LIEZI Chapter 7 - Yang Zhu

[dawei]

LIEZI Chapter 7  - Yang Zhu

 

This is Chapter 7 for those that translate the work. As Giles did not, his chapter 7 is most others Chapter 8.

 

Graham:

Quote

The Yang Chu' chapter is so unlike the rest of the Lieh-tzu that it must be the work of another hand, although probably of the same period (3rd or 4th century A.D.). Its message is very simple: life is short, and the only good reasons for living are music, women, fine clothes and tasty food. Their full enjoyment is hindered by moral conventions which we obey from an idle
desire to win a good reputation in  the eyes of others and famewhich will outlast our deaths. If there is any philosophy which is near enough to the rock bottom of human experience to be the
same through all variations of culture, this is it; and the author presents it with uncompromising lucidity.

 

The Yang Chu chapter is the one part of the Lieh-tzu in which everything is familiar, and we follow effortlessly nearly every turn of the thought without ever sensing elusive differences of preconception which obscure the point. The historical Yang Chu (c. 350 B.C.) was the first important Chinese thinker who developed a philosophy for the individual disinclined to join in the struggle for wealth and power. Little is known of his teaching, which was submerged in Taoism during the next century. He seems to have held that, since external possessions are replaceable while the body is not, we should never permit the least injury to the body, even the loss of a hair, for the sake of any external benefit, even the throne of the Empire. For moralists such as the Confucians and Mohists, to refuse a throne would not be a proof of high-minded indifference to personal gain, but a selfish rejection o f the opportunity to benefit the people.

 

They therefore derided Yang Chu as a man who would  not sacrifice a hair even to benefit the whole world. the other hand the Taoists of the 3rd century b .c . and later, also concerned
with the cultivation of personal life, easily accepted Yang Chu as one of themselves. Outside this chapter the Yang Chu of the Lieh-tzu is a Taoist, although a group of sayings and stories
in Explaining Conjunctions" shows some traces of his original doctrine. When the hedonist author puts his very different theories into the mouth of Yang Chu he is merely following a recognised literary convention o f his time. He expressed the same opinions through a dialogue between Kuan Chung (died 645B.C.) and Yen-tzu (died 493 B.C.), although he must have known that these famous ministers of the state of Ch'i were not even contemporaries. However, there is evidence that the editor of the Lieh-tzu has expanded the hedonist document with five additions alternating with its last five sections, and that the first three of these are from older sources and concern the historical Yang Chu. 

Consequently there is danger of confusion, and in the present translation these passages (as well as a minor interpolation) are printed in italics in order to distinguish them. The first of them is a dialogue between Yang Chu and Chin Ku-li, the chief disciple of Mo -tzu (c. 479-c. 381 B.C.). It is evidently from a Mohist source, among other reasons because the story is told from the side of Ch in Ku-li. This passage, in which Yang Chu refuses to give a hair to benefit the world, gives the false impression, if we overlook its separate origin, that the author of the 'Yang Chu chapter was an amoral egoist as well as a hedonist. But there is nothing else in the chapter which supports this conclusion. The hedonist author is a rebel against all moral conventions which hinder sensual enjoyment, and an enemy of the respectability, the obsession with face, which the Chinese and the English confuse with morality; but he wants pleasure for other men as well as for himself. In one story the voluptuary Tuan-mu Shu gives away all his possessions as soon as he is too old to enjoy them, and dies without the money for his own funeral; those whom he has helped then club together to restore the property to his children. 

 

There is no sign of hedonism elsewhere in the Lieh-tzu, and the opening stories of the Yellow Emperor' and King Mu' chapters both reject it explicitly. The Yang Chu' chapter on the other hand is almost untouched by Taoist thought and language. The contrast is all the more striking since Chinese poets in their cups, xhorting us to enjoy life while it lasts, find it very easy to mix hedonism with mysticism. No other part of the book evokes a mood in the least like the sombre and passionate tone of this chapter. There is no question, for this writer, of seeking a standpoint from which to look with equanimity on life and death. The word Death' echoes through everything he writes, warning us to make merry while we can, and the only consolation which he admits is the thought that life, brief as it is, is long enough to weary us of its few pleasures. 

 

A Taoist, just as much as a Confucian, is a moderate, a compromiser who balances every consideration against its opposite, and avoids any excess which might shorten his natural span o f life. This hedonist, on the contrary, is by temperament an extremist, who presents all issues with harsh clarity, and prefers the intense enjoyment of an hour to any consideration of health, safety or morality. A Taoist laughs at social conventions, and eludes or adapts himself to them; the hedonist abhors them as a prison from which he must escape
at any cost. Any Taoist would understand part of what we mean by Liberty , but the author of this chapter is perhaps the only early Chinese thinker who would have appreciated the passion
which this word excites in the West.

 

Anton Forke:

Yang Chu was a philosopher of the classic age of Chinese thought who probably lived in the 300's B.C.E. He has been associated with the Taoists since the rise of official Confucianism and the consolidation of what we now call 'Taoism', although this term is problematic, as thinkers like Yang Chu, Chuang Tzu, and Lao Tzu are quite different and were not considered to be members of a single school in ancient times. In addition, the text that we still have which is attributed to Yang Chu is from a somewhat later period, preserved in the Lieh Tzu (other extracts of which are also available at sacred-texts in the book Taoist Teachings), which did not reach its final form until perhaps 400 C.E. or so. In this text, Yang Chu is far from being a mystic, and is concerned mainly with enjoying life to its fullest, allowing a person's individual character the fullest expression possible and not interfering with natural processes.

 

Anton Forke Translation:

Yang Chu's Garden of Pleasure

[The Yang Chu chapter of the Lieh Tzu (book 7)]

https://www.sacred-texts.com/tao/ycgp/index.htm

 

[wandelaar]

Yang chu - one of the more interesting ancient Chinese philosophers! Not for the faint of heart.