Guo Xiang (郭象), courtesy name Zixuan 子玄
c. 252-312 · Daoism · Known
Guo Xiang was an official in Western Jin China who cut the Zhuangzi to the thirty-three chapters we read now and wrote its standard commentary. Against Wang Bi he argued that nothing is nothing at all, so it can produce nothing: there is no creator and no Dao standing behind the world, and each thing generates itself inside the portion allotted to it. Freedom is filling out that portion. A large shape is not too much, a small one not too little.
Signature
The position Zixuan is most identified with in the Profiler:
- Ground of Being
- leans Immanence
- Beginning of Things
- Eternal Cosmos
Positions on the 8 axes the sources answer
- Identity
- leans Changing (75 on a 0–100 scale from Unchanging to Changing)
- Meaning
- leans Constructed (25 on a 0–100 scale from Constructed to Inherent)
- Order
- leans Vertical (25 on a 0–100 scale from Vertical to Horizontal)
- Nature of Reality
- mildly leans Multiplicity (62 on a 0–100 scale from Unity to Multiplicity)
- Ground of Being
- leans Immanence (25 on a 0–100 scale from Immanence to Transcendence)
- Nature
- leans Harmony (75 on a 0–100 scale from Mastery to Harmony)
- Polity
- leans Liberalism (75 on a 0–100 scale from Illiberalism to Liberalism)
- Conviction
- leans Uncertain (25 on a 0–100 scale from Uncertain to Certain)
12 of 20 axes are left blank: the sources do not answer them, or Zixuan refused the framing. Nothing is imputed; a blank is not a middling score.
Foundational questions
- Government
- Monarchy
What is your ideal form of government? - Highest Good
- Freedom
What is the highest good? - Good and Evil
- Natural Emergence
What is the fundamental nature of good and evil? - End of Things
- No End
What is the ultimate end of all things? - Ethics Basis
- Virtue
What is the ultimate basis of ethics? - Agency
- Compatibilism
What is the nature of human agency and freedom? - Beginning of Things
- Eternal Cosmos
What is the origin of reality? - Time
- Process / Becoming
What is the fundamental shape of time? - Authority
- Natural Law
What is the legitimate source of authority? - Death
- Other
What happens at death? - Human Nature
- Innate Good
What is human nature?