The Butterfly as Companion: Meditations on the First Three Chapters of the Chuang Tzu

by Kuang-Ming Wu

Chuang Tzu's first three chapters are arranged into free verse (in Chinese, in the original word order) and translated, nearly word-for-word, with extensive critical glosses vis-a-vis over fifty Chinese, Japanese, and Western commentators. The exegetical, philosophical, and contemporary implications of these chapters are then meditated upon. Here, in Chuang Tzu's world, all strivings are a play, parodying stories and arguments; each plays off of and refers to the others.

Chuang Tzu lived during the third and fourth centuries B.C. Historically, he is the foremost spokesman for Taoism and its legendary founder, Lao Tzu. It was mainly due to the influence of Chuang Tzu that Indian Buddhism was transformed in China into Ch'an into the unique vehicle we usually call by its Japanese name, Zen.

This is the most thorough presentation to date of the Chuang Tzu's poetic beauty, philosophical insights, and unity.

Genres: Philosophy

512 pages, Paperback

First published March 2, 1990

Reviews

[Alex Zakharov · Rating 3 out of 5]

Extremely uneven, in part unreadable, questionable structural choices. A systematic in-depth attempt to explore, analyze and interpret first 3 chapters of Chuang Tzu. Each chapter is broken down and translated literally word-for-word on a misguided mission to preserve the original intent of the text – sure, I understand the idea that historiography is flawed and any poetic translation of Chuang Tzu necessarily takes away some of the meaning and quite possibly distorts whatever is left but a word for word literal translation simply blows up any meaning into unreadable gibberish. Or perhaps the author was simply illustrating how Tao’s ‘system of no system’ can be practically applied to the text of its sacred book. At some point the author mentions Wittgenstein’s(?) notion of ideal utopia as a utopia in which no historical records exist, in that sense authors word for word translation is an ideal translation where no meaning exists…

On a good side some of author’s meditations on the various subjects were pretty insightful and fun to ponder – for example contrasting Tao’s ‘position of no position’ to western Aristotelian thought (and conflict ‘resolution’) was nicely done, comparison and contrast of Taoism (awaken into dreaming) vis-a-vis Buddhism (awaken out of dreaming) was enlightening, thoughts on interdependence of perspectives/subjectivity and the idea of ideal observer reminded me of Zizek’s intersubjectivity arguments and of course Deleuzian anti-categorization rants seem to be lifted right off Chuang Tzu. Also nice connections to famous “real” magic joke that Dennett loves.

So in summary, structural word-for-word translation was a total disaster, most analysis in the book was passable but not inspiring, but some of author’s side musings were actually quite excellent. If it is true that allegedly Chuang Tzu tackles all problems of metaphysics by dissolving the subject, then the author would successfully tackle Chuang Tzu by dissolving the main body of his book.

[Ieva · Rating 5 out of 5]

still re-reading it... a part of bigger project called diploma theses