Abstract
This essay examines the theory of ritual propriety presented in the Xúnzǐ and criticisms of Xunzi-like views found in the classical Daoist anthology Zhuāngzǐ. To highlight the respects in which the Zhuāngzǐ can be read as posing a critical response to a Xunzian view of ritual propriety, the essay juxtaposes the two texts' views of language, since Xunzi's theory of ritual propriety is intertwined with his theory of language. I argue that a Zhuangist critique of the presuppositions of Xunzi's stance on language also undermines his stance on ritual propriety. Xunzi contends that state promulgation of anelaborate code of ritual propriety is a key to good social order (zhi) and that state regulation of language is a key to smooth communication and thus also good order. The Zhuāngzǐ provides grounds for doubting both contentions. Claiming that ritual propriety causally produces social order is analogous to claiming that grammar causally produces smooth linguistic communication, when in fact it is more likely our ability to communicate that allows us to develop shared rules of grammar. Humans have fundamental social and communicative capacities that undergird our abilities to speak a language or engage in shared ritual performances. It is these more fundamental capacities, not their manifestation in a particular system of grammar or ritual norms, that provide the root explanation of our ability to communicate or to live together harmoniously. The Xunzi-Zhuangzi dialectic suggests that ritual is indispensable, but normatively justified rituals will be less rigid, less comprehensive, less fastidious, and more spontaneous than a Xunzian theorist would allow.
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Notes
Seligman et al. (2008), especially 4, 17, 180.
Major exponents of the view that ritual functions primarily to express collective sentiments and promote social solidarity include Durkheim (1912) and Radcliffe-Brown (1965). More recent work has questioned the idea that the significance of ritual lies in supposed contents—such as sentiments or beliefs—that it refers to or expresses. This alternative line of analysis—which Confucian theorists would largely endorse—holds that the significance of ritual lies directly in ritual performances and their consequences. Representative discussions include Bell (1992), Bell (1997), Rappaport (1999), and Seligman et al. (2008).
An example may be Book 38 of the Dàodéjīng, which calls ritual propriety ‘the wearing thin of loyalty and trust and the beginning of disorder.’
Seligman et al. (2008, 119) unfortunately misconstrue Mohist criticisms of Confucianism this way. While the Mohists rejected what they considered the excessive, wasteful Confucian tradition of ritual propriety, they by no means dismissed the importance of rituals. On the contrary, regular ritual sacrifices to ancestors, spirits, and Heaven are a vital part of the Mohist dào.
No precise chronology is available for the writings collected in these two late Warring States anthologies. (The oldest parts of the Zhuāngzǐ may predate the oldest parts of the Xúnzǐ, but many parts of the two probably overlap chronologically.) Moreover, the Zhuāngzǐ writers rarely name the adherents of the views they criticize. So I do not claim that the Zhuāngzǐ is responding specifically to Xúnzǐ’s views, but only that it is responding to positions that conceptually are relevantly similar to Xúnzǐ’s.
For Bell (1992), for instance, ritual activity is related to, rather than wholly different in kind, from non-ritual activity. Rather than attempting to identify a discrete category of ritual acts, she focuses on the process of ritualization, to which a wide range of activities may be subjected. Ritualization is a way of acting devised to set off and privilege some kinds of activities from others (1992, 74). Rappaport defines ritual very generally as ‘performance of more or less invariant sequences of formal acts and utterances not entirely encoded by the performers’ (1999, 24), a characterization obviously formulated to be broadly inclusive. See too Seligman et al. (2008).
As Hansen observes, ‘Xúnzǐ’s theory of names mirrors his position on ritual’ (1992, 319).
The second part of Li’s proposal is that rén 仁 (ethical goodness) can be understood as mastery of a culture, analogous to mastery of a language. Though interesting, this half of the analogy seems to me less successful, as rén probably includes attitudes that go beyond ‘cultural mastery,’ to the extent that notion can be made precise. Li’s interpretation dovetails at least partly with Hansen’s proposal that rén be understood as an intuitive moral competence or virtuosity in performing social roles, which are structured by the norms of conduct embodied in ritual propriety (1992, 62). For other insightful discussions of the relationship between rén and ritual propriety, see Shun (1993) and Wong (2008).
Xúnzǐ uses several different words to refer to different aspects of nature. Tiān 天 typically refers to Heaven or nature in the abstract, as the sum of all natural conditions and patterns. Tiān dì 天地 (‘heaven and earth’) refers to the non-human natural world. Xìng 性 refers to spontaneous, innate, and thus natural dispositions. Thus, it is sometimes interpreted as ‘nature,’ as in the phrase ‘people’s nature.’ Xúnzǐ’s stance here contrasts with that of some Daoist texts, which imply that Nature itself provides a dào for us to follow. It also contrasts with the Mohist view of Heaven or nature (tiān) as a quasi-personal deity that follows a dào of benefiting everyone, which in turn serves as a model for human dào.
Xúnzǐ 8/28/15–16. Citations to the Xúnzǐ give the ICS concordance numbering (Lau 1996). All translations are my own.
See, for example, Xúnzǐ 19/95/3, which states that the world comes to order as a result of the merging of xìng and wèi. See too 23/113/17–19, which explains that, like everything people become capable of through study or develop through work, ritual propriety, and duty are wèi (artifice). They contrast with xìng, which is bestowed by Nature and requires no learning or work.
See 9/39/3 and 17/80/2–3.
Or, on an alternative reading of the line, this dào is the highest standard of humanity (rén 人).
See, for example, 19/95/1–3, which implies that the combination of nature and artifice produces both social order and beauty in individual character, or 19/94/8, which speaks of the beauty of carrying out one’s duties. See too 1/3/17 and 1/4/16, which posit beauty as an end of study and cultivation.
A Xunzian theorist of ritual would thus agree with Rappaport’s suggestion that ritual form itself adds something to the substance of ritual beyond whatever content the symbolically encoded form itself expresses (1999, 31). (For related views, see Bell 1997 and Seligman et al. 2008.) For Xúnzǐ, the regular performance of ritualized activities according to the norms of ritual propriety partly constitutes social order and thus brings into existence a particular ideal of a flourishing society. The role of ritual propriety as a basis for social order means that the significance of any one ritual act extends beyond its specific content, lying partly in its relation to the overall system of ritual propriety and duties. Through the ritualized form of their activities, ritual performers may understand themselves to be contributing to the continuity of the human dào, creating and sustaining the cultural patterns that make us human. Moreover, as we will see below from Xúnzǐ’s explanation of funeral rites, because of its role in the overall system, a single concrete ritual performance may have multidimensional significance. For instance, the act of offering sacrificial wine to the deceased may simultaneously express grief, display respect, acknowledge the deceased’s social status, situate death within the overall process of human life, affirm the unity of the deceased’s life, and reinforce the integrity of the cultural order.
See too 9/36/3, which in similar language states that ‘regulating ritual propriety and duty in order to divide them [people], making there be the ranks of poor and wealthy, noble and common’ is ‘the basis for providing for all the world.’
See also 10/42/12–21. Xúnzǐ’s claims here may overlap Durkheim’s (1912) view that the performance of rituals reaffirms and builds commitment to the social structure or Collins’s (1988) suggestion that rituals create psychological solidarity crucial to the functioning of society. A Xunzian theorist might agree that social solidarity is one of several functions or consequences of the general observance of ritual propriety. But Xúnzǐ’s focus is primarily on conduct and action guidance, not attitudes: if the norms of ritual propriety are generally observed, all members of society will behave in a coordinated way, according to shared norms.
11/51/19–20. On the analogy to artisans’ tools, see too 19/92/12–19.
Xúnzǐ is here employing the same analogies—artisans’ measurement tools—that the Mohists had previously used to explain how ‘the benefit of all’ provides a distinct, reliable model (fǎ 法) for what is morally right (yì 義) or the correct dào. Xúnzǐ contends that it is actually ritual propriety that provides such a model.
Xúnzǐ underscores the social, traditional, and performative nature of ritual propriety by explaining that teachers are in turn the means of rectifying ritual propriety (2/8/1). One cannot attain competence in the rituals on one’s own. They must be practiced in interaction with others under the critical eye of a master.
See, for instance, 19/94/8–12 and 19/98/1–2. Xúnzǐ’s explanation of how ritual propriety provides an orderly means for expression of potentially disruptive emotions resonates with Van Gennep’s (1960) work on rites of passage, which proposes that such rites channel emotions into an organized cultural framework, thus subjecting them to social control. It overlaps Radcliffe-Brown’s (1965, 160) interpretation of rites as regulated symbolic expressions of sentiments, with the difference that Xúnzǐ does not see the expression of emotion as the crux of the significance of ritual propriety. The significance lies rather in how ritual propriety produces order; one of the ways it does so is by providing a disciplined means of expressing potentially disruptive emotions. Moreover, Xúnzǐ would reject Radcliffe-Brown’s suggestion (ibid.) that sentiments determine individuals’ conduct and thus are the key to maintaining social order. For Xúnzǐ, the key factor producing social order is habitual performance according to ritual propriety, regardless of the performers’ sentiments. Ideally, performers will come to love ritual propriety. But order can still be maintained when performers are subject to disruptive or contrary sentiments, provided they continue to approve of and thus remain committed to ritual propriety.
See, for instance, 4/17/1–2, 9/39/5–7, and 19/90/10.
Fundamentally, the heart directs action through its normative attitudes of approval (kě 可) or disapproval (22/111/11). An agent may learn to perform the dào reflexively, its norms having become part of the agent’s character, but such performance rests ultimately on the attitude of ‘approving’ the dào itself. See 21/103/21 and 22/111/22–23.
9/39/5. See too 5/19/4, where he vehemently dismisses the suggestion that the dào for achieving order might vary in different eras or circumstances.
In his recent ‘constructivist’ interpretation of Xúnzǐ, Hagen contends that Xúnzǐ’s worldview ‘allows for the possibility of pluralism’ and does not assume the existence of a ‘singular ultimate or transcendentally fixed Way’ (2007, 10). As characterizations of Xúnzǐ’s theoretical framework, these claims seem clearly correct. Despite these points, however, Xúnzǐ espouses a traditionalist conservatism with dogmatic tendencies, as Hagen acknowledges when he remarks that although Xúnzǐ provides a rationale for traditional ritual practices, ‘[his] justifications [fall] short of showing that only those precise norms would do the job’ (2007, 112).
In this respect, Xúnzǐ’s stance converges with Hertz’s (1907) and Durkheim’s (1912) proposal that death rites function to reaffirm the permanence of the social order after it is ruptured by a member’s demise.
I have elsewhere described this Chinese assumption as the ‘job title’ theory of language (Fraser 2009a). ‘Names,’ such as ‘knight,’ ‘teacher,’ ‘parent,’ or ‘minister,’ are regarded as associated with norms of conduct, much as job titles are associated with job descriptions. To be denoted by a particular name is to be subject to certain norms and expectations; conversely, only those who live up to the norms deserve the name. Part of the work of rectifying names is to clarify which jobs are indeed associated with which names and whether particular individuals live up to their name—their job title—or not.
Hansen emphasizes that practical rectification of names is needed to interpret and perform ritual propriety correctly. Before a code of conduct can guide us, we need to be able to distinguish the objects and actions named in the code (1992, 65–66).
I owe this formulation to my colleague Dan Robins.
Like most texts attributed to the pre-Han masters, the Zhuāngzǐ is an anthology of brief, roughly paragraph-length writings by different hands. Its hundreds of short parts are linked thematically by a network of doctrinal family resemblances and historically or genealogically probably by numerous intersecting teacher-student lineages, as the texts were likely composed and transmitted among groups of teachers and students. The anthology is organized as 33 ‘books,’ each a collection of short stories or remarks, often grouped loosely by theme. Typically, these stories and remarks share a broadly interrelated doctrinal orientation, but they do not purport to present a unified or coherent system of doctrines. Even a conservative count, such as Liu’s (1994), attributes at least four different authorial or doctrinal voices to the corpus. My own view is that there are almost certainly many more, and that even the seven so-called ‘inner chapters’ that many scholars attribute to the historical Zhuāng Zhōu 莊周 are most probably the work of several different writers. (For a detailed critique of the view that the ‘inner chapters’ represent an authorially privileged, chronologically early, or doctrinally canonical section within the anthology, see Klein (2010).) In general, however, because little historical information is available on the authorship or provenance of individual parts of the Zhuāngzǐ, I believe the appropriate interpretive approach is to focus on the texts, not their unknown authors. That is, instead of attempting to reconstruct the systematic thought of one or more particular authors or ‘schools’—a project that simply cannot be carried out convincingly, given the disjoint nature of the various ‘books’ and our lack of historical information about them—interpreters should focus on exploring and reconstructing the rich discourses on various themes found in the anthology. Given the literary and physical structure of the collection, the genealogical relationships between its component texts, and their shared broad outlook, we can expect different parts to explore common themes from a variety of angles, presenting views that may overlap substantially but also diverge significantly. From reconstructions of such discourses, we can move on to consider or develop systematic positions that are grounded in Zhuangist motifs and views, but not necessarily explicitly presented in or endorsed by all parts, or any particular part, of the anthology. Hence, in this paper I use the label ‘Zhuangist’ loosely to refer to ideas or positions presented or grounded in at least some parts of the Zhuāngzǐ. This label is not intended to imply that these ideas or positions are shared by or consistent with all of the voices found in anthology; nor is there any expectation that all of the views I label ‘Zhuangist’ fit together as a coherent package, since they may come from different texts within the anthology. I should add that since the Zhuāngzǐ is a notoriously difficult, diverse, and playful text and its content the subject of much scholarly debate, the interpretations presented here may be controversial.
Citations to the Zhuāngzǐ give chapter and line numbers in the Harvard-Yenching concordance (Zhuāngzǐ 1956). All translations are my own.
To clarify, the aim of this comparison with Davidson and Brandom is not to appeal to their conclusions to justify a Zhuangist critique of rectifying names. It is to highlight an intriguing, albeit partial parallel between them and one strand of Zhuangist thought and thus to illuminate the potential implications of both. If correct, Davidson’s or Brandom’s ideas complement a Zhuangist criticism of the need to ‘fix’ (dìng) names. But that criticism can stand on its own.
While these arguments do not specifically mention Xúnzǐ or ‘rectifying names,’ they can be applied to rebut the general idea that we could find an authoritative basis for ‘rectifying’ (zhèng) the distinctions that undergird the use of names. For a more detailed discussion of the arguments, a justification of the interpretations presented here, and a comparison with other interpretations, see Fraser (2009b).
‘The sage harmonizes them with this and not-this and rests on the wheel of nature. This is called ‘‘walking two ways’ (2/38–40).
See 2/38–39 and 18/39. Recall too the well-known Zhuāngzǐ passage that states, ‘The purpose of statements (yán) lies in the thought; getting the thought, forget the statement’ (26/48–49). Against the doctrine of rectifying names, the text contends that the exact wording is unimportant as long as the audience gets the point.
Graham associates this passage with a ‘Syncretistic’ stance that combines Daoist, Confucian, and Legalist ideas (1981, 257–58). It is debatable, however, whether the Zhuāngzǐ books he labels ‘Syncretistic’ represent a coherent, unified doctrinal position, since even Graham himself assigns portions of them to other strains of thought within the anthology.
Lǐ yì 禮意, here rendered as ‘the point of ritual propriety,’ is sometimes interpreted as ‘the meaning of ritual propriety’ (see, for instance, Graham 1981, 89). However, the role of yì in early Chinese philosophy of language is not that of semantic meaning, but more like that of a speaker’s thought or intention—the point the speaker is trying to convey. Yì is roughly synonymous with zhì 志 ‘intent.’ See Fraser (2005, section 4.2).
Besides this passage, the metaphor of fish forgetting each other appears at 6/23 and 14/60.
See 19/62–64. ‘Forgetting’ (忘) is often valorized in the Zhuāngzǐ as signaling freedom from care or anxiety (4/43–44), the absence of maladroit consciousness of things, including self-consciousness (6/89–93, 12/45, 19/24, 19/57), and ‘fitting’ (shì 適) well with one’s surroundings (19/62–64). The valorization of ‘forgetting’ is not universal, however; in some passages, it refers to neglecting matters of importance (20/61–68).
This point is also illustrated by the story of Zhuāngzǐ’s extemporaneous drumming and singing in response to his wife’s death (18/15–19). When his wife passes away, Zhuāngzǐ initially grieves, but after coming to view her death as part of an inevitable natural process, like ‘the procession of the four seasons, spring and autumn, winter and summer,’ he begins to ‘comprehend fate,’ makes peace with his loss, and commemorates her life with an impromptu musical performance.
I am grateful to three anonymous referees for many constructive comments.
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Fraser, C. The Limitations of Ritual Propriety: Ritual and Language in Xúnzǐ and Zhuāngzǐ . SOPHIA 51, 257–282 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-012-0303-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-012-0303-7