How Metaphor Functions in the Zhuangzi: The Case of the Unlikely Messenger (Seminar organized by The Research Centre for Chinese Philosophy and Culture)

Abstract:

What I would like to argue is that Zhuangzi utilizes literary devices in his writings for cognitive purposes. There are two major external purposes, which we can label, level 1 and level 2. Level 1 is to break down traditional valuation in order to free the mind; Level 2, once the mind is free, to point to a higher, spiritual freedom that is the main goal of the Zhuangzi. To accomplish this, the literary devices contain an unlikely messenger and a message. The unlikely messenger functions to break down traditional or habitual ways of thinking and the message points to the higher freedom that is sought. The unlikely messenger functions as a metaphorical device that possesses a cognitive function. The unlikely messenger awakens the child-like imaginative dimension of the mind and in so doing, re-engages that cognitive sphere. That sphere is the mind in its pre-adult, pre-conceptual modality. The pre-adult, pre-conceptual modality of the child’s mind does battle with the residue of adult, conventional values that have been assimilated in the course of its adult incarnation. The child’s mind wages war on two flanks. While it rejects the conventional values of its adult past and present, at the same time it opens itself to the message itself which is a message of freedom for the adult that can only be appropriated after it has vanquished its residue of adult, conventional values in an internal struggle. This struggle among three generates the state of freedom in an existential and not merely intellectual form for the reader of the text. It is not enough to say, as many writers do, that Zhuangzi makes use of metaphorical communication. The question is, how is it possible that metaphorical communication can be cognitive?