Zhuangzi Edited by Roger T. AMES and Takahiro NAKAJIMA Zhuangzi and the Happy Fish Zhuangzi and the Happy Fish ROGER T. AMES TAKAHIRO NAKAJIMA UNIVERSITY OF HAWAI`I PRESS HONOLULU © 2015 University of Hawai`i Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America 20 19 18 17 16 15 6 5 4 3 2 1 Library of Congress Cataloging- in-Publication Data Zhuangzi and the happy fi sh / edited by Roger T. Ames and Takahiro Nakajima. pages cm Includes index. ISBN 978-0-8248-4683-1 (cloth)— ISBN 978-0-8248-4684-8 (alk. paper) 1. Zhuangzi. 2. Taoist philosophy. 3. Philosophy. I. Ames, Roger T., editor. II. Nakajima, Takahiro, editor. BL1900.C576Z4945 2015 299.5'1482— dc23 2014033413 University of Hawai’i Press books are printed on acid- free paper and meet the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Council on Library Resources. Designed by Milenda Nan Ok Lee Printed by Sheridan Books Inc. For two more happy fish: Shinji Kajitani and Masato Ishida Contents Introduction 1 1 Zhuangzi: Th e Happy Fish Hideki YUKAWA 2 3 2 Yuzhile: Th e Joy of Fishes, or, Th e Play on Words Hans Peter HOFFMANN 3 0 3 Th e Relatively Happy Fish Chad HANSEN 5 0 4 Zhuangzi’s Notion of Transcendental Life Eske Janus MØLLGAARD 7 8 5 Knowledge and Happiness in the Debate over the Happiness of the Fish SHAM Yat Shing (translated by Joseph Harroff) 102 6 Th e Relatively Happy Fish Revisited Norman Y. TENG 130 7 Knowing the Joy of Fish: Th e Zhuangzi and Analytic Philosophy KUWAKO Toshio (translated by Carl M. Johnson) 141 8 Of Fish and Knowledge: On the Validity of Cross-Cultural Understanding ZHANG Longxi 149 9 Zhuangzi and Th eories of the Other Takahiro NAKAJIMA (translated by Carl M. Johnson) 170 10 Of Fish and Men: Species Diff erence and the Strangeness of Being Human in the Zhuangzi Franklin PERKINS 1 82 11 Th e Happy Fish of the Disputers HAN Xiaoqiang 206 12 Fact and Experience: A Look at the Root of Philosophy from the Happy Fish Debate PENG Feng (translated by Tu Qiang) 229 13 Rambling without Destination: On Daoist “You- ing” in the World Hans-Georg MOELLER 2 48 14 “Knowing” as the “Realizing of Happiness” Here, on the Bridge, over the River Hao Roger T. AMES 261 Contributors 2 91 Index 2 95 viii CONTENTS Introduction Th is book—like so many good things—began in a classroom. With the generous support of the Uehiro Foundation on Ethics and Education, we w ere able to convene the fi rst meeting of the University of Tokyo–U niversity of Hawai‘i (UTUH) Residential Institute for Comparative Philosophy in August 2012 at the East-West Center on the University of Hawai‘i cam- pus. Our teaching team included fi ve professors from UT and UH (Ko- bayashi Yasuo, Takahiro Nakajima, Kajitani Shinji, Ishida Masato, and Roger T. Ames), and the participants included some thirty graduate stu- dents from the two institutions with an additional ten international schol- ars. In addition to hosting a series of thematic lectures, our mission as fac- ulty was to introduce our participants to a close reading of original texts in Chinese and Japan ese philosophy, a skill that is deemed essential for every student in our comparative philosophy programs. During the UTUH institute it became apparent that we needed to es- tablish an interpretive historical and intellectual context in the reading of canonical texts. Specifi c Japan ese, Confucian, and Daoist readings w ere used to demonstrate the argument that locating the discussion within such a context makes a profound diff erence in the possibilities available for in- terpretation and allows the reader to avoid a pernicious cultural reduc- tionism at least to some degree. A further argument was that such an in- terpretive context is a concern not only for Western students of Asian 1