The Character of Wei-Jin qingtan Reading Guo Xiang's 'Zhuang Zi' Commentary as an Expression of Political Practice

This dissertation seeks to understand Guo Xiang's (d. 312 C.E.) commentary to the Zhuang Zi not only in the more familiar contexts of Taoism and Chinese philosophy, but also in the light of the society in which he lived. The socio-historical circumstances and political practices of the Wei-Jin period (220--420) created a motivation to produce classical commentary, and figures like Guo Xiang often pursued high government office on the strength of their reputations as exegetes. I offer a historical reconstruction of qingtan ("pure discussion"), a rhetorical tradition of character evaluation that was instrumental in advancing political careers. In light of this practice, I give a literary reading of Guo Xiang's commentary that goes beyond the standard philosophical treatment of his work. When we look more closely at Guo's analysis in the Zhuang Zi commentary, we can see the currents of contemporary political thought that inform his work, a factor that may explain why it was so well received. In addition, a more grounded understanding of qingtan opens up the study of other influences in the Wei-Jin intellectual environment, including newly translated Mahayana Buddhist sutras.;I analyze six key topics in Guo Xiang's commentary usually taken to be "misreadings" of the Zhuang Zi text, or as "impositions of Ruist values," and argue that these may be better read as expressions of qingtan institutional ideology. I conclude that taking into account the political dimension of qingtan debate makes new contributions to the study of Wei-Jin thought more generally, and opens new vistas on the problem of how to apply the labels "Ruist," "Daoist," and "Buddhist" in the context of early medieval China.