Recently I helped a new first-year junior sister look over a paper, and in passing I jotted down a question here. This question is rather naive, but many people still make this mistake.
Quite naturally, like many beginners and even some scholars who comment on Laozi and Zhuangzi only in part, she understood “自然” as the “自然” in “自然界” (“nature” as the natural world). But in ancient China and ancient Greece, the word “自然” did not have this meaning at all (see my earlier article “Ancient Greek Natural Philosophy and the Scientific Spirit”).
Exactly what the word meant in ancient Greece may still require detailed textual verification, but in ancient China it is extremely obvious that “自然” did not refer to “nature” or the natural world. For in classical Chinese there were hardly any two-character words to begin with! So this “自然” can only be read separately as “self” and “so.” Yet this obviously simple point has somehow escaped many people’s notice; or even if they did notice it, they still stubbornly insist on reading Laozi and Zhuangzi through the lens of “returning to nature.”
My junior sister said that some reference books also explain it this way, which shows that when reading classical Chinese, it is important to find a good reference book. Fortunately, there are indeed good annotated editions. Chen Guying, for instance, is very clear-minded—“… the word ‘自然’ is not a noun, but an adverb. That is to say, ‘自然’ does not refer to a concrete existing thing, but describes a state of ‘being so by itself.’ In the book Laozi, all instances of ‘自然’ have this meaning.” (Chen Guying: *Laozi Jinzhu Jinyi* [*Laozi: Modern Annotations and Translation*], Commercial Press, 2003, p. 49)
Laozi’s “自然” is simply “self-so”; it is that simple. When Laozi and Zhuangzi emphasize “自然,” they are not talking about “embracing nature” or “returning to nature”; they are emphasizing “letting things take their course,” emphasizing noninterference, pursuing “wu wei,” pursuing freedom, “free and easy wandering,” the “true person”… The thought of Laozi and Zhuangzi is “consistent from beginning to end”; its key lies in these two characters, “自然.” If one misunderstands them, any interpretation is bound to fall into confusion.
What Zhuangzi says about what we now call the “natural world” is mainly embodied in the discussion of equality among things, the idea that “things and the self are one and the same.” But Zhuangzi’s main point is still not “returning to nature,” but “自然.”
Still, more broadly speaking, whether in the West or in China, the sense of “nature” as “inherent character” and its sense as “the natural world” are also part of the same lineage. What we today call nature or the natural world precisely refers to a world made up of things that are non-artificial, non-man-made, but authentic in themselves. So returning to nature, at bottom, is still returning to freedom, returning to a state of authenticity.
October 16, 2007
Moumou
2007-10-22 13:41:16 Anonymous 124.17.17.106
It’s embarrassing to say it~~~
Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.
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