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Dark Learning

Xuanxue, the learning of the dark or profound (xuan, a black shading into dark red, and so the hidden), is the name the fifth century gave to a subject of the imperial academy built on three “profound” texts: the Book of Changes, the Laozi and the Zhuangzi. It also names the thinkers of the third and fourth centuries who read those texts anew after the fall of the Han, among them He Yan (c. 207–249), Wang Bi (226–249) and Guo Xiang (d. 312). They read Confucius and Laozi together, not as rival camps.

Wang Bi’s method is a way of reading. In “Clarifying the Images”, on the Book of Changes, he writes: “Images are what bring out meaning; words are what make the images clear … So words are for making images clear: once you have the image, forget the words. Images are for holding meaning: once you have the meaning, forget the image. As the snare is for the hare, and once you have the hare you forget the snare; as the fish trap is for the fish, and once you have the fish you forget the trap.” He takes the Zhuangzi’s fish trap and adds a middle term, the image. “Whoever holds on to the words has not got the image; whoever holds on to the image has not got the meaning.” His target is the Han readers of the Changes, who tied each hexagram to fixed images and numbers: “if the meaning is strength, why must it be a horse? if the category is compliance, why must it be an ox?” When their system failed, they added more of it, “and once the origin is lost, the cleverer the worse”.

What the inquiry reaches cannot be taught in words. Pei Hui asked him why nothingness, on which all things depend, was something “the sage would not speak of, while Laozi expounds it endlessly”. Wang Bi answered: “the sage embodies nothingness, and nothingness cannot be taught, so his words necessarily concern what is; Laozi and Zhuangzi had not got free of what is, so they were forever teaching what they lacked” (Shishuo xinyu 4.8). The sage is Confucius, and he ranks above the Daoist writers because he did not talk about it.

Guo Xiang, whose edition of the Zhuangzi in thirty-three chapters is the one that survives, ranks the same way in the preface that bears his name: “Master Zhuang may be said to know the root … Yet although Master Zhuang did not embody it, his words reach the utmost: they comprehend the order of heaven and earth, set out the natures of the myriad things, reach through the changes of life and death, and make clear the way of sageliness within and kingliness without.” Of the disputers’ paradoxes he wrote: “These bear no relation to the functioning of the state; indeed, they may truly be called useless talk. But since young aristocrats must have some amusement when they are tired with the canonical writings, if they can distinguish names and analyze principles … is it not better than gaming?” (tr. Bodde).