Meeting of the Northeast Conference on Chinese Thought- Abstracts

In this paper, I attempt to reconstruct Confucius’ theory of parental virtues. In Section I, I defend the importance of having a Confucius’ theory of parental virtues. I briefly introduce two main sources that I use in this paper: the Analects of Confucius and the Dialogues of Confucius. Six strategies employed in this paper are then introduced: (1) direct interpretation, (2) reconstruction from xiao, (3) the condition for xiao, (4) parent example, (5) inference from the analogy between family and state, and (6) aim as junzi. In the following sections, I argue that there are two parental virtues in Confucius’ thought. In Section II, I argue that parental love should be considered the most important parental virtue. First, parents would satisfy their children’s basic material needs and worry about their children’s well-being. Second, parents would show parental love appropriately. They would express their love for their children at appropriate times when they are still young. They would have an appropriate attitude towards their children by keeping busy taking care of their children. Third, parents are expected to be intimate (亲 qin) towards their children. They would be tolerant (宽 kuan, 容 rong) of their children when they sometimes make mistakes. This is shown by Confucius’ disapproval of the punishment in the parent-child relationship. Last, Confucius also emphasizes the respect (敬 jing) by parents for their children. In Section III, I argue that the second parental virtue should be the sufficient and appropriate instruction (教 jiao) provided by parents for their children. There are two methods of instruction — indirect instruction and direct instruction. First, I contend that parents could influence their children without specific and direct instruction in the familial sphere.

Parents are expected to act as the moral model for their children to follow to cultivate virtues. Parents possess several virtues, such as 孝 xiao, 义 yi, and 礼 li so that they could act as moral models for their children. Second, parents would also provide direct instructions for their children. They could achieve this in two ways. They would teach their children about virtues by explaining the meaning of virtues and the relevant behavioral requirements for those virtues. They would also seek external sources, i.e., instructors and classical texts, for their children to pursue knowledge and cultivate virtues. Last, I argue that the purpose of parental instruction is to cultivate their continuous love of learning throughout their lifetime.

In this paper, I argue that shu (恕) in the Analects, namely, the maxim “do not do unto others as one does not wish oneself,” should be understood as a gradual self-corrective process rather than a simple injunction by critically reviewing the previous works of Fingarette, Lau, and Ivanhoe. I argue that shu is not only a way of treating others but also a process of correcting one’s decision-making process. Specifically, I propose that through shu as a self-corrective process based on interactions, a moral agent can develop the capacity to discern moral appropriateness in specific situations. Furthermore, by examining the story of Upright Going in the Analects and similar stories in Zhuangzi and Huaninanzi, I will argue that the scene showing the different opinions about uprightness (直) between Kongzi and the duke of She should be understood as the example of shu, searching the moral appropriateness through interactions with others. By analyzing these examples with a focus on shu as a self-corrective process, I will clarify the concrete steps involved in applying shu in specific situations. These steps include: (1) initial moral judgment, (2) moral imagination to understand the perspective of the other, (3) suspension of initial moral judgment based on this understanding, (4) revision of the initial moral judgment, and finally, the repetition of this process until moral appropriateness is achieved. Additionally, I will highlight that for this process to be successfully carried out, it requires mutual engagement with others rather than being conducted unilaterally.

What is Confucian respect? Some argue that jing (敬) is the equivalent of the Western concept of respect, while stressing that jing is distinctive in that it emphasizes treating objects seriously. Others argue that jing is different from the Kantian respect for persons because it fundamentally concerns how one perceives one’s place in the world instead of being a response provoked by the worthiness of objects. In this paper, I argue that jing is a virtue, and it concerns how the agent interacts with the world instead of being called on by inherent proprieties of objects. While endorsement of the value of objects is not constitutive of jing, some crucial forms of jing involve appreciation of the value of objects. Moreover, when jing guides interpersonal relationships, it has diverse normative grounds, which have not been carefully analyzed by recent interpretations. Thus, they fail to reveal that jing is closely connected to other Confucian cardinal virtues. Furthermore, jing involves being alert and concentrated, showing respect towards the worthy, recognizing one’s limitations and a sense of humility and modesty, and an aspiration to emulate the worthy. While recent literature has regarded jing as a remedial virtue that can overcome arrogance, we should not ignore the “emulating the worthy” dimension of jing, which consists of its positive aspect. Only by fully appreciating the multiple dimensions of jing, can we understand how it can enlarge democratic citizens’ minds in pluralistic societies where constant conflicts emerge between them.

By this point, Anglophone philosophers are well accustomed to mining chapter 2 of the Zhuangzi (hereafter “the Qiwulun”) for challenging claims about knowledge, language, and reality. They are less accustomed to mining it for the kind of practical advice that people need in social situations, let alone in leadership positions. But not only does the chapter’s recommended approach to disagreement and debate seem aimed at de-escalating social confrontations: it’s presented as a way to please other people, to solve practical problems together, and to overcome the isolation that we inadvertently encourage when we fail to appreciate what people have in common. Beyond this, the chapter explicitly invokes the de 德 of kings, and assumes that sages will be in a position to debate history and policy questions. It even offers a systematic template for enhancing one’s ren 仁, integrity, and courage along lines suggested by its in-depth exploration of how dao and language work. The main focus of this presentation will be on this “five greats” passage, which asserts that the “great” or “big” (da ⼤) versions of dao, discriminative intelligence (bian 辯), ren, integrity, and courage are significantly different from the “small” versions—different enough to be, in some respects, their opposites. A primary theme throughout the Qiwulun is that, while “dao” obviously labels any given determinate pathway, it labels all the other ones as well. All the small dao makes up the biggest dao, which in being all-encompassing no longer answers to our standard sense of what a pathway is. Something similar can be said about the biggest form of discriminative intelligence, which incorporates every smaller version of discernment and hence no longer speaks the “language” we expect it to. What happens when we apply this logic to ren, the disposition to care for one’s fellow human beings? Since caring for everyone involves balancing each particular attachment against an indefinite number of others, “great ren is not ren” at all—at least so long as we think of ren in terms of specific emotional investments. A maximally trustworthy person, meanwhile, is more interested in what each situation seems to call for than in their own supposed purity of character. If being conscientious across the widest range of human situations involves being lax or irresponsible sometimes, then being valiant across a comparable range involves a great deal of unassuming, gentle, and retiring behavior that we would not automatically associate with valor. In the context of the Qiwulun as a whole, the “five greats” passage can seem like a bit of an interlude or even an interpolation—but, however it wound up in its current textual setting, it expresses somebody’s decision about the practical significance of the surrounding skeptical, pluralistic, and antirealist material. The Huainanzi combines equally radical material with systematic portraits of politically effective people, demonstrating that this combination could be taken quite seriously in the milieu that produced our Qiwulun. If learning to appreciate many daos and many forms of intelligence is crucial in a leader, then it stands to reason that such a person will also need to appreciate many different people worthy of care (no matter their opposed interests), many different ways of doing the right thing (in response to different circumstances), and many different ways of fighting for what’s right (no matter how many seekers of right one needs to disappoint). This makes good leaders, depending on the perspective that one takes, inhumane, unrighteous, and cowardly. But that’s exactly as one should expect if, as the Qiwulun argues at length, enmeshment in diverse perspectives is not optional.

Han Feizi’s political ideal can be summarized as benefiting people from the ruler’s perspective. From this perspective, the ruler, as the interlocutor, is assumed to have the motivation to pursue good governance, and what needs to be doubted is his ability and people’s motivation and ability. Therefore, Han Feizi advocates for the supreme power of the ruler to ensure that the initiative of governance remains in the hands of those who pursue good governance, while also dissolving the spiritual freedom of people to prevent those with insufficient abilities from making self-righteous personal judgments. Since spiritual freedom is incompatible with people’s interests only in the special era, Han Feizi allows the ruler to lift this ban through reform after the war. However, this permission is very vague out of distrust of the ruler’s judgment ability.

Bridging political theory and comparative politics, this paper offers a novel reading of the Han Feizi as a social scientific analysis of authoritarian politics and autocratic survival. In so doing, it makes contributions to two literatures which have not previously been systematically connected: classical Chinese political thought and the comparative study of authoritarianism. Within Chinese and comparative political thought, this paper challenges previous readings of the Han Feizi as “Chinese philosophy,” emphasizing instead the text’s character as a work of political analysis. Within comparative politics, this paper draws on the Han Feizi to challenge mainstream scholarly approaches which take autocrats’ prioritization of political survival as a foundational theoretical assumption. These approaches inadvertently accentuate the puzzle of autocratic self-defeat: why do autocrats often seem to act in ways that undermine their political interests? By contrast, the Han Feizi offers an extended principal-agent explanation of autocratic self-defeat, centered on the intrusion of autocrats’ personal preferences and judgments into political decision-making and the unintended consequences that follow for autocrat-elite relations. The key upshot of reading the Han Feizi social scientifically is that autocrats’ consistent prioritization of political survival over their other personal preferences is something to be explained—and for the Han Feizi, the desired outcome of persuasion—not simply assumed.

This paper investigates the problems and possibilities of morality within Confucian qi-monism, the view that all of reality and value is composed of and contained within the realm of qi, or “vital stuff.” It first outlines this position across three key figures in the tradition: the pivotal Neo-Confucian Zhang Zai, the later imperial (Ming-Qing) Confucian Wang Fuzhi, and the major modern New Confucian Xu Fuguan. The three rejected the predominant Neo-Confucian notion that there is a primary source or locus of value and inherent reality beyond this “vital stuff,” and they did so in the face of prevailing commitment among their fellow philosophers to various transcendent metaphysical Confucian doctrines. The continuous renewal of the qi-monist position within the tradition—before, during, and after the imperial institutionalization of Cheng-Zhu metaphysics—suggests its enduring appeal. The persistence of its appeal should not come as a surprise, in fact: it voices certain deep commitments of Confucian philosophy, especially to the concrete and situated nature of what is good and right, that are shared with the Neo-Confucian metaphysicians (but mitigated, attenuated, and even contradicted by their metaphysics). At the same time, the continuous renewal of its opponent position—the identification of right and good with transcendent principle or pattern—evidences the similarly persistent appeal of that moral metaphysics. From Zhu Xi’s philosophy of principle to Wang Yangming’s philosophy of the heartmind to Mou Zongsan’s philosophy of the infinite heartmind, we see increasingly robust commitment to moral metaphysics among the most influential Confucian philosophers. Their belief that Confucian morality requires transcendent grounding has been a major source of opposition against the qi-monists—a concern that continues to be voiced loudly by leading contemporary Confucian philosophers who believe that “establishing values requires a metaphysical basis” (Chen 2014, 4). In other words, the metaphysicians fear that this version of Confucianism—Confucianism without transcendent commitments—lacks the requisite moral fortitude. The paper/presentation delves into the middle of these formulations of the qi-monist position, Wang Fuzhi’s, analyzing key tenets of Wang’s anti-metaphysical philosophy and evaluating its potential for upholding moral values. Wang claims that “the Way” (which the Changes argues is “above form,” whence we get the Chinese term for “metaphysics”) exists only when and where particular things exist (literally defining Confucian “metaphysics” in qi-monist terms). On this basis, he rejects the idea that we should seek to realize the Way of things through perfecting or aligning them to their proper form, emphatically and fundamentally precluding the possibility of (appeal to) transcendent normative standards. Is goodness and rightness possible without such metaphysical grounds? Wang Fuzhi believed so, rooting morality instead in the dynamic tendencies and situated good of particular things as they are instantiated. Norms arise therein, as part of the continuous and dynamic interplay of existing (and especially living and feeling) beings, rather than being bestowed from without. Explicitly championing and developing Zhang Zai’s philosophy in the face of established Neo-Confucian orthodoxy, the strengths of Wang Fuzhi’s arguments carry substantial weight for the other qi-monists and support the viability of similar Confucian positions more broadly.

Huayan Buddhism (華嚴宗), a prominent Chinese Buddhist school, is known for its extensive thesis of ontological interdependence, which posits that everything depends on everything else for its existence and identity. This thesis presents a radically different way of understanding the ontological structure of objects. In this view, reality is depicted as an arch where its bricks mutually support each other, rather than as a multi-layered building. Nonetheless, Huayan Buddhists also seem to acknowledge some ultimate ground. They endorse not only an ultimate principle, li (理), that governs all things, but also the concept of “One Mind” (yixin 一心) that generates all things. The revolutionary nature of the Huayan thesis of interdependence thus hinges on the precise roles that li and “One Mind” play in the Huayan system. As I will demonstrate, while Huayan texts clearly indicate that li is not the ultimate ground in Huayan Buddhism, the role of “One Mind” is less clear. I will then resolve the apparent tension between interdependence and “One Mind” by identifying true suchness (zhenru 真如), one of the two aspects of “One Mind”, as li.

This paper comprises the first attempt at a systematic philosophical reconstruction of an episode in the history of philosophy of science in the Chinese tradition. Shen Gua 沈括(1035-1091) is arguably the most important figure in Chinese scientific history. His largest and best-known work, the biji “Brush Talks from Dream Brook” (夢溪筆談), contains widely-celebrated refinements to the Song dynasty astronomical calendar, the introduction of arc-sagitta methods into observational astronomy, the first record of a tornado in the Eastern hemisphere, and more. Brush Talks also contains philosophically important comments about topics as diverse as the problem of induction, the nature of idealization and scientific representation, free will and determinism, and scientific classification. While there is a fair amount of historical work that situates Shen within the Chinese scientific tradition, there is none that aims to characterize or systematically reconstruct his philosophical thinking about science. Therefore that is my aim in this paper. As such, this paper also aims to establish the study of the history of philosophy of science in China (as opposed to history of science per se) as a viable research programme, just as many historians of Western philosophy and science work on (e.g.) Newton’s, or Einstein’s, or von Helmholtz’s philosophy of science. I show that there is a puzzle in Brush Talks concerning the possibility of scientific explanation. Shen repeatedly endorses causal explanations of ordinary phenomena, many of which posit unobservables (in contemporary parlance). These explanations almost always rely on analogies. For instance, planetary retrogradation is explained by an analogy to the shape of a willow-leaf; he explains the camera-obscura effect by analogy to fulcrums and oarlocks (MXBT #130, #44). Yet Shen also states that many methods of human knowledge are mere analogies (寓, MXBT #145). And in a famous passage he appears to state that human knowledge of nature’s regularities is impossible due to their complexity (#123, cf. Sivin 1973). Ya Zuo (2019) additionally situates Shen as a unique kind of proto-empiricist in Chinese intellectual history. The puzzle is as follows: how, then, can Shen consistently offer and endorse causal explanations that posit unobservables, given the apparent limitations on human knowledge? I argue that we can recover a more nuanced interpretation of Shen that systematically integrates these apparently inconsistent remarks with other comments he makes about what underpins knowledge. First, the face-value reading should be preserved: Shen routinely and consistently endorses the possibility of causal knowledge. Moreover, he elsewhere expresses surprising optimism about the extent of human knowledge, saying (e.g.) that “inferring the future from past causes is unsurprising” (故藏往知來，不足 怪也, #145). His apparent skepticism, I show, comes instead from a commitment to a sort of particularism about knowledge and an awareness of (in the parlance of contemporary epistemology) possible defeaters. He writes that “one cannot rigidly adhere to interpretations,” (#135) and that even natural regularities are “predetermined unless they encounter something” that disturbs them (#133). Reading Shen as an epistemic particularist delivers an interpretation which vindicates both his optimism about causal explanation and provides a more nuanced characterization of his general epistemological position.

In this paper, I develop an interpretation of wu-wei 無為 in Daodejing, according to which wu-wei means what it literally means, that is, not doing anything at all. The key to my interpretation is that wu-wei, as not doing anything, is not the consequence of any desire, intention, or effort; rather, it is the consequence of being indecisive. More specifically, the indeterminate nature of Dao suggests that sages, as well as those who want to follow Dao in practice, should be indecisive with respect to what to do and keep all (practically) possible actions open. A consequence of this indecisiveness is wu-wei: nothing is done. Many scholars find it problematic to understand wu-wei as not doing anything. Instead, the popular understanding is that wu-wei is a special kind of action—the effortless or spontaneous action. While effortless or spontaneous action is an inspiring guideline for our practical life, I find this understanding of wu-wei unsatisfying in the context of Daodejing. Thinking of wu-wei as effortless or spontaneous action does not align well with the nature of Dao and the character of sages who follow Dao in practical life. In Daodejing, wu-wei is one of the “wu 無-aspects” of Dao, together with wu-xing 無形 (featurelessness) and wu-ming 無名 (namelessness), among others. Dao is constant and exemplifies wu-wei (Daodejing 37), so do sages (Daodejing 2, 57, 64). As a consequence of wu-wei, the myriad things and people are spontaneously transforming (自化) (Daodejing 37, 57). The text suggests that spontaneous actions are consequences of, but not identical with, wu-wei. Taking wu-wei to be spontaneous action implies not only that Dao exemplifies spontaneous actions but also that Dao shares some feature with the myriad things—they all perform spontaneous actions. But this seems unacceptable given the nature of Dao as wu 無 and the fundamental difference between Dao and the myriad things. Further, understanding wu-wei as effortless or spontaneous action fails to fully capture the feminine aspect of Dao, which is described as “mother” (母) and “female” (雌, 牝). A corresponding feminine characteristic that is emphasized in practical life is Rou 柔 or softness. Is being effortless or spontaneous a way of being soft so that when everything is spontaneously transforming, everything shares this feminine nature of softness, and the male aspect of nature disappears accordingly? It seems not. Thus, understanding wu-wei as effortless or spontaneous action does not fully accommodate the differences between Dao and the myriad things. As I argue in a separate project, Dao is essentially indeterminate, and this indeterminate nature prevents Dao from having concrete features and grounds all possible ways of being. Thinking of Dao as providing a guideline for practice, it is natural to think that we should be indeterminate with respect to what to do and keep all possible options open for us. For, just like “five colors make one blind” and “five sounds make one deaf”, concrete actions, once done, limit one’s possible ways of life to certain boundaries. The emphasis on indecisiveness also aligns nicely with the feminine aspect of Dao, rou 柔 or softness. Compared with the Confucian virtue of gang 剛 that promotes being decisive and quickness to act, softness, as a Daoist trait, reminds us of the importance of being indecisive, being slow to act, being cautious, and not shutting down possibilities by making decisions. Hanfeizi describes this practice nicely as “slowing the heart with nothing accomplished, being soft and supple without making decisions, not deciding on liking and disliking” (Hanfeizi 15). The interesting difference, however, is that while Hanfeizi claims that indecisiveness leads to ultimate failure (亡), Daodejing suggests the exact opposite: softness and indecisiveness are powerful and lead to flourishing in the Daoist sense.

Reasoning by analogy plays an important role in the intellectual landscape of early China. In philosophy, many of these pieces of reasoning analogize the moral-psychological makeup of human beings and our underlying nature to different parts of the natural world. Why? In the literature, this question has been construed in two ways: (Q1) Why analogical reasoning rather than more prolix, detailed (I shall call them directly inferential) arguments like those with which we are familiar in the Western tradition? (Q2) Why the natural world as such a frequent term of analogy in discussions of morality and human nature?

The present paper has two aims. First, it identifies and argues against a presumption which underlies the very framing of question (Q1). A succinct way of stating this presumption is the following: the argument forms proper to philosophical debates are the directly-inferential ones (i.e. forms wherein conclusions follow inferentially from premises, either deductively or inductively or abductively). It is only under this presumption that (Q1) seems like a worthwhile question. I will take apart this presumption, suggesting that it conflates style of exposition with argument form. Making this distinction explicit clarifies that (Q2) is a better philosophical question to ask about analogical reasoning. Suggesting one possible answer is the second aim of my paper: Discussions about moral psychology and human nature in Early China proceeded under certain fundamental metaphysical commitments about the relation between Heaven and observable natural patterns, on the one hand, and humans’ place within these patterns on the other. Given these commitments, the function of analogizing to the natural world is more than just to persuade; it is to trace out what patterns in nature human beings resemble and where they fit in the natural order.

(“Guyue” 古樂), a chapter of Lüshi chunqiu, contains several passages describing the invention of music by imitating sounds emanating from nature (such as the wind and calls of birds). Is this mimesis? As with most pseudo-problems, the answer depends entirely on one’s definitions. If mimesis means no more than “creating art that imitates nature,” then obviously this is mimesis, but some authorities have insisted on restricting mimesis in such a way that only Western art could ever have it: mimesis presupposes a Platonic theory of Forms, a divine creator, and so on. This paper will show that the examples of mimesis in “Music of the Ancients” not only are matched by similar statements in contemporaneous sources, but also figure rationally in the overall philosophy of Lüshi chunqiu.

Analytic philosophers have been drawn to some sceptical passages in the Zhuangzi. There is wide disagreement over how exactly to characterize Zhuangzi’s scepticism or relativism, but much less has been said about Zhuangzi’s positive values. The analytic interpreters tend to use scepticism or relativism as the framework to understand Zhuangzi’s positive values and take him to promote a healthy dose of epistemic humility, versatility, and flexibility (Graham in Mair 1983, Allinson 1989, Schwitzgebel 1996, Chung 2018, Wong 2005, Connolly, 2011). I take such characterizations of Zhuangzi’s positive values to be at least inadequate, and often inaccurate. Instead of starting with Zhuangzi’s often-obscure sceptical comments, I reverse the strategy and start with the passages where Zhuangzi is explicit about his positive values. Frustrated by the absurd and chaotic nature of human life, Zhuangzi values life lived with ease and maximal individual freedom, and detests harm and societal duty. The unambiguous and compelling nature of Zhuangzi’s positive commitments forces us to resituate his skeptical or relativist sounding passages. I engage in close reading of the original text, and discuss and criticize the most influential recent interpretations from analytic philosophers to put my interpretational difference into sharp focus.

This paper investigates the ways in which the authors of the Zhuangzi 莊子 critique early Chinese ritual performance. Certain texts, such as the Analects (Lunyu 論語) and the Ritual Records (Liji 禮記), present passages/narratives in which knowledgeable spectators evaluate ritual performers. These spectators’ positive evaluations are based largely on the performers’ skills in enacting inherited ritual protocol. The performer/spectator relationship, therefore, centers largely upon spectators’ recognition and comprehension of the performer’s behavior. The Zhuangzi, by contrast, frequently upends this relationship by presenting scenarios in which spectators are surprised, confused, or angered by performers who blatantly defy ritual norms. These performers do not conform to established ritual protocol or “scripts,” but rather perform more spontaneous and improvised behavior, which privileges the performer’s body in the present and rejects the so-called “artifice” (wei 偽) of ritual scripts inherited from the past. Although improvisation (especially theatrical improvisation) serves as a useful aesthetic analogy for describing the ways Zhuangzian performers contrast with Confucian ritual performers, I argue that it is only part of the Zhuangzian critique of ritual performances. Through the analogy of performance art, I show that the visual and cognitive rupture between performers and spectators is a deliberate and essential feature of Zhuangzian ritual criticism. As integral parts of the “drama,” these baffled spectators accentuate how Zhuangzian performers intended to subvert the social/religious norms of early China and subject them to ridicule.

Agency is a central topic in Zhuangzian philosophy. The Zhuangzi offers a rich conception of agency that is distinct from dominant philosophical theories of agency in both its orientation and content. First, agency is manifested not in discrete individual actions, but in long-term courses or patterns of action. Second, as Karyn Lai recently noted, agency is understood in terms of responding appropriately to one’s circumstances by creating, identifying, and following a fitting path. This feature is linked to a foundational existential problem the Zhuangzi deals with: each of us find ourselves in a constantly changing and often chaotic and overwhelming world, which provides us with many opportunities but also inevitable obstacles, constraints and restrictions. To live well in such circumstances is to respond aptly and smoothly to these obstacles, constraints, and restrictions, in part by utilizing the opportunities creatively and flexibly. This link also explains the third key feature of Zhuangzian agency: it is inherently normative. The text uses a variety of evaluative terms, such as shun 顺, he 和, shi 适, to characterize the standards of adept actions (and, by extension, the standards of the good life) . The Zhuangzian approach departs from the prevailing conception of agency in pre-Qin China, which emphasizes the deliberative 虑and judgmental/approval（可）role of the heart-mind (xin, 心). While it does not completely deny the usefulness of planning and deliberation in the habitation/cultivation process, a recurrent theme in the Zhuangzi is that agents who rely on pre-established norms for action-guidance fail to respond aptly to concrete and variable situations. Instead, the proper role of xin is to be attentive and responsive. This role is described in terms of emptiness (xu, 虚 ) and heart-mind fasting (xinzhai, 心斋). We distinguish between different kinds of responsiveness and , drawing on recent advancements in skill theory, explain and clarify the roles of xin and zhi 志in directing action. First, cognitive control and automaticity integrate in executing action. Skilled action is never fully automatic but always has a cognitive component that “meshes” with automatic processes. One crucial component of cognitive control is attention control. The “empty” state of xin contributes to attention control by being attentive and clam, which makes it more likely to notice and track subtle things in the external environment and one’s own movements. Second, many skills are performed under variable, uncontrollable conditions. The advanced performance of many skills depends on the agent’s ability to flexibly adapt to variable, and sometimes difficult, circumstances. The openness of the “emptied” xin is essential for this ability. In sum, Zhuangist agency is skill-like (It is no accident that the text contains many fascinating “knack stories”) in that adept agency is structured as a purposive, directed, yet flexible response to circumstances. It is the result of interaction between the agent’s de 德 and zhi 志 and contextual factors in the agent’s circumstances, such as relations with others or the physical environment.

 It is well-known that, in classical Chinese philosophy, qing 情 does not always and primarily mean emotions. At the same time, many studies of the Zhuangzi still approach the discourse on qing 情 under the rubric of something like the philosophy of emotion. The aim of this presentation is not so much to criticize that approach to the Zhuangzi but to explore the aspects of qing 情 in the Zhuangzi that don’t neatly fit into the categories of passions, moods, and emotions. My attempt will be to illustrate the discourse on qing 情 in theZhuangzi through the notion of attunement. My main questions are: What if to be is to be attuned? What’s the relationship between attunement and rhythm, frequency, and intensity? And what kind of philosophy might result if the opening of Book 2 of the Zhuangzi is read as a phenomenological account of being as various (and varying) modes of attunement?