“Zhuang Zi Is Not the One Who Attains the Tao”: the Other Face of Wang Fuzhi’s View of Zhuang Zi    

Deng Lianhe

Abstract: Although Wang Fuzhi gave positive assessment of Zhuang Zi’s learning in An Explanation of Zhuang Zi and Comments on Zhuang Zi during his late years, and tried to build communication between Confucianism and Taoism, that is not his full view of Zhuang Zi. Except for the two books above, he also left a large amount of random comments in other writings. While taking all the books and comments together, we can find that once transferring from the text of Zhuang Zi to other contexts, Wang Fuzhi’s evaluations of Zhuang Zi were mainly criticism. In his view, since Zhuang Zi only pursued the individual transcendence and evaded the human ethics as well as laws of things, his learning must be resulted in over-indulgence, and even associated with greedy and base persons finally; historically, as the follower of Lao Zi, Zhuang Zi’s thought had been harmed the political order and social ethics deeply and continuously. Besides, Wang Fuzhi also blamed the tendency toward Zhuang Zi among the scholar-officials in history and reality that only considering one’s own easiness and abandoning the responsibilities one should bear. Compared with the previous Taoism in the Song and Ming Dynasties, although Wang Fuzhi’s criticism of Zhuang Zi did not provide fundamental breakthrough in academics, and showed inconsistency somehow, his view expressed a strong Confucian character as well as the constant mentality of an adherent of the Ming Dynasty.