The start of the new semester has already taken me away from blogging more than I would like.  As I settle in to the new schedule ('m always a bit discombobulated at first, adjusting to a new set of class times and meetings) perhaps I will be able to post more….

A web site that I had never noticed before came to my attention this week (can't remember from where…): Sino-Platonic Papers.  It's run by Victor Mair, sinologist extraordinaire at UPenn and he describes it thusly: "The purpose of the series is to make available to specialists and the
interested public the results of research that, because of its unconventional or
controversial nature, might otherwise go unpublished."  This is serious academic research of the first order.  Some really interesting stuff. For example, in one paper, "Notes on the Earliest Sanskrit Word Known in Chinese," we learn that the ancient Indian language was being transcribed by Chinese scholars as early as the second century BCE, reminding us that significant cultural interactions were happening at very, very early periods.  

But the paper that caught my attention was: Other Laozi Parallels in the Hanfeizi:An Alternative Approach to the Textual History of the Laozi and Early Chinese Thought," a detailed philological and philosophical comparison of the foundational Daoist and Legalist texts. In this paper, author Tae Hyun Kim reiterates several points worth keeping in mind:

    – before the 2nd century BC, and likely for some time thereafter, the DDJ had yet to be standardized as a text.  Kim refers to early versions of the text as "proto-Laozis."

     – Kim argues that: "To put it in radical terms, the proto-Laozis could not have
been clearly distinguished from the philosophy that we have called “Confucianism.”  That is, we should not make too much of a distinction between what later are categorized as separate schools of thought.

     – Indeed, Kim also avers that we should be skeptical of any such labeling – "Confucianism," Daoism," etc. – for any philosophizing in the pre-Qin period.  Such labels are retrospective interventions that obscure as much as they reveal.

All good advice.  And Kim goes further than some in turning a critical gaze onto Zhuangzi as well:

These doubts and criticism about the Laozi and Lao Dan are also applicable to the text Zhuangzi, and to a historical figure, Master Zhuang, who has been believed to have lived in the middle of the Warring States period, having an intellectual relationship with Hui Shi, but his historicity is not verifiable, based on any textual and historical evidence. Some significant anecdotes and episodes in the Inner Zhuangzi that thoroughly mock and criticize Confucian values (e.g., discussion of sitting and forgetting (zuowang 坐忘) in the Da Zhong Shi chapter) were probably not from Master Zhuang’s own hand, but from his successors.

I had been harboring some belief that there was a historical figure, Master Zhuang, and he was involved in the writing of the text that bears his name, and that he was deliciously snarky in his attacks on Confucianism.  But I guess we are all composites now…