Why is seminar pedogagy so rich? Because things like this happen. I asked each student in the Zhuangzi single text course to identify a passage from our reading (chapters 1-3) which they found particularly interesting. 10 students spontaneously identified 10 different passages.
It's just the setting you'd want for discussing perspectival Zhuangzi! Framing it all was one of my choices: Courses are formed by someone walking them. (2.19) "Course(s)" is Ziporyn's translation of dao 道 but I'm happy to claim this insight for seminar learning as well.
And Zhuangzi was waiting for us in one of his characteristic hijackings of a famous story, too, here a story of the sage king Yao, who first unified rule in China. When one day ten suns rose at once, "scorching the grains and crops, killing the plants and grasses" (as Ziporyn quotes from the Huainanzi in a note), Yao had nine of them shot out of the sky. Moral of the story: there must be only one ruler, one standard of rightness. But in Zhuangzi (2.37) Yao is advised a better course by Shun, the very person Yao chose to be his successor:
In ancient times, Yao asked Shun, "I want to attack Zong, Kuai, and Xu'ao, for though I sit facing south on the throne, still I am not at ease. Why is this?"
Shun said, "Though these three may continue to dwell out among the grasses and brambles, why should this make you ill at ease? Once upon a time, ten suns rose in the sky at once, and the ten thousand things were all simultaneously illuminated. And how much better are many Virtuosities than many suns?"
And Zhuangzi was waiting for us in one of his characteristic hijackings of a famous story, too, here a story of the sage king Yao, who first unified rule in China. When one day ten suns rose at once, "scorching the grains and crops, killing the plants and grasses" (as Ziporyn quotes from the Huainanzi in a note), Yao had nine of them shot out of the sky. Moral of the story: there must be only one ruler, one standard of rightness. But in Zhuangzi (2.37) Yao is advised a better course by Shun, the very person Yao chose to be his successor:
In ancient times, Yao asked Shun, "I want to attack Zong, Kuai, and Xu'ao, for though I sit facing south on the throne, still I am not at ease. Why is this?"
Shun said, "Though these three may continue to dwell out among the grasses and brambles, why should this make you ill at ease? Once upon a time, ten suns rose in the sky at once, and the ten thousand things were all simultaneously illuminated. And how much better are many Virtuosities than many suns?"
