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“But human speech is not just a blowing of air. Speech has something of which it speaks, something it refers to.”
The issue here is that speech has aboutness. When I say something, I am not just making noise, the noises I make are words and the words have meanings.
“Yes, but what it refers to is peculiarly unfixed. So is there really anything it speaks of? Or has nothing ever been spoken of? You take it to be different from the chirping of baby birds. Is there really any difference? Or is there no difference? Is there any dispute going on there? Or is there no dispute? Is anything demonstrated by it? Or is nothing demonstrated by it? How could any course of activity become so concealed and unnoticed that there could be any question about whether it is a genuine or a false course? How could any act of speaking become so concealed and unnoticed that there could be any question about whether it is right or wrong to say? After all, where could any course veer off to without that course thus being present there? Where could any speaking be present without that speech thus being deemed acceptable there?
The text in this chapter is, I think, more didactic, and less narrative, which, oddly, should have made it easier for me to get my head around, but after all the work I did getting myself to understand the mode the first chapter is written in, was a strange shift. And, of course, it's not like it is written as an essay or a treatise, it is still written in the form of anecdotes, but they contain these longer digressions. I think part of what is happening is that The Zhuangzi is here engaging with a point about the treachery of language.
The issues in chapter two, especially the early passages, are things that I have thought about and wrestled with in other contexts before, but The Zhuangzi has very specific targets in mind. It calls out the Mohists and Confucians by name, it references the White Horse Not Horse paradox, in some ways it is a very reactionary text. Plus, I've been told it is full of puns and jokes that are not always captured in translations (this chapter in particular has a bunch of wordplay about this/that and right/wrong that turns on character overlap in classical Chinese that isn't preserved in English, and is hard to translate).
I've been spending a lot of time thinking about the transition from the treachery of language, in the first part of the chapter, to what seems to be a bolder metaphysical thesis, as the chapter progresses, about the indistinguishability of things themselves. The first bit, about the inadequacy of language is an easy pill to swallow. Language really can't (despite the apparent success it has in the practical arena) do the full job demanded of it. But this seems to be a failing as language, and not something that bears on the shape of reality.
At the same time, The Zhuangzi seems to comfortably transition:
What is acceptable we call acceptable; what is unacceptable we call unacceptable. A road is made by people walking on it; things are so because they are called so. What makes them so? Making them so makes them so. What makes them not so? Making them not so makes them not so. Things all must have that which is so; things all must have that which is acceptable. There is nothing that is not so, nothing that is not acceptable.
This passage descends from what we call acceptable (unacceptable) to what is acceptable (unacceptable), and then combines the making of roads with things being called by a label. This is the passage (as I read it) where we get a clear collapse between the linguistic and the metaphysical. But I am not sure I understand why.
So I will probably spend some more time in the future reading this chapter and thinking about it, because this portion is perplexing to me, and doesn't sit comfortably with me yet. The next bit coming up, though ("three in the morning"), I have an easier way into, because it is about tricking monkeys into being less grumpy, and that is an easier thing to get my head around.
I am not sure I will stick to a strict linear progression through the text, because, if there is one thing I feel like i have permission to do here, it is wander freely through it, but also, I did want to talk about this part, which is opaque to me and somewhat frustrating, so I felt like better to go through than around.
