Genuine Pretending: On the Philosophy of the Zhuangzi by Hans-Georg Moeller and Paul J. D’Ambrosio

Abstract

Reviewed by: Genuine Pretending: On the Philosophy of the Zhuangzi by Hans-Georg Moeller and Paul J. D’Ambrosio Stephen C. Walker Moeller, Hans-Georg, and Paul J. D’Ambrosio, Genuine Pretending: On the Philosophy of the Zhuangzi. New York: Columbia University Press, 2017. xii, 221 pp. US$35 (pb). ISBN 978-0-231-18399-4 There is no way that I can find to sum this book up without leaning on one cliché or another: “game-changer” and “must-read” seem about as good as anything, and I will even bypass the indicative mood entirely and say to Zhuangzi 莊子 lovers, “buy this book.” Hans-Georg Moeller and Paul J. D’Ambrosio have crafted and presented a truly innovative and refreshing take on Zhuangist thought and narrative technique, centered on appreciation for its humor and on the complexities of living life without either being [End Page 141] or trying to be anybody in particular.1 Conceding throughout that theirs is only one of many fruitful ways to draw insights from the Zhuangist cornucopia, they set themselves against the mainstream habit of assuming that the point of Zhuangist writing is to help us be somehow better than we are right now. The way the authors see it, the very idea of “being better”—whether inflected philosophically, religiously, or otherwise—comes in for ribald and outrageous roughing-up at Zhuangist hands. The authors wear their enthusiasm for this project on their sleeves, and as their preface makes particularly clear (pp. ix–x), the larger project that produced this book combines exegesis with philosophical advocacy. For Moeller and D’Ambrosio, the agenda they’ve uncovered in the Zhuangzi is a live and compelling philosophical option; scholars less inclined to think we should interpret ancient texts with one eye on contemporary applications may sometimes feel impatient with the results. In this review I will do my best to explain the general character of those results, proceeding not chapter-by-chapter or even in an order that I think the authors would prefer, but rather in an order that for me best represents what is so distinctive and arresting in their take. The authors correctly point out that Zhuangist humor is “acknowledged by many readers yet philosophically examined by few” (p. 185). Countless scholars make a passing nod or wink at just how funny this text is, but their interpretations nearly always make it sound like Zhuangist writing is only incidentally hilarious. For Moeller and D’Ambrosio, a lot of Zhuangist writing is essentially hilarious: were the text less funny, it would have a very different set of points to make. Much of Genuine Pretending can be read as a series of answers to the standing question of what points an essentially funny style of thinking could see fit to make in the first place. Funny thinking doesn’t need to be unserious, and if the Zhuangzi is already a locus classicus for “knowledge that doesn’t know” (不知之知) and “doing what cannot be done” (行其所不能行), it could well also be a text that is so serious it can’t but laugh. The authors note that some of the scholars who acknowledge Zhuangist humor do so with a kind of wince—reassuring their readers that the laughs are not mean-spirited, that they don’t attest a true disdain for moral value (pp. 75–76). Moeller and D’Ambrosio are less interested in agreeing or disagreeing with such assurances than they are in asking what’s so threatening about laughter in the first place. For them, the Zhuangist sense of humor isn’t rooted in a feeling of superiority over the people and values that get laughed at, but rather in a kind of amazement at how odd and strangely sad we get when we commit to being certain ways and upholding certain goods. When the authors speak more plainly for themselves than for the writers they’re interpreting, they sound quite caring and concerned about the pains and toils we endure in our beholdenness to people and to values we won’t laugh at. They read story after story in the Zhuangzi as prompting us to distance and dissociate ourselves from...