Abstract
Wang Bi’s syncretistic hermeneutics, influenced by his affiliations with the Jingzhou school of learning, draws on a combination of Confucian political and social thought, Daoist naturalism, and Huang-Lao concepts of the sage ruler, while his interest in the function of language also owes much to the School of Names. This study of Wang Bi’s life and works focuses on the distinction between “nothingness” and “somethingness” and the “substance” and “function” of “nothingness”: wu (nothingness), though possessing no physical existence, is both the primogenitor of and the cosmic program that directs all phenomenal existence, the ultimate principle of principles, the “one” that governs the “many.” As such, Wang’s xuanxue (arcane learning) fuses Daoist naturalism with Confucian ethics for the human world. For language, Wang’s analysis of the relationships among “images” (xiang), “ideas” (yi), “concepts” (yi), “principles” (li), and “words” (yan), develops a view of language that had immense impact on later Chinese hermeneutics and poetics. Finally, an account is provided of Wang’s influence on the later Daoist philosophical and religious traditions, and his veneration of wu “nothingness” is contrasted with Guo Xiang’s emphasis on the spontaneous self-generation of everything, entirely without a transcendent creator, his rejection of “nothingness” and veneration of you “somethingness” (phenomenal reality).
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Notes
- 1.
Liu Shao’s dates have been worked out by Lun Chibiao [Luen Chih-Biao] 倫熾標 in Lun 1990.
- 2.
WANG Xiulin 王岫林 has made a thorough study of the relationship between physical appearance and the appraisal of personal character during the Wei-Jin era (WANG 1996).
- 3.
“Pitch [arrows] into the pot” (touhu 投壺) was a game played at formal or ritual feasts.
- 4.
- 5.
Han Kangbo commented on those parts of the Changes not included in Wang Bi’s commentary: the “Commentary To the Appended Phrases,” the “Providing the Sequence of the Hexagrams” (Xugua 序卦), the “Hexagrams In Irregular Order” (Zagua 雜卦), and the “Explaining the Trigrams” (Shuo gua 說卦).
- 6.
Master Yan 顏子, also called Yan Hui 顏回 or Yan Yuan 顏淵, was supposedly the most virtuous, learned, and diligent of Confucius’s disciples.
- 7.
This is translated and annotated in its entirety in Lynn 1999: 30–47.
- 8.
Zhilue can also be translated as “Essential Purpose” or “Essential Meaning.” See Lynn 1994.
- 9.
Shi 勢 has a wide range of meaning, including “propensity,” which also would work here, but “characteristic potential” seems better since it more explicitly suggests that maturity is the realization of the potential for growth inherent in the character of things. For shi as “propensity” and related meanings, see the work of François Jullien (Jullien 1999).
- 10.
Zhuangzi, “External Things” (Waiwu 外物) (Chapter 26) (Guo 1997: 4.944).
- 11.
Entries by Robinet and others in Pregadio 2008 end with recommendations for further readings on the subjects involved.
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Lynn, R.J. (2015). WANG Bi and Xuanxue . In: Liu, X. (eds) Dao Companion to Daoist Philosophy. Dao Companions to Chinese Philosophy, vol 6. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-2927-0_16
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