Hagop Sarkissian
University of Toronto
Utopia and Violence in the Primitivist Documents
Panel: The Sorting That Puzzles Things Out
AAS Convention, Washington DC, 7 April 2002

 

[NB: This replaces an earlier abstract under the title "Was the Primitivist China's First Utopian?"]

Abstract

The conventional pairing of the Laozi and the Primitivist documents from the Zhuangzi at first seems reasonable. Not only do both contain broad criticisms of technology, high culture, and instrumental rationality, but they also share nearly identical visions of an agrarian utopia. Nonetheless, stressing these similarities obfuscates the Primitivist's distinctiveness. Treated in isolation, it becomes apparent that the differences between the two texts are considerable.

Not only is the Primitivist uninterested in a mystical Dao or cosmological speculation, he has also lost faith in remedying the problems of society through reformation of proper rulership. His move towards radicalism itself is a censure against the Laozi: the fear underlying that text has turned into rancour, while its aphoristic appeals to moderate desires and to scorn luxurious objects have been replaced with ideological calls for the destruction of the socio-cultural order and the elimination of noxious intellectuals.

By shifting focus away from the text in which his writings were eventually compiled - the heterogeneous Zhuangzi - to the intellectual climate in which they were probably composed - the late Warring States / Qin-Han interregnum - the pragmatic, ideological concerns of the Primitivist are easily understood. Instead of looking at other 'Daoists' as sources of influence, I will suggest that the Primitivist can be fruitfully compared to such unlikely contemporaries as Hanfeizi and Li Si.

 

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8 Nov 2001 / Contact The Project / Conferences Page