The ample Daoism section of the Norton Anthology of World Religions, which I gave a talk about a few years ago, has provided a perfect text for kicking off the single-text course I'll be teaching on the Zhuangzi. It's a review of a first English translation of the text by one Oscar Wilde in 1890, shortly before the appearance of The Picture of Dorian Gray!
Wilde likens Zhuangzi to everyone from Plato to Meister Eckhart to Darwin, finding he had summed up in himself every mood in European metaphysical or mystical thought (2087) and transcended them all, along with calling out the vanity of every attempt at economic, political or moral governance. Will we be ready to join him?
He sought to destroy society, as we know it .... Of course it is sad to be told that it is immoral to be consciously good, and that doing anything is the wort kind of idleness. Thousands of excellent and really earnest Philanthropists would be absolutely thrown upon the rates if we adopted the view that nobody should be allowed to meddle in what does not concern them. ... It is clear that Chuang Tsu is a very dangerous writer, and the publication of his book in English, two thousand years after his death, is obviously premature, and may cause a great deal of pain to many thoroughly respectable and industrious persons. (2087, 2090-91)
Wilde likens Zhuangzi to everyone from Plato to Meister Eckhart to Darwin, finding he had summed up in himself every mood in European metaphysical or mystical thought (2087) and transcended them all, along with calling out the vanity of every attempt at economic, political or moral governance. Will we be ready to join him?
