Abstract
Ge Hong’s Baopuzi represents, next to the commentaries of Wang Bi and Heshanggong, a major contribution to medieval Chinese views on the Daodejing, which constitutes one major component of Xuanxue. Unlike those two commentaries, Ge Hong’s work takes a very different course by providing a cosmic background to the role and position of Laozi and the contents of the Daodejing. Much of what he says about both of them centers on his non-metaphysical understanding of being and non-being that he believed served as the backbone for the structures of phenomenal reality. This chapter provides an analysis of his ideas on this topic.
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Notes
- 1.
Xuanxue has been translated into English as “Neo-Daoism,” which is something of a misnomer because the primary allegiance of many of its proponents, including Wang Bi 王弼, Guo Xiang 郭象, and Zhang Zhan 張湛 was to Confucianism, while others, including Ge Hong, Ji Kang 嵇康, and Ruan Ji 阮籍, are best recognized for their allegiance to Daoist thought. Many contemporary Chinese scholars seem content to understand Xuanxue, next to its original historical placement in the Wei-Jin dynasties, in terms of “the metaphysics of Dao.”
- 2.
- 3.
The base meaning of you is “to have,” and wu is “not to have.” In spite of A.C. Graham’s (1959, 1989) hesitations, they are often translated in Western works into the terms of being and non-being, and I believe these translations are for the most part warranted and non-problematic. In this chapter, I leave you/wu in their transliterated form in order to highlight the direct continuity on this discourse from Laozi through to Ge Hong.
- 4.
As important as this counterpoint is to approach and understand the thought of Ge Hong, particularly given Wang Bi’s over-riding dominance on Daodejing exegesis such that it is hardly recognized among Western readers that Ge Hong even had anything worthwhile to say about it, it is hard not to lament the fact that Ge Hong did not set himself to writing a direct commentary to it, unlike Wang Bi. Additionally, Western cultural resources for understanding Ge Hong, and Daoism more generally, are severely limited compared to those of the Chinese, and Wang Bi provides a relatively more familiar point d’appui for Western readers.
- 5.
There are many excellent contemporary Chinese studies on Ge Hong’s philosophical engagement with Warring States and Han period thought that show he was much more than a simple iconoclast when it came to the metaphysical and philosophical projects of early China. Among the best are Hu Fuchen (1989, 2006) and Li Zongding (2012).
- 6.
“What the ten thousand forms of the ten thousand things return to is the One. From what does the One come? From wu. From wu there is the One. Can the One then be called wu? As it is already called the One, how is it without a name? There is the word for it, and there is the One, so how could they not be the Two? There is the One and there is the Two, and the generation of the Three follows. The numbers arising from wu are exhausted at this point. Going beyond this, there are no other things that belong to the class of Dao 萬物萬形, 其歸一也, 何由致一, 由於無也。由無乃一, 一可謂無, 已謂之一, 豈得無言乎。有言有一, 非二如何, 有一有二, 遂生乎三, 從無之有, 數盡乎斯, 過此以往, 非道之流.”
- 7.
Throughout this chapter, I will continue to contrast Ge Hong’s “religious” commitment to, or reading of, the Daodejing with Wang Bi’s “philosophical” one. Hoping to curtail debate into the essential or defining differences between them, by “religious” I refer to the taking seriously of notions of long-life and immortality, and by “philosophical” I mean the refusal to entertain such notions. While this might come across as a refusal to engage, I appeal to the cultural history of Daoism, in which the possibility of immortality was not only taken seriously by practitioners, but also used as a badge of honor with the intent to differentiate themselves from the hegemony of Confucian dogmatic authoritarianism.
- 8.
Herlee Creel (1970) both initiated and exemplified this habit of Western sinology.
- 9.
Wang Bi’s reading of the first line of Daodejing chapter 1 (“The Dao that can be spoken is not the eternal Dao”) has empowered the Confucian tradition, as well as much of Western sinology, to diminish, even ridicule, most religious readings of the Daodejing (along with Ge Hong’s career as a Daoist) by claiming that it spends five thousand words talking about something that cannot be talked about.
- 10.
See Alan Fox’s chapter in this Companion for an alternative reading.
- 11.
See Michael (2015a: 15–21) for a closer analysis of the linguistic mechanisms at play in this reading.
- 12.
Beginning with Herlee Creel, modern scholars have seen the “Daoist” thought of Ge Hong as deeply contradictory to the “Daoist” thought of the Zhuangzi, and this simplistic view is founded on precisely this point. Contemporary Chinese scholars have taken great strides in uncovering the deeper relations between the two; for example, Yuan Long writes: “On one hand, Ge Hong fully advocated the Zhuangzi’s thought about ‘valuing life concerning the survival of the body, but on the other hand he strongly rejected its theories about ‘the equalization of life and death,’ and he ultimately decided on the belief in the divine xian … The Zhuangzi thought that, after the death of the person, there is no value in regretting the death of the fleshly body, because it is only one among the ten thousand things, and the transformations of things can never cease … Ge Hong attached great importance to the belief that the spirit depended on the existence of the body, and he believed that the continued existence of the flesh was extremely important for cultivating divine xianship, so he adopted multiple methods to maintain the fleshly body.” Yuan 2015: 15. Alternatively, Li Songrong writes: “Daojia (“Daoist philosophy”) and daojiao (“Daoist religion”) are both “Daoism”: the former is directed to the philosophical faction, the latter to the religious faction. Between daojia and daojiao, there are similarities and differences. Daojia pursues the realm of absolute happiness, daojiao pursues the results of immortality. One is directed to the conditions of life, the other is directed to the goals of religious practice. The Zhuangzi is a classic of Daoist doctrine, and its Dao encompasses the meanings of ontology. It takes the perspective of Dao to observe death, and it solves the problem of the transcendence of death from the spiritual level. The Baopuzi 抱朴子 is a classic of early daojiao, and although its Dao inherited the ontological characteristics of the Zhuangzi’s Dao, it connected Dao to the divine xian of daojiao. Since becoming a xian became the mark of whether one has attained Dao, how to become a xian comprises the core contents of the work.” Li 2008: 29.
- 13.
As Li Zongding notes: “Although Ge Hong’s theories were placed in the same relative position as Wang Bi’s theories, his discussions of you/wu did not have the same ontological meaning of Wang Bi’s wu, which gave wu a marked emphasis in the original production of the ten thousand things, and this is evidenced in the methods that Ge Hong adopted in his theories about bodily cultivation.” Li 2012: 91.
- 14.
See Michael (2011) for a closer analysis of the development of “taichu” terminology in early Daoism.
- 15.
For some reason, Ge Hong does not include the third member of Daodejing chapter 21’s cosmogonic assemblage: “vitalities.”
- 16.
See Michael (2005: 61–68) for an analysis of the discursive uses of “gateways” in the Daodejing and the Zhuangzi.
- 17.
Given that this identification holds the key to Ge Hong’s discourse on you/wu and the theoretical foundation for immortality, it is odd that it has received so little attention in the Western academy. Modern Chinese scholars, on the other hand, have taken this identification very seriously, and Hu Fuchen (1989: 206–228) provides the model; another example among many is Zhu Zhanyan who writes: “Under the influence of Wei-Jin Xuanxue, Ge Hong used you/wu to explain the relationship between ‘form’ and ‘spirit.’ What he called ‘form’ referred to the human body-shape, and what he called ‘spirit’ referred to spiritual awareness … From a functional point of view, ‘shape’ and ‘spirit’ are the two sides of a single structure of existence, and both are indispensable. Between them, ‘shape’ is the material carrier of human life, and ‘spirit’ is the controlling master of human life. ‘Shape’ and ‘spirit’ are mutually independent and harmonious. They manifest as actual living life but when they become separated, it means that the original life ruptures and ceases to exist.” Zhu 2009: 58. Still, by far the best study of which I am aware on Ge Hong’s discourse on you/wu is Li Zongding who states that, while the “form-spirit” issue was long-standing in previous Chinese philosophy, it was primarily Ge Hong who transformed it from a “dualism” (er yuan lun 二元論) to a “monism” (yi yuan lun 一元論). Li 2012: 84 and passim.
- 18.
As previously noted, Ge Hong’s “Daoist” thought is often seen as contradictory to the Zhuangzi’s “Daoist” thought, but his adoption of the Zhuangzi’s theory of qi as life to explain death is one clear counter-argument against that view; to quote Yuan Long: “The Zhuangzi thought that the life-vitality of all beings is attached to the body, and that the body depends on qi to be born, but qi is not an ultimate existent, it was produced ‘amidst the chaos’ and was born from Dao. Therefore, in the Zhuangzi’s philosophical thought, Dao has ultimate reality, it indeed is ultimate reality, and qi has no meaning in terms of an ultimate body. Ge Hong inherited the Zhuangzi’s philosophical notion of Dao as the one thing-in-itself of the entire cosmos, and he greatly enriched and developed the philosophical content of the Zhuangzi’s notion of qi in order to resolve the ways that Daoism engaged the core issues of life and death.” Yuan 2015: 14.
- 19.
This passage shows one of Ge Hong’s uses of the phrase “mystery-Dao” that was briefly mentioned above, and it is worth noting Li Zongding’s further comments about it: “The change from ‘mystery’ to ‘mystery-Dao’ marks an important transition from philosophy to religion, and Ge Hong often combines mystery with other words, as for example in ‘mystery-Dao,’ ‘mystery-One,’ and other new words. On the one hand, he used the ethereal and profound meaning of ‘mystery’ to explain the wondrous Dao and the wondrous One; on the other hand, he also had ‘mystery-One’ refer to the methods of cultivating immortality.” Li 2012: 37.
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Michael, T. (2020). Ge Hong’s Evolving Discourse on You and Wu and its Roots in the Daodejing. In: Chai, D. (eds) Dao Companion to Xuanxue 玄學 (Neo-Daoism). Dao Companions to Chinese Philosophy, vol 14. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-49228-1_23
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