From Nothingness to Nothing

Guō Xiàng’s Nominalist Reduction of the Ontological Performativity of Wú 無

Abstract

It is well-known that the Daoist tradition conceives the world as emerging from an unfathomable first principle called Dào 道 or wú 無. Early medieval thinkers and commentators such as Hé Yàn 何晏 and Wáng Bì 王弼 played a key role in the elaboration of this tenet. However, their views were challenged at an early date, especially by Guō Xiàng’s 郭象 influential reading of the Zhuāngzĭ 莊子. Moreover, since the early 20th century, scholars have stressed the originality of Guō Xiàng’s rejection of the onto-generative power of the Dào. However, even in recent scholarship, readers tend to refer to a selected set of passages from the Zhuāngzĭ Zhù 莊子注, and to focus mostly on doctrinal statements. By contrast, this study aims at exploring the exegetical and argumentative strategies by which Guō Xiàng establishes his understanding of Dào and wú. I intend to show that Guō Xiàng’s rejection is based on a reduction of the meaning of wú to its verbal use, and on what I will describe as a nominalist attitude in the Zhuāngzĭ Zhù. By doing so, this study shall provide new insights into Guō Xiàng’s worldview, and the ways in which he construes his core tenet, namely the idea that all the myriad things are self-so (zìrán 自然), self-generated (zìshēng 自生), and lone transforming (dúhuà 獨化).