Book Review of "The Many Lives of Yang Zhu"
The following essay is a book review of The Many Lives of Yang Zhu: a historical overview, edited by Carine Defoort and Ting-mien Lee. I recommend the book for those interested in understanding the intersection between the Taoist tradition and pleasure ethics.
Who Was Yang Zhu
Yang Zhu–also spelled Yang Chu, and I will use these spellings interchangeably–is known as Master Yang or Yoshi by Japanese scholars. He’s–together with Lao-Tse and Zhuangzi–one of the founding fathers of Daoism.
When he lived is not known for sure, but it’s estimated that he lived circa 350 BCE, and so he may have been a contemporary of Epicurus. Here are some of the things that I learned about Master Yang in this book:
Some scholars (Cui Shu, Gu Jiegang, Feng Youlan–see page 289 of the book) actually believe that Lao-Tse (the deified official founder of Daoism, of whose existence we are not certain) was actually a disciple of Yang Chu, which would make Yang Chu or the Yangists the true founders of Daoism.
It’s possible that he was merely a freethinker who had not intended to create a school. Yang’s lineage or affiliation (jia) emerged later. According to Meng Wentong (page 327), two bands of the Yang Chu school emerged after Yang Chu. One focused on indulging one’s inborn nature and disposition, and the other one focused on restraining it.
According to Zhu Xi (page 169), Yang Chu left his imprint on the Chan (later, Zen) Buddhist lineage.
Daoism never had the Platonic split between body and soul that we suffer from in the West. In Daoism, the body expresses the values of the philosophy through medicinal practices, movement, martial arts, etc. This is attributed to Yang Chu’s focus on the body.
Although he has always been compared to Epicurus, Yang Zhu stood somewhere between the Cyrenaics and the Epicureans in celebrating (page 238) only sensual pleasures and not focusing on pleasures of the mind. Some Epicureans might even join the chorus of those who criticized him for too much self-indulgence.
Like Philodemus of Gadara (author of the Herculaneum scroll On Death), Yang Chu favored frugal burials.
Only fragments remain that have been attributed to him. The most complete Yangist collection of writings is chapter 7 of the Lie Zi (the third most important Daoist classic after the Zhuangzi and the Tao Te Ching), which was translated into English as Yang Chu’s Garden of Pleasure by Anton Forke.
Master Yang challenged the status quo (page 11) with bian (argumentation, debate), a practice which annoyed his enemies. Like Socrates, Yang questioned social conventions. Like Epicurus, he had strong convictions (page 23), and was therefore a dogmatist.
Although Yang’s doctrine focused on the body, historians and critics have always emphasized (and worried) that he was in practice an egoist. This encyclopedia entry on Zhuang zi says
Yangism or egoism largely rejected social or moral dàos on the apparent assumption that natural guiding dàos essentially recommend self-preserving behavior. Its paradigm is the anti-social hermit. Motivation by self-interest was normatively prior to any conventional dào. They preserved their natural purity from social corruption by rejecting society’s mores.
As studies of the fragments attributed to him advanced, and as people began to gain an appreciation that went beyond the caricature that Confucians like Mencius made of him, Yang Zhu was transformed by later scholars. As in the case of other fields of Eastern studies, it was Japanese scholars who elevated the study of Yang Zhu.
In sum, thanks to the efforts of young Japanese intellectuals trained in the discipline of philosophy during the Meiji period, Yang Zhu was revived through various phases, thus transforming from a neglected figure into a major ancient philosopher of egoistic hedonism. It was also within these intellectual trends that an image of “the philosopher Yang Zhu” was exported back to China from Japan. - The Many Lives of Yang Zhu, page 249
Takase is the Japanese scholar who is credited with contributing perhaps the most to the rehabilitation of Yang Chu for the benefit of future generations. In page 244, we see that he distilled the teaching into six elements observed in common with the thought of Lao-Tse, and he enumerated the nine elements of Yang Chu’s doctrine as egoism, hedonism, “discourse on name and substance”, discourse on nurturing life and celebrating death, discourse on taking pleasure in life, discourse on life and death, discourse against suicide, discourse on resting in peace in one’s life, and discourse on fatalism. He says that “for Yang Zhu, egoism and hedonism were to maintain one’s innocence and nature”.
Later, Chinese intellectuals applied a mechanistic materialist and Marxist analysis to Yang Zhu, arguing “by analyzing people’s thought from the perspective of societal and economic development and changes in personal relationships” (page 335), that his ideas and beliefs emerge from specific historical and material conditions. At one point, Marxists linked Yang Zhu to a ruling class that was in the process of being replaced.
More recently, and under the influence of Western ideas, modern Eastern scholars have shifted to depictions of Yang Zhu as a proponent of human rights. In the 20th Century, Liang Qichao attributed “rights” to Yang Chu, saying that he turned the “Chinese from slaves to citizens” by defending physical integrity, right to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. He says Yang understood rights but not the need to defend them through aggression.
Liang Qichao … became the first Chinese scholar to call Yang Zhu a philosopher. He was also the first Chinese intellectual to depict Yang Zhu as an advocate of the notion of “rights”. This depiction led to the portrayal of Yang Zhu as an individualist. - The Many Lives of Yang Chu, page 9
Four Aspects of the Philosophical Hedonism of Yang Chu
Page 115 of the book details four aspects of the philosophical hedonism in Yang Chu. They are:
#1 - Life over death
This idea is essentially similar to the Epicureans’ “death is nothing to us” doctrine, the aim of which is life-affirming. It’s accentuated in the idea of joy in life (le sheng, page 106), where le = joy, pleasure. It’s also accentuated in concepts like utmost joy (page 114, which reminds me of the “complete life” in Kyria Doxa 21) and nourishing life, which points to a life-affirming vitality. The concept of yang sheng (nourishing life) is associated by some Taoists with superstitious practices for living forever. For Yang Zhu, true nourishing life is about pleasure, health, and vitality.
#2 - Reality over pretense or reputation
This element reminds me of Epicurus’ adage that “it’s not the semblance of happiness but true happiness that we seek”. In page 119, we see that reality (shi) over pretense (ming), is associated with concern for real and natural things versus concern for name and reputation. In page 120, we see that the Yangists especially wrote against worrying about “moral reputation”, or against false reputation.
#3 - Internal, not external
The person who is good at ordering what is on the outside does not necessarily bring order to things, but rather, brings hardship to his body. The person who is good at ordering what is on the inside does not necessarily bring disorder to things, but rather, brings ease to his nature. - Zhuangzi
The inner alchemy described here reminds me of the introverted work of Kyria Doxa 14, and also of Nietzsche’s declaration that the higher man will be able to put his own soul in order. Here we see an inward-looking subjective ethics of the self, however the case-studies furnished in the Yangist literary sources show that some Yangists seem at times to have been vulgar hedonists, and seem to advocate lives of indulgence in some of the traditional stories used to illustrate their points.
The sources point to how lack of ambition for needless things is inner freedom, which reminds us of Epicurean warnings against struggling for things that are neither natural nor necessary. In page 122 the focus is on the inner versus the outer in terms of autarchy, so that it praises inner freedom.
When we can be killed or given life, that which controls our lives is outside us … When nothing in the world counters us; that which controls our lives is within us.
Some later scholars of Yang Zhu have pointed out that this internal focus produces tranquility, ataraxia, while focus on externalities produces perturbations. Shimada Chorei is cited in the book:
Master Lie concentrated on valuing equanimity and an empty heart; he privileged the love for one’s own body and aimed at preserving the natural endowments by precluding confusion and attraction caused by external things.
#4 - Freedom
Freedom is tied to being an individual.
[Yang Zhu’s] saying is that the life of people is like morning dew, in which people just live out their days in pleasure as much as possible, not sacrificing their pleasure to benefiting others.
Conclusion
Epicurus remarks that certain men have worked their way to the truth without any one’s assistance, carving out their own passage. And he gives special praise to these, for their impulse has come from within, and they have forged to the front by themselves. - Seneca, Letters to Lucilius, LII, 3
I’ve been wanting to harvest this Chinese wisdom of pleasure. There are curious historical parallels with the Epicurean tradition in terms of the pragmatic repercussions of the two doctrines, the forces that both lineages were reacting against, and how they were treated by the state and by the dominant ideologies of the state. This says something about the tension that always exists between the state/the collective on one hand, and on the other hand the body, which is to say: the individual with his desires, his dreams, his thirst for freedom, and his pleasures.
Principal Doctrine 14 recommends the practice of being an individual in order to procure true security. Although Yang Chu’s thought flourished in the east, he has much to teach us about the practice of PD 14.
The historical method used in this book reminds me of Bruce Feiler’s book Abraham (which attempts but fails to identify a historical person named Abraham). Like the patriarch of the Middle Eastern religions (who was reinvented over and over again, with fresh new layers of myth added over time), Yang has 11 different portrayals, with every generation reimagining him, sometimes with an agenda.
Our evaluation of Yang Zhu is not complete. In a future essay, I will discuss his moral challenge to ancient China’s military entanglements and ideologies.
