並列摘要
This paper explores the semantically ambiguous distinctions health/sickness and strength/weakness in ancient Daoist texts. I will introduce and discuss several images in the Daodejing (Laozi) and allegories in the Zhuangzi which illustrate the often paradoxical reversals of these qualities, and then outline their philosophical significance: 1) The Daodejing operates with a number of paradoxical distinctions, among them the soft/hard and the quite parallel weak/strong distinction. Both are paradoxical because, as believed to be the case in both sexuality and warfare, the soft and the weak actually overcome and defeat the hard and the strong. Thus, a reversal takes place: the strong turns out to be weak, and the weak to be strong. Several images illustrate the paradoxical qualities of the soft and the weak, such as water and the infant. In this way, the soft and the weak, “materialized” in the form of water or an infant, are indicators of health and associated with the “thickness of de.” The notion of de represents quite generally the powers of vitalizing efficacy present in nature and capable of being cultivated and accumulated by humans. As a political text, the Daodejing advocates a “health policy” based on a cultivation and accumulation of de. 2) The cases of Cripple Lipless, Pitcherneck, and Uglyface Tuo all point to a paradoxical understanding of health in the Zhuangzi. Unlike commonly assumed, health cannot be equated with immaculate physical appearance or an absence of ailments and physical “handicaps.” The common non-paradoxical conception of health as simply the opposite pole of an unambiguous sick/healthy distinction is wrong, and, most importantly, obstructs one’s capacities for perceiving the extraordinary vigour emanating from the cultivation of one’s de. Often enough, a healthy “form” obscures a sick de, just as a sick form may well obscure a healthy de. The allegories of the cripples in chapter 5 of the Zhuangzi illustrate this, and they particularly advocate a more appropriate understanding of, and, more importantly, a sharpening of our perceptive capacities regarding the paradoxically intertwined sick/healthy distinction.
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