At the beginning of Zhuangzi, there is a segment clearly stating that “In the northern ocean, there is a fish, called the kun. From a big fish, this kun changes into a bird, called the peng. When the ocean moves, this bird moves to the southern ocean.” This allegory expresses a kind of eternal happiness in the pursuit of the moral realm of “roaming through infinitely.” Hua (transformation) is the moral realm reached through cultivation with gongfu (time and effort). This cultivation is in the moral realm of “ethics of happiness” in Zhuangzi. Therefore, the ethics of Zhuangzi starts from the “study of human” to reveal that the meaning of human moral life lies in the completion of the final goal, which must be achieved through the moral realms of “happiness ethics,” “theological ethics,” and “philosophical ethics,” using the cultivation with gongfu.
This cultivation in Zhuangzi is the “unifying” process of reaching the qi, jing, and shen in the heaven through the transformation of the qi, jing, and shen of the moral subject of the cultivation through gongfu. The moral realm in Zhuangzi, which is in the moral subject of the cultivation through gongfu, contains the functional achievements of the moral subject of Thomas’s ethics practice. In other words, qi contains the “reasoning” and shen the “will” of the soul, and the “bad feelings” and “good feelings” of xing (form), which is “born in jing,” contain the “anger” and “lust” in the irrational part of the soul.
The cultivation with gongfu in Zhuangzi is mainly manifested in the theory of virtue. Tao “gives birth to” everything, and virtue “sustains” everything. However, “Tao cannot be obtained through words, and De cannot be reached through behavioral thinking.” When analyzing the history and delving into the text of Zhuangzi, it is a difficult task to “interpret Zhuang through Confucianism,” “Zhuang through Buddha,” “Zhuang through Tao,” or “Zhuang through Zhuang” as a way to explore the moral theory of Zhuangzi.
In fact, the phenomena of the text of Zhuangzi being “difficult and obscure,” “convoluted and hard to read,” and “profound and incomprehensible” still exist. This is the main reason that seriously hinders the progress and development of research on the ideology in Zhuangzi.
The word virtue in Zhuangzi’s philosophy is extremely important. In the text, it appears as many as 206 times. However, the study of Zhuangzi’s virtue is not an obvious problem, but an extremely complex wisdom. In academia, some say that Zhuangzi’s virtue has the connotation of “natural, individual specialty.” Others say that Zhuangzi’s virtue theory “not only expresses its own characteristics, but also shows its diversified colors.” Since the pre-Qin period, the literary, philosophy, and history fields have shared the same view—“Zhuangzi’s texts are beautifully written, wide, and deep, and have been very difficult to interpret since ancient times.” Zhuangzi himself expressed “absurdly virtual theories, wide and abrupt speeches, and wild remarks.” He also said, “although his books are magnificent, it is indirect and does not hurt the major theme; although the remarks are versatile, it induces people to watch.” Therefore, studying the virtue in Zhuangzi and to follow the research path of “inheriting historical and traditional experiences” will only result in lamenting “only because in this mountain, there are too many clouds that I don’t know where I am.”
This paper studies the virtues of Zhuangzi and attempts to take Western ethics theories as a clue to study Zhuangzi’s ethics just to use new tools to find new ways to interpret the ideas in Zhuangzi, and to explore new things in those ideas.
Thomas Aquinas, known as the giant and mentor of scholasticism, has written many books. Thus, Summa Theologiae is his most important representative masterpiece. In 2008, the Summa Theologiae (Chinese Edition) jointly published by the Dominican Order of China and the Studium S. Pius X had 17 volumes. This philosophical masterpiece completely expresses all the ethical ideas of Thomas. In the first and second parts of the second volume of this book (Volumes 4 to 12 of the Chinese edition), the ethics of happiness, theology, and philosophy, and the basic theories of virtue are discussed; however, the second half of the first volume (the third volume of the Chinese edition) discusses Thomas’s theory of the study of human (about a human being) as a complex of soul and flesh, human beings are the portraits of God, and human hypostasis, and so forth. These are the basis of Thomas’s ethics of the study of human.
The author will start from the above content of Summa Theologiae, using the systematic context as clues to interpret the meaning of virtue in the text of Zhuangzi. Further, the basic virtue theory model of Zhuangzi will be proposed to construct its ethics system.