Andrew Meyer
Brooklyn College
On the Trail of Robber Zhi
Panel: The Sorting That Puzzles Things Out
AAS Convention, Washington DC, 7 April 2002Abstract Chapter 29 of the extant Zhuangzi, "Robber Zhi," is one of the most interesting pieces of pre-Qin literature. Constructed around a mythical encounter between the titular paragon of rapine and lawlessness and the great sage Confucius himself, "Robber Zhi" is at once a richly woven farce and an exquisitely subtle political and philosophical allegory. Many students of Zhuangzi have noted the uniqueness of Chapter 29. In this essay I will present a few suggestions about the text and its place in the pre-Qin intellectual world based upon a comparison of "Robber Zhi" with other chapters of the Zhuangzi and other writings found in works such as the Hanfeizi.
I argue that "Robber Zhi" manifests a basically consistent worldview with several of the Outer Chapters. A C Graham grouped together as "Primitivist (Chapters 8-11)," as well as Chapters 16 ("Menders of Nature") and 28 ("Yielding the Throne"). The author or authors of these texts were contemptuous of the wealth, power, mercantilism, and belligerence of the great mega-states of that era. They advocated a return to smaller, more strictly agrarian communities and the practice of mystical forms of personal cultivation for the regulation of the individual and society.
Of great interest is the highly polemical nature of these chapters. Their authors were deeply steeped in the intellectual debates of the Warring States, and developed a form of "trialectical" logical attack (the exclusion of two radical extremes against a correct center) that seems to have been quite influential in the philosophical culture of the third century BCE. Other late Warring States texts adopt tropes and rhetorical constructs developed in these Zhuangzi chapters, seeking to forward their own polemical agendas.
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1 Nov 2001 / Contact The Project / Conferences Page
