a given situa-
tion. Therefore, the modern opposition between a morality of principles
and an ethics of situational perception is not helpful in explaining what is
at stake in Zhuangzi’s ethics. Second, if this “perceptional intuition of
doing the right thing” is understood as a kind of aesthetic perception, then
Zhuangzi’s “tao-attitude” becomes aesthetized and not ethical in the more
strict and substantial sense we require of a genuine religious ethics. Be-
cause of the dominance of the aesthetic in the postmodern sensibility and
the emphasis on situational perception in neo-Aristotelian ethics, such
an aesthetic worldview has often been attributed to Zhuangzi. For instance,
Lee H. Yearley argues that Zhuangzi recommends that we “ought to deal
with everything the way you deal with esthetic objects. All life should be
viewed as an esthetic panorama” (136). In a recent article in JAAR, Jung
H. Lee explains that the Daoist moral imperative is to be “finely aware
and richly responsible” or to be open to the “imaginative possibilities of
a particular circumstance” rather than to conform to a rule (530). I sug-
gest that for Zhuangzi the truly ethical question is not how to adapt one-
self to changing situations by way of aesthetic perception of imaginative
possibilities but, rather, how to constitute oneself as an ethical subject
according to a certain law. This suggestion will be substantiated when we
now turn to Jean François Billeter’s reading of Zhuangzi.
The Zhuangzi contains a number of stories about Zhuangzi himself.
These stories may only be legend, but they present a picture of Zhuangzi
that, according to A. C. Graham, is “unmistakably” connected with the
Zhuangzi of the Inner Chapters, the chapters written by Zhuangzi himself
(1981: 115). A recurrent theme in these stories is Zhuangzi’s disdain for
power. When the king of Chu offers him a high position, Zhuangzi says
that he would rather drag himself through the mud (17/81–84); when Hui
Shi is afraid that Zhuangzi will take his place as chief minister, Zhuangzi
tells his friend that the position is worth nothing more than a rotting rat
(17/84–87); and when a self-satisfied diplomat tells Zhuangzi how well
he is rewarded by his ruler, Zhuangzi points out that the lower one stoops
in serving the powerful, the more rewards one will reap: one who licks
the ruler’s hemorrhoids, says Zhuangzi, will get the greatest reward (32/
22–26). Billeter argues that, contrary to the received opinion, the critique
of power we find in the Zhuangzi goes far deeper than a simple rejection
 Møllgaard: Zhuangzi’s Religious Ethics 359

and that it is not an apology for being apolitical. In his critique of power,
says Billeter, Zhuangzi goes to “its very principle” (son principe même):
Zhuangzi shows how power is rooted at the level of intersubjective rela-
tions and of consciousness itself (1996: 865, 875).
For Zhuangzi, the realm of “man” (ren) is totally dominated by power.
Only with death will the regime of domination of one person over the

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/jaar/article/71/2/347/759550 by guest on 21 September 2021

other come to an end. In a dream a skull tells Zhuangzi that in the after-
life there are no ruler and no subjects and that the joy of being free from
the domination of power is greater than that of the most powerful ruler
alive (18/22–29). For Zhuangzi, the rule of power is omnipresent, and yet,
as Billeter points out, Zhuangzi also indicates that there could be a place
of equality beyond the dehumanizing power relations: “Throughout his
work, Zhuangzi forcefully proclaims that domination is not fatality, that
other relations than those of power of some over others are possible, and
that they conform to the very essence of human subjectivity” (1996: 875–
876). Billeter refers to a passage in the Zhuangzi that he says is compa-
rable to some of the most striking stories in the New Testament. In this
story a mutilated person (i.e., a punished criminal) and a prime minister
are both studying with the same spiritual teacher. Ever time the teaching
is over, the minister refuses to leave at the same time as the mutilated and
insists that he step aside for his superior. The mutilated points out to the
minister that according to the teaching of their common master there is
no such thing as difference in rank and that the minister has shown him-
self to be a man of no “integrity” (de). At the end of the dialogue the min-
ister, like Confucius in the dialogue with Shushan the toeless, shamefully
acknowledges his pettiness (5/13–24). Billeter comments that although
the word equality is not used in the passage, the idea is there: for, in re-
fusing to leave together with the mutilated, the minister commits “a sin
against the spirit” (1996: 861).
According to Zhuangzi, says Billeter, power is a burden, and those who
carry this burden either become brutes or free themselves from it. Billeter
considers a story in which the marquis of Lu, Confucius’s home state,
walks around “with a worried look” (you youse). The marquis is spotted
by a certain Yiliao from the Southmarket (the part of town where many
of the perfected persons in the Zhuangzi live), who asks the Marquis why
he looks so “worried” (you). In response the marquis enumerates his
duties as a good ruler: he has studied the way of the former kings, he fol-
lows the rites and is constantly busy with his tasks as a ruler, and yet he
cannot escape from worrying, for at any moment things could go wrong.
Yiliao tells the marquis that “worry” (you) pertains to power itself and
the only cure for this kind of worry is to rid oneself of power. For “he who
possesses others is weary, he who is being possessed by others is worried.
360 Journal of the American Academy of Religion

Therefore Yao did not possess others, nor was he being possessed by oth-
ers. I wish you would throw off your weariness, get rid of your worries,
and wander unique together with the Way in the land of vast emptiness”
(20/21–22). As Billeter points out, we have here not just an unrealistic
invitation to renounce all practical involvement with running a state. The
real significance of the passage is philosophical, psychological, and even

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/jaar/article/71/2/347/759550 by guest on 21 September 2021

religious: salvation consists in refusing to dominate and be dominated
(Billeter 1996: 866). Billeter’s reading is convincing. In Zhuangzi, as we have
seen, ethics begins with a critique of the connection between Traditionalist
concern and power, and this critique comes close to the Gospels when they
teach the total negation of the realm of power. In Zhuangzi, as in the Gos-
pels, this negation is not escapism but, rather, a call for the transformation
and redemption of the world of man. Furthermore, in Zhuangzi the no-
tions of the “unique” (du) and of “wandering” (you) refer precisely to the
state of grace and the liberating activity characteristic of the person who has
transcended relations of domination but not human relations altogether.
Billeter’s most important insight, however, is that the regime of power
is fundamentally a regime of willing. Human beings are, says Billeter, “the
victims of their own willing”; they are subjugated to their own intention-
ality (1996: 868). According to Billeter this is the very core of Zhuangzi’s
philosophy: “All error, all suffering has as its cause the subjugation of
consciousness to the intentionality which is natural to it—but conscious-
ness can, through a critique, recognize this subjugation, remove inten-
tionality (lever l’intentionalité) and become free to will or not will, from
being intentional or not, liberating itself in this way from error and suf-
fering” (1996: 868). Those who have liberated themselves from the regime
of willing have realized “nonpower” (non-pouvoir), and they have true
power to help others. Those who are in the grip of their own willing will
only make matters worse when they try to help others. As we have seen,
precisely this is the point of Zhuangzi’s dialogue between Confucius and
Yan Hui about “the fasting of the mind.” Billeter writes:

To exercise a beneficial action on others, it is necessary to have forgotten

the very idea of such an action, any influence whatsoever and, further-
more, surely, any ascendancy, any power over the other. Paradoxically,
it is the beings totally deprived of such intentions who have real power
over others. . . . Because in the end the only definitive help that one human
being can bring another human being, on the emotional or the intellec-
tual level, is to liberate him or her from the subjugation to his or her own
willing, to make him or her free to will or not to will, to make prevail in
him or her-self sometimes the state of intentionality, sometimes that of
non-intentionality. But only non-willing can induce non-willing. (1996:
871, 877–878)
 Møllgaard: Zhuangzi’s Religious Ethics 361

Billeter here sees Zhuangzi’s fundamental ethical law of equality, which

says that “in intersubjective relations, nobody can hope to cause a trans-
formation in others if he does not accept to be transformed himself as
well.” Billeter says that he is inclined to take this law as universal and that
Zhuangzi here “recognizes in his own way the essential equality of all
human beings” (1996: 875). Billeter points out that this is equality nei-

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/jaar/article/71/2/347/759550 by guest on 21 September 2021

ther in the Greek sense of citizens who form a community of free persons
nor in the Judeo-Christian sense whereby all human beings are free in
front of God. It is another kind of equality based on a law inherent in the
interactions between human subjectivities, “a law according to which we
cannot act on another, and so live and collaborate with him, if we do not
accept that he equally acts on us” (Billeter 1996: 877). Unfortunately, this
idea had no impact on Chinese political culture, which based itself rather
on the principle of the domination of one human being over the other.
Therefore, it was hard for later Traditionalist scholars to see the ethical
significance in Zhuangzi’s thought. Billeter writes:
[Zhuangzi] has also shown that our subjectivity, through a conversion,
can have access to a condition that liberates it from the desire to exercise
power over others and the temptation to submit oneself to the power of
others. On this point his thought has not only a philosophic significance.
It takes on, virtually, an eminent religious significance. It could perhaps
have inspired attitudes and behavior that, even if fundamentally religious,
could have had in return political implications. But this possibility was
not realized, and in the end it was the principle of power, the principle of
domination and subjugation, accepted as natural and universal, that pre-
vailed over it. (1996: 877)
Billeter has shown that there is implicit in Zhuangzi a moral law that, as he
says, has “an eminent religious significance.” We will now see that Zhuangzi
in fact explicitly states his own moral imperative, and I will consider what
we can deduce from Zhuangzi’s formulation of this imperative.

ZHUANGZI’S MORAL IMPERATIVE

From the Kantian point of view the problem with the Traditionalist
notion of “humanity” (ren) is that it is defined in terms of the pathologi-
cal or our common feelings and desires.8 Humanity is defined as “loving
people” (airen) and “love toward parents” (qinqin), and it is these sup-
posedly spontaneous feelings and impulses that by “extension” (tui), and
in their application properly supplemented with “wisdom” (zhi) and a

8 The word ren, “humanity,” is different from but closely related to the word ren, “human being,”

or, in Zhuangzi’s technical sense, “man” as opposed to “Heaven.”

362 Journal of the American Academy of Religion

sense of the “right” (yi), become the basis for “humane government”
(renzheng). But, as Kant would point out, there is nothing in this pic-
ture that in principle can prevent Traditionalist morality from degen-
erating into favoritism, nepotism, the merely strategic use of reason, and
even despotism. The Zhuangzi, as we have seen, confirms that this, in
fact, was the actual outcome of Traditionalist morality.

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/jaar/article/71/2/347/759550 by guest on 21 September 2021

Heiner Roetz, however, has argued that we do find in the Tradition-
alist moral picture something that, from a Kantian point of view, could
serve as a principle that could anchor Traditionalist morality and prevent
it from drifting into ambiguity and eventual decline into the immoral. The
principle in question is no other than the age-old golden rule, which
Confucius, in response to a question about “humanity” (ren), formulates
as follows: “What you do not wish done to yourself do not do to others”
(Analects 12.2, Roetz’s translation). There is no doubt that this principle
is central to Confucius’s moral picture, for Confucius repeats the same
maxim when he is asked for “one saying that can guide one’s conduct
throughout life,” and he links it to the central notion of “reciprocity” (shu)
(Analects 15.24). For Roetz it is decisive that in applying the golden rule
the moral agent “puts the other in its own position, and itself into that of
the other.” Even more importantly, the golden rule incorporates a “for-
mal, abstract procedure into ethical reasoning,” so that now “the moral
nature of an action relates to its generalizability” and not to some ambigu-
ous notion of virtue (Roetz: 134–135). Here it does not matter that Kant
himself says that the golden rule is “trivial” and that it cannot serve “as a
standard or principle” (1997: 37). The important point is that Confucius
proposes a maxim that could be a candidate for such a principle, even if
he does not consider the limitations of his own maxim.
Roetz takes this task on himself and discusses several of the objections
to the golden rule: the equality implied in the golden rule can easily de-
cline into the hierarchical reciprocity characteristic of ancient societies (it
is questionable if Confucius even saw a problem here); the rule could
become a simple device of prudence; and in any case the golden rule pre-
supposes a concept of the good. Consequently, what is needed for the
golden rule to be a genuine principle is above all the self-cultivation of
the moral subject who is to apply the rule (Roetz: 137–138). But this means
that Confucius’s golden rule is unable to immediately determine the will,
the very ability that, according to Kant, is the mark of the moral law. In
this regard Mencius’s striking formulation of his own moral maxim is
perhaps closer to the Kantian intention. Mencius says: “Do not do what
you do not do. Do not will what you do not will. This is all” (7A17, Roetz’s
translation). As Roetz’s translation makes clear, this maxim is close to
being a tautology and, so, as empty of positive content as Kant’s moral
 Møllgaard: Zhuangzi’s Religious Ethics 363

law. Mencius’s maxim breaks with the gradual approximation to the ideal
in Mencius’s own notion of “extension” (tui), and it promises an imme-
diate translation of willing into acting and obtaining—a spontaneity that
is also characteristic of the moral will in Kant. In Mencius, at least in this
moment in Mencius, the endless approximation to the goal through self-
cultivation falls away and the moral law takes effect immediately.

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/jaar/article/71/2/347/759550 by guest on 21 September 2021

On closer inspection, however, we find that the Mencian maxim is
probably not intended to be entirely formal, that it, in fact, has posi-
tive—and, so, from the Kantian point of view, potentially pathological—
content. For, according to Mencius, to do what we do and to will what
we will presupposes that we first “establish” (li) ourselves in our “greater
part” (dati) or in our true desire—which is the desire for humanity and
the good, not the desire for fine food and sex; only then will everything
be all right. D. C. Lau’s translation takes account of this implication in
the Mencian maxim: “Do not do what you would not do; do not desire
what you would not desire. That is all” (1984: 269–270, emphasis added).
We see that, just as in the case of Confucius, Mencius’s maxim presup-
poses a notion of the good, and the good is not determined by the maxim
itself.
Now, Zhuangzi provides his own moral maxim that totally breaks with
these Traditionalist maxims and is more compatible with the Kantian moral
picture. Zhuangzi’s moral imperative says: “Do for others in not doing for
others” (6/61). Before we consider the implications of Zhuangzi’s impera-
tive, we must look at its context, for it contains a number of significant fea-
tures. Three of Zhuangzi’s fictitious characters are “sitting together as
friends” (xiangyuyou), and they ask each other: “Who can be with others
in not being with others, do for others in not doing for others. Who can
ascend to Heaven, wander [you] in the mists, roam in the infinite, and
forget themselves and others in [the experience of] life without end? The
three men looked at each other and smiled. There was no opposition in
their hearts, and so they became friends” (6/60–62). After some time, one
of the three friends dies, and in defiance of all proper ritual decorum the
remaining two friends sing and play music right next to and in plain view
of the corpse. Confucius’s disciple Zigong sees this and is shocked. When
he returns and reports what he has seen to Confucius, he exclaims: “What
kind of people are they!?” Confucius answers that they are the kind of
people that wander “outside the square” (fangzhiwai) and that such people
cannot be bothered with the rituals, whereas Confucius himself wanders
“inside the square” (fangzhinei) and as such is one of “Heaven’s con-
demned” (tian zhi lumin). Furthermore, Confucius now realizes that it
was “crude” (lou) of him to have sent Zigong to observe the unusual fu-
neral in the first place (6/62–71).
364 Journal of the American Academy of Religion

First, it is important that Zhuangzi’s imperative is voiced in an atmo-

sphere of intimate “friendship” (you). Friendship is a relation of equality,
and it is the relation the Traditionalists found most difficult to accom-
modate in their moral picture, which was based on hierarchical relations
and even on a fundamental inequality. For the Traditionalists, moral in-
fluence goes in one way only, namely, from the cultivated nobleman to

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/jaar/article/71/2/347/759550 by guest on 21 September 2021

the common people: “The virtue of the noble man is like the wind, the
virtue of the common people is like the grass. When the wind blows on
the grass, it must bend” (Analects 12.19). From Zhuangzi’s point of view,
it is because the Traditionalist is not willing to engage in an equal rela-
tionship with the other, or, as Billeter says, be open to the possibility of
being influenced by the other, that he does not attain genuine ethical con-
sciousness. For Zhuangzi friendship not only reflects the moral law, it also
takes on religious connotations: in friendship we transcend the power
relations characteristic of the realm of man and ascend to Heaven.
Second, when Confucius realizes that in comparison with the tran-
scendence of the three friends he himself is “crude” (lou), then we recall
that the same feeling of being “crude” impressed itself on Confucius when
he refused to teach Shushan the toeless. In Zhuangzi the feeling of being
“crude,” “low,” “shallow,” and “mean” (all connotations of the word lou)
is the feeling that arises in the moralist when confronted with the perfec-
tionist point of view. For the moralist never tastes the freedom of the ethi-
cal experience (so eloquently described by the three friends) but, rather,
is left only with the bad taste of always falling short of it. The Traditional-
ist moral subject remains within the morality of the superego, where the
subject is constantly worried in its endless progress to meet demands that
are really of its own making but which it itself can never fulfill. Only with
death do the demands of the superego end. For the Traditionalist, “the
burden is heavy, and the road is long,” for he “takes humanity as a bur-
den for himself,” and “only with death does his road come to an end”
(Analects 8.7). It is this condition that, in the view of Zhuangzi, makes
Confucius one of “Heaven’s condemned.”
If we now turn to Zhuangzi’s maxim, “Do for each other in not doing
for each other” (xiangwei yu wuxiangwei), then it is clear that this maxim
is not open to the criticism that can be leveled against Confucius’s golden
rule. Zhuangzi’s maxim cannot be interpreted in terms of hierarchical
reciprocity, for it suspends all reciprocal relations; it cannot fall into merely
strategic action, for as a form of nonaction (wuwei) it transcends all tech-
nical action (wei); and, unlike the golden rule, Zhuangzi’s maxim does
not presuppose a concept of the good, for nothing is imposed on the other.
Furthermore, unlike the Mencian maxim, Zhuangzi’s maxim makes no
reference to a will or desire for a presupposed good. (In Billeter’s terms,
 Møllgaard: Zhuangzi’s Religious Ethics 365

Zhuangzi’s maxim expresses that nonwilling that alone sets the other free
to will or not will, that is to say, free for the moral law.) Zhuangzi’s maxim
negates all this, but this does not mean that we cannot give positive con-
tent to Zhuangzi’s maxim and his moral picture in general. In conclusion,
let us see what positive content one can deduce from Zhuangzi’s maxim.
This can only be done in a sketchy fashion and in view of an understand-

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/jaar/article/71/2/347/759550 by guest on 21 September 2021

ing of Zhuangzi’s thought as a whole that cannot be fully justified here. I
consider the following areas of Zhuangzi’s ethical thought: the ethical
subject, the subject’s choice, the will of the ethical subject, and the rela-
tion of this will to the transformations of nature. In each of these areas I
highlight the structural similarities between Zhuangzi’s and Kant’s moral
pictures.

ZHUANGZI AND KANT

First, who is the ethical subject in Zhuangzi? Clearly it is not the sub-
ject, or ego, the wo or the ji—in Kantian terms, the pathological subject—
inscribed in the realm of “man” (ren). This does not mean, however, that
Zhuangzi’s ethical subject is therefore entirely inscribed in the realm of
“Heaven” or “Nature” (tian). Zhuangzi’s authentic subject is, rather, situ-
ated in-between the realms of “Heaven” or “Nature” (tian) and “man”
(ren). As A. C. Graham writes, Zhuangzi “does not expect to live in a per-
manent ecstasy moving like a sleepwalker guided by Heaven; he recog-
nizes that one must be sometimes ‘of Heaven’s party’ and sometimes ‘of
man’s party,’ and declares that ‘someone in whom neither Heaven nor
man is victor over the other, this is what is meant by the Genuine Man’”
(1989: 196). In Zhuangzi the perfected person is free to be either in the
realm of man or in the realm of Heaven—or, in Billeter’s terms, “free to
will or not to will.” Zhuangzi’s authentic, unique, and free subject—in
Kant’s terms, the autonomous subject—is split or divided between Heaven
and man, in much the same way as Kant’s moral subject is divided not
between the pathological and the pure will but between the pathological
and the freedom or autonomy to choose between the pathological and
the pure will (see Zupancic: 21–22).
Second, does Zhuangzi’s ethical subject have a choice? Yes, but this
choice is not situated at the level of “right” (shi) and “wrong” (fei). For
Zhuangzi, the fundamental choice is, paradoxically, the “choice” of our
own fate and nature, what we are, or, as it is also named in the Zhuangzi,
“the reality of our nature and destiny” (xingming zhiqing). Without this
choice, moral action, the choice between right and wrong, will decline into
moralism and technicalities. It will decline into what Zhuangzi calls the
“mechanical mind” (jixin) from which our judgments issue “like arrows
366 Journal of the American Academy of Religion

from the cross-bow trigger,” that is to say, our moral judgments become
deadly for others. According to Zhuangzi, something needs to “exist” (cun)
and be “settled” (an) in us before we begin to think about ordering the
world, otherwise the result will only be more violence. What needs to exist
first of all is the ethical subject, which, as I have said, in Zhuangzi is con-
stituted by the split between Heaven and man. In other words, what needs

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/jaar/article/71/2/347/759550 by guest on 21 September 2021

to exist before the choice between right and wrong is the freedom to be of
man’s party or of Heaven’s party—in Billeter’s terms, the freedom to will
or not will or, again, in Kant’s terms, the freedom to be pathological or
pure. In short, to be authentically ethical we must, paradoxically, first at
the most fundamental level choose the ability to choose. But this choice,
of course, cannot be a choice in the normal sense, for it is the presuppo-
sition for all choosing.
Here too there is a significant parallel to Kant. In Kant the Gesinnung is
the fundamental disposition that underlies the subject’s choice of max-
ims, or, as Kant says, it is “the ultimate subjective ground of the adop-
tion of maxims” (1960: 20). Now, Kant says that the Gesinnung itself is
something chosen, and so, as Henry E. Allison observes, Kant seems “to
affirm a paradoxical, if not totally incoherent, doctrine of a timeless act
of self-constitution” (137). The incoherence is that “if choice presup-
poses Gesinnung, then it cannot be claimed that Gesinnung is itself chosen”
(Allison: 139). To remove this seeming incoherence, Allison takes Kant’s
notion of Gesinnung not in an ontological, metaphysical sense but in a moral
sense as a regulative idea for “the general orientation of the will” (144) or
as a maxim “that provides a direction or orientation for the moral life of
the agent viewed as a whole” (141). In Zhuangzi, of course, there is nothing
that resembles a Kantian regulative idea, and we must interpret Kant’s para-
doxical idea of Gesinnung differently if we are to see the structural similar-
ity with Zhuangzi. In the course of a Lacanian reading of Kant’s moral
philosophy, Alenka Zupancic explains that the Gesinnung is chosen “from
an entirely empty place,” by, as Kant says, an “act of spontaneity of the sub-
ject” (35). The “empty place” from which this act issues is “the blind spot
that sustains the difference between phenomena and noumena” (Zupancic:
35–36). Similarly, we may say that in Zhuangzi the ethical subject “chooses”
itself spontaneously from the empty space or blind spot in-between “man”
(ren) and “Heaven” (tian). This “choice” is not itself ethical, but it is the
sine qua non of the ethical action. For total immersion in the realm of
Heaven eclipses the ethical just as well as total immersion in the realm of
man does. The millipede that moves its many legs by relying on “the mecha-
nism of Nature [or Heaven]” (tianji) (17/55) is just as mechanical as human
beings who rely on their “mechanical mind” (jixin), that is to say, the mind
 Møllgaard: Zhuangzi’s Religious Ethics 367

that can only do what it is programmed to do. In neither case does the ethi-
cal come into play. The “choice” to situate oneself in-between Heaven and
man breaks with mechanical action, whether by nature or by culture, and
first makes possible the ability to will or not will, which is the necessary pre-
requisite for ethical choice.
But have we not said, following Billeter, that for Zhuangzi the funda-

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/jaar/article/71/2/347/759550 by guest on 21 September 2021

mental ethical state is a state of not willing, whereas in Kant, of course,
everything depends on the good will. Here there seems to be a decisive
difference between Kant and Zhuangzi. It is well known, however, that
nothing is more obscure in Kant than the status of the moral will. For the
moral will is defined in terms of autonomy, that is to say, it is defined
negatively as being independent of all empirical motivation. The moral
will must have its source in a nonempirical motivation or what Kant calls
“pure practical reason.” But how is that possible? Kant says that it is a “fact
of reason” or, as he writes, a fact “of which we are a priori conscious, even
if it be granted that no example could be found in which it has been fol-
lowed exactly” (1956: 48). Still, it is hard to see what could be the motiva-
tion, or drive, for the moral will, if, as Kant says, the moral will does not
have an “incentive” (Triebfeder) in the pathological sense. We must con-
clude, with Zupancic, that it is precisely from the absence of the incentive,
the object drive, that the moral will springs into action: “Now even if Kant
makes a point of stressing that the ethical act is distinguished by its lack
of any Triebfeder, he also introduces what he calls the echte Triebfeder, the
‘genuine drive,’ of pure practical reason. This genuine object-drive of the
will is itself defined precisely in terms of pure form as an absence of any
Triebfeder” (18). The point is, says Zupancic, that in Kant the very absence
of pathological motivation “must at a certain point begin to function as
an incentive”: the very emptiness of the form of the moral law itself be-
comes a material drive or motivation. This, says Zupancic, is “the real
‘miracle’ involved in ethics,” which, as Kant says, requires a “revolution”
in our disposition (15, 11).
Here, surely, we can see the structural similarity to the “nonaction”
(wuwei) implicit in Zhuangzi’s moral imperative. For nonaction is not
the absence of action; it is, rather, the highest and most ethical form of
action. This is expressed in the well-known formulation “in doing noth-
ing, nothing is not done” (wuwei er wubuwei). In Zhuangzi, more spe-
cifically, it is the absence of technical, purposive “action” (wei) that is
the source of truly ethical action.9 How this nonaction can be practi-

9 For a discussion of the idea of wuwei in ancient China, see the recent article in JAAR by Edward

Slingerland.
368 Journal of the American Academy of Religion

cally effective is just as mysterious as how Kant’s pure practical reason

can become effective. All one can say here is that from their different
points of view both Zhuangzi and Kant indicate the existence of a will-
ing that must remain a mystery, for if the moral will did not remain a
mystery, it would be merely technical and, so, not moral. For Kant, all
hypothetical imperatives—that is to say, all nonmoral imperatives—are

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/jaar/article/71/2/347/759550 by guest on 21 September 2021

technical. Similarly for Zhuangzi, Traditionalist moralism is technical
“action” or “doing” (wei) without foundation in a properly ethical sub-
jectivity—what Kant called Gesinnung.
Finally, does not Zhuangzi’s immersion in the native, the natural, and
the fated contradict Kant’s transcendental freedom and perhaps even the
fundamental freedom in “wandering” (you) postulated by Zhuangzi him-
self? Here again we see a structural similarity between Zhuangzi and Kant.
As is well known, Kant says that none of our actions is really free, for all
may be determined by some pathological motive, that is, a kind of natu-
ral causality. Nevertheless, as moral agents we must necessarily consider
ourselves free agents. It is in explaining this paradox that Kant some-
times suggests that freedom presupposes that it is possible to act from
the position of the noumenal; but, fortunately, the paradox can be ex-
plained without recourse to this presupposition. As Zupancic says, Kant
impresses on us that we are entirely embedded in the causal flow of
nature and, therefore, have no freedom. But just in the moment when
the subject sees that it is not free but, in fact, totally determined, when it
“appears to be nothing but an automaton,” then Kant says, “And yet it is
precisely in this situation that you are freer than you know” (Zupancic:
27). It is as if there is a “crack” in the Other, and it is in this crack that
Kant “situates the autonomy and freedom of the subject” (Zupancic: 27).
Zupancic concludes: “The crucial point here is that freedom is not in-
compatible with the fact that ‘I couldn’t do anything else,’ and that I was
‘carried along by the stream of natural necessity.’ Paradoxically, it is at
the very moment when the subject is conscious of being carried along
by the stream of natural necessity that she also becomes aware of her
freedom” (27–28). In the same way, we can say that in Zhuangzi the
experience of the native, the natural, and the fated is at the same time
the experience of free wandering—and the unity of this experience of
being at once free and fated is the ethical experience. It is correct when
Billeter says that for Zhuangzi there is no freedom except in the aware-
ness of necessity in the midst of our own activity (1993: 558). Zhuangzi’s
freedom is by no means attained by some imaginary transcendence of
the necessities of the human condition. Like Kant, Zhuangzi finds free-
dom in awareness of necessity.
 Møllgaard: Zhuangzi’s Religious Ethics 369

REFERENCES
Allison, Henry E. Kant’s Theory of Freedom. Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
1990 versity Press.
Billeter, Jean François “La phénoménologie de l’activité dans le Zhuangzi.”
1993 Asiatische Studien 47/4: 545–558.

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/jaar/article/71/2/347/759550 by guest on 21 September 2021

1996 “Non-pouvoir et Non-vouloir dans le Zhuangzi—Un
Pardigme.” Asiatische Studien 50/4: 853–880.
Carr, Karen L., and The Sense of Antirationalism: The Religious Thought of
Philip J. Ivanhoe Zhuangzi and Kierkegaard. New York: Seven Bridges
2000 Press.
Chan, Wing-tsit A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy. Princeton: Prince-
1969 ton University Press.
Cua, Antonio S. “Forgetting Morality: Reflections on a Theme in Chuang
1977 Tzu.” Journal of Chinese Philosophy 4/4: 305–328.
de Bary, William The Trouble with Confucianism. Cambridge: Harvard
Theodore University Press.
1991
Eno, Robert “Cook Ding’s Dao and the Limits of Philosophy.” In
1996 Essays on Skepticism, Relativism, and Ethics in the
Zhuangzi, 127–151. Ed. by Philip J. Ivanhoe and Paul
Kjellberg. New York: State University of New York Press.
Graham, A. C. Chuang-tzu: The Inner Chapters. London: Allen and
1981 Unwin.
1989 Disputers of the Tao: Philosophical Argument in Ancient
China. La Salle, IL: Open Court.
Hansen, Chad A Daoist Theory of Chinese Thought: A Philosophical
1997 Interpretation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Kant, Immanuel Critique of Practical Reason. Trans. by L. W. Beck. In-
1956 dianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill.
1960 Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone. Trans. by
Theodore M. Greene and Hoyt H. Hudson. New York:
Harper and Row.
1997 Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals. Trans. by James
W. Ellington. Indianapolis: Hackett.
Knoblock, John Xunzi: A Translation and Study of the Complete Works.
1988–94 3 vols. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
370 Journal of the American Academy of Religion

Lau, D. C. Mencius. 2 vols. (Penguin Books, 1979; reprint, Hong

1984 Kong: Chinese University Press, 1984).
1983 The Analects. (Penguin Books, 1979; reprint, Hong Kong:
Chinese University Press, 1983).
Lee, Jung H. “Finely Aware and Richly Responsible: The Daoist
2000 Imperative.” Journal of the American Academy of Reli-

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/jaar/article/71/2/347/759550 by guest on 21 September 2021

gion 68/3: 511–536.
Mair, Victor H. Wandering on the Way: Early Tales and Parables of
1994 Chuang Tzu. New York: Bantam Books.
Roetz, Heiner Confucian Ethics of the Axial Age: A Reconstruction under
1993 the Aspect of the Breakthrough toward Postconventional
Thinking. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Slingerland, Edward “Effortless Action: The Chinese Spiritual Ideal of
2000 Wu-wei.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion
68/2: 293–327.
Yearley, Lee H. “The Perfected Person in the Radical Chuangtzu.” In
1983 Experimental Essays on Chuang-tzu, 125–139. Ed. by
Victor H. Mair. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.
Zupancic, Alenka Ethics of the Real: Kant, Lacan. London: Verso.
1999