Zhuangzi, Peirce, and the butterfly dreamscape: concentric meaning in the Qiwulun 齊物論
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Jamin Pelkey (b. 1974) is Associate Professor of Languages, Literatures & Cultures at Ryerson University, Toronto. His research interests include semiotics, embodied cognition, and language evolution. His books include
Dialectology as dialectic (2011),Sociohistorical linguistics in Southeast Asia (2017), andThe semiotics of X: Chiasmus, cognition, and extreme body memory (2017). He is currently editingBloomsbury Semiotics , a major reference work in four volumes.
Abstract
Waking from a vivid dream, the sage finds himself lost between worlds of possibility and ultimately transformed. Zhuangzi’s famous butterfly story may seem familiar, but the text-linguistic structures of its broader interpretive context are little discussed and poorly understood. In this paper I argue that the Qíwùlùn 齊物論 chapter, like so many other ancient writings, is composed in a concentric, chiastic pattern, with sections in each half mirroring each other throughout, while the central sections provide a pivotal peak and interpretive key that radiate meaning back out to the margins. To quote Mary Douglas, “the meaning is in the middle.” The middle is also the place of Peircean Thirdness. In this paper I map the chapter’s text-level chiastic structures and trace its intimations of Peircean semiotic pragmatism. The core rings of the text endorse contrite fallibilism while also prefiguring triadic structure, the pragmatic maxim, and the continuity thesis. Referencing cultural and historical contexts plus recent scholarship on Zhuangzi and Peirce, I ultimately argue that this ancient text, like the pragmatist semiotic it foreshadows, can be better appreciated and applied by embracing the interplay of centers and margins, discarding debilitating ideologies, and waking up to new degrees of freedom.
1 Introduction
Zhuangzi’s butterfly dream opens with notes of whimsy: “flitting and fluttering around, happy with himself and doing as he pleases.”[1] Then he wakes in a state of confusion, “he doesn’t know if he is Zhou who had dreamt he was a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming he is Zhou.”[2] The story then ends abruptly with two trenchant assertions: “Between Zhou and a butterfly there must be some difference! This is called the Transformation of Things.”[3] Many studies have attempted to interpret the meanings of this passage, seeking to apply the story’s themes to a variety of problems and connections. Such studies often touch on the story’s broader contextual relationships in the process. Of particular relevance is the placement of the passage at the end of The Zhuangzi’s second chapter, Qíwùlùn 齊物論.[4] Few studies, by contrast, have explored the philosophical themes of the chapter using textual analysis to better illuminate the meaning of its concluding passage; and, to my knowledge, no studies to date have systematically examined the chapter’s textual discourse structure linguistically to more fully understand the story relative to the chapter that supports it. My primary purpose in writing this paper is to address this gap.
In the process, I demonstrate the presence of a text-level chiastic structure functioning as an ordering principle in the chapter. The basic pattern in question can be described as an ABC…X…CBA design (or, more accurately, A:B:C:D:E:F:G::G′:F′:E′:D′:C′:B′:A′), featuring two sets of four passages at the periphery of the text and two sets of three passages at the center of the text. The two sets of seven center–periphery passages each map onto their inverse counterparts in the opposing half to form something of a concentric structure or “ring composition” (Douglas 2007; Niles 1979; von Otterlo 1944). As far as I know, this structure has not been previously noted to function at the textual level in The Zhuangzi; and, as such, the pattern may prove to be more widespread than the second chapter alone. Regardless, the discovery of this ordering principle in the Qiwulun provides promising interpretive leverage that should not be neglected in seeking to understand the chapter argument and apply its insights.
My second purpose in writing this paper is to further illuminate links between Peircean semiotic pragmatism and Chinese philosophy, with a focus on the thought of Zhuangzi, arguing that his thought on display in the chapter prefigures key themes in Peirce – prominently including fallibilism, continuity, and triadic structure. These two purposes are closely aligned – being integrated in a third purpose.
1.1 Ultimate aims and argument structure
My third and ultimate purpose in writing this paper is to illustrate the relevance of chiastic modeling for better understanding both Peircean semiotics and the thought of Zhuangzi. As I have begun to argue elsewhere (Pelkey 2013a), too little emphasis is placed on the importance of the concept of “the middle” in Peircean semiotics. The same could be said about the importance of relations within and between relations (Borges 2020; Kockelman 2011). For Peirce, such matters are especially important for understanding Thirdness, which is not sequentially third but, rather, mediates between oppositional pairs of Firstness and Secondness. Furthermore, except in the abstract, Peirce’s three categories are always involved in each other, Firstness containing aspects of Secondness and Thirdness, Secondness containing aspects of Firstness and Thirdness, and so on. While such features are no secret to Peircean semioticians and other Peirce scholars, they require much more didactic attention and attentive thematization for broader appreciation and application. Since text-level chiasmus embodies all of these abstractions, and since Zhuangzi’s Qiwulun offers up a new example of text-level chiasmus, the text in question becomes a congruent heuristic for better understanding Peircean semiotic.
In framing my argument, the focus of the paper moves beyond the butterfly dream itself to the butterfly dreamscape: i.e., the structural, semantic, and thematic context of the full chapter.[5] As I demonstrate below, the chapter both opens and closes with a dream – two separate dreams in which two different sages have lost themselves; but this is only the beginning of the inverse parallels that the chapter discourse structure offers up as an interpretive guide. To better appreciate such findings and their implications, it will first be helpful to consider three layers of context in more detail: (1) previous treatments of the Qiwulun and the butterfly dream, (2) further orientation to chiasmus, and (3) a brief review of the literature comparing pragmatism and Daoism. The first of these layers I deal with in Section 2, the second in Section 3, and the third I take up below to round out the introductory section.
Following these layers of context, Section 4 provides a systematic presentation of evidence and analysis of the Qiwulun ring composition, followed by a special focus on the chapter’s central core in Section 5, which also explores several key intimations of Peircean pragmatism in Zhuangzi’s thought that the analysis brings to light. The paper then concludes in Section 6 with a reinterpretation of Zhuangzi’s butterfly dream in light of this new analysis plus a recap of the argument and findings and their implications for future research.
1.2 Daoist thought through pragmatist lenses (and vice versa)
Pragmatism, according to Peirce, is first and foremost a method for clarifying concepts. The method mandates that our ideas and categories should be rooted both in perception and in purposive action for them to qualify as valid contributions to logical thinking. In Peirce’s own words, “The elements of every concept enter into logical thought at the gate of perception and make their exit at the gate of purposive action; and whatever cannot show its passports at both those two gates is to be arrested as unauthorized by reason” (1903: CP 5.212). Peircean pragmatism is founded on at least three pillars: (1) the ontological/phenomenological categories, (2) an attitude of contrite fallibilism, and (3) the principle of continuity. The categories consist of felt qualities (Firstness), necessary reactions (Secondness), and habituated mediation (Thirdness). These elements blend together to weave the relational fabric of experience and reality. Human experience with these mixed elements of reality teaches us to expect that our understanding will always be partial and faulty but also that it is possible to make progress in finding out the truth about things since everything is continuous and interrelated with everything else through processes of growth, whether actual or virtual.
In preparation for the Zhuangzi–Peirce dialogue in Section 5, it is important to question the validity of comparisons between Daoist philosophy and American pragmatism. Doesn’t the attribution of pre-Peircean pragmatism introduce a fallacy of patent anachronism? Not according to Peirce. In fact, Peirce holds that pragmatism is “an old way of thinking” (c. 1910: CP 6.490); and while the pragmatic maxim itself was not “definitely formulated” until he stepped onto the scene, he identifies the likes of Socrates, Spinoza, Berkeley, and Kant as his precursors (c. 1910: CP 6.490). After decades of trying and retrying to define the maxim, he found himself still unsatisfied with his attempts. Near the end of his life, he even insisted that “it cannot be defined” (c. 1910: CP 6.490), “a circumstance which, I believe, distinguishes it from all other doctrines, of whatsoever natures they may be, that were ever promulgated.” Notably, pace Peirce, Laozi’s Daode Jing opens with a similar claim for the Dao 道.
Indeed, comparisons between aspects of American pragmatism and facets of Daoist thought can be noted in the literature at least since the late 1980’s (see, e.g., Givón 1989), and with accelerating frequency since the turn of the twenty-first century. This can be observed for instance in the work of Coutinho (2002), Merrell (2003, 2010, Raposa (2012), and Robinson (2015). And while most connections are made between the thought of Peirce and Laozi, the relation of Daoist themes with the thought of John Dewey is also of note (see, e.g., Maki 2016), including connections between Dewey and Zhuangzi (Behuniak 2010, 2019; Kirby 2008). Comparisons between Peirce and Zhuangzi, on the other hand, have so far been limited to brief asides, as we find in Coutinho (2002, 2018 or Ma and van Brakel (2019). The latter note in passing, for instance, that Zhuangzi’s conception of doubt is closest to Peirce’s “reasonable doubt” versus the “skeptical doubt” of Sextus Empiricus or the “methodological doubt” of Descartes (Ma and van Brakel 2019: 150). Zhuangzi–Peirce comparisons are explored in some detail in Section 5. To better set the stage for the textual analysis proper, it will first be helpful to sketch a number of highlights on the life and times of Zhuangzi and his writings.
2 Zhuangzi and the Qiwulun: historical and interpretive contexts
In order to establish relevant concepts and distinctions for the discussion to follow, this section considers Zhuangzi’s life and times, his writings, various challenges facing his present-day interpreters, previous approaches to the butterfly dream, and previous studies of the story’s host chapter: the “Qiwulun.”
2.1 Zhuangzi and The Zhuangzi
Also known as “Zhuang Zhou,” or “Zhou” for short, Zhuangzi lived during the Late Warring States period, from c. 360–286 BCE, and served as a minor government official while developing the philosophy of Laozi. His work on the collection of texts that would eventually bear his name is dated to approximately 300 BCE. The text is composed of 23 chapters, the first seven of which (also known as the “Inner Chapters”) are considered to be his own work, while the remaining 16 chapters are considered to be derivatives developed by later generations of disciples.
The Zhuangzi is strongly influenced by earlier Daoist writings, including the Daode Jing 道德經 and the Yijing 易經, developing numerous themes from these writing such as the concept of inaction (wuwei 無爲), selflessness (wuwo 無我), namelessness (wuming 無名), and personal awakening, among others (Yuan and Wen 2014). Many have argued that the primary theme of The Zhuangzi is freedom (Gaskins 1997; Skogeman 1986; Watson 1968) – especially “freedom from the things that limit contentment, happiness, and peace” (Gaskins 1997: 107). This claim is all the more salient when considering the historical and cultural context of the era in which it was written. The Warring States Period (much like the present age) was marked by extreme fragmentation, shallow individualism, opportunism, hustling, and deference to polarizing ideologies (McLeod 1982). Major construction on the Great Walls of China took place during this period due to the rampant mistrust of outsiders and the widespread practices of othering and xenophobia that this reinforced. Confucianism was as popular as ever; but, pushed to extremes, Confucian practices tended toward fundamentalism, moralism, dogmatism, prescriptivism, and legalism. Breaking free from corruptions and illusions such as these might then be a plausible historical goal of the text, one that helps account for what could otherwise appear to be brazen paradoxes.
2.2 Reading and misreading The Zhuangzi
Without taking the above context into account, Zhuangzi’s thought can easily be (mis)read as mere nominalism. Indeed, some brand him a relativist (Neville 2002; Ziporyn 2012); others claim that he is a linguistic skeptic (Hansen 1995); still others frame him as a Cynic practicing ironic detachment (Van Norden 2016). I argue, instead, following Huang (2010) and Gentz (2019), that in spite of its complexities, Zhuangzi’s approach is centered according to clear organizing principles. As for the overt contradictions and impossible paradoxes featured in the text, I argue (following Gaskins 1997) that it is more plausible to read these aspects of The Zhuangzi as markers of praxis – more specifically, strategies for inducing doubt that can lead to new states of awareness, enabling those trapped by double binds usurping their freedom to transcend contradictory tensions (see Gaskins 1997: 111). In this way, Zhuangzi teaches his followers, ultimately, “to accept [differences] without deeming and setting permanent boundaries” (Lacertosa 2019: 187). This more pragmatic stance also helps account for broader debates surrounding Zhuangzi’s basic ontology and approach.[6] Similar applications might benefit scholarship on other key Daoist texts.
One feature that sets The Zhuangzi apart from the Daode Jing and the Yijing alike is the narrator’s reliance on whimsical storytelling. This includes numerous disarming vignettes (many of which feature animals and mythical beings), vivid parables focused on skilled workers, and mundane conversations. These playful narratives are often delivered with a sudden twist or surprise ending. The butterfly dream is one such tale. Huang (2010) notes that The Zhuangzi’s stories fall into two types, knack stories and difference stories, both story types being related to one of the book’s central themes, i.e. Tian 天 (lit. ‘heaven’). Tian has little to do with Western conceptions of “heaven.” Rather, it is concerned with the natural structure or disposition of something or someone. As Huang (2010) clarifies, knack stories function as “how to be” accounts told in order to illustrate structural Tian, while difference stories function as “ought to be” accounts told in order to elucidate dispositional Tian. The butterfly vignette is an instance of a “difference” story – illustrating how things ought to be dispositionally in order to realize Tian.
Insights such as these lead Huang to identify a distinctive “virtue ethics” in The Zhuangzi, a virtue ethics that is intent on discovering “the goodness or wellness of a person instead of the rightness of an action” (Huang 2010: 1066). In contrast to the Golden Rule, Huang reconstructs on this basis a “Copper Rule” in The Zhuangzi: “Do unto others as they would have you do unto them,” arguing: “When this virtue is cultivated, a person will be able to respect the difference of others, so that their wellness is enhanced in a spontaneous, effortless, joyful and natural way” (2010: 1067). Holding all these themes and distinctions in mind will help clarify the discussion to follow, as will further layers of context related to the chapter and story in question.
2.3 The “Qiwulun” and the butterfly dream
Among many other translations, the title Qíwùlùn 齊物論 has been rendered, “The adjustment of controversies” (Legge 1891), “Discussion on making all things equal” (Watson 1968), “The identity of contraries” (Giles 1889), and “The equal discourse of things” (Tan 2018). The interpretive challenges that these variant renderings expose lies in the brevity of the title and the ambiguous nature of its wider semantic relations. A basic interlinear parsing, as in (1), can help, as long as we keep in mind that each of the three terms is polysemous:
| 齊 | 物 | 論 |
| qí | wù | lùn |
| even.out | (all)things | ideologies |
The first term 齊 qí is frequently employed in its basic sense of smoothing out wrinkles or flattening out lumps. The second term 物 wù refers to ‘things’ or ‘stuff’ in general, naturally evoking the high-frequency collocation 万物 wanwù ‘ten thousand things’ (i.e. ‘everything’ or ‘all kinds of x’). The third term論 lùn can mean ‘theories,’ ‘debates,’ ‘controversies,’ or ‘ideologies,’ depending on a range of collocations – any of which may in some sense be implied. As the text makes clear, the debates or controversies that are being called to task in the chapter are often highly polarized belief systems with flimsy support and inconsequential effects.
The chapter itself has many facets, being composed in multiple voices and genres that often overlap – including narrative, dialogue, poetry, hortatory exhortation, philosophical exposition, and logical discursus. The chapter’s themes are also richly suggestive, as can be noted in a wide range of interpretations. In the past 15 years alone, scholarly readings of the chapter have ranged from the ethical (Lacertosa 2019) and the epistemological (Tan 2018) to the ecological post-humanist (Chen 2016b) and the imagistic (Shen 2007). My goal in this paper is neither to select between such readings nor to harmonize them. Rather, I wish to suggest that the structural hermeneutics of the text are important to consider as a pre-requisite for settling on (or furthering) any given reading. The paper is written in dialogue with such studies, however. In what follows, I both draw on and augment insights from other scholars who have studied the butterfly dream story specifically in relation to themes in the broader chapter.
Shen (2007), for example, examines the Qiwulun to illustrate his hermeneutic theory of Chinese philosophy in general. He proposes a multi-tiered process of interpretation for such texts featuring four general principles: intratextuality, coherence, minimum amendment, and maximal reading. Such principles suggest, in short, that the text should speak for itself by letting its parts speak to each other as much as possible. Shen also recommends that such a reading should ideally emphasize “the use of metaphor more than concept, narrative more than argumentation, in order to express its image-ideas rather than pure ideas” (2007: 7). These important principles are supported and augmented in the chiastic analysis that I map out below.
Scholars who undertake focused studies of the butterfly dream text tend to treat intratextual chapter content lightly. Exceptions fall into at least two categories: those that dispense with intratextual evidence altogether and those that insist on systematic applications of intratextual evidence. In short, three approaches to chapter intratextuality can be noted. Decontextualized or minimally contextualized studies treat the story as an isolated unit, scarcely registering its contextual embedding, in order to illuminate problems or connections in some other text, tradition or context. Examples of this approach include Han (2009, 2010), who treats the story out of context in order to examine its potential for contradicting Descarte’s cogito argument, and K. Lee (2015), who builds on Han’s approach, finding the story useful for questioning Western concepts of self-identity.
The most common approaches to the story are generally contextualized studies that acknowledge the story’s situation within some other level of context such as the Daoist tradition in general or The Zhuangzi in particular. This approach includes those that home in on a particular piece of intratextual evidence related to the chapter while neglecting a much broader range of intratextual possibilities the text has to offer. Studies that treat the story at this level include Skogemann (1986), Allinson (1987, 2012, Möller (1999), Stanchina (2018), J. H. Lee (2007), Ming (2012), Yao (2013), Budriūnaitė (2014), and Roth (2000).
Less common are thematically contextualized studies that consider the story to be focal but insist that it must be integrated with the chapter’s full conceptual framework and argument through textual analysis of the whole in order to be properly appreciated or understood. Three examples of this approach are Gaskins (1997), Cheng (2014), and to a lesser degree X. Yang (2005). X. Yang’s treatment is narrowly focused on taking sides in a controversy related to the nature of the transformation (internal vs. external) with which the butterfly story ends; so while her study scours the chapter for evidence in an attempt to settle this particular debate, it also misses many other important themes (and the macro-structure of the chapter) in the process. Cheng’s treatment, by contrast, picks up on many of the ignored passages and overlooked themes in the chapter to propose an interpretation of the story focused on “self” and “death,” making connections with the thought of multiple early modern and contemporary philosophers including David Hume and Edward Slingerland in the process. Cheng’s study makes important contributions but neglects discourse structure in favor of thematic development.
Finally, Gaskins’ study treats the butterfly dream as the “powerful culmination” of ideas in the chapter (1997: 107). He identifies the core themes of the chapter as realizing the freedom of the self by breaking through psychological traps (a.k.a. double binds). Gaskins neglects to examine the role of discourse structure in the process of his analysis, but his conclusions are largely supported by my analysis below, which has the potential to make his argument even more compelling, except that (as I discuss further in the sections that follow) the butterfly dream story, as profound as it may be, should not be seen so much as the grand conclusion of the chapter, as it is an echo of the chapter’s opening vignette and a revisitation of the chapter’s central peak. But to understand how this is so, and to better appreciate its implications, it is necessary to pay attention to the structure and function of chiasmus: parallel textual inversions that can also be described as X-shaped reversals or as inverse concentric A:B::B′:A′ patterns. In addition to many other examples of chiastic syntax that appear throughout the chapter, the butterfly dream story itself employs sentence-level chiasmus to make its point:
Once Zhuang Zhou dreamt he was a butterfly, a butterfly flitting and fluttering around, happy with himself and doing as he pleased. He didn’t know he was Zhou. Suddenly he woke up and there he was, solid and unmistakable Zhou. But he didn’t know if he was Zhou who had dreamt he was a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming he was Zhou. Between Zhou and a butterfly there must be some distinction! This is called the Transformation of Things. (trans. Burton Watson 1968: 49, emphasis mine, JP)
The chiastic pattern ‘Zhou:Butterfly::Butterfly:Zhou’ is a preservation of the Chinese original (周:蝴蝶::蝴蝶:周), using the inverse relation of discourse participants to evoke the humorous confusion or conflation of opposite beings structurally or diagrammatically. As McCraw (2006) has demonstrated, clause-level chiasmus is not only frequently employed in The Zhuangzi, but also semantically and pragmatically potent in its uses. The same can be said of chiasmus at the text level, at least in the case of the Qiwulun, as I demonstrate in Sections 4–6. But to better appreciate chiastic principles at work in the Qiwulun, it will first be helpful to consider a number of related background issues and distinctions.
3 Chiasmus, ring composition, and nuclear x-grams
As many are now coming to realize, chiasmus accomplishes much more than decorative flourish and does so far beyond the clause. But what is chiasmus, and how does it function at different linguistic levels?
3.1 Chiasmus beyond the clause
When the first comes last and the last comes first, “chiasmus” is in play.[7] The etymology of the term traces back to the Greek letter chi (χ), but early Greek rhetoricians who first used χ as a visual/spatial metaphor of reverse/transverse crossing to discuss inverse parallelisms in speech and writing were actually identifying a pattern that is featured in languages and literatures around the world and across time (Douglas 2007; Grausso 2020; Nänny 1988; Pelkey 2013c; Welch 1981). Until recently, however, modern academic discourses showed little interest in chiasmus, treating it as mere decorative flourish at the phrase and clause level or – at micro- and macro-textual discourse levels – as a mere mnemonic device for committing long passages to memory.
Recently this situation has begun to change. On one hand, these changes are due to discoveries of macro-textual chiasmus functioning as a structural-interpretive medium for better understanding the meaning of complex passages and texts. As I discuss further below, such dynamics are now noted by scholars of ancient texts, from Beowulf and the Bible to the Daoist Yijing and the Buddhist scriptures.
On the other hand, changes of attitude toward chiasmus are due to the gradual reassessment of the pattern as something far more general and functional than the description of its surface realizations alone can account for. Among other things, chiasmus has recently been described as an expressive pattern for modeling complex internal states (Paul 2009, 2014), as a fundamental pattern of thought (Lissner 2007; Pelkey 2013b, 2017b; Wiseman 2009), as an embodied pattern rooted in movement and memory (Merleau-Ponty c. 1960; O’Reilly and Harris 2017; Pelkey 2013b, 2017b, 2018), and as a pattern of cultural organization and personal transformation (Pelkey 2016, 2017a; Strecker 2011; Wiseman and Paul 2014). Typologies of chiasmus are now being proposed at multiple levels toward differing ends (Grausso 2020; Harris 2021 forthcoming; Paul 2014; Pelkey 2017b).
For the purposes of the present paper, a simple typology will suffice, i.e., a basic distinction between formal and thematic chiasmus. In an address to the National Academy of Sciences, Richard Feynman once referred to himself as “a universe of atoms […] an atom in the universe” (1955: 14). This qualifies as an instance of formal chiasmus. In the Preface to his book I think I am a verb, Thomas Sebeok once said of semiotics, “Behind its every revelation an abeyant illusion lurks; but behind every mirage, confounding reality lies dormant” (1986: x). The relevant relations are mapped out more clearly in (2):
| Formal chiasmus versus thematic chiasmus | ||||
| Formal Chiasmus: | universe: | atoms:: | atom: | universe |
| Thematic Chiasmus: | revelation: | illusion:: | mirage: | reality |
Simply speaking, formal chiasmus features reverse parallelism involving identical terms, while thematic chiasmus features reverse parallelism involving synonymous terms (illusion ∼ mirage), or terms that are otherwise semantically related (e.g. revelation ∼ reality), including oppositional relations (e.g. real vs. fake). While formal chiasmus is overt and explicit, then, thematic chiasmus is suggestive and implicit. What is important to bear in mind for the study to follow is that these same contrastive dynamics range far beyond the clause. Both formal and thematic chiasmus can be noted as evidence of chiastic patterning at every level of linguistic structure, from the phonetic unit to the macro-text (Harris 2021 forthcoming; Nänny 1988: 51). When making structural chiasmus claims at the macro-text level, however, it is best to find a combination of formal and thematic evidence – a point that I will illustrate further in Section 4. First it will be helpful to further define and contextualize the notion of text-level chiasmus or “ring composition” and its prevalence in ancient texts.
3.2 The prevalence of ring composition in pre-modern texts
Medievalist John D. Niles describes “ring composition” as a text-level “chiastic design in which the last element in a series in some way echoes the first, the next to the last the second, and so on.” He goes on to elaborate that the series tends to center “on a single kernel, which may serve as the key element, so that the design as a whole may be thought of as an ABC … X … CBA pattern capable of indefinite expansion” (Niles 1979: 924). Niles’ influential research on the phenomenon builds on the pioneering work of W. A. A. van Otterlo (1944, 1948 and Cedric Whitman (1958). Among other texts, Niles (1979) draws attention to the elaborate structural design of the Old English epic Beowulf, which he describes as featuring a macro-chiasm with four mirrored layers, each part of which features its own embedded chiastic patterning. The macro-chiasm is summarized in (3):
| Beowulf as a ring composition | ||||
| A: | Prologue: Scyld’s funeral; history of the Danes | |||
| B: | First Fight: Grendel | |||
| C: | Interlude: Banquet at nightfall | |||
| D: | Second Fight: Grendel’s mother | |||
| C′: | Interlude: Banquet at nightfall | |||
| B′: | Third Fight: Dragon | |||
| A′: | Epilogue: History of the Geats; Beowulf’s funeral | |||
Each of the story’s fight scenes is also organized chiastically. Most notably, Beowulf’s fight with Grendel’s mother features ten layers of inverse parallelism, centered on their pivotal battle in the depths of a pool (Niles 1979: 927).
Similar chiastic patterns mark the embedded discourse structures of ancient and medieval texts around the world. Examples include the Jewish Scriptures and the Christian New Testament (Welch 1981), Buddhist Scriptures (Orsborn 2017), Hindu Scriptures (Balkaran 2020), Zoroastrian Scriptures (Schwartz 2006), The Chinese Yijing (McCraw 2006), Classical Greek literature such as Homer’s Odyssey (Reece 1995; Whitman 1958), Persian poetry such as Rumi’s Mathnawi (Savi-Homani 2003), Sufi literature such as the Madhumalati (Weightman 2001), French epic poetry (Niles 1973), British traditional ballads (Buchan 1972), and many others. While some scholars have noted examples of similar dynamics at work in modernist literature (e.g. Ljungberg 2012; Nänny 1997), the prevalence and robustness of the chiastic ordering principle in ancient and medieval texts around the world is distinctive, and more research is needed in order to better understand its dynamics, origins, and implications.
3.3 Characteristic features of ring compositions
Anthropologist Mary Douglas (2007) has made the most progress in this regard to date by undertaking a systematic study of ring compositions in literatures around the world. Her book Thinking in circles summarizes the literature on the topic, explores its textual and cultural functions, and defines a number of key principles that can be used to identify and analyze ring compositions cross-linguistically. Of particular relevance for the present study, Douglas defines seven tendencies of long ring compositions and three rules for the endings of long ring compositions (those spanning an entire text or group of texts). First consider the seven tendencies Douglas proposes (2007: 35–38), which are reproduced in (4):
| Qualifying features of ring compositions | |
| 1. | Introductory exposition or prologue |
| 2. | Split into two halves |
| 3. | Parallel sections across a central divide |
| 4. | Indicators to mark individual sections |
| 5. | Central loading (evoking beginning and end) |
| 6. | Rings within rings (major and minor) |
| 7. | Closure at two levels (formal and thematic) |
While any valid ring composition should feature most of these characteristics, weak or partial evidence for one or more features does not necessarily disqualify such an analysis. Rather, it is the preponderance of collateral evidence that validates the phenomenon. Other operational principles help as well, including relationships between ending, beginning, and middle sections. Here Douglas finds two further principles at work, both of which are mandatory:[8]
The ending of a ring composition must evoke both the beginning section and the central pivot section or “mid-turn” (2007: 126).
The middle section, in turn, connects with both the beginning and the end.
In other words, the beginning, mid-turn, and concluding sections of a ring composition tend to be vitally interrelated. This is crucial for the analysis to follow, as is another of Douglas’s central claims. When attempting to interpret a text composed as a ring composition, it is crucial to understand the vital importance of the “mid-turn” section. In other words, “the meaning is in the middle.” This is not only a neglected point in the study and application of text-level chiasmus; it is also a neglected point in the study and application of Peircean semiotics, as I discuss further in Section 5. And yet realizations of these relationships are by no means limited to strictly concentric patterns.
3.4 Variant ring structures
The “ring composition” metaphor is simply one way of referring to what is in reality an untold array of related patterns. Depending on internal structural dynamics and external cultural dynamics, many such patterns could also be discussed using other geometric metaphors. Douglas (2007) notes in this connection the “Four Triangles” structure of the Madhumalati, as identified in Weightman (2001). Bauer (2003) and Pelkey (2013a) discuss ring structures in Dylan Thomas’s (1940) poem “Vision and Prayer” as overlapping lattice networks. Returning to The Zhuangzi in this connection, we should note the nuclear trigram and hexagram arrays of Daoism that structure the Yijing. Two such models are illustrated in Figure 1.
Daoist nuclear trigram and hexagram models.[9]
These structures are not merely concentric but also interlocking, featuring numerous transverse oppositional relations. Each symbol is organized into one (Figure 1, left) or more (Figure 1, right) layers of rings, around a central axis according to a spatial logic of diagonal, horizontal, and lateral oppositions. Heaven (solid Yang lines) is up; Earth (fully Yin lines) is down; Valley and Wind are in opposition above just as Thunder and Mountain are below; and yet, Valley is to Mountain as Wind is to Thunder; and so on. Such models and their applications are far more fecund than I can hint at here; but it is at least worth noting that they all originate in ancient tortoise shell divination practices that pre-date the Yijing. As Daoist philosophy developed, so did the function of the central axis, which is often overtly identified with the Yin-Yang reversal – the central relation of oppositions as irreducible, interdependent processes flowing into and out of their opposites.
Two concentric models for visualizing chiastic relations in the Qiwulun ring composition.
Working from the perspective of the Western tradition, Marshall McLuhan once identified this very dynamic with chiasmus, noting: “Every process pushed far enough tends to reverse or flip suddenly. This is the chiasmus pattern, perhaps first noted by ancient Chinese sages in I Ching: The Book of Changes” (McLuhan and Nevitt 1972: 5–6). Indeed, it is plausible that the antiquity and influence of these patterned dynamics on Daoist thought may have come to serve as an ordering principle in Daoist texts. And with that possibility in mind, we turn to the textual discourse structure of the Qiwulun itself.
4 The Qiwulun ring composition
The Qiwulun has been described as “perhaps the most controversial and difficult chapter of the Zhuangzi” (Tan 2018). Could the explication of an intrinsic ordering principle, or master structure, serve as an interpretive guide to render this challenging text more intelligible? As discussed above, analysis of the text as a whole has been largely neglected in the literature to date compared to (and indeed due to) its famous concluding section. As a result, interpretations of the butterfly dream have effectively upstaged the butterfly dreamscape, leaving us with a decontextualized passage that can be endowed with an endless procession of interpretations or “readings” according to the diverse interests and goals of a wide range of scholars. The discovery and validation of a chiastic ordering principle might at least serve as a check on such tendencies and might even clarify the argument and/or the aesthetic and practical intentions of the chapter. To see how this might be so, this section presents preliminary evidence for identifying the textual discourse design of the Qiwulun as a deliberate chiastic “ring structure,” or – more plausibly and more accurately – a nuclear trigram ring structure. This is accomplished by considering both formal and thematic parallels across sections and then (in Section 5) by paying special attention the chapter’s middle sections, before concluding with a look at the interplay between the chapter’s opening, closing, and middle sections. In the discussion to follow, discourse sections will be identified according to the pattern QWL 07[G]::08[G′] – indicating the source text (QWL), the sequential section number (07, 08), the chiastic position marker (G, G′), and the axis of relation (“:” indicating an intra-axis relation, “::” indicating an inter-axis relation) for clarity.
The Chinese source text is composed of 14 traditionally delineated discourse units. If the text were a basic ring composition, structural and thematic evidence for this division might be expected to feature a simple split down the middle according to the inverse pattern A:B:C:D:E:F:G::G′:F′:E′:D′:C′:B′:A′. This is borne out in the analysis to follow; but the best evidence for the central pivot lies in its relation to the four sections immediately surrounding it. While the two pivotal passages, QWL 07[G]::08[G′], function as the absolute center, something more complex (and more interesting) than a simple concentric design with seven equal halves is apparent in the text. Instead, the central pivot is best established in relation to its immediate complements, QWL 05[E]:06[F]::09[F′]:10[E′], which serve as a kind of intermediate middle between pivot and periphery. The peripheral discourse units, in turn, can be identified as QWL 01[A]:02[B]:03[C]:04[D]::11[D′]:12[C′]:13[B′]:14[A′]. In other words, visualized recursively, the sequential discourse units of the Qiwulun appear to be rendered according to the pattern listed in (5):
| Proposed recursive chiastic structure of Qiwulun discourse units |
| [ 01–02–03–04 [ 05–06 [ 07–08 ] 09–10 ] 11–12–13–14 ] |
Visualizing this diagram as a full ring composition is accomplished by either of the two schematics listed in Figure 2, and both possibilities should be borne in mind.
The model on the left is an interlocking concentric design based on analogies with the nuclear trigram and hexagram models inherent in Daoist thought, as discussed in Section 3.4 above. The simpler concentric model on the right captures many of the same dynamics while also providing a more manageable frame, better suited for this preliminary analysis. Both models qualify as ring compositions.
With these structural summaries in mind, we now turn to their supporting linguistic evidence: i.e., the chiastic patterning featured in the text itself at both formal and thematic (or structural and semantic) levels. A non-exhaustive but sufficient summary of this evidence is provided in Table 1, which arranges the inverse parallels into common rows, distinguishing central passages from their peripheral counterparts. The boundary of the central passages QWL 05[E]::10[E′] is distinguished from the surrounding periphery by marked usage of formal chiastic pairings working in concert with thematic chiasmus – a distinction discussed above in Section 3.1 and illustrated in Table 1 using bold formatting to distinguish formal (explicit) chiastic evidence from thematic (implicit) chiastic evidence.
Summary of evidence for the Qiwulun (QWL) ring composition: Mapping macro-chiastic structure from periphery to center in two directions.
| First half, 1–7[A–G] Forward to central pivot |
Second half, 14–8[A′–G′] Backward to central pivot |
|
|---|---|---|
| P E R I P H E R Y |
QWL01[A] = BEGINNING | QWL14[A′] = END |
| Zi Qi is roused from a daydream (嗒) ‘I had just now lost myself’ (吾喪我) ‘the myriad differences’ (萬不同) |
Zhuangzi (Zhou) awakes from a dream (夢) ‘He didn’t know he was Zhou’ (不知周也) ‘there must be some difference!’ (有分矣) |
|
| QWL02[B] | QWL13[B′] | |
| Day/night; morning/evening (日/夜; 旦/暮) No one knows (莫知) |
Penumbra/shadow (罔兩/景) How do I know (惡識) |
|
| QWL03[C] | QWL12[C′] | |
| Critique of the missing master (真宰) Constant toiling 役役 Preference? the futility of a striving life pitifully muddling through life & death |
Critique from the absent master (夫子) Constant toiling 役役 Being right? The vapidness of a confident life Stupidity & delusion, waking & dreaming |
|
| QWL04[D] | QWL11[D′] | |
| Words (言) and (un)certainty Godly Yü (有神禹) Right/wrong reversals (是 … 非 … 非 … 是) |
Speech (謂) and (not) knowing Perfect person is Godlike (至人神矣) Right/wrong (是非) confusion |
|
| C E N T E R |
QWL05[E] | QWL10[E′] |
|
This 是 and that produce each other Dao 道 is a hinge in a socket (樞 … 其環中) Sage 聖人 does not deny and affirm (是非) Illuminates 照 all by Tian 天 |
This 是 creates borders Dao 道 is not enclosed (未始有封) Sage 聖人 does not pass judgment (議) Illumination 照 of all by De德 |
|
| QWL06[F] | QWL09[F′] | |
|
Three 三 in the Morning/evening Oneness (通)為一 |
Three 三 from Nonbeing to being Oneness (已)為一 |
|
| QWL07[G] = YANG PIVOT | QWL08[G′] = YIN PIVOT | |
| Extremes, boundaries, ending (終) Ideology, opinion: clarity (明) |
Speech, categories, beginning (始) Being, nonbeing: uncertainty (未知) |
Before considering the evidence for each chiastic pairing of this ring composition, it is important to note that some themes (such as being and nonbeing 有/無 and paradoxes of extremes) are repeated and revisited in many sections throughout the chapter. The appearance and re-appearance of clause- and phrase-level chiasmus is also a pervasive feature in the text, as are frequent “head–tail” linkages of themes between adjacent sections – thus constituting other levels of chiastic structure. Detailed explorations of these related elements of structural cohesion are beyond the scope of this paper but should be explored in future studies. This study is focused on the master structure of the ring composition itself, which is helpful to consider in terms of concentric pairs for the purposes of this preliminary exposition.
QWL 01[A]::14[A′]. The outer periphery of the chapter is defined by parallel stories featuring parallel dream states from which two respective sages awake. Both sages then acknowledge having lost themselves. In both cases, the affirmation of radical continuity is also called into question by a competing affirmation of the status and necessity of differences, whether general or specific. Several other scholars have noted clear thematic parallels between the first and last passages of the Qiwulun. Yao (2013), for example, observes a link between Zhuang Zhou’s experience in the closing passage and Zi Qi’s experience in the opening passage, typifying both in the words of Zi Qi: “just now I had lost myself “ (Legge 1891, trans.). Stanchina (2018) supplements this observation by noting the chapter’s self-transformation bookends. Wang and Xu (2019) also note a range of “前后的呼应” [‘front–back correlations’] between these sections of the chapter, arguing, “原来《齐物论》的开篇与结尾呼应得是如此的巧妙” [‘It turns out that the opening and closing passages of the Qiwulun echo each other ingeniously’]. These are important observations. Even so, in spite of widespread scholarly consensus for thematic parallels between these sections, such links remain structurally implicit, since no formal linguistic matches emerge to qualify the pairing as explicit. Zi Qi’s dream state is closer to a daydream, while Zhou’s is a proper sleeping dream for example; and even the important affirmation of “differences” that can be identified in both passages relies on differing constructions in the original (see Table 1).
QWL 02[B]::13[B′]. The next ring of chiastic discourse also features exclusively thematic parallels. In 02[B], a litany of lament over the cycles of strife, fear, and futility that mark human existence concludes with “day and night replacing each other before us, and no one knows where they sprout from. Let it be! Let it be! [It is enough that] morning and evening we have them.” These salient themes are echoed in two tightly integrated pairings in 13[B′]. First, the morning/evening, day/night pairing maps onto a discussion between personifications of Shadow and Penumbra; but when Shadow is unable to answer Penumbra’s questions about the source of her actions, she concludes, “‘How do I know why it is so? How do I know why it isn’t so?’” Indeed, as we find in 02[B], “no one knows where they sprout from.”
QWL 03[C]::12[C′]. Continuing to build on the themes of human striving and futility set up in 02[B], the next intermediate ring level features thematic juxtapositions of two masters – both absent – who provide further framing for the human predicament. The hypothetical ‘True Master’ 真宰 in 03[C] seems necessary but is oddly missing; and a secondhand critique from the famous master Confucius 夫子 in 12[C′] is appreciated but misguided. So too are people’s petty preferences and polarized debates – especially given the muddling, deluded predicament of our existence. In the process, this ring also features the first clear instance of formal chiastic pairing. The conspicuous reduplicated morpheme construction 役役 ‘constant toiling’ appears only twice in the entire chapter – once in 03[C], once in 12[C′] – a non-trivial detail that can be identified as a strong piece of supporting evidence for the broader ring composition under consideration here.
QWL 04[D]::11[D′]. The next ring of chiastic discourse features two additional instances of formal pairings that augment thematic parallels. First note that observations in 04[D] on uncertainty and the nature of words are analogous to observations of speech and the nature of knowledge in 11[D′]. Then note that a mention of Saintly Yü (有神禹) in 04[D] finds loose thematic echo in 11[D′], which features a discussion of the ‘perfect person’ 至人. Although it would be weak evidence on its own, the quality of this thematic parallel is upgraded by the use ‘god’ 神 as a formal modifier in both constructions. Notably, the morpheme 神 is used only one other time in the chapter. By contrast, the positive–negative shì fēi 是非 construction (translated variously ‘right/wrong’ and ‘affirm/deny’) is used ten times in the chapter: three times in 04[D], once in 11[D′], and six times elsewhere; but its usage in 11[D′] is the only occurrence in the latter half of the chapter.[10] In this case, the formal pairing combines with a thematic pairing to make a stronger case. In 04[D], Zhuangzi describes a confusing state of affairs: “What one calls right, the other calls wrong/and what one calls wrong the other calls right.”[11] This has clear parallels with his observation in 11[D′] that “the paths of right and wrong/are all hopelessly snarled and jumbled.”[12]
QWL05[E]::10[E′]. The next ring level serves as the transition zone between periphery and center. In addition to diagrammatic clues from the trigram model in Figure 3, textual evidence for this judgment is based on the sheer quantity and quality of pairings featured between the two sections and their surrounding text, relative to all other rings in the composition. This especially includes four formal pairings tightly integrated with four thematic pairings. Other rhetorical effects such as repetition and paradox also intensify in these two sections; and as the pace of delivery accelerates, the stage becomes crowded with key terms central to Daoist philosophy such as ‘the sage’ 聖人, ‘clarity’ 明, Tian 天, De 德, and most importantly, Dao 道. In other words, the discourse is clearly circling its central climax. Working in parallel (as illustrated in Table 1), the two sections each provide a different critique of ‘this’ 是. Each provides a differing analogy for the Dao 道. Each defines a qualities of ‘the sage’ 聖人 as non-judging, and each discusses the ‘illuminating’ 照 capabilities of a core Daoist virtue: De 德 in the case of 05[E] and Tian 天 in the case of 10[E′]. Notably, the term 照 is used nowhere else in the chapter.
Ring compositions and triadic structure.
QWL06[F]::09[F′]. Moving closer to the center, the next ring level serves as the chapter’s penultimate peak. Fittingly, in Daoist thought related to trigram and hexagram models, “[l]ines designated by a six and a nine have, according to the ancient conception, an inner tension so great as to cause them to change into their opposite, that is yang into yin, and vice-versa” (Jung 1950: xxxii). Both sections highlight aspects of the process of making all things one. The interplay between ‘one’ and ‘three’ is also salient. In 06[F], ‘one’ appears six times (three of which use the construction 通為一), and ‘three’ 三 is mentioned four times. In 09[F′], ‘one’ occurs five times, and ‘three’ 三 is mentioned twice. While there are 18 total instances of ‘one’一 in the whole chapter, 61% are found in this ring level (06[F]::09[F′]); similarly, of the nine total instances of ‘three’ 三 in the chapter, 67% are found in this ring level. Most notably, no other section features both numbers. In both 06[F] and 09[F′], ‘three’ 三 is implicated in the production of higher-level divisions and controversies that easily distract from the underlying continuity between things. Themes in this ring suggest multiple proclivities with Peircean pragmatism, as I discuss further in Section 5.
QWL07[G]::08[G′]. Finally, the central ring itself serves as the chapter’s discourse peak while representing both the end of the beginning and the beginning of the end. Accordingly, the term ‘ending’ 終, which appears three times in 07[G] (and only once elsewhere in the chapter), is juxtaposed with its opposite, ‘beginning’ 始in 08[G′]. And while ‘beginning’ 始 appears multiple times in both sections, it is focal in 08[G′], with nine repetitions. The ending in question in 07[G] is concerned in particular with empty controversies that end in foolishness and the culmination of that foolishness in the end of life – a fatuous life which accomplishes nothing. The section uses this scenario to critique extreme positions and arbitrary boundaries, arguing that ‘chaos and doubt’ 滑疑 are better guides to ‘clarity’ 明 (or ‘brightness’). In fact, the character 明 (a composite of sun and moon, Yang and Yin) is the final word of 07[G] and the pivotal morpheme between the first and second halves of the chapter. Here the brightness of Yang gives way to the darkness of Yin, but only by apparently contradicting earlier indictments against confident assertions and linguistic boundaries to show how logical syllogisms founded on cascading temporal regresses of beginnings, followed by embedded logical regresses of being and nonbeing, lead paradoxically to ‘uncertainty’ 未. In these ways, the chapter’s center-most ring juxtaposes the central tensions of the chapter: clarity and uncertainty, and their relationship with other supposed binaries such as sameness and difference, being and nonbeing.
In order to appreciate the coherence, relevance, and power of these ideas, it is helpful to note ways in which they prefigure and enliven key aspects of Peircean pragmatism. I sketch some of these connections in the next section with a special focus on the two center-most rings: QWL 06[F]:07[G]::08[G′]:09[F′].
5 Proto-Peircean pragmatism at the core of the Qiwulun
Since the interpretive key of a chiastic composition is loaded toward its central rings, it is important to consider these sections carefully. I argue in this section that in considering the Qiwulun’s core rings it is also helpful to note ways in which the text prefigures key themes in Peircean semiotic pragmatism. These themes include triadic relations, the pragmatic maxim, the continuity thesis, and contrite fallibilism.
5.1 Triadic relations
It is widely appreciated in Peircean semiotics that the meaning of a triadic sign relation is irreducible to any one of its three modes. Rather, meaning emerges from the complex interrelation of sign vehicle (representamen), focal target (object), and local potential (interpretant). While all three modes are activated in the process of creating a new sign, the mode of being most heavily involved in meaning construal, or the development of understanding, is the interpretant – i.e. that which one is prepared to interpret, whether wittingly or unwittingly, about the nature and function of a given relation. Critically, for Peirce, the interpretant is a mode of “Thirdness” – i.e. continuity or mediation – that which functions not as the final item in a list of three items or the grand conclusion to a two-part argument but rather as the connecting tissue or the in-between: “Third is the concept of mediation, whereby a First and a Second are brought into relation” (Peirce c. 1905: EP 1.296).
This point may seem basic, but it is anything but transparent to many students and scholars of Peirce (Pelkey 2013a). This is due in part to widespread common sense assumptions about sequential lists. According to these assumptions, the sequence First, Second, Third should map onto Beginning, Middle, End, respectively; but this intuition does not square with Peirce’s system. In Peirce’s own words: “By the third, I mean the medium or connecting bond between the absolute first and last. The beginning is first, the end second, the middle third” (1875: CP 1.337, emphasis mine). According to Peirce, in other words, the relevant mapping should be rendered as in (6):
| Mapping beginning–middle–end onto Peirce’s categories |
| Beginning = First |
| Middle = Third |
| End = Second |
Part of the challenge of internalizing Peirce’s system (much less applying it widely and successfully) hinges on this point. And it is here that immersing one’s imagination in the chiastic structures of pre-modern texts stands to be so fruitful. Figure 3 illustrates the relationship between common sense notions of beginning, middle, and end applied first to a ring diagram and then mapped onto the Peircean categories.
As discussed above, ring compositions involve a kind of inverse symmetrical interplay between first, last, and middle. In much the same way, Peirce argues: “Not only does Thirdness suppose and involve the ideas of Secondness and Firstness, but never will it be possible to find any Secondness or Firstness in the phenomenon that is not accompanied by Thirdness” (1903: CP 5.90). In ring compositions, as in Peircean semiotic, the beginning and the end are brought into relation by an interpretive key in the middle.
More specifically related to the Qiwulun, as noted above, the penultimate center ring 06[F]::09[F′], is marked by parallel discussions of oneness and threeness (with fourness also featuring in 06[F] and twoness also featuring in 09[F′]). And even though the ultimate aim of the chapter would seem to be weighted toward oneness (moving beyond oppositions), Zhuangzi pays clear tribute to a Daoist theme from Laozi in the process. This is especially transparent in 09[F′]: “The one and what I said about it make two, and two and the original one make three. If we go on this way, then even the cleverest mathematician can’t tell where we’ll end, much less an ordinary person.” These lines echo Laozi’s own: “The Dao gave birth to One, One gave birth to Two, Two gave birth to Three, and Three gave birth to the ten thousand things” (Laozi c. 500 BCE: 42).[13] As Zhuangzi continues in QWL 09[F′], the introduction of threeness serves as a kind of tipping point: “If moving from nonbeing to being we get to three, how far will we get if we move from being to being?”
In both Zhuangzi and Laozi we find an overt acknowledgment of “three” as the quantity from which all other quantities are generated. The same can be said for Peirce. Such claims may seem to be open to critique on grounds of arbitrariness (see, e.g., Kull 2019). But Peirce defends the necessity of triadic relations in many ways, not least of all empirical:
[I]t will be asked, why stop at three? Why not go on to find a new conception in four, five, and so on indefinitely? The reason is that while it is impossible to form a genuine three by any modification of the pair, without introducing something of a different nature from the unit and the pair, four, five, and every higher number can be formed by mere complications of threes. […] A road with only three-way forkings may have any number of termini, but no number of straight roads put end on end will give more than two termini. Thus any number, however large, can be built out of triads; and consequently no idea can be involved in such a number, radically different from the idea of three. (c. 1890: CP 1.363)
This passage is often neglected in discussions of Peirce’s rationale for his triadic system. Much more can be said about its significance (see, e.g., Ketner 1986, 1988); but, for our purposes here, suffice it to say that the perspective is congruent with Zhuangzi’s sense that “three” is both necessary and sufficient for higher-order degrees of complex relations. It is also clear in the Qiwulun, though, that Zhuangzi is concerned about the dubious effects of threeness, since three tends to introduce false distinctions that create distractions – the most harmful of which are dogmatic binaries that lead to vapid debates and wasted lives. This in turn motivates a call for the unification of understanding, along with a call to action that shares much in common with Peirce’s pragmatic maxim.
5.2 The pragmatic maxim
As discussed in the introduction, Peirce’s pragmatic maxim is primarily concerned with the clarification of concepts. He insists that any concept not grounded primarily in ordinary experience and ultimately in purpose-driven action should be called into question (1903: CP 5.212). The Qiwulun shares these concerns – especially in its critique of received conceptual boundaries and their tendency to lead practitioners toward blind ideology. Indeed, this point finds purchase in the very title of the chapter, as discussed in Section 2. As discussed in Section 4 above, the problematic boundaries created by words and the misguided confidence enabled and enforced by speech are all directly challenged in the chapter – especially in rings 04[D]:05[E]::10[E′]:11[D′]. Moving from these passages into the core rings, then, one might expect to find some solution or resolution in order to more adequately deal with such problems.
This is provided in core passages 06[F]:07[G]::08[G′]:09[F′]; but Zhuangzi’s solution is no formulaic quick-fix; rather, a range of attitude adjustments and practical responses are called for – at least three of which map well with elements of Peircean thought: fallibilism, continuity, and the pragmatic maxim. Zhuangzi’s prefiguration of the pragmatic maxim is grounded in yōng 庸, a term that Watson (1968) translates as ‘the constant’:
[T]he person of far-reaching vision […] relegates all to the constant. The constant is the useful; the useful is the passable; the passable is the successful; and with success, all is accomplished. They rely upon this alone, rely upon it and do not know they are doing so. This is called the Way. (QWL 06[F], gender-neutral adjustments mine, JP)
Yōng 庸 could also be translated, ‘the ordinary,’ ‘the commonplace,’ or ‘the mediocre’ – a conception not far removed from the perceptual realm of ordinary experience where Peirce insists inquiry should begin. It is also clear that grounding one’s inquiry in the everyday is not enough for Zhuangzi (ditto for Peirce). The inquirer is also to search for further footing in purpose-driven action: a search that is ultimately vindicated by criteria of beneficial usefulness. Closely related to this aspect of proto-Peircean pragmatism that emerges at the core of the Qiwulun is its underlying ground and motivation: i.e. “知通為一” ‘comprehending things in their unity’ (QWL06[F], Legge 1891, trans.), which calls to mind Peirce’s continuity thesis.
5.3 The continuity thesis
Peircean semiotic pragmatism works from a “theory of continuity” (c. 1897: CP 1.170) that assumes everything is both logically and temporally continuous with everything else. Peirce scholars point out that the “concept of continuity is so central and basic to Peirce that it is not too much to say that he built the whole final version of his philosophy around it” (Stjernfelt 2007: 3; see also Peirce c. 1893: CP 1.171). Peirce also discusses his ontology of relations in process as “synechism” (<Greek συνεχής ‘continuous’). Synechism for Peirce is always in process, creating and maintaining relations that are real but indeterminate – instead of being fixed or absolute.
This same sense of fundamental interconnection between things is also a salient theme at the core of Zhuangzi’s Qiwulun. One of the defining parallels between sections 06[F]::09[F′] is a set of vivid poetic passages that are represented in Table 1 with the construction “…為一,” denoting ‘unity’ or ‘oneness.’ Consider each in turn:
For this reason, whether you point to a little stalk or a great pillar, a leper or the beautiful Hsi-shih, things ribald and shady or things grotesque and strange, the Way makes them all into one. Their dividedness is their completeness; their completeness is their impairment. No thing is either complete or impaired, but all are made into one again. Only the person of far reaching vision knows how to make them into one. (QWL 06[F])
There is nothing in the world bigger than the tip of an autumn hair, and Mount T’ai is tiny. No one has lived longer than a dead child, and P’eng-tsu died young. Heaven and Earth were born at the same time I was, and the ten thousand things are one with me. We have already become one, so how can I say anything? But I have just said that we are one, so how can I not be saying something? (QWL 09[F′])
In both of these passages, Zhuangzi insists that everything is already unified, while also acknowledging that things are nevertheless divided – or so they seem to be in the act of categorizing and speaking about them. But the confusion that these apparent contradictions induce is not something to be explained away. Instead, in an important sense, it is the real point of the chapter, i.e. the affirmation of uncertainty and doubt – a stance not far removed from Peirce’s own embrace of fallibilism.
5.4 Contrite fallibilism
Peirce’s position of “contrite fallibilism” (1893: CP 1.14) links up with his continuity thesis. The ever-unfolding relations between things, real as they are, are also indeterminate (c. 1897: CP 1.71), and the affinity that our bodyminds share with the universe we have evolved from is at best imperfect (1903: CP 5.47). We can make progress in understanding the true nature of things, but because of the indeterminacy of relations, we can never reach full knowledge or absolute understanding. As a result, according to Peirce, “no blight can so surely arrest all intellectual growth as the blight of cocksureness” (c. 1897: CP 1.13). A fallibilist stance is then non-negotiable for Peirce; indeed, it is “a linchpin of his philosophy” (Houser 2006: 3). It is also a linchpin of the Qiwulun. In fact, my chiastic analysis identifies it as the linchpin of the chapter.
Zhuangzi’s Qiwulun is in many ways a plea for contrite fallibilism as an alternative to slavish devotion to ideology or pitiful delusions of misplaced certainty. In fact, considered in terms of its chiastic composition, this can be identified as the chapter’s central interpretive key. It is arguably the strongest unifying theme of QWL 07[G]::08[G′], the text’s two mid-most passages. First, 07[G] concludes that the best way to find clarity is by steering with ‘the torch of chaos and doubt’ 滑疑之耀 instead of placing stock in entrenched debates over empty linguistic concepts championed by competing logicians. Then 08[G′] proceeds to induce a firsthand experience of chaos and doubt by confronting us with a relentless cascade of logical and temporal relations that come to seem like bewildering, empty concepts:
There is a beginning. There is a not yet beginning to be a beginning. There is a not yet beginning to be a not yet beginning to be a beginning. There is being. There is nonbeing. There is a not yet beginning to be nonbeing. There is a not yet beginning to be a not yet beginning to be nonbeing. Suddenly there is nonbeing. But I do not know, when it comes to nonbeing, which is really being and which is nonbeing.
Just as 07[G] concludes with an affirmation of “chaos and doubt” or “confusion and perplexity” (Legge 1891), 08[G′] ends with a double statement of doubt: following the statement above, the section concludes, “I don’t know whether what I have said has really said something or whether it hasn’t said something.” As Ma and van Brakel (2019: 150) point out, Zhuangzi’s conception of doubt is more closely aligned with Peirce’s “reasonable doubt” instead of the “methodological doubt” of Descartes or the “skeptical doubt” of Sextus Empiricus. In other words, for both Zhuangzi and Peirce, the point is not to manufacture doubt or to doubt everything (which is actually impossible) but rather to embrace doubt when it is genuinely present. But neither is the embrace of genuine doubt an end in itself for either Zhuangzi or Peirce. Rather, for Zhuangzi, doubt illuminates the way to greater clarity; and for Peirce, acknowledging that “you do not satisfactorily know already” is “indeed the first step toward finding out” (c. 1897: CP 1.13).
6 Conclusion: reinterpreting Zhuangzi’s butterfly dream
What should be made of Zhuangzi’s famous butterfly dream in light of these findings? Discovering that the broader chapter (i.e. the butterfly dreamscape) is structured as a “ring composition” allows new interpretive leverage that can be used to better understand relationships between textual parts and wholes. According to text-level chiastic ordering principles, the part–whole relations most relevant for guiding textual interpretation are center–margin relations. One thing this means for the butterfly dream story is its own relative degree of demotion in terms of interpretive scope. As a result, the story should no longer be thought of as the grand conclusion to the chapter. Nor should it be conceived merely as an isolated narrative about the nature of identity (pace, e.g., Haft 2006; Han 2009; K. Lee 2015). Instead, the butterfly dream story’s themes are structurally enriched by a new kind of stereoscopic vision that comes from viewing the story through the lenses of its inverse parallel counterparts and vice versa. Given the principles of hermeneutic central loading and center–periphery dialogue identified by Mary Douglas as defining features of ring compositions, the butterfly dream story can now be thought of as vitally interrelated with the beginning and middle sections of the chapter in particular: i.e. 01[A] …06[F]:07[G]::08[G′]:09[F′]… 14[A′].
Zhou’s sense of confusion upon waking from his dream in 14[A′] evokes Zi Qi’s confession, upon being roused from his daydream in 01[A], that he had just lost himself – and vice versa. More importantly, the reader/listener’s central experience of losing one’s own self in a dream-like blur of logical and temporal linguistic relations induced by the narrator in 08[G′] is affirmed in the immediately preceding section (07[G]) as the torch of “chaos and doubt” which lights the way to clarity. This pivotal pairing then sheds new light on the opening and closing dream stories, which can now be thought of in terms of one’s own new experience and its reevaluation, in which genuine doubt comes to be preferred over misplaced certainty. The center–periphery relations do not stop here, naturally, as discussed above. All four passages also affirm in their various ways the necessity of differences between things (at least when we are relying on linguistic forms and practices to communicate). But, as the penultimate core 06[F]::09[F′] reminds us, it is the unification of differences, not the entrenchment of ideologies, that leads to meaningful growth.
In the process of identifying these key interpretive clues woven into the textual structure, a number of core themes emerge that seem to prefigure defining features of Peircean semiotic pragmatism. My master argument and ultimate motivation in writing this paper has been to show ways in which the thought of Zhuangzi, the thought of Peirce and the patterns of chiastic discourse structure can illuminate each other. In this way, the exercise is in some sense congruent with its object, while also serving to illustrate one of the key features of chiasmus: interdependent dialogue through which parts and wholes are mutually enriched via patterned relations.
But this is a preliminary study; much more could be said at every turn. My interpretive exegesis using textual analysis is systematic, but it is not comprehensive. Rather, the study calls for further work and opens up new vistas on textual analysis throughout The Zhuangzi (and elsewhere). Proto-Peircean themes in the Qiwulun are in need of further development as well, and this is especially true with reference to the chapter’s role in the larger text of The Zhuangzi. The ring structure I have defined and the interpretive guidance that it offers both have more potential for development, as do other aspects of chiastic patterning in the text. A separate study could be carried out on sentence-level chiasmus in the chapter, and in The Zhuangzi as a whole (building on McCraw 2006); and a book could be written on the interplay between clause-level and discourse-level chiastic structure in this chapter alone. Drawing on the work of Mary Douglas, and others, this study further illustrates ways in which the meaning of a ring composition is to be sought first and foremost in its center. The center position of a triadic relation is the most closely associated with meaning for Peirce as well. Hence, the relationship between chiastic structure and Peircean semiotics are further areas of promising research.
Another promising line of inquiry that this study develops is the role that centered (vs. hierarchical) models can play in helping ourselves and others transcend paralyzing effects of false dichotomies, contradictory schemas, and pernicious ideologies that waste our time and ruin our lives. This is the aim of Zhuangzi’s chapter, as indicated in its title, along with its ultimate end (an end which circles back to the beginning, fully informed by its middle passages). And what is that end? Nothing less than “謂物化”: ‘the Transformation of Things.’
About the author
Jamin Pelkey (b. 1974) is Associate Professor of Languages, Literatures & Cultures at Ryerson University, Toronto. His research interests include semiotics, embodied cognition, and language evolution. His books include Dialectology as dialectic (2011), Sociohistorical linguistics in Southeast Asia (2017), and The semiotics of X: Chiasmus, cognition, and extreme body memory (2017). He is currently editing Bloomsbury Semiotics, a major reference work in four volumes.
Acknowledgments
The first draft of this paper was presented as a plenary address to the Semiotic Society of America Annual Meeting 44, 11 October 2019, Portland, Oregon. The second draft of the paper was presented as an invited lecture to the Language in Context Seminar Series, Department of Linguistics and English Language, 10 December 2019, University of Edinburgh, Scotland. I am grateful to colleagues and participants in both of these events for the encouragement to continue developing these ideas and for the helpful feedback offered in order to do so. Further appreciation is due to reviewers and editors at Chinese Semiotic Studies for suggestions which led to improvements in the final revision process. All remaining errors are the butterfly’s alone.
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Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Part One: Cultural Signs and Sign Theories
- Conceptual metaphor and media bias: a critical metaphor analysis of British and American mainstream media reports on the Hong Kong riots
- Signs of music, intertextuality, and narrative strategy
- Part Two: Bridging Chinese and Western Semiotics
- Constraint and li, work and qi: Deacon and Zhu Xi
- Zhuangzi, Peirce, and the butterfly dreamscape: concentric meaning in the Qiwulun 齊物論
- Part Three: Cultural Signs in Translation and Discourse Analysis
- Where irony goes: routinization and the collapse of viewpoint configurations
- Pragmatic failures in public-sign translation: an eco-pragma-translatology analysis of environmental signage in Quanzhou
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Part One: Cultural Signs and Sign Theories
- Conceptual metaphor and media bias: a critical metaphor analysis of British and American mainstream media reports on the Hong Kong riots
- Signs of music, intertextuality, and narrative strategy
- Part Two: Bridging Chinese and Western Semiotics
- Constraint and li, work and qi: Deacon and Zhu Xi
- Zhuangzi, Peirce, and the butterfly dreamscape: concentric meaning in the Qiwulun 齊物論
- Part Three: Cultural Signs in Translation and Discourse Analysis
- Where irony goes: routinization and the collapse of viewpoint configurations
- Pragmatic failures in public-sign translation: an eco-pragma-translatology analysis of environmental signage in Quanzhou
