Is Zhuangzhi a Relativistic Skeptic?

          Before proceeding we need to understand first what Relativistic Sceptic is. Relativistic scepticism contains two different terms that is in need of inquiry i.e. relativism and scepticism. What is Relativism? Relativism is contrary to that of any ideas that champions a single truth. It is a discipline that accepts the plurality of truth gained and plurality is made possible due to the right of an individual’s claim over the truth he arrived at in his own dilemma. Relativism pays heed to the particular instance of an individual’s capacity to claim truth coming from his standpoint i.e. of his own experience and manner of thinking. Scepticism is about the suspension of truth and the arrival of it through perpetual doubt cast by the contingency of things due to reality as flux as how it appears to the senses. A relativistic sceptic is a person or a template of which there is the recognition of the plurality of truth yet in that plurality he remains dubious of any claims to truth and such is the label given to Zhuangzhi by Chad Hansen.

            Chad Hansen argued that there is a way to understand the texts and he aimed at understanding Laozi’s original intent by bracketing all interpretations that misleads the original intent. Some interpretations are framed by culture or tradition and even with the framing was done by the opposing ideas such as the Mohists and the Confucian adherents. Chad Hansen wishes to form that interpretation of Daoism which is coherent or in itself systematic in which also that makes it acceptable. But before overhauling traditions he needs to shed light unto us what are these. Basically these are which makes Lao Tzu as the author of his works and that he is anti-language, anti-prescriptive which thrives in mysticism. Mysticism in the sense that is of the proliferation of the usage of contradictory terms and statements that offers no understanding or a vacuum in thought. And also when Chad Hansen started to apply the contradictory nature of Lao Tzu’s Dao in the socio-political realm, Lao Tzu became anti-government, anti-culture or anti-social.

            To sum it all, Chad Hansen made the traditional interpretation of Daoism as mystical and that for that he also made mention of the interpreters as people who reduce the explanation into an awestruck conclusion of being deep. “The interpreters allow that what they see in the text is incoherent gibberish, but they seek to explain it by calling it deep and profound mysticism.” (Chad Hansen, 1992)  And it is unlikely that Daoism is aimed at a vacuum in the practical sense of morality and furthermore, politics. Therefore according to Chad Hansen that this is in no sense just a form of anarchism but of a scepticism. And we cannot dismiss Lao Tzu as an anarchist or an anti-social but the manner in how the Dao is presented is not in the form of incoherence in the evidence of logical contradictions but of the language leading to a sceptical flavour. Wherein constancy is not about the mystery of Dao but it is where the constancy is the fluidity of the meaning of Dao.

            Is Chad Hansen then correct in his suggestion that Daoism here is sceptical in template? Even in the last lines of his article he was sceptic into the claiming a right view for Daoism. Karyn Lai seems to have a hint in that scepticism that she did not want to rest on a Dao that is mystical and being also practical aimed into the understanding of Dao in the moral sphere wherewith she proposes a view that will enlighten us to what Daoist philosophy is really about. She made mention of ziran as how nature is as nature itself and wuwei as non-action. She then merges the two wherein the nature of nature is in non-action or so called spontaneity. To furthermore buttress Chad Hansen’s relativistic scepticism is Kaltenmark’s stress on the Daoist thought of interdependent selfhood wherein Te is understood as the “power of the individual to realize itself within its environment and in the context of its relations with others.” (Karen Lai, 2007) This idea of Te then supports the contention of Hansen’s relativistic flavour in Daoism, wherein the individual tends to relate himself to the call of the times in an environment wherein he is situated. Therefore there is the stress of no adherence to an absolute metaphysical truth that is abstract to particularities in any particular context but that the power of Te makes an individual compatible within his particular situation. Scepticism then comes in wherein when an individual tends to be dubious of Te’s manifestation and understanding when he begins to realize when he is already in another context. This then is how nature goes that an individual is spontaneous with respect to his environment.

            Let us then continue the sceptic flavour of Lao Tzu in Ivanhoe’s paper on the “Paradox of Wuwei?”. Wherein the coinage of the term paradox signifies a dilemma that will lead to scepticism since a paradox is this meet of two conflicting issues and taken as one. Paradox usually ends in doubt since we can only understand one side of the extreme but not the merge of both. The paradox here is when there is the tension of being conscious and unconscious in our actions, and with regards to wuwei and in its fulfilment wherein we cannot attain it when we are conscious to gain its benefits and we cannot also likewise attain it if we do not have prior knowledge of it. So there must be an unconscious move to wuwei but also at the same time we have to be conscious of what it is in order to start that move. As how Ivanhoe puts it here is the paradox; “One cannot successfully cultivate wuwei if one is primarily motivated by the prospect of enjoying the benefits of wuwei.” And “One cannot begin to act in a wuwei manner unless one already has some appreciation for acting this way within oneself.” (Philip Ivanhoe, 2007)

            Sean Nelson is another proponent of Hansen’s view of Daoism as sceptical and is antagonistic to traditional claims of mysticism. He thus says that mysticism and scepticism is inevitably compatible. (Sean Nelson, 2008). Although he deemed Zhuangzhi as not constant in its relativism but still there is the flavour of it. It is undeniable that how the Zhunagzhi is presented in such poetical manner is one way to further stress the intent but in so manner as to give the readers a kind of contrasting views at play but likewise also on the showcase of the different perspectives put to clash but not to attack and destroy one and prefer one but to enlighten us all with these perspective and thus leaving us to balance and choose a middle path.

            Lastly is Eric Schwitzgebel’s understanding of the Zhuangzhi. He therefore supports the fact of the Zhuangzhi as a sceptic but ruled out it being radically sceptic since it offers no practicality of such philosophy to be totally dubious. He proposed that the Zhuangzhi’s scepticism is therapeutic in the sense that it aims to heal one’s tension in a dilemma full of moral prescriptions or shall I put it as absolutism wherewith one cannot question the norms. Such scepticism is aiding one to be uncertain at times but wherein this uncertainty is something healthy wherein one could reflect in what course of action to take especially when tension arise. There are then tensions because there is this plurality of the norms and for that there too arise confusions and a therapeutic scepticism is that that loses the tension. Until whatever that dawns in one’s own personal encounter with the manifestation of Tao could act according to it.

            Above all, I have supported Chad Hansen’s relativistic scepticism in the light of few others who also viewed Zhuangzhi and Daoism in the like manner. it is therefore inevitable of all mentioned “scholars” that they treat Zhuangzhi as a sceptic but not to the point that it offers nothing, since it is unlikely and impractical to the context of the time of the Zhuagzhi. But would I subscribe to everything mentioned above? Yes I agree with the Zhuangzhi being sceptical but it I am against the denunciation of its mysticism. I can understand that their lens is scientific and analytic in the sense that they dismiss the mystical due to its incomprehensibility. Although I agree that reducing it to mere mysticism leads to nothing and suggests nothing but is it not what the Zhuangzhi and the Laozi says? Nothing? It is unlikely that we can get something out from this other than a mere term to answer the question of content and suggestion but let us surrender the stress of thinking and just think of nothing until no strain is achieve in the thinking of it and let that one thing spontaneous to pop out of that be the answer for the moment.

            I am not saying that the Zhuangzhi is a mystical piece in the sense that it cannot be understood but by the way how its language goes is a portrayal of being yes a sceptic and a relativist seeing both ends of the extremes but it is mystical when words fail to encapsulate the personal revelation or shall I say manifestation of the Dao in an individual. What others fail to see in mysticism is that unexplainable feeling of achieving what is Nothing; wherein that Eureka moment is the springboard for further thoughts. I am also not referring to the mystical as something that one surrenders the quest for meaning of what is in question, because as how the mystics are pictured out by the essays are that they are just merely concluding or dismissing things as so. But I say there is such what I call learned mysticism wherein there is a point in the entire search that we surrender to a mystical experience to make a vacuum in thought of all the stress of over thinking and making it a step further to thinking again. Is not scepticism itself the process before we can call things mystical? Or is it not that scepticism is leading to mysticism at times when being sceptic leads to no answers and thus suspension happens and after that can we not deem such suspension not only in doubt but of a surrender to the mysterious but only for the moment?

            The attempts here to describe Tao in the papers given are but the expositions of the myriad ways it can be. Being then faithful to the sceptic flavour, then we cannot give a finality of what Tao really is and we continue further the search for it. Laozi and the Zhuangzhi deemed it as nothing or as a result of the meet of the opposites since there is no better way to describe it than to put it in between? That vacuum in thought that words fail to express that experience? The very problem with language and the stress of exposition is that we underestimate the silence in one’s own reception of revelation or of the simplicity of what is said. To end and buttress my point, I will end with Heidegger’s words that “what is spoken is never, in any language, what is said.”