Ziqiang Bai

David Wong’s engagement with Zhuangzi 莊子 is closely associated with his reflections concerning moral relativism. Wong means to defend the view that there is no rational and universal justification for any morality, which requires us to take a relativistic stance toward different moral views, treating a plurality of moral views (but not necessarily all) as worthy of appreciation or, at least, tolerance. His Moral Relativity (1984a) is “the first book-length study of moral relativism” (Xiao and Huang 2014: 1). After arguing extensively for the point that “a recognition of moral relativity is part of the best explanation of moral experience” (Wong 1984a: 7), Wong introduces Daoism to show how moral relativity may best account for our concern to treat every person truly with equal worth. Twenty-two years later, in his second book, Natural Moralities: A Defense of Pluralistic Relativism (2006), Wong develops and defends his pluralistic relativism, “an ambitious, sophisticated, and original version of moral relativism” (Xiao and Huang 2014: 1). In this book, Wong aligns Zhuangzi with his pluralistic relativism. He also employs Zhuangzi’s arguments to show that it is possible “to have confidence in one’s moral commitments while recognizing that different commitments are equally justified” (Wong 2006: 228). In fact, Philip J. Ivanhoe has already criticized David Wong’s relativistic interpretation of Zhuangzi in Moral Relativity (Ivanhoe 1996). This chapter will focus on Wong’s interpretation of Zhuangzi in Natural Moralities. Specifically, this paper will first present how David Wong interprets and uses Zhuangzi as a pluralistic relativist and then argue that Wong in his interpretations and uses of the Zhuangzi does do justice to Zhuangzi but projects his own relativistic moral theory into the text instead.

Abstract:Zhuangzi's understanding of human nature has not been extensively discussed in the English literature. The Chinese discussions of it, though many, largely tend either to be carried away into the Confucian conventional debate on the moral goodness and badness of human nature or to explain it away by overemphasizing Zhuangzi's stress on the uniqueness of the human individual. In this article, with the intention to pin down what is really meant by human nature in the Zhuangzi, it will first be examined what the word xing connotes for Zhuangzi and then argued that Zhuangzi characterizes human nature in terms of the heart-mind (xin 心), understood both functionally as what animates the body and essentially as a universally significant power that enables the human being to behave in a way similar to the way that the Dao 道 acts in the universe.