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Pyrrho’s Equilibrium & Zhuangzi’s Pivot

Pyrrho’s Ataraxia - Open & Closed Agnosticism - Zhuangzi’s Pivot - Zhuangzi’s Butterfly

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Pyrrho’s Ataraxia

While some see radical changes in perspective as scary, others see it as a challenge. Likewise, while some see the suspension of judgment as eternal indecision or even eternal torture, others see it as a blessed suspension, a levelling of sharp differences, even a transcendence of the problems of the world. The Greeks call this state ataraxia, from a-tarache or non-distrubance. While this concept can be seen in early Indian and Chinese writers, in the West it seems to begin with the 4th century BC Greek skeptic Pyrrho, whose ideas have come down to us through the writings of the 2nd/3rd century AD Greek writer Sexus Empiricus. In her book Sextus Empiricus and Greek Skepticism (1899), Mary Mills Patrick notes the following:

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Open & Closed Agnosticism

In the introductory page, 🧩 Not Quite Skeptical 1, I refine the definition of agnosticism by comparing it to three types of Pyrrhonic skepticism. Here I want to return to those categories, noting that my notion of the open agnostic is most like the ephectic skeptic who stumbles into ataraxia, the state of equilibrium between various points of view. The open, soft, inclusive agnostic is less like the aporetic skeptic who aims to reach this state of equilibrium by refuting claims of truth — although the hard agnostic shares this somewhat zealous trait.

Open agnostics are somewhat closer to the zetetic skeptic who desires to escape perplexity (aporia) and equilibrium (ataraxia) in order to find a constant truth. To be more precise, open agnostics are like the zetetic in that they are eager to search (unlike the aporetic skeptic or hard agnostic) yet they aren’t needing to search. If in the process of living and thinking they suspend judgment, and if in this state they come upon a perspective that looks constant, they’ll explore it, openly and without a great deal of angst. They do this because this perspective may offer a deeper truth, not because they need or desperately want to move on from aporia and ataraxia, and not because they aim to find a constant truth. They have a great deal more of Keats’ negative capability, which is the ability to remain in doubts & uncertainties without an irritable search for fact & reason.

Unlike the aporetic skeptics or hard agnostics, open agnostics don’t aim to prove that there is no constant or ultimate truth. Perhaps it would be better if there was a Great Truth, who knows? Nor do they feel the need to find such a Truth. If it is such an overwhelming and capitalizable Truth, It will reveal Itself in due course. Until then, they will live in the phenomenological moment, seizing the day while they still have eyes to see it.

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Zhuangzi’s Pivot

Zhuangzi, a fellow 4th C. BC philosopher, also develops a model of the mind that posits a balance between opposites. Zhuangzi’s model is reminiscent of that of aporetic skeptics, who aim to refute different philosophies so that they can move through perplexity (aporia) to equilibrium (ataraxia). Zhuangzi is more theistic in doing this, however, since for him the point of equilibrium is also the Dao, which is an essentialist or spiritual reality beyond arguments:

Are there or are there not two views, that and this? They have not found their point of interplay, called the pivot of the Dao. As soon as one finds this pivot, one stands in the center of the ring of thought, where one can respond endlessly to the changing views — endlessly to those affirming, and endlessly to those denying. (The Writings of Zhuangzi, trans. James Legge)

Prior to Zhuangzi, the legendary Laozi asks, “Between yea and nay / How much difference is there? / Between good and evil, / How great is the distance?” Zhuangzi takes Laozi’s yeas and nays and multiplies them. He then places them on a circle that contains an infinite number of opposing points. He replaces Laozi’s idea about morality with one about psychology: the mind finds a “point of interplay” at “the centre of the ring of thought.” He refers to this point as “the pivot of the Dao,” thus explicitly indicating that it shares something with the Dao itself, if the Dao can be said to be anywhere rather than everywhere and nowhere. Laozi makes a number of fascinating (and obscure) assertions about the location of the Way or the Dao:

Darkly visible, it only seems as if it were there. / I know not whose son it is. / It images the forefather of God … . As a thing the way is / Shadowy, indistinct, / Indistinct and shadowy, / Yet within it is an image; / Shadowy and indistinct, / Yet within it is a substance. / Dim and dark, / Yet within it is an essence. / The essence is quite genuine / And within it is something that can be tested … . There is a thing confusedly formed, / Born before heaven and earth. Silent and void / It stands alone and does not change, / Goes round and does not weary. / It is capable of being the mother of the world. / I know not its name / So I style it ‘the way.’ — (Daodejing, trans. D.C. Lau)

Laozi’s writing is notoriously poetic and obscure, yet Zhuangzi’s prose gets more clearly at the idea that the mind interacts with this shadowy ‘way,’ and that this interaction 1. has little to do with morality, 2. can come about through pivoting on the ring of thought, and 3. is a positive, aimless, enjoyable experience:

Since Yao has put on you the brand of his benevolence and righteousness, and cut off your nose with his right and wrong, how will you be able to wander in the way of aimless enjoyment, of unregulated contemplation, and of the ever-changing forms (of dispute)?

Zhuangzi’s position is here similar to the aporetic’s marked preference for the release of equilibrium. It’s also reminiscent of Byron’s notion that “It is a pleasant voyage perhaps to float, / Like Pyrrho, on a sea of speculation”…

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Although much is made of Daoism’s adage He who knows does not speak, Zhuangzi specifically argues that speech, like the ever-changing forms of dispute, is fundamental to who we are. Like Montaigne, he counters those who would push skepticism into realms where it negates the self that makes us human, or the thought which gives us the chance of understanding the self. Montaigne’s frustration with thinkers who use doubt to negate understanding surfaces in his comic statement, “When they say I doubt one wants to grab them by the throat and make them admit that they know at the very least that they doubt.” Zhuangzi makes a similar point: “How do you know that […] when I say I do not know it, I really am showing that I do know it?” Referring to the “pivot” which allows for a unified understanding of Heaven, Zhuangzi asks, “Why should we not inquire into it? Why should we be perplexed about it?” Zhuangzi insists that the ineffability of God and Heaven doesn’t imply that human thought can’t try to understand them: “Heaven, Earth, and I were produced together, and all things and I are one. Since they are one, can there be speech about them? But since they are spoken of as one, must there not be room for speech?”

Seeing the reality and distinctions in thought isn’t the same however as passing moral judgment about these thoughts. Zhuangzi notes that because the Dao is everywhere, it is also inside us, in our thoughts and speech. Because the Dao (like the Hindu concept of Brahman) lies within and beyond everything, everything partakes of it. As a result, what we don’t like or what we don’t approve of doesn’t really matter in the bigger scheme of things:

But how can the Tao be so obscured, that there should be ‘a True’ and ‘a False’ in it? How can speech be so obscured that there should be ‘the Right’ and ‘the Wrong’ about them? Where shall the Tao go to that it will not be found?

This statement is incredibly powerful in the realms of philosophy and theology, since it argues against anyone who would brow-beat or sermonize so as to control what is permissible to think. And just as one cannot forbid thought, one cannot forbid any train of thoughts, or any narrative — such as a philosophy or religion — which explains human nature, the natural world, or the supernatural world.

Zhuangzi shares a great deal with Montaigne in that both counsel critical thought yet also suggest that everything is connected in the mystical dominion of a greater Force. Like Montaigne’s take on Pyrrho’s ataraxia, Zhuangzi’s pivot makes a thought-cosmic connection possible. Because the Dao seems empty yet is connected to everything, the pivot of the Dao seems empty yet is also connected to everything. The Daoist who stands at ‘the centre of the ring of thought’ isn’t seeking a release or escape from the differing positions so much as he’s enjoying the ever-changing disputes. This is because he feels grounded in a mystical experience which transcends those disputes. Being at the centre is like being in the eye of a hurricane: everything around it merely highlights the calm at the centre. Like the Dao, this centre is a no-place, and can only be identified in a negative sense, by the things it isn’t.

The skeptic’s experience of ataraxia is at once different from and similar to the experience of the Daoist mystic. The starting points are different in that the Daoist starts with the experience of the Dao, whereas the skeptic arrives at the experience of ataraxia. The Daoist enjoys the never-ending disputes whereas the skeptic struggles to find a balance between these forms, so that he can escape them and enter into a state of ataraxia or tranquil equilibrium. Still, in both cases the tension created by opposites is reconciled by a suspending, balancing psychological mechanism. This suspension is closely aligned with the concept of critical thinking, that is, with a form of thinking which requires the thinker to get beyond their own point of view and to consider it in relation to other points of view. This critical thinking becomes a habit so that the mind comes to enjoy the detachment from opposing views as well as a distanced appreciation of them.

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Zhuangzi’s Butterfly

While others boys were busy in the trees

yodeling from branch to branch

like Tarzan in the green

I counted iron nails

and two-by-fours

and the force

of the face

coming

down

on

a

.

or

saw

above

the wide

open space

where I might

ascend for awhile

and feed on bright stars

and wonder how and where

the wings of the butterfly are held

from the centre of self to windswept air

Zhuangzi’s pivot of the Dao can lead to integration, doubt, or alienation, depending on how we re-orient our perception. Zhuangzi is different from agnostics not because he levers himself from previous selves and previous points of view, but because like Pope and Montaigne he starts and ends with an appreciation of a greater infinite power:

Do not keep pertinaciously to your own ideas, which put you in such opposition to the Tao. […] Be large-minded like space, whose four terminating points are illimitable, and form no particular enclosures. Hold all things in your love, favouring and supporting none specially. (The Writings of Zhuangzi 17.6)

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Next: ❤️ Hegel’s Dialectic

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