Mar

20

Chuang Tzu & Wittgenstein

Filed Under Feuilletons |

First of all, welcome Ashraya, to the blogging community. She’s a precocious pre-med student who happens to be quite a writer, as well as a singer for the band, The Kitchen Cabinet. Second of all, if you haven’t already, grab a copy of Stephen Malkmus & the Jicks’ new album, Real Emotional Trash and go to track 6, “Baltimore.” Go ahead, dude: crank it up. It will quickly be apparent that younger bands haven’t forgotten how to jam. Psychedelic, wall-of-sound guitar, kick-ass drumming by Janet Weiss of Sleater-Kinney throughout the album… what can I say My favorite rock album in some time.

I noticed that this blog has actually gained readers while I was away. Interesting. I suspect that it was because my Murakami interview translations got picked up somehow in different channels. I had like two thousand visits one day. (Maybe I should purchase that weird book, Murakami’s Whiskey Pilgrimage in Europe, from the Korean bookstore & translate some passages…) But just maybe, the readers find my silence way more interesting. I wouldn’t doubt that possibility at all.

Taoists always knew the value of being silent, both in words & deeds. “One does less and less until one does nothing at all,” says Lao Tzu, “and when one does nothing at all there is nothing that is undone.” The gist of it all being that words & purposive action lead to the kind of instrumental reason which entrenches one in the ways of the world, away from wu wei.

chuangtzu.jpgI briefly mentioned Chuang Tzu by way of Eliot Weinberger in my previous post. He’s a more interesting philosopher to me than Lao Tzu, because while adhering to the same Taoist cautionary stance against “words,” Chuang Tzu’s functional valuation of “words” is more nuanced than Lao Tzu’s. There’s an interesting parable of an Artisan named Ch’ui in Section 19 of Chuang Tzu called “Mastering Life.” “Artisan Ch’ui could draw as true as a compass or a T-square,” Chuang Tzu tells us, “because his fingers changed along with things and he didn’t let his mind get away” -

You forget your feet when your shoes are comfortable. You forget your waist when the belt is comfortable. Understanding forgets right and wrong when the mind is comfortable. You begin what is comfortable and never experience what is uncomfortable when you know the comfort of forgetting what is comfortable.

Artisan Ch’ui had no need for mediating tools because he didn’t let his mind get away, just as how one forgets his body when the mediating apparel is comfortable. Then Chuang Tzu concludes with a culminating illustration of this principle -

The fish trap exists because of the fish; once you’ve gotten the fish, you can forget the trap. The rabbit snare exists because of the rabbit; once you’ve gotten the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words exist because of meaning; once you’ve gotten the meaning, you can forget the words. Where can I find a man who has forgotten words so I can have a word with him

Any word that exists outside of meaning is a useless vessel, can only deter The Way. Even the words that successfully serve their mediatory function must be forgotten once the meaning is understood. Uncannily enough, these words of Chuang Tzu find their echo centuries later, in a different continent, in the words of Ludwig Wittgenstein which inform his readers of the limited, mediatory purpose of his words and propositions in Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus -

My propositions are elucidatory in this way: he who understands me finally recognizes them as senseless, when he has climbed out through them, on them, over them. (He must so to speak throw away the ladder, after he has climbed up on it.) He must surmount these propositions; then he sees the world rightly.

Throw away the fish traps, throw away the ladder. Chuang Tzu’s instruction “once you’ve gotten the meaning, you can forget the words” slides comfortably into Wittgenstein’s famous last words of Tractatus: “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.”

neuenschwander.jpgThis is all fine and dandy, but the ultimate irony is that Chuang Tzu depends on words and texts to theoretically deliver a conduit to The Way, the principles of which all but negate the primacy of words. Wittgenstein, likewise, would spend a solid chunk of his life digging himself out of the hole that was Tractatus, with words and more words. When Chuang Tzu asks, “Where can I find a man who has forgotten words so I can have a word with him” it is as if he is stoically acknowledging the impossibility of such a prospect. The question is a rhetorical möbius strip: it promises the enlightenment of the wu wei, but simultaneously puts at distant bay the practical attainability of The Way. The fact that both Chuang Tzu and Wittgenstein rely on the written word seems to testify to this - unmediated meaning exists in truth, but may be irretrievable in practice. Just as it is impossible to undo language, in this completely mediated and rationalized world, all one can do is sift through the mediations to get closer.

(Last image: by Rivane Neuenschwander)


Comments

You must be logged in to post a comment.