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What Can't be Said: Paradox and
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Yasuo Deguchi
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What Can’t Be Said
Paradox and Contradiction in
East Asian Thought
YA SU O D E G U C H I , JAY L . G A R F I E L D,
G R A HA M P R I E S T, A N D R O B E RT H . SHA R F
1
3
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© Oxford University Press 2021
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Deguchi, Yasuo, author. | Garfield, Jay L., 1955–author. |
Priest, Graham, author. | Sharf, Robert H., author.
Title: What can’t be said : paradox and contradiction in East Asian thought /
Yasuo Deguchi, Jay L. Garfield, Graham Priest, Robert H. Sharf.
Description: New York, NY, United States of America : Oxford University Press, 2021. |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020031164 (print) | LCCN 2020031165 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780197526187 (hb) | ISBN 9780197526200 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: Philosophy—East Asia.
Classification: LCC B5165 .D44 2021 (print) | LCC B5165 (ebook) | DDC 165—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020031164
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020031165
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197526187.001.0001
1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
Printed by Integrated Books International, United States of America
“There is no truth, and even if there were we could not know it, and
even if we could know it, we could not articulate it.”
Plato, The Gorgias
Contents
Preface ix
Reference Abbreviations xi
1. Introduction and Motivation 1
Jay L. Garfield and Graham Priest
2. Knots in the Dao 13
3. Silence and Upāya: Paradox in the
Vimalakīrti-nirdeśa-sūtra 42
Jay L. Garfield
4. Non-dualism of the Two Truths: Sanlun and
Tiantai on Contradictions 57
Yasuo Deguchi
5. Chan Cases 80
Robert H. Sharf
6. Dining on Painted Rice Cakes: Dōgen’s Use of
Paradox and Contradiction 105
7. Dialetheism in the Work of Nishida Kitarō 123
Yasuo Deguchi and Naoya Fujikawa
8. Review and Preview 143
9. Epilogue: Mind in World, World in Mind 152
Robert H. Sharf
References 173
Index 179
Preface
This book was written collectively. Although individual names

or groups of names are associated with each chapter, reflecting
those who wrote the initial drafts and exercised editorial control
over those chapters, each member of the authorial collective was
involved with the conception and writing of the entire book, and
we take collective responsibility for its contents. We wrote over a
period of several years, supported by a series of workshops. We
gratefully acknowledge a generous grant from the John Templeton
Foundation that supported these workshops and this research, as
well as additional support from Yale-NUS College, Smith College,
the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, the Center
for Buddhist Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, and
the Graduate School of Letters of Kyoto University. We thank Ms.
Grace Kwan, Mr. Ling Ximin, Dr. Takurō Ōnishi, Dr. Reina Saijō,
and Ms. Chrissie Bell for assistance in those workshops.
We were joined in several of those workshops by colleagues
who contributed important insights to our work. We thank Mark
Csikszentmihalyi, Scott Cook, Tōru Funayama, Chad Hansen,
Shōryū Katsura, Bryan Van Norden, and Brook Ziporyn for their
participation in these discussions. We learned a great deal from
them, and this book is better for their contributions.
Qianyi Qin was a constant presence in this project. She joined
us as a research assistant and became a junior colleague. She as-
sisted with editorial work and logistical coordination, but also
offered sustained critique and commentary, pushing us to greater
clarity, catching many philosophical errors, and providing impor-
tant insights. This work owes a great deal to her contributions and
hard work.
x Preface
A special thanks goes to Naoya Fujikawa, whose material on

Nishida proved invaluable for Chapter 7, and to Kristina Chiu,
Molly McPartlin, and Hallie Jane Richeson, who compiled
the index.
Finally, we note that all translations are ours unless otherwise
stated.
Reference Abbreviations
T. CBETA electronic version of the Taishō shinshū daizōkyō 大正新修大藏經,

eds. Takakusu Junjirō 高楠順次郎 and Watanabe Kaigyoku 渡邊海旭
(Tokyo: Taishō issaikyō kankōkai, 1924–1932).
X. CBETA electronic version of the Shinsan Dainihon Zokuzōkyō
新纂大日本續藏經 (Tokyo: Kokusho Kankōkai 國書刊行會, 1975–1989).
All Japanese Dōgen quotations are from Mizuno’s Complete Works of Dōgen.
1
Introduction and Motivation
Introduction
In this book, we bring together two topics that have never been
put together before: dialetheism and East Asian philosophy. We
will start by orienting the reader to these two topics. We will then
provide some background on Indian Buddhism and briefly survey
where our journey will take us. Finally, we will comment on the
turn in our last chapter.
Dialetheism
Let us start with dialetheism, since this is a view that is likely to be

unfamiliar to many readers.
A dialetheia is a pair of statements, A and ~A (it’s not the case
that A), which are both true. Alternatively, and equivalently given
a natural assumption about how negation works, a dialetheia is a
statement, A, that is both true and false. Dialetheism is the view
that there are some dialetheias. A dialetheist holds that some
contradictions are true, not (necessarily) that all contradictions are
true. The view that all contradictions are true is called trivialism,
and it is a special case.
Dialetheism countenances the violation of the Principle of
Non-Contradiction (PNC): the thesis that no contradiction can
be true. The PNC has been high orthodoxy in Western philosophy
Jay L. Garfield and Graham Priest, Introduction and Motivation In: What Can’t Be Said. Edited by:
Yasuo Deguchi, Jay L. Garfield, Graham Priest, and Robert H. Sharf, Oxford University Press (2021).
© Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197526187.003.0001
2 What Can’t Be Said
since Aristotle’s badly flawed but highly influential defense of it in

the Metaphysics.1 While there have been some important Western
philosophers who rejected the PNC—Hegel is the most obvious
example2— these have been but isolated voices, at least until
recently.3
Contemporary dialetheism is closely connected with recent
developments in logic, and specifically paraconsistent logic. In
non-paraconsistent logics, such as the familiar Frege/Russell logic,
a contradiction implies everything. Hence, if one countenances
any contradiction, one is immediately committed to accepting any
proposition whatsoever, and this fuels the reluctance on the part of
many philosophers to countenance true contradictions: trivialism
is a high price to pay. A paraconsistent logic, on the other hand,
is one in which contradictions do not imply everything. In the
second half of the 20th century, a number of logicians have shown
that paraconsistent logic is viable and indeed useful. Using a
paraconsistent logic thus opens the door to the rational accepta-
bility of theories that contain contradictions. These may then re-
veal metaphysical possibilities that might otherwise go unnoticed,
or that might be dismissed out of hand, including, for example,
the possibility that reality itself is inconsistent. This is because in
a paraconsistent framework, contradictions do not spread, but are
localized as “singularities.”4 (We will not go into the logical details
here. We decided, as a matter of policy, to keep this book largely
free of technical issues. Those interested can find the relevant liter-
ature in the references.)
Unsurprisingly, then, we have seen a number of philosophers
who have come to endorse contradictory theories about various
1
For an analysis and discussion of Aristotle’s arguments, see Priest 2006, ch. 1.
2
Though, we note, interpreting Hegel as a dialetheist is certainly contentious. For a
defense, see Priest 2019a.
3 For a more on dialetheism, see Priest 2007a, and Priest, Berto, and Weber 2018.
4 For more on paraconsistent logic, see, again, Priest 2007a, and Priest, Tanaka, and
Weber 2017.
Introduction and Motivation 3
topics. The most high-profile of these concerns paradoxes of self-

reference, such as the liar paradox. This is the simplest of a whole
family of paradoxes. It concerns the sentence This sentence is false.
If it is true, it is false; and if it is false, it is true. And, since it is either
true or false, as it appears it must be, it follows that it is both true
and false.
The liar paradox is an ancient and venerable paradox, and it
has occasioned much discussion in the history of Western logic.
Nearly all the discussions have tried to explain what is wrong
with the contradiction-generating reasoning. The lack of suc-
cess is underscored by the fact that, after some two and a half
millennia, there is still no consensus on the matter. A dialetheic
approach to the paradox cuts through this tortured history. The
reasoning is simply what it appears to be: a sound argument for a
true contradiction.5
The applications of dialetheism have now gone a long way be-
yond the paradoxes of self- reference. Let us note briefly a few
more examples. One of these concerns the nature of motion and
its paradoxes. Dialetheism may be applied to solve some of these.
Consider one of Zeno’s paradoxes of motion: the Arrow. Take an
arrow that is travelling from point a to point b. Consider any instant
of its motion. At that instant, because it is an instant, progress made in
its journey is zero. But the time of the motion is composed of all the
instants in it. At each such instance it makes zero progress. An infinite
number of zeros added together (even uncountably infinitely many)
is zero. So the progress made on the whole journey is zero: the arrow
never moves.
The dialetheic solution is that at every instant it does move. The
arrow is where it is, but it is also where it is not. Since it is in mo-
tion, it is already at a later point of its motion, and maybe also at an
earlier point of its motion. Since it makes progress at an instant, it
5 On the matter of the liar paradox, see Beall and Glanzberg 2017.
can make therefore progress at a sum of instants. Clearly, the anal-

ysis is dialetheic.6
Another sort of paradox to which dialetheism may be applied—
and one which is more relevant to what is to come, since it may
deal with inconsistent identities—is the sorites paradox. Sorites
paradoxes are paradoxes concerning some predicate which is such
that making small changes does not affect its applicability. One fa-
mous sorites paradox concerns the Ship of Theseus. Theseus had
a ship, call it a. Every day, he changed one of the old planks and
replaced it with a new plank. After a while, every plank in the ship
had been changed. Let us call the resulting ship b. Changing one
plank of a ship does not affect its identity. So after each day, the ship
was still the ship a. In particular, a = b. However, Theseus, being
a careful fellow, kept all the old planks, and it occurred to him to
reassemble them, which he did. Clearly, the reassembled ship is a.
Equally clearly, it is not b, since they are in different places, so it
is not the case that a = b. That is, a is and is not b. If you are not a
dialetheist, this is obviously a problem. If you are, you may just take
yourself to be in the presence of another sound argument with a
contradictory conclusion.7
A final application of dialetheism, and one which will also be very
relevant in what is to come, is a paradox of the ineffable. A number
of very important Western philosophers have argued that language
has its limits: there are things of which we cannot speak. Thus, in
the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant tells us that the categories are
not applicable to noumena, such as a thing in itself. Any state-
ment about such a thing would apply the categories, so one cannot
speak of such things. Or, in the Tractatus, Wittgenstein tells us that
statements are about objects. But statements have a form, and form
is not an object. Hence, one cannot make statements about form. Or
6 For what it is worth, this was also Hegel’s solution to the paradox. On all these things,
see Priest 1987, ch. 12.

7 Sorites paradoxes and identity are discussed in Priest 2010b.
again, in Being and Time, Heidegger tells us that being is not itself
a being. It follows that one can say nothing about it. For, as he also
tells us, to make a statement about anything is to treat it as a being.
But as is evident to even a cursory perusal, Kant, Wittgenstein,
and Heidegger say much about the things about which they say we
cannot talk, if only that we can say nothing about them. If one takes
any of these theories to be correct, one therefore has a paradox at
the limits of the expressible.
The philosophers in question were, of course, well aware of these
contradictions. And each suggested ways in which the contradic-
tion may be avoided. Wittgenstein even resorts to the desperate
measure of calling the claims in his book literally meaningless,
including, presumably, that one, resulting in further paradox.
Though this is not the place to go into the matter, it is not hard to
see that these ploys do not work.8 If one subscribes to one of these
positions, a radical, but arguably more sensible, position is simply
to accept the contradiction at the limits of thought. So much for the
first of our two conjoined topics. Let us move to the second: East
Asian philosophy.
East Asian Philosophy
As we have noted, Western philosophical traditions have gener-

ally been hostile to dialetheism. Again generally speaking, the
Asian philosophical traditions have been less so—though Western
commentators on these traditions have been hesitant to endorse
dialetheic interpretations of the texts involved for fear of making
their favorite philosophers appear irrational, given the interpreters’
Aristotle-inspired horror contradictionis.
8 On all of these matters, see Priest 2002. We note that in the end Heidegger finally
conceded the dialetheism of his view. See Casati 2016.

Take, for example, South Asian philosophy. Early Indian philos-

ophy is arguably more open to dialetheism than Western philos-
ophy. Various philosophers endorse the thought that some things
are both true and false (or neither true nor false, thus endorsing
the possibility of truth value gaps, as well as truth value gluts). This
idea is often represented in a framework called the catuṣkoṭi (four
corners), according to which a statement may be true (only), false
(only), both, or neither. The framework is deployed by both early
Hindu and early Buddhist thinkers. Jain logic utilizes not four but
seven semantic valuations! This is their saptabhaṇgī (seven-fold
categorization), and some of these valuations are clearly dialetheic.9
Later Indian philosophy is much less dialetheism-friendly. Indeed,
under the influence of the orthodox Nyāyā philosophers and the
Buddhist epistemologists Dignāga and Dharmakīrti, the PNC
becomes orthodox in Indian thought around the 6th century CE.10
Turning to East Asia, matters are different again. Unencumbered
by either Aristotelian or Nyāyā thinking, philosophers were freer
to develop and explore contradictory theories. Indeed, many East
Asian texts are full of paradoxical-sounding claims.11 Of course, it
would be absurd to suppose that on each such occasion, the author
of the text is endorsing a dialetheic view. Such authors are as entitled
to metaphor and poetic license as anyone else. Sometimes context
may show that the contradiction is simply the penultimate line of
some kind of reductio argument. Sometimes contradictions may be
uttered for their shock value alone, to shake up someone’s thinking.
That is, they have value as upāya (skillful means). And sometimes,
if the authors had been more careful, they would have indicated
that the contradictory claims were true in different senses.12
9For further details, see Priest 2007b, 2010.
10
Aspects of the contradictory nature of early Indian thinking are explored in Garfield
and Priest 2003; Deguchi, Garfield, and Priest 2008; and Priest 2018.
11 In Chinese, one expression for a contradiction is maodun 矛盾 (“sword and shield”).
This refers to an old story concerning a weapons salesman. When selling a sword, he
would claim that it could cut through any shield; and when selling a shield, he would
claim that it was invulnerable to any sword.
12 For more on these matters, see Deguchi, Garfield, and Priest 2008.
Even when all such occurrences of contradictions are set aside,

however, there remain many places where the authors utter
contradictions intending to endorse them, literally and unambig-
uously. The contradictory natures of the things concerned are not
only endorsed, but they are also defended, explained, and their
consequences explored. The world (that is, all that is the case), they
argue, has contradictory aspects. It may be that some of these con-
tradictory aspects reveal profound truths about the nature of reality
and human existence, truths that would be inaccessible to one lim-
ited by the bounds of consistency.
Background on Madhyamaka
This brings us to the present book. Its point is to show that many
East Asian philosophers were indeed dialetheists; moreover, that
dialetheism was central to their philosophical programs. That is,
not only were East Asian philosophers less shy of contradiction
than their Western colleagues, but they may have developed im-
portant insights that evaded their Western colleagues as a con-
sequence of this willingness to entertain, and sometimes even to
embrace, paradox. We will consider a number of texts from East
Asian philosophy, examining and explaining the dialetheias their
authors endorsed, the reasons for them, and their philosophical
consequences.
Interpretation is, of course, always a difficult and contentious
matter, and there will be times when the friends of consistency
might reasonably disagree with our interpretations. But in some
cases, that the view being endorsed is dialetheic is virtually impos-
sible to gainsay. Moreover, bearing in mind the historical and intel-
lectual influences that run between our texts, the central claim of
our book, that there is a strong vein of dialetheism running through
East Asian philosophy, would seem to be as definitively established
as any piece of hermeneutics can be.
Our journey will start with two Chinese classics, Daodejing and
Zhuangzi, but the majority of the texts we will be dealing with are
Buddhist. These Buddhist texts draw, of course, on their Indian
heritage. So a word of background on the relevant parts of this,
and specifically the Madhyamaka Buddhism of Nāgārjuna, is per-
tinent here. Buddhist exegetes operated with a notion of two truths
(satyas):13 a conventional one, saṃvṛti-satya, that concerns the
way things appear to be, and an ultimate one, paramārtha-satya,
that pertains to how things actually are. In the pre-Mahāyāna
Abhidharma traditions, the ultimate point of view is that every-
thing is composed in the last instance of dharmas. These are met-
aphysical atoms, each of which exists in and of itself; that is, each
has intrinsic nature or own-being (svabhāva). The objects of con-
ventional understanding are then merely conceptual/mereological
constructions made up of these dharmas; they are collections of
dharmas, perceived or cognized as unified wholes through the ap-
plication of some name or concept.14
Nāgārjuna’s Mūlamadhyamakakārikā, and the Madhyamaka
School of Buddhism which was based in large part on this text,
rejected this picture. There is nothing that is what it is in and of
itself: everything is empty (śūnya) of intrinsic nature (svabhāva).
Nāgārjuna is as insistent as his Abhidharma predecessors that there
are two satyas, but he understands them differently. Nāgārjuna
argues that ultimate reality is emptiness—that everything is empty
of intrinsic nature, including emptiness itself. Moreover, he argues
that, since to be empty is to be empty of intrinsic nature, to be
13 Recent commentators sometimes prefer to translate satya in this context as reality,
arguing that it is ambiguous between truth and reality. Arguably, truth is preferable.
Truth in English is cognate with trust, and it means originally something in which one
can trust. We can trust a true friend or true coin of the realm; the true water in a lake as
opposed to the deceptive water in a mirage. Derivatively, a true sentence is a sentence
on which we can rely. Semantic truth is thus but one kind of truth, not different from re-
ality. So, when we talk about the two truths—conventional and ultimate—we are talking
about the two domains of things on which one can rely, including cabbages and kings,
sentences and emptiness.
14 See Siderits 2007, especially ch. 6.
empty is to be dependently originated, which is the very nature of

the conventional truth. There is, hence, both a profound difference
between, and an identity of, the two truths.
Nāgārjuna’s thought bequeathed Buddhism two tricky problems.
First, ultimate reality is the way things are independent of the way
they are taken to be when viewed through the lens of the concepts
appropriate to conventional reality. It is therefore ineffable, since to
describe anything, you have to apply concepts to it. But Nāgārjuna
and those who followed him certainly talk about it. Secondly, and
even more disconcertingly, since everything is empty, so is ultimate
reality. There is, then, no ultimate difference between conventional
and ultimate reality; the final nature of each is emptiness, which,
again, is identified with dependent origination. Nāgārjuna himself
points this out when he claims that there is not an iota of difference
between the two. So they are different and the same. Indeed, if the
ultimate truth is the way that things are ultimately, Madhyamaka,
in virtue of arguing that there is no way that things are ultimately,
suggests that there is no ultimate truth—and that this is it. The
Madhyamaka view is therefore pregnant with at least two potential
contradictions.15
A number of later Indian and Tibetan Buddhists struggled to de-
fuse the air of contradiction. We leave aside, here, both the question
of the exegetical correctness and that of the philosophical cogency
of these readings. The East Asian reaction, however, was quite dif-
ferent. Rather than trying to avoid the contradictions, or downplay
them, many East Asian Buddhist philosophers accepted them. They
not only accepted them; they foregrounded them in their Buddhist
thinking. We may see, here, the influence of Daoist thought. Daoist
ideas played an enormous role in the formation of various strands
of Chinese Buddhism, and the Indian paradoxes resonated with
those already present in Daoism.16
15 For a translation of, and commentary on, the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā, see
Garfield 1995.
16 On the entry of Buddhism into China, see Sharf 2002.
Where Are We Going?
So here is where we are going. In the next chapter, Chapter 2, we will

look at some aspects of the Daodejing and the Zhuangzi. The first
will deliver us the paradox of the ineffability of the Dao, while the
second will deliver paradoxes concerning meaning and reasoning.
Chapter 3 turns to the Vimalakīrti-nirdeśa Sūtra. Though this is an
Indian text, there is little evidence that it had much of an impact
on the development of Indian Buddhism. It had, however, an enor-
mous impact in China, particularly on Chan. In this chapter, we
will see how this text handles the paradox of the ineffability of the
ultimate. Chapter 4 concerns the paradox of the identity and differ-
ence of ultimate and conventional reality, and how this is handled
by two schools of Chinese Buddhism, Sanlun and Tiantai. Sanlun,
represented for our purposes by Jizang, builds the paradox into a
dialectical progression of Hegelean proportion. Tiantai theorizes
the identity of the two different truths by postulating a third, the
middle, which is exactly the identity of the first two. Neither of
these strategies avoids the contradiction involved. Rather, they are
ways of articulating it.
In Chapter 5, we turn to Chan and its use of “public cases”
(Chinese: gong’an 公案, Japanese: kōan). One might attempt to
resolve the contradiction concerning the two truths by parame-
terization (disambiguation): the conventional and ultimate are
different conventionally, but the same ultimately. But this can’t
work: if the conventional and ultimate are indeed ultimately the
same, the distinction collapses. Chan public cases develop and
explore this paradox in the context of various points of doctrinal
controversy. In Chapter 6, we turn to Dōgen, the founder of the
Japanese Sōtō school of Zen. We examine some of the fascicles
of his Shōbōgenzō to see how Dōgen uses the identity of the two
truths to generate and deploy other contradictions relevant to
Buddhism, including contradictions concerning enlightenment,
time, and language.
In Chapter 7, we come to our final East Asian thinker, Nishida

Kitarō, founder of the influential Japanese Kyoto School of phi-
losophy. Nishida draws on Japanese Zen to deliver an analysis
of absolute nothingness, which both is and is not an object, and
which is and is not ineffable. He also produces an analysis of the
self and the world in which it is embedded. These are both iden-
tical to and distinct from each other. Chapter 8 briefly reviews the
preceding chapters, spelling out precisely the contradictions we
have met along the way.
The Book’s Coda
We could have ended there, but we decided not to do so. The cen-
tral aim of the book is to establish the dialetheic tradition running
through East Asian philosophy. By the end of Chapter 8, this has
been achieved. Many of the thinkers and traditions we consider
were clearly dialetheic.
Whether or not any of the contradictory theories we address is
true is an entirely different matter. Whatever we say in the first eight
chapters (as distinct from what each of us might think) is neutral on
that issue. But there is a point at which neutrality becomes impos-
sible: a contradiction that appears in our discussions, and assumes
more and more significance as the chapters accumulate, is the con-
tradiction between the first-person (“subjective”) view of the world
and the third-person (“objective”) view. This is the contradiction
we take up in the book’s coda, Chapter 9. And here, drawing on dis-
cussion from previous chapters, we do argue for, and endorse, this
contradiction.
Why did we decide to include this final chapter? History and
scholarship are interesting and important pursuits. Nonetheless,
the texts we are dealing with are philosophical texts. They are
dealing with philosophical issues, issues that are alive and impor-
tant today. The texts are therefore no mere objects of scholarship.
What they have to say is part of ongoing and contemporary philo-

sophical debate. We wanted to foreground this point by taking up
one such issue in the final chapter. Any stance one takes on a pro-
found philosophical issue is bound to be contentious. No doubt the
stance we take here is. But this stance is no philosophical quirk. As
the rest of the book shows, it is informed by the thinking of some of
the most important East Asian philosophers.
We thus place our own thinking in that tradition.
2
Knots in the Dao
Introduction: Dao and Dialetheia
We begin our discussion of East Asian attitudes toward paradox

with an examination of the role of contradiction and paradox in
two influential Chinese philosophical texts: the Daodejing and
the Zhuangzi. The Daodejing is traditionally attributed to a figure
called Laozi 老子—the “Old Master”—who is supposed to have
lived between the 6th and 4th centuries BCE, but the text we
have is an amalgam that draws from several sources (Chan 1963;
Graham 1981; Hansen 1992). The author of the eponyomous
Zhuangzi is traditionally dated to the 4th century BCE, but the
thirty-three-
chapter text in circulation today, edited by Guo
Xiang 郭象 (d. 312), is based on a compilation that dates to the
2nd century BCE. (Sections of the text, notably the first seven
chapters, may indeed go back much earlier; see Graham 1981 and
Roth 1991.)
Together, these texts offer an account of the nature of reality,
the way (dao 道)1 of nature, and how one should comport one-
self in order to achieve harmony with it.2 They do so in a way that
1 The term dao is itself polysemic, like the word way in English. It can indicate a path
or a road; the right way to behave, hence morality; a way that things are; a way of being;
a way of doing something; a way of thinking; a way of speaking (a text or discourse); the
“great way” (or the way the entire universe is); or a particular way followed by a partic-
ular individual; and so on. See Hansen 1992.
2 For a general introduction to Daoism, see Liu 2007, chs. 6 and 7. For a discussion of
Daoist epistemology, with some interesting attention to paradox, see Allen 2014.
Jay L. Garfield and Graham Priest, Knots in the Dao In: What Can’t Be Said. Edited by: Yasuo Deguchi,
Jay L. Garfield, Graham Priest, and Robert H. Sharf, Oxford University Press (2021). © Oxford University
Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197526187.003.0002
frequently courts paradox. And, as we shall show, some of these

paradoxes are not simply flourishes of literary style or challenging
metaphors, but are meaningful indications of the contradictory
nature of reality itself. While it might sometimes be possible,
and even reasonable, to see these prima facie contradictions as
attempts to unsettle the reader, to raise puzzles rather than to
solve them, or simply to entertain, we think that the pattern of
such commitments, coupled with the fact that in the cases we con-
sider the explicit endorsement of the contradictions we ascribe to
them is the most natural and rational way to read them, suggests
an explicit commitment to the inconsistent nature of reality and
so to the truth of some contradictions. This is not, however, to
say that we ascribe to these philosophers an explicit concern with
logic or with dialetheism as a doctrine. None of these figures were
logicians (although Zhuangzi clearly honed his arguments in con-
versation with “logicists” such as Hui Shi 惠施 and Gongsun Long
公孫龍). Our project is one of rational reconstruction: we show
that these figures are committed to certain contradictions; that
they are content to be so committed; that they are rational to be so
committed; and that these contradictions play clear roles in their
philosophical outlook. Hence, we might conclude that had they
reflected on the question of dialetheism, they would have endorsed
this view. We establish this in the context of Daoism by consid-
ering crucial passages from each of the two texts, starting with
the Laozi.
Whereof One Cannot Speak: The Laozi on the

Dao and Its Ineffability
The Laozi is a poetic text, both allusive and elusive. Because of

this, it has been interpreted in a wide variety of ways. We will be
foregrounding one particularly influential interpretation of its
central theses, namely that associated with the “Neo-Daoists” in
Knots in the Dao 15
the early years of the Common Era.3 More specifically, we will ap-
proach the text via the commentary of the important Neo-Daoist
commentator Wang Bi 王弼, who, according to tradition, lived
from 226 to 249 CE, and whose commentary has guided many
modern interpretations of the Daoedejing.4
Let us begin with the famous opening lines of the text:
The Dao that can be described in language is not the constant

Dao; the name that can be given it is not the constant name.5
Wang Bi glosses this as follows:
The Dao that can be rendered in language and the name [ming]
that can be given it point to a thing/matter [shi] or reproduce a
form [xing], neither of which is it in its constancy [chang]. This
is why it can neither be rendered in language nor given a name.6
So the Dao is ineffable. We will return to the reasons for this a bit
later. The Laozi continues:
Nameless it is the origin of the myriad things; named it is the

mother of the myriad things.7
Here is Wang Bi’s gloss:
Anything that exists originates in nothingness [wu], thus, before

it has forms and when it is still nameless, it serves as the origin of
the myriad things, and once it has forms and is named, it grows
3 On the influence of Neo-Daoist readings of the Daoist classics on the development of
Chinese Buddhism, see Allen 2014.

4 Unless otherwise noted, translations in what follows are taken from Lynn 1999.
5 道可道，非常道。名可名，非常名 (Lynn 1999: 51).
6 可道之道，可名之名，指事造形，非其常也。故不可道，不可名也 (ibid).
7 無名天地之始，有名萬物之母 (ibid).
them, rears them, ensures them their proper shapes, and matures
them as their mother. In other words, Dao, by being itself form-
less and nameless, originates and brings the myriad things to
completion. They are originated and completed in this way yet
do not know how it happens. This is the mystery [xuan] beyond
mystery.8
The thought behind this reading is clear: behind—and ontolog-

ically prior to—the flux of worldly events, lies an originary and
generating principle, Dao. It is sometimes described in the Laozi as
nothingness, or the One; 9 it may be conceived as the fundamental
ground of being. This gives rise to all things, which exist only as its
manifestations; it itself is beyond description, nameless, ineffable.
The ineffability of the Dao is asserted again at various points in
the Laozi. Thus, at section 25 we have:
There is something created from the amorphous10 that was born

before Heaven and Earth. Obscure, oh, and, immaterial, oh, it
stands alone, unchanged. It operates everywhere but stays free
from danger, thus we may consider it the mother of all under
Heaven. We know not its name. So style it Dao.11
Here is Wang Bi’s gloss on the penultimate sentence:
Names [ming] are used to determine forms [xing], but, created

from the amorphous, it has no form, so we cannot make any
8凡有皆始於無，故「未形」、「無名」之時則為萬物之始，及其「有形」、
「有名」之時，則長之育之，亭之毒之，為其母也。言道以無形無名始成萬物，
以始以成而不知其所以玄之又玄也 (ibid).
9 For example, sections 22 and 39.
10 Here, and later, we have altered the translation from “amorphous and incomplete.”
11 有物混成，先天地生。寂兮寥兮，獨立不改，周行而不殆，可以為天下母。
吾不知其名，字之曰道 (trans. Lynn 1999: 94f).

Knots in the Dao 17
such determination. Thus the text says that “we do not know its
name.”12
And in section 32 we have:
The Dao in its constancy is “nameless.” Although the uncarved

block is small, none under Heaven can make it his servitor [chen],
but if any lord or prince could hold on to it, the myriad folk would
submit spontaneously.13
Wang Bi glosses the first sentence as follows:
The Dao is formless, not attached to anything, and in conse-

quence cannot be named, so we use “nameless” to refer to it in its
constancy. Thus the text says, “The Dao in its constancy is ‘name-
less.’ ” The uncarved block [pu] as such has nothingness [wu] for
heart/mind [xin], and this too is nameless.14
The Dao, like the uncarved block—the wood that has not yet been
shaped for human purposes, but is pure raw material—is not a
thing among things, which are the kinds of things to which names
attach, but that which is the primordial ground of the existence
of things. On Wang Bi’s and our reading, the text is clear that this
ground of reality is ineffable.15
12 名以定形，混成無形，不可得而定，故曰，不知其名也 (trans. Lynn
1999: 95).
13 道常無名，樸雖小，天下莫能臣也。侯王若能守之，萬物將自賓 (trans. Lynn
1999: 108).
14 道無形不繫常，不可名，以無名為常。故曰道常無名也。樸之為物，以無
為心也，亦無名 (ibid).
15 In notable ways, the Dao, Laozi’s One, is like the One of Neo-Platonism, and espe-
cially of Plotinus. For him, the One is the ground and source of all reality; see Gerson
2012. It is also ineffable; see Ennead V.3.13.1, V.3.14.1–8, V.5.5.11–13, VI.9.5.31–32. See
also O’Meara 1995, ch. 5.
The Explanation of Ineffability
This ineffability is not “accidental.” There are reasons why the Dao
cannot be designated, and these reasons are explicitly endorsed.
Wang Bi gives two related but distinct arguments in his short intro-
duction to the text (Laozi zhilue 老子指略). The first argument, to
which he alludes in his commentary on sections 25 and 32 earlier,
goes as follows:
The way things come into existence and efficacy [gong] comes
about is that things arise from the formless [wuxing] and that ef-
ficacy emanates from the nameless [wuming]. The formless and
the nameless [the Dao] is the progenitor of the myriad things. It
is neither warm nor cool and makes neither the note gong nor the
note shang. . . . If it were warm, it could not be cold; if it were the
note gong, it could not be the note shang. If it had a form, it would
necessarily possess the means of being distinguished from other
things; if it made a sound, it would necessarily belong among
other sounds.16
In other words, Dao cannot be a this rather than a that, since it is

behind both, and if it were one, it could not be the other. Hence, it is
ineffable, since any description would make it a this or a that. In the
Timaeus Plato describes how things in the world are produced when
the forms are imposed on a formless stuff, chora. And he argues
that chora can have no nature (and so cannot be described), since it
would “obtrude them and receive the other qualities badly.”17 This
would appear to be the same argument, and Wang Bi (as well as the
author of the Laozi, if he is right) would appear to endorse the same
conclusion, a conclusion from which he never recoils.
16 夫物之所以生，功之所以成，必生乎無形，由乎無名。無形無名者，
萬物之宗也。不溫不涼，不宮不商。 . . . 宮也，則不能商矣。形必有所分，
聲必有所屬 (trans. Lynn 1999: 30).
17 For references and discussion, see Sorabji 1988: 32ff.
Knots in the Dao 19
The second argument in the introduction is employed in section

41 of the Laozi, which deals with the greatness of the Dao. In par-
ticular, one sentence says: “The great image is formless,”18 which
Wang Bi glosses as follows:
As soon as there is form, distinctions exist, and, with distinctions,

if something is not warm it must be cool; if not hot, it must be
cold. Thus, an image which has the great form is not the great
image.19
Wang Bi spells out the argument in more detail as follows:
. . . the abundance that can be spoken of would never have the

capacity to govern Heaven and Earth, and to whatever degree
a thing has form, it will never be sufficient to encompass the
myriad things. . . . Any name will fail to match what it is. Any
assessment for it would fail to express all that it is. A name nec-
essarily involves how one thing is distinct from other things, and
assessment necessarily involves something on which it depends.
Making distinctions, any name would fail to be inclusive; if there
is dependence, there is something that is incomplete. As it cannot
be perfectly inclusive, any name for it would deviate greatly from
the truth as there is no completion, it cannot be captured by
names.20
That is, the Dao is so great that it transcends our finite categories.
Our categories draw distinctions and therefore apply to only a part
of reality. The Dao transcends any such part and hence is ineffable.
18 大象無形 (Lynn 1999: 132).

19 有形則有分，有分者不溫則炎，不炎則寒。故象而形者，非大象 (ibid).
20 故可道之盛未足以官天地，有形之極未足以府萬物 . . . 名之不能當，稱之
不能既。名必有所分，稱必有所由，有分則有不兼，有由則有不盡。不兼則大
殊其真，不盡則不可以名 (our translation).
The 15th-century philosopher and theologian Nicholas of Cusa—

as did many other theologians—argued that God, being infinite,
transcends all human categories. This, too, would appear to be the
same argument.21 Once again, it is endorsed unequivocally.
The Rub
We have now seen that, at least according to Wang Bi’s inter-

pretation, the Dao, important as it is— indeed, fundamentally
important—is ineffable. Any category can apply to only part of re-
ality, and any attempt to apply it to the whole would turn it into
something that it is not.
There is an obvious knot here. The Dao is ineffable. Yet the Laozi
says a lot about it, as we have seen, including that it is ineffable.
Indeed, one cannot explain why it is ineffable, as Wang Bi does,
without talking about it. And when we say that something is inef-
fable, we are talking about that thing, and not something else. (To
talk about something else would be to change the subject!) Now, to
talk about something may not be to say that it is effable; but doing
so shows that it is. So the Dao is ineffable, by claim, and effable, in
virtue of the fact that it is claimed to be ineffable. One does not have
to be a genius to note this point. It is clear to even a casual thinker,
and Wang Bi is much more than that.22
Yet Wang Bi does not comment on the matter. There are many
possible explanations for this. As we noted, given the obvious-
ness of the paradox—and the frequency with which paradoxes of
21 For discussion and references, see Priest 2002: 22ff.

22 The situation here is one in which many Western and Indian philosophers have
found themselves when they claim that something cannot be spoken of and, in the
process of explaining why, do exactly that. This is Wittgenstein’s predicament when he
points out that much of what he says in the Tractatus cannot be said; and Heidegger’s
when he asserts in Sein und Zeit that Being is not an object, treating it as such in the pro-
cess. For references and discussion, see Priest 2002, chs. 12 and 15. Nāgārjuna is in the
same predicament in Mūlamadhyamakakārikā; see Garfield and Priest 2003.
Knots in the Dao 21
ineffability are developed in the East Asian tradition—one expla-

nation is not that he simply didn’t notice it. One might argue that
Wang Bi and the author of the Laozi commit themselves to these
paradoxes to “shake the reader up,” to induce an aporia, or just to be
dramatic. Or one might suggest that their language is not meant to
be taken as assertoric or literal. Perhaps it is merely “therapeutic” or
metaphorical. We don’t think that these are plausible explanations.
For one thing, the requisite drama, or rhetorical flourish, is absent
in these texts (although perhaps not in the Zhuangzi, to which we
will return later). There is no mention of an irresolvable aporia, and
none plays a role in the remainder of the Laozi, which is devoted
to discussions of the nature of reality and how to act in conformity
to it, nor of our inability to know it or to know how to behave.
And while the text does trade in metaphors, this appears to be the
unpacking, rather than the presentation of one.
The most obvious and compelling reading is simply that the au-
thor of the Laozi and Wang Bi accepted the contradiction. At any
rate, neither the text nor the commentary ever tries to escape it or to
explain it away. Here then we have our first Daoist paradox: a par-
adox of expressibility. We have a good argument to the conclusion
that we can say nothing about the Dao and that argument explains
why the Dao is inexpressible, thereby expressing something about
it. Once again, it is important to note that neither the author of this
text, whoever she or he might be, nor any canonical commentator
on the text attempts to defuse this contradiction.23 It seems simply
to be accepted, which is not surprising. One of the great insights of
Laozi and Zhuangzi is that the world itself is deeply paradoxical,
and any attempt to understand it that presumes consistency will
fail. The frequent explicit assertion of contradictions in these texts
provides ample evidence of this comfort with paradox.
23 Even Hansen (1992), who strives to show that many of the passages in the Laozi that
might appear paradoxical can be reread consistently, does not suggest that this paradox
is not genuine, or that the author of the text is not committed to it.
Just Saying: The Zhuangzi on Justification
The Passage in Question
Let us now turn from the Laozi to the Zhuangzi, a text renowned
both for its captivating prose style and its enigmatic philosophical
exposition.24 The passage on which we will focus demonstrates
both of these properties. It will therefore require some unpacking.
This passage articulates twin contradictions. Both are responses
to arguments from the logicist school—the so-called school of
names. Zhuangzi will point out that although the logicists argue
that one cannot know that one means anything, one can know
exactly that. Moreover, he continues, although the logicists pro-
pound arguments, in fact one cannot argue convincingly for an-
ything; nonetheless, he then argues, one can argue for exactly
that. And once again, nothing in this text backs down from these
contradictions.
Let us start with the passage itself.
Making a point to show that a point is not a point is not as good

as making a non-point to show that a point is not a point. Using a
horse to show that a horse is not a horse is not as good as using a
non-horse to show that a horse is not a horse. Heaven and Earth
are one point; the ten thousand things are one horse.25
Before we unpack this passage through an exploration of the

metonymies it exploits and the philosophical and rhetorical con-
text in which it figures, a brief comment is in order about the
translation. The term zhi 指, which our translator, Paul Kjellberg
(2001), has rendered as “point,” literally means finger, and thus by
24
Thanks to Scott Cook for helpful comments on an earlier draft of this part.
25
以指喻指之非指，不若以非指喻指之非指也。以馬喻馬之非馬，不若以非
馬喻馬之非馬也。天地一指也，萬物一馬也 (trans. Kjellberg 2001: 213).
Knots in the Dao 23
extension referent or intention (that to which one is pointing). Note

that the same cluster of meanings is present in English. We can talk
about the point of an utterance, the point of an action, and a finger
can point just as an utterance or an action can have a point. The idea
of reference is in the Chinese as well as in the English. Now let’s try
to figure out what the text is saying.
The Metonyms: Horses and Fingers
Both the reference to the horse and the reference to the finger are
allusions to arguments advanced by the Chinese philosopher (or
proponent of the so-called school of names), Gongsun Long.26
While the first argument is not important in content for Zhuangzi’s
project, it is important to know what it is in order to read the pas-
sage. The second, however, is more directly relevant. Let us begin
with the horse. The following text is attributed to Gongsun Long:
Can it be that a white horse is not a horse?
Advocate: It can.
Objector: How?
Advocate: “Horse” is that by means of which one names the
shape. “White” is that by means of which one names the color.
What names the color is not what names the shape. Hence,
I say that a white horse is not a horse.
26 According to tradition, Gongsun Long and Zhuangzi were contemporaries, and in
this passage, Zhuangzi is responding directly to Gongsun Long’s sophistical arguments.

But as we know almost nothing about the lives of either figure, and as our extant his-
torical sources postdate their deaths by well over a century, they are better regarded as
fictional characters rather than historical personages. Be that as it may, it is clear that by
the time of the composition of the “Inner Chapters” of the Zhuangzi, two paradoxes—“a
white horse is not a horse” and “pointing doesn’t reach the object”—were in circulation
and were associated with Gongsun Long. For a discussion of the relationship between
Gongsun Long and Zhuangzi, see Hansen 1992: 270–272, Vierhelleer 2014, and Ivanhoe
and Van Norden 2001: 218n3.
Objector: If there are white horses, one cannot say that there are
no horses. If one cannot say that there are no horses, doesn’t
that mean that there are horses? For there to be white horses
is for there to be horses. How could it be that the white ones
are not horses?
Advocate: If one wants a horse, that extends to a yellow or
black horse. But if one wants a white horse, that does not ex-
tend to a yellow or black horse. Suppose that a white horse
were a horse. Then what one wants [in the two cases] would
be the same. If what one wants were the same, then a white
[horse] would not differ from a horse. If what one wants does
not differ, then how is it that a yellow or black horse is ac-
ceptable in one case and unacceptable in the other case? It is
clear that acceptable and unacceptable are mutually contrary.
Hence, yellow and black horses are the same [in that, if there
are yellow or black horses], one can respond that there are
horses, but one cannot respond that there are white horses.
Thus, it is evident that a white horse is not a horse.27
There are two arguments here, and on the most obvious reading,
they are both rather sophistical. The first argument simply goes
from the premise that the referent of the phrase white horse is dif-
ferent from that of the phrase horse (the first refers to the set of
white horses, and the second to the set of all horses) to the conclu-
sion that white horses are not horses. The argument is obviously
terrible. It may be a sound argument to the claim that horse and
white horse are not synonymous, but that hardly gets the conclusion
27 “白馬非馬”，可乎？曰：可。曰：何哉？曰：馬者，所以命形也；白者，
所以命色也。命色者非名形也。故曰： “白馬非馬 ”。曰：有馬不可謂
無馬也。不可謂無馬者，非馬也？有白馬為有馬，白之，非馬何也？
曰：求馬，黃、黑馬皆可致；求白馬，黃、黑馬不可致。是白馬乃馬
也，是所求一也。所求一者，白者不異馬也，所求不異，如黃、黑馬
有可有不可，何也？可与不可，其相非明。如黃、黑馬一也，而可以-
應有馬，而不可以應有白馬，是白馬之非馬，審矣！ (Gongsun longzi 公孫龍子,
trans. Ivanhoe and Van Norden 2001: 364–365).
Knots in the Dao 25
that a white horse is not a horse, relying on an equivocation be-

tween identity and predication. The second is not much better and
relies on a crude intentional fallacy. If I want a white horse, but you
give me a black horse, then I did not get what I want. But if what
I wanted was a horse, I would have got what I wanted. So I didn’t
want a horse. But I did want a white horse. So a white horse must
not be a horse.
Graham (1986) proposes a plausible and more charitable re-
construction of this argument. Taking Hansen’s (1983) some-
what problematic reading as a starting point, he reads Gongsung
Long as making a point about parts and wholes in the domain of
concepts. On Graham’s reading, Gonsung Long is arguing that
when we add whiteness to horseness, we get a new entity with two
parts, white-horseness, which is different from horseness. Or, to put
it more clearly in English, Gongsung Long is arguing that to be a
white horse is not to be a horse. We think that Graham probably has
this right, but for our purposes, nothing hangs on the analysis: it is
Zhuangzi’s reply, not Gongsung Long’s argument, that is the main
point here.
On some of these readings, these arguments are terrible; on
Graham’s it may be more successful but not terribly interesting, but
their success, failure, and philosophical interest are all beside the
point. The important point for reading the Zhuangzi passage is that
when he uses the term horse, he may be seen as talking not about
horses but about arguments. Moreover, despite the fact that these
are bad arguments for a silly conclusion, he is not talking about bad
arguments per se. Zhuangzi is talking about arguments simpliciter.
So, if he were not being so elliptical, he could have said, “better to use
a non-argument to show that an argument is not an argument than to
use an argument to show that an argument is not an argument . . . the
myriad things/heaven and earth/everything is one argument.” Still
cryptic, but we are getting someplace, as we will see shortly.
Turning to the second argument, Gongsun Long is quoted as
saying, “all things are capable of being pointed out [lit. fingered], but
pointing out can never be pointed out.”28 This should put one fa-
miliar with Indian grammatical philosophy in mind of Bartṛhari’s
paradox (Herzberger and Herzberger 1981). Bartṛhari (c. 5th cen-
tury CE) argued that if meaning (or reference) is a relation between
words and their meanings/referents, then the very word meaning/
reference is itself meaningless/non-referential since the word
meaning/reference would have to be related to its meaning, which
could not be specified, since part of that meaning would be the re-
lation of that very word to its own meaning, generating a vicious re-
gress. Gongsun Long seems to have the same thing in mind: if to be
meaningful is to designate something, then since we cannot desig-
nate designation, on pain of regress, designation is not meaningful,
in which case there is no designation, and hence no meaning. But we
have said that using a statement that must, therefore, be meaningful.
This argument is more interesting than the horse argument, and
indeed it is more germane to Zhuangzi’s own point. When Zhuangzi
uses the word finger/point/meaning, he may be seen as having this
very argument in mind; but he will be arguing that things are even
worse than Gongsun Long thinks they are; that is, he will concede
Gongsun Long’s point, and then show that it leads straight to con-
tradiction. Before we return to the argument itself, let us continue
to explore the background, using as context other arguments in the
second chapter of the Zhuangzi.
The Skeptical Background 1: Meaning
In a dialogue near the opening of the second chapter, Zhuangzi

writes:
. . . Do you understand? You hear the piping of men but not yet
the piping of the earth. You hear the piping of the earth but not
yet the piping of Heaven. . . .
28 物莫非指，而指非指 (trans. Ziporyn 2009: 12n13).

Knots in the Dao 27
When the Great Clump belches forth its vital breath (qi) we
call it the wind. As soon as it arises, glaring cries emerge from
all the ten thousand hollows. Don’t tell me you’ve never heard
how long the rustling continues, on and on! The towering trees
of the forest, a hundred spans around, are filled with indentations
and holes—like noses, mouths, ears; like sockets, enclosures,
mortars like puddles. Roarers and whizzers, scolders and sighers,
shouters, wailers, boomers, growlers! One leads with a yeeee!
Another answers with a yuuu! A light breeze brings a small
harmony, while a powerful gale makes for a harmony vast and
grand. And once the sharp wind has passed, all these holes return
to their silent emptiness. Have you never seen all the tempered
attunements, all the cunning contentions?
So the piping of the earth means just the sound of these
hollows. And the piping of man would be the sound of bamboo
panpipes. What, then, is the piping of Heaven?
It blows forth in ten thousand different ways, allowing each to
go as it will. Each takes what it chooses for itself—but then who
could it be that activates them all? 29
We pipe. Nature pipes. The universe pipes. We take our own piping
to be very special, to be meaningful, unlike the piping of earth and
the piping of heaven. But Zhuangzi asks us to reconsider—to take
seriously the possibility that our piping is just one more species of
the same genus: nothing more than sounds produced by various
causes. He asks us to consider the possibility that all we say is “full of
sound and fury, and signifying nothing,” and that the significance
29 . . . 汝知之乎？女聞人籟而未聞地籟，女聞地籟而未聞天籟夫！」 . . . 「夫
大塊噫氣，其名為風。是唯无作，作則萬竅怒呺。而獨不聞之翏翏乎？山林之畏
佳，大木百圍之竅穴，似鼻，似口，似耳，似枅，似圈，似臼，似洼者，似污
者；激者，謞者，叱者，吸者，叫者，譹者，宎者，咬者，前者唱于而隨者唱
喁。泠風則小和，飄風則大和，厲風濟則眾竅為虛。而獨不見之調調、之刁刁
乎？」子游曰：「地籟則眾竅是已，人籟則比竹是已。敢問天籟。」子綦曰：
「夫吹萬不同，而使其自已 1 也，咸其自取，怒者其誰邪！」 (trans. Ziporyn
2009: 9–10).
of our own speech is a species of the same genus as the significance

of thunder, the wind, or birdsong. Cook (2003) quotes Guo Xiang’s
commentary in this passage: “[A]‌lthough the sounds have a myriad
of differences, the standard with which they are endowed is uni-
form, and thus superior and inferior have no place among them.
This is compared to the wind upon things: the different tones are
all alike in their correctness” (72). Cook argues that Guo shows
correctly that Zhuangzi denies any standard of correctness or su-
periority for one kind of sound over another. This is the possibility
raised by Gongsun Long’s second argument, whether or not it is
ultimately successful, and it is this possibility that is mooted by the
piping passage.30
Why take this seriously? For at least two reasons: first, once it is
on the table, how could you argue against it? What could you say?
You might offer an abstract semantic theory for one’s language, per-
haps a Montague grammar. Zhuangzi will compliment you on the
quality of the sound but will not concede that what you said meant
anything. Any direct argument for your theory will only beg the
question, for once the possibility that language is meaningless is on
the table—once it is a live option, Zhuangzi points out—it is hard to
refute: nothing you say will even count as an argument, let alone a
sound argument.
Or one might try instead to offer a reductio on Zhuangzi’s argu-
ment. One might argue, for instance, that even to assert the argu-
ment, Zhuangzi must mean something by his words. If he doesn’t,
we might say, we have no reason to be convinced; if he does, he
has undermined his own position. But even this strategy fails.
Zhuangzi once again replies that he is making sounds, piping of his
own. That’s all. If the effect of his piping is to make us see that we
are all only piping, so be it. But if it has that effect, it does so in the
30 See also Schwitzgebel 1996 and Berkson 1996 for similar reflections on Zhuangzi’s
skepticism regarding the privileged place of human language as significant.

Knots in the Dao 29
way that the sound of the waves lulls us to sleep, or in the way that
a sudden bang startles us, simply by causing us to transform from
one state to another, not in virtue of some special semantic pro-
perty. If, on the other hand, that is not its effect, and we continue
to believe that our speech is more than piping, we are welcome to
keep piping away. But if we do so, there is no way that we should
have any confidence that our piping is more than that, for there is
nothing we could say that we could know to be meaningful in this
dialectical context.31
This takes us to the second reason: there is something (para-
doxically) deeply right about what Zhuangzi is saying: once we
enter this dialectical context, we can’t know that our speech is
meaningful, if meaning is to be taken to be something more than
a brute causal notion. Keep that dialectical context in mind, and
keep in mind how easy it is to enter it: Zhuangzi is responding
to Gongsun Long’s argument, which has as its conclusion the
claim that there is no meaning relation, and hence that words
don’t mean anything at all—that it is impossible to make a point.
Zhuangzi takes this argument seriously. He does not necessarily
accept its soundness, but he does think that it raises an impor-
tant question, and that is all he needs to get to the paradox he
is about to develop.32 Zhuangzi points out that just raising the
question about the meaningfulness of language creates what
William James called a new “live option”—that language is
meaningless. It is in the context in which this is a live option for
the disputants that the argument to which we are about to turn is
mounted, an argument that only requires that—whether or not
31 The response is similar to one made to his critics by Sextus; see Priest 2002: 3.4.
Schwitzgebel and Berkson (op. cit.) offer similar interpretations.

32 Here we leave aside the question of whether this argument is in fact sound. The
important point is simply that Zhuangzi takes it to be sound—at least for the sake of
argument—and so accepts its conclusion—that we never mean anything—again, for the
sake of argument.
Gongsun Long’s argument is ultimately successful—it creates

such a context.33
Once the option that our language is meaningless is alive,
whether or not it turns out to be true, we are in trouble. Zhuangzi
sees that it sets up an epistemological paradox: we can never know
that what we say or think is meaningful at all, and we can know
that. First, the argument that we cannot: to know that what we say
or think is meaningful is to believe it with justification.34 But to
accept any justification would be to know that the justification is
meaningful, which, ex hypothesi, we do not (given the openness of
the question). To assert baldly, without justification, that we know
that our thoughts and language are meaningful would be to beg
the question; our own expression that we know that—whether in
thought or language—would already have to be known to be mean-
ingful. So we cannot know (discursively) that what we think is
meaningful.
But hold on—and here is the second argument—we have just
come to know that we cannot know that our language is mean-
ingful, and we can only have done so if this expression—we cannot
know that our language is meaningful—and those other expressions
composed by the argument are themselves meaningful. Hence we
have an argument that we do know (again, discursively; after all,
we are saying it) that our language and thought is meaningful. So
if each of these arguments is sound—and Zhuangzi clearly thinks
that each is—we both can know and cannot know that our language
and thought is meaningful. Once again, Zhuangzi does nothing to
33 We understand Zhuangzi’s strategy in much of the second chapter as developing a
series of “live option” problems in epistemology. In doing so, he challenges a model of

knowledge as involving a knower standing against a world to be known. This model, he
argues, always falls prey to problems of this kind.
34 The model of knowledge as justified true belief is, to be sure, not the one that
Zhuangzi favors. He prefers to encourage a non-discursive understanding of human

wisdom, and much of his epistemological reflection is dedicated to demonstrating the
superiority of such wisdom over discursive knowledge. But that is not to say that dis-
cursive knowledge is impossible, only that it is of less importance than one might have
thought. And to know discursively is to believe something truly, and with justification.
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the Cid, occupied, with unconcealed exultation, the elegant
mansions and lovely gardens of the Moorish exiles.
The tranquillity of the city being now assured, the Cid turned his
attention to Ibn-Djahhaf. He was horribly tortured to obtain a
statement of his wealth, which a diligent exploration of his palaces
and of those of his friends subsequently proved to be false. All the
possessions of those who had ever in any way befriended the former
master of Valencia were promptly confiscated. Then the Cid, who
had planned for his illustrious prisoner the most agonizing of deaths,
caused a pit to be dug in the principal square of the city and heaped
about with fagots; and Ibn Djahhaf, buried in it to the shoulders, was
slowly roasted to a crisp. The female members of his family, destined
for the same fate, were saved, with great difficulty, by the entreaties
of his Moorish subjects and the remonstrances of the Christian
soldiery, who, although daily participants in scenes of diabolical
cruelty, could not view unmoved the commission of such a crime. No
such exemption could be obtained, however, for the slaves, the
friends, and the literary associates of the unfortunate Kadi. They
were all burned on great funeral pyres in sight of the citizens and the
army. In the infamous record subsequently made by the Spaniards in
the Old and the New World, among the awful atrocities perpetrated
by Alva, Cortés, and Pizarro, none surpassed in cold-blooded
brutality the conduct of the Cid at the siege and capture of Valencia.
His ambition, far from being satisfied with the acquisition of one of
the richest provinces of the Peninsula, was only stimulated to greater
exertions. He extended his dominions on every side. He took
Murviedro, and, despoiling its inhabitants, sold them at auction, after
having made and broken a treaty similar to the one negotiated at
Valencia. His power was so great that kings did not disdain to treat
with him on an equality; and Pedro I. of Aragon solicited his
friendship in terms which indicated the fear with which he was
regarded by his neighbors. At last his army was utterly routed by the
Almoravide general Ibn-Ayesha, near Xativa, and heart-broken, the
bold leader, who had been for so long the idol of the Christians and
the terror of the infidel, was unable to survive the disaster. For two
years his courageous widow, Ximena, succeeded in repulsing the
Almoravides, but at last, compelled to abandon her position,
Valencia was evacuated by the Castilian amazon and set on fire.
Such was the career and such the end of an adventurer whose
influence and prestige often rose superior to those of royalty itself;
who, by a perverted sentiment of enthusiasm, has passed into
history as the exemplar of chivalry and the pattern of every martial
excellence; who, though the sacrilegious despoiler of cathedrals and
monasteries, is yet revered by the Church as one of her most
devoted champions, whose brutality is applauded as zeal, whose
perfidy is held up to public admiration as the highest development of
worldly wisdom, and who to-day enjoys in the minds of his
vainglorious countrymen a consideration not inferior to that accorded
to the most venerated saint in the Roman Catholic calendar.
Ecclesiastical fictions and popular ignorance prolonged the influence
of the Cid far beyond the term of his natural life. The absurd legend
which recounted the rout of Moorish armies at the sight of his corpse
lashed to the saddle and borne at the head of crusading squadrons
on many occasions, in subsequent times, inspired the Castilian
chivalry with fresh devotion to their cause. The fables attributed to
his charger Babieca and his sword Tizona—which, in imitation of
Arabic custom, had each its history—were related with awe in every
peasant’s hut on the plain and in the sierra. A sacred character
attached to his remains. They worked innumerable miracles. They
confounded the designs of unbelievers. Great virtue invested
fragments of his coffin and of his garments. They were powerful
talismans against danger in battle. They foiled the plots of
conspirators. And yet there were few pious persons in the most
superstitious age who did not possess far better claims to the
attributes of a saint. The Cid was for the greater part of his life a
rebel. He defied and oppressed his king. He served the
Mohammedans, and, as their ally, invaded the Christian kingdom of
France. Even in the poems intended to glorify his exploits he is
represented as ridiculing the Pope. He burned churches and robbed
the clergy. His perfidy became proverbial. He betrayed everybody.
The barbarities he committed without compunction appalled even his
own followers, long accustomed to the remorseless butchery of the
helpless and the old. His cruelty was incredible. Of the virtues of
patriotism, mercy, forgiveness, he knew nothing. Even his orthodoxy
was justly liable to criticism. He was more indulgent to the infidel
than, in the eyes of the zealots, became a true believer. He
maintained a harem. Moslems formed a large proportion of his
command. It was even suspected that he was not buried with the
rites of the Church. In 1541, when his tomb was opened, his body
was found wrapped in a Moorish mantle embroidered with
arabesques and Arabic inscriptions. Nevertheless, the universal
reverence in which he was held by the Spanish people, clergy and
laity alike, induced Philip II., the most austere of royal bigots, to
demand his canonization at the hands of the Pope, a ceremony
which was only prevented by political complications necessitating the
sudden recall of the Spanish ambassador from Rome.
The occupation of Valencia was the last achievement in the life of
Yusuf. With the exception of the city of Toledo, and the principality of
Saragossa soon to succumb to the arms of his son, the entire realm
of Moorish Spain was subject to his authority. This great conquest
had been accomplished in less than three years. His empire was
equal in magnitude to those of the Ommeyades and Abbasides
combined. The entire region of Northern Africa, from Tunis to the
Atlantic, obeyed his edicts. His dominions embraced an area more
than ten times that of the Western Khalifate during the era of its
greatest prosperity. Even the early princes of Islam, upon whom had
descended the mantle of the Prophet, had not claimed such a vast
jurisdiction or wielded such despotic authority. Every Friday his name
was repeated, for the homage and the prayers of the devout, from
the pulpits of three hundred thousand mosques. The provinces of Al-
Maghreb, as well as those of Spain, had been seriously affected by
wars and revolutions; their cities had been repeatedly plundered;
their agricultural population had been greatly reduced by
enslavement and starvation. Yet such was the wealth of the empire
of Yusuf that, notwithstanding the expenditures of a magnificent
court and an imperfectly regulated system of taxation, he was
enabled to leave to his successor a treasure of seven and a half
million pounds’ weight of silver and a hundred and twenty-five
thousand pounds’ weight of gold. No less than thirteen princes, who
had inherited or usurped the titles of sovereignty, acknowledged him
as their lord. Under none of the khalifs of any dynasty had the
burdens of the people seemed so light. The necessaries of life were
cheaper than they had been within the memory of man. Bread was
sold at a nominal price, and for a trifle an armful of the choicest
vegetables and fruits could be purchased. The large majority of his
subjects paid no taxes. The ordinary expenses of the government
were defrayed by the tribute of Christians and Jews; the
extraordinary demands were readily met by the spoils of war.
Universal demoralization had, however, rendered a lasting reform
impracticable among the antagonistic states of the Peninsula
accustomed for generations to the prevalence of military excesses
and anarchy. The hopes of public happiness and of future security,
which at times were entertained by the people, were in the highest
degree illusory. Theological influence, fatal to every government,
soon overturned the gigantic but unstable fabric of Yusuf. With him
and his successors the power of the faquis was paramount. They
dictated every measure, disposed of every office, shared in every
contribution. Their rapacity and tyranny increased with their
opportunities. Even without foreign interference, the African
monarchy must within a few years have fallen to pieces. The
deterioration of the Berber soldiery was so rapid and complete after
its exposure to the temptations and luxury of Andalusia that Ali was
compelled to enlist, for his own security, recruits from the infidel
populations of Europe. Even the Greeks of Constantinople, the most
superstitious of Christians, the most perfidious of men, were to be
found in the armies of the natural enemy of the Church and the
reformer of the Mohammedan religion. The government officials
were selected by the women of the harem, who sold lucrative
employments to the highest bidder or shared the profits of extortion,
while the monarch prayed and fasted or listened to the exhortations
of the clergy. The Almoravide empire fell with the same rapidity that
was so conspicuous in its foundation. Not many years were to
elapse before its African domain was to be usurped by a race of
savage fanatics, and the kingdoms of Spain, with one exception, be
permanently subjected to the sceptre of the dreaded and execrated
Christian.
The years of Yusuf, prolonged far beyond the ordinary term of
human existence, included a full century, three ordinary generations
of man. His active life, his abstemious habits, his freedom from those
vices which waste the body and enfeeble the mind, enabled him to
retain to the last the enjoyment of all his faculties. Although pitiless in
the treatment of his enemies, it is related of him that during his entire
reign, through motives of mistaken humanity, he never signed the
death-sentence of a single criminal. Small indulgence was shown to
the two tributary sects which, under the law of Islam, were permitted
the exercise of their worship. From both, the contributions
established by the successors of Mohammed were rigorously
exacted. The Christians were prohibited from making proselytes. All
their churches of recent erection were destroyed. A tradition of
obscure origin, long current in the Peninsula, was made the excuse
for a new and ingenious tax upon the Jews. It was said that the
Hebrews had promised Mohammed that if the Messiah did not come
before the year 500 of the Hegira their nation would become
Mussulman. The time had not yet expired, but Yusuf imposed upon
the Jews of his dominions the payment of an immense sum, by
which they and their descendants were released from an act of
apostasy which they had never contemplated, based upon a tradition
probably invented by some idle and mendacious theologian.
The phenomenal rise of the Almoravide empire, its marvellous
opulence and apparent stability, the suddenness of its collapse,
demonstrate the imperfect cohesion of the ill-balanced and
misdirected elements of Moslem society. The Arab and the Berber
character, never voluntarily amenable to the salutary restrictions of
law and civilization, were now wedded to that civil disorder and
habitual freedom from control whose indulgence offered a not
imperfect resemblance to the conditions of the predatory and
independent life of the Desert. The career of Yusuf was largely
modelled after that of Mohammed. The reforms he instituted were
productive of temporary peace and of a delusive prosperity, but the
Spanish Moslems had become too degraded to appreciate the
blessings of tranquillity and order; and their princes, while fully alive
to the impending peril of Christian supremacy, unwisely permitted
their private feuds and personal prejudices to contribute directly to
the subversion of both their authority and their religion.
The sceptre of Yusuf descended to his son Ali, a young man of
twenty-three years, whose martial aspirations were constantly
subordinated to his religious duties and to his predilection for the
society of the clergy. The seat of government, as in the preceding
reign, remained at Morocco. The capitals of the various Spanish
states and provinces were held either by devoted vassals of the
crown or by military governors of established reputation and
unquestionable loyalty. Ali was scarcely seated upon the throne
before the citizens of Saragossa, weary of the tyranny of the Beni-
Hud, solicited his protection; and that city, the key of the valley of the
Ebro and the last of the great capitals of Moorish Spain to surrender
its independence, was incorporated, without bloodshed, into the
colossal Almoravide empire.
The possession of the territory once occupied by the khalifate did
not satisfy the restless spirit of Ali, whose policy aspired to so vast
and impracticable a scheme as the total annihilation of the Christian
power. His ambition was seconded, and indeed largely prompted, by
his zeal, which impelled him to the prosecution of incessant
hostilities against the enemies of Islam. The occupation of
Saragossa by Temim, the son of Yusuf and the governor of Valencia,
was followed by an invasion of the dominions of Alfonso VI. and the
siege of Ucles. A Castilian army sent to relieve that fortress
encountered the Moslems a short distance from its walls. A bloody
battle was fought; and the Christians, who far outnumbered their
adversaries, underwent a crushing defeat. Sancho, the favorite son
of the King by his Moorish wife or concubine, Zayda,—who was the
daughter of Motamid, formerly Prince of Seville,—was killed in the
action, and the grief of Alfonso was so intense that he only survived
his bereavement a few months. To his genius as a soldier and a ruler
has been justly attributed a large share of the greatness of the
Castilian monarchy. He traversed the territory of his Moslem
enemies from one extremity of the Peninsula to the other. In the
course of his long and eventful reign he won thirty-nine battles. Great
in all the popular qualities of the time, his deeds made a deep and
lasting impression on the national character of Spain.
The dissensions which followed the death of their sovereign
seriously threatened the integrity of the kingdom. The activity of
Temim carried dismay along the entire Christian frontier. Ocaña,
Aurelia, Cuenca were again subjected to Moslem authority. The
policy of Al-Mansur, which for a quarter of a century, without
intermission, had maintained the Holy War, was renewed. Ali
reinforced his brother with an army of a hundred thousand Africans,
which, after desolating a large part of Castile, formed the siege of
Toledo. Unable to make any impression upon that fortress, the
invaders stormed and burned Talavera, Guadalajara, Madrid, and
many other less important cities. Ibn-Abi-Bekr invaded Portugal and
took Santarem and Lisbon. The remoteness of his capital, the
restless and impulsive character of his subjects, the danger of
sudden revolution, soon necessitated the return of Ali, whose
enterprise could not be dignified by the name of a campaign, and
was, in fact, nothing more than a gigantic foray. The number of
Christian captives who followed in the train of his army exceeded
any that had passed the strait since the invasion of Musa. Year after
year the lieutenants of the Sultan carried their ravages into the
enemy’s country. No quarter was given or expected in these
expeditions. All prisoners not available as slaves were inhumanly
butchered, and the women and children exhibited for sale in the
markets of Al-Maghrab, Egypt, and Syria.
The loss of Alfonso VI. of Castile was compensated by the rise of
another Alfonso, King of Aragon, surnamed from his fighting
proclivities El Batallador. Under the guidance of his genius, the
Christians began again to successfully arrest the progress of
Moslem conquest. The line of fortresses along the frontier gradually
fell into their hands. The great cities of Lerida and Saragossa were
taken. In many fiercely contested engagements, the furious assaults
of the Moslems were repulsed by the cool and determined courage
of their adversaries. On the bloody field of Cutanda, in an effectual
attempt to save the city of Calatayud, the Emir of Valencia left twenty
thousand of his bravest soldiers. The tide once turned, the
misfortunes of the Moslems followed each other in quick succession.
The strongholds of the North were absorbed by the increasing power
of the kingdom of Aragon. Portugal and much of the valley of the
Douro, which had submitted to Yusuf, were again incorporated into
the states of Castile. The decadent condition of his empire in the
Peninsula provoked another raid from Ali, at the head of a great
African army, with even less decisive results than had attended the
former one. The incapacity of the sovereign, in his far-distant capital,
to protect his subjects from the oppression of their governors, as well
as to defend his frontiers from the encroachments of the enemy,
became daily more apparent. The influence of the theologians, as
might have been anticipated from the peculiar disposition of Ali, was
paramount. The faquis and kadis were the true source of power, the
dispensers of favor, the pitiless instruments of oppression and
vengeance. They stood at the ear of every provincial magistrate and
military commander,—officials whose ignorance exaggerated the
knowledge of their unprincipled advisers,—and reaped the profits of
spoliation and cruelty, while their dupes bore the odium of their
flagrant and shameless injustice. Their intolerance arrayed them
against all learning, even to the point of decrying the most
accomplished scholars of their own, the Malikite, sect. No
philosopher dared to openly entertain an heretical opinion. Poets,
formerly accustomed to affluence, wandered about clothed in rags,
and were constantly on the verge of starvation. The clerical and
judicial harpies who controlled the administration secured the
employment of Jews as farmers of the revenue, and divided with
these inexorable collectors the fruits of their rapacity and extortion. In
consequence of their rare opportunities, they soon became the
richest class in Andalusia. Ibn-Hamden, the Kadi of Cordova,
surpassed all of his brethren in wealth, his fortune being estimated at
several million pieces of gold. Encouraged by their example and
success, the Berber officers and soldiers robbed and persecuted the
people, already driven to despair by the exactions of corrupt
functionaries acting under the perverted authority of the law. They
seized their property. They intruded upon their privacy in the
unrestrained indulgence of lust and rapine. The wives and daughters
of the most respected citizens could not appear in the streets without
danger of insult and violation. In consequence of these abuses, the
army became thoroughly demoralized, the soldiers refused to face
an enemy, and it became necessary to enlist bands of mercenaries,
gathered at random among the ports of the Mediterranean, to
garrison the principal cities. No attention was paid to the
remonstrances of the indignant and suffering victims. At length the
revolutionary spirit of Cordova again asserted itself. The inhabitants
rose, the Berbers were hemmed in and massacred, and not one of
the obnoxious race who dared to face the fury of the mob survived.
The appearance of Ali failed to awe the rebels, but the
commencement of a siege soon brought them to terms. Aware of the
provocations they had endured, the Sultan treated his seditious
subjects with unusual leniency, requiring only the pecuniary
reimbursement of such of their victims as had escaped with their
lives and a liberal indemnity to the families of the dead. It was while
at Cordova that Ali received the first intelligence of an insurrection in
Africa, whose popularity and progress were of evil augury for the
permanence of the already tottering Almoravide power.
CHAPTER XVIII
THE EMPIRE OF THE ALMOHADES
1121–1212
Rise of Abu-Abdallah, the Mahdi—His Character and Talents—He

rebels against Ali—His Eventful Career—Abd-al-Mumen
succeeds Him—Decline of the Almoravide Power in Spain—Raid
of Alfonso of Aragon—Rout of Fraga—Death of Alfonso—
Indecisive Character of the Campaigns in the War of the
Reconquest—Progress of Abd-al-Mumen in Africa—Victories of
the Almohades—Natural Hostility of Moor and Berber—Anarchy
in the Peninsula—It is invaded by the Africans—Establishment of
the Almohade Empire in Andalusia—Almeria taken by the
Christians—Its Recapture by the Berbers—Death of Abd-al-
Mumen—His Genius and Greatness—Accession of Yusuf—His
Public Works—He organizes a Great Expedition—He dies and is
succeeded by Yakub—The Holy War proclaimed—Battle of
Alarcos—Effects of African Supremacy—Death of Yakub—The
Giralda—Mohammed—He attempts the Subjugation of the
Christians—Despair of the Latter—Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa
—Utter Rout of the Almohade Army.
The proverbial instability of the tribes of Northern Africa, habitually
dominated by the most abject superstition, the prey of successive
generations of religious impostors, incapable of systematized civil
organization, of moral consistency, of personal loyalty, was now to be
again demonstrated by a revolution that, in the principal
circumstances of its origin and progress, was almost the counterpart
of the one preceding it, which had made the polished and intellectual
population of Spain—justly proud of the traditions of the khalifate—
tributary subjects of a foreign and barbaric potentate. As with every
race brought suddenly in contact with the highest civilization without
passing through the intermediate phases incident to the regular and
predestined development of nations, the corruption and degeneracy
of the Berbers advanced with amazing rapidity. Amidst the hitherto
unknown allurements of luxury and vice, the primitive virtues of
generosity, courage, and hospitality disappeared. The fetichism of
the Desert was replaced by a spurious and absurd Mohammedan
belief, which retained, as essential parts of its doctrine, the most
objectionable and offensive principles of Paganism. The religious
teachers of the people, more deeply contaminated than their
disciples and closely allied with the Jews, whose worship and whose
dogmas they held up to reprobation in public and connived at in
secret, had become monsters of extortion, profligacy, and injustice.
The martial tastes of Yusuf had not descended to his son, who daily
exhibited, to the delight of the clergy and the astonishment of the
people, the abasement of a devotee, an example sufficiently edifying
in a saint but strangely unbecoming in a sovereign whose throne
was sustained by arms, and whose subjects were accustomed to
subsist by conquest and rapine. No faqui desirous of obtaining a
reputation for piety prayed and fasted with more persistent regularity
than Ali. The greater part of his time was passed in the mosque, and
the administration, meanwhile, was usurped by the clergy and the
ladies of the court. The direct intervention of women in public affairs
was a practice heretofore unknown to the Moslem constitution.
During the reign of Ali, however, the wives and concubines of great
officials virtually controlled, by favor and purchase, the policy of the
government, trafficked in appointments of the civil and military
service, capriciously deposed high dignitaries, and pardoned
brigands and other malefactors condemned for atrocious crimes.
The contradictory mandates, and the uncertain execution of the laws
resulting from the conflicting interests and the indecision of ambitious
and corrupt females, produced inextricable confusion, and provoked
the scorn and resentment of the people. In Spain, far removed from
the capital of the empire, the prevalent disorder and oppression
reached its culmination; and even constant familiarity with military
abuses could not reconcile the citizens of the Andalusian capitals to
the intolerable insolence of the Almoravide soldiery.
About this time there appeared in the African dominions of Ali a
new reformer, half enthusiast, half charlatan, whose austerities and
denunciations of the prevalent luxury and impiety of the age at once
attracted the attention and inspired the reverence of the masses. His
name was Abu-Abdallah; his origin—designated by an appellation
referring to the calling of his father, a lamplighter in the mosque of
his native village—was most humble; but nature had endowed him
with talents which early marked him as a leader of men. His
education, acquired in the famous schools of Cordova, Bagdad, and
Cairo, was far superior to his rank, and, by assiduous study and
extensive travel in foreign countries, he had amassed a vast fund of
knowledge, and had obtained, even in the centres of Moslem
learning, the reputation of an accomplished controversialist and
theologian. A pupil of the great Al-Ghazzali, he had embraced with
eagerness the doctrines of that renowned philosopher, whose work,
branded as heterodox and impious by the clergy of Cordova, had
been publicly consigned to the flames, and its possession made a
cause of relentless persecution by the bigoted religious counsellors
of Ali. The subsequent conduct of the reformer might suggest to an
observant and unfriendly critic that this unfavorable reception of the
dogmas of one of the most famous teachers of Islam had not a little
influence in forming the opinions and determining the career of the
ambitious young Berber student. His education completed, Abu-
Abdallah returned to his home among the tribesmen of Masmoudah
in the country of Sus. His travels and his studies, directed by a keen
and vigorous intellect, had given him a profound insight into human
nature, while the superiority of his literary attainments obtained for
him the greatest respect from the simple and ignorant shepherds
among whom his lot was cast. From the day of his return, he
affected an air of mystery well calculated to impose upon a
credulous and highly imaginative people. He assumed the title of Al-
Mahdi, or The Leader, a word synonymous with Messiah, a
personage whose advent has been predicted by the founders of
almost every sect of Oriental origin. He declaimed with audacity and
eloquence against the sins of the degenerate Moslems. In common
with all reformers whose success demands a real or apparent
exhibition of sanctity, his life afforded an edifying example of self-
denial and of the practice of the most austere virtue. His garments
were scanty and of the coarsest materials. His sole possessions
consisted of a staff and a leathern bottle. Subsisting upon alms, and
sleeping in the court-yards of the mosques, where, during the day,
with impassioned oratory, he exhorted the wayward to repentance,
he did not remain long in solitude. Crowds gathered to participate in
his devotions and to enjoy the benefit of his prayers. The erratic
genius of the Berber, impressed with an exhibition so congenial with
its nature and actuated by the love of novelty, soon recognized in the
holy man a guide whose inspiration was directly derived from
heaven. Among the first of his disciples was a youth of distinguished
lineage and unusual personal attractions, named Abd-al-Mumen,
whom the Mahdi, as he was now universally called, selected as his
councillor, and whose talents for war and executive ability, as soon
became evident, were superior to those of any individual of his time.
Accompanied by a small band of followers, the Mahdi advanced by
easy stages to Morocco, the depravity of whose citizens he
constantly represented as worthy of the severest punishment that
could be inflicted by the wrath of an outraged Deity. It was not
without reason that he denounced the vices of the great Almoravide
capital. Although so recently founded, it already ranked with the most
opulent, the most splendid, the most dissolute of the cities of the
Mohammedan world. Its population had been gathered from three
continents; its commerce extended from the frozen zone to countries
far south of the equator; its profligate diversions equalled in their
shamelessness and monstrous variety the proverbial abominations
of ancient Carthage.
The first public act of the Mahdi after his arrival was one whose
unparalleled audacity was admirably calculated to establish the
sacredness of his pretended mission as far as the most distant
frontiers of the empire. On one of the Fridays of the festival of
Ramadhan, a great concourse had assembled in the principal
mosque of the capital to await the coming of the Sultan. Before the
royal cortége appeared, an emaciated figure, meanly clad and
intoning in deep and solemn accents verses from the Koran, strode
through the assemblage and seated itself, without ceremony, on the
throne. The remonstrances of the attendants of the mosque
produced no effect on the intruder, and even at the approach of Ali
himself he retained his seat, while the entire congregation rose and
stood reverently in the presence of their monarch. In the minds of
devout Moslems, mental eccentricity and insanity are not
infrequently considered evidences of divine inspiration; the most
outrageous denunciations are received with humility by the greatest
potentates; and, encouraged by impunity, the dervish and the
santon, sure of the toleration of the sovereign and the applause of
the multitude, do not hesitate to violate every feeling of decency and
reverence in the prosecution of their schemes of imposture. The
existence of this superstitious prejudice prevented the molestation of
the Mahdi, whose reputation had preceded him, but whose person
was as yet unknown to the inhabitants of Morocco. Not content with
usurping his place, the audacious reformer even ventured, in
scathing terms, to reprove the Sultan in the presence of the
assembly, and warned him that if he did not correct the faults of his
government and the vices of his subjects he would be speedily
called upon to render an account of his neglect to God. The
amazement and consternation of the Prince were only exceeded by
the apprehensions of the people, who awaited, with equal anxiety,
the accomplishment of a miracle or the outbreak of a revolution.
From that day the religious authority of the Mahdi was established
throughout the African dominions of Ali. His audiences were
numbered by thousands. Proselytes in vast multitudes assented to
his doctrines, and his movements began to seriously occupy the
attention of the government, whose officials saw with unconcealed
dread his fast-increasing popularity and the effect which his
harangues and his ostentatious asceticism were producing upon the
capricious and easily deluded masses. He was examined by the
ministers, some of whom advised his immediate execution, but, as
he had hitherto confined himself to religious exhortations and had
asserted no pretensions to the exercise of temporal sovereignty, the
impolitic clemency of Ali, unmindful of the similar circumstances
which had attended the elevation of his own family to power,
dismissed, unharmed, the most dangerous enemy of his life and his
throne. The lesson he had just been taught was not lost on the wary
impostor, who, of all distinctions, coveted least the honors of
martyrdom. He left the capital and repaired to Fez, where for a
considerable period he kept himself in seclusion, but, through his
devoted emissaries, still retaining and indeed increasing his
influence over the ignorant populace, deeply impressed with the
mystery that surrounded his movements as well as with the oracular
messages with which he nourished the curiosity and stimulated the
expectations of his followers. At length, without warning, he
reappeared in the streets of Morocco. The enthusiastic welcome he
received made it apparent that his popularity had been in no respect
diminished during his absence. His insolence and his extravagance
now became more offensive than ever. He denounced, in epithets
conveying the greatest opprobrium, the public and private conduct of
the monarch and his court. Assisted by his disciples, he seized the
wine vessels in the bazaars and emptied their contents into the
streets. The sight of a musical instrument roused him to fury and was
the signal for its instant destruction, as well as for the maltreatment
of the owner. His piety could not tolerate even the songs of mirth,
and those who presumed to enjoy this harmless amusement in his
hearing were speedily silenced with a shower of blows. The climax of
impudence and outrage was attained when the Mahdi, having one
day encountered in one of the public thoroughfares of the capital the
sister of Ali, who, in compliance with the prevalent custom of the
Moorish ladies of Africa and Spain, had discarded the veil, roundly
abused her for this violation of the injunctions of the Prophet, and
ended by precipitating her from her saddle into the gutter, to the
horror and consternation of her numerous retinue. An offence of this
flagrant character committed by any one unprotected by the
influence of the grossest superstition would, under Oriental law, have
been instantly punishable with death. But the reverence entertained
for the sacred profession of the culprit, the general suspicion of his
want of responsibility, and a fatal indifference to his rapidly
increasing power suggested the imposition of an insignificant
penalty, and the bold and reckless innovator was banished from the
city. In obedience to the letter, if not to the spirit of his sentence, he
betook himself to a neighboring cemetery, erected there a miserable
hovel, and, surrounded by the significant memorials of the dead,
began anew his prophesies of impending evil and his declamations
against the vice and corruption of the dignitaries of the empire. The
leniency with which his offences had been treated by the authorities
was distorted by fear and fanaticism into persecution and injustice,
and the violator of law was at once exalted into a martyr. The
passions of the ignorant were then artfully aroused by
representations that the life of their leader was threatened, and a
bodyguard of fifteen hundred well-armed soldiers was organized to
watch constantly over the safety of the self-styled Messenger of
God. The Sultan now began to realize, when too late, the effects of
his ill-timed indulgence. He sent a peremptory order for the Mahdi to
leave the vicinity of the capital. The latter, alleging that he had
already complied with the directions of his sovereign as indicated by
the sentence of banishment, and feeling secure in the midst of his
devoted adherents, at first declined to abandon his position; but, on
learning that measures were already taken for his assassination, he
fled in haste to the distant town of Tinamal, where he had disclosed
his pretended mission. There, in the mosque, he first openly
announced his claim to temporal power. A sympathetic audience
was excited to frenzy by his mysterious predictions and his fervid
eloquence; his claim to universal dominion as the Champion of the
Faith and the restorer of the purity of Islam was received with
vociferous applause by the multitude, and in the midst of the turmoil
Abd-al-Mumen and ten of his companions, rising and drawing their
swords, swore eternal fealty to their leader. Their example was
followed by the entire congregation; and thus, a second time, in the
centre of the Sahara was inaugurated a Mohammedan reformation
the precursor of a gigantic but unsubstantial and impermanent
empire. This decisive step had no sooner been taken than the Mahdi
proceeded to organize his government by the appointment of civil
and military officials. Abd-al-Mumen was made vizier; the ten
proselytes who had sworn allegiance in the mosque were united in a
Supreme Council; and the two subordinate bodies, composed
respectively of fifty and seventy disciples, were charged with the
management of affairs of inferior moment; the result of their
deliberations being subject to the approval or rejection of the Mahdi
himself. The revolutionists, whose numbers, daily recruited by
accessions from the martial tribes of the Desert, had now become
formidable, assumed the name of Almohades, or Unitarians, not only
to distinguish them from the Christians, whose trinitarian dogma and
adoration of images caused them to be designated by all Moslems
as idolaters, but to indicate as well a return to the original simplicity
of Islam, long corrupted by the heterodox practices and dissolute
manners of their Almoravide rivals. A strange and mysterious fatality
seemed to attach to the fortunes of the latter in every field where
they encountered the armies of the newly arisen Prophet. In four
successive engagements the soldiers of Ali, seized with a panic in
the presence of the enemy, yielded almost without resistance to the
attack of the Berber cavalry; their standards and baggage were
taken, and thousands of fugitives, butchered in headlong flight,
expiated with the loss of life and honor their effeminacy and their
cowardice.
The opinion generally prevalent in the minds of the illiterate, that
military success is an infallible criterion of religious truth, began to
produce its effect on the Almoravides. The terror experienced by
them at the sight of the enemy—really due to relaxation of discipline
and apprehension of the miraculous powers of an audacious
charlatan—was universally attributed to supernatural influence. The
mission of the Mahdi required no further demonstration of its divine
origin. Henceforth his utterances were received by both friend and
enemy as the oracles of God. His credit daily increased among the
credulous and passionate inhabitants of the Desert. The Almoravide
soldiers shrank from an encounter with a foe whose white standard
seemed to be invested with the mystic qualities of a talisman. The
Mahdi, renouncing in a measure his character of affected humility,
now assumed the pomp of a sovereign. He surrounded himself with
a splendidly appointed bodyguard. His throne was approached by
suppliants for favor with the debasing and complicated ceremonial of
Oriental despotism. He demanded, in arrogant and menacing
language, submission and tribute from Ali, who, dejected by
repeated misfortune, began to share with his ignorant subjects the
awe which enveloped the person and the attributes of his triumphant
and formidable adversary. The plans of the latter had heretofore
been accomplished without an established base of operations, the
camps of the Almohades being moved from place to place over the
drifting sands of the Desert; but now, the direction of an army of
twenty thousand men, the subsistence and shelter of a vast
multitude of non-combatants, and the dignity and power of a new
and growing political organization urgently demanded a settled
habitation and a recognized centre of authority. Among the lofty
crags of a mountain spur extending from the range of Tlemcen to the
Atlantic stood the village of Tinamal. Its retired situation, its natural
defences, its proximity to both the rich cities of the coast and the
fertile regions of the interior, the character of its people, who were to
a man ardent believers in the mission of the Mahdi, made it an
admirable point either for the inauguration of a conquest or the
institution of an harassing system of predatory warfare. It was
approached by narrow and tortuous paths which, winding along the
mountain side, disclosed, on the one hand, an inaccessible cliff, on
the other, an abyss whose depths were shrouded in perpetual
gloom. From its battlements, almost hidden in the clouds, the
progress of a hostile party could be watched for miles as, with slow
and uncertain steps, it pursued its hazardous way. In this mountain
fastness the Mahdi fixed his residence and established his capital.
The natural impediments in the path of an invader were greatly
multiplied by the artificial resources of engineering skill. Towers and
fortresses were raised at points commanding the various
approaches to the mountain stronghold. Drawbridges were thrown
across roaring torrents. Walls and gateways obstructed the passage,
where an insignificant force might with ease check the progress of a
numerous army. The village of Tinamal soon became a city, whose
inhabitants, subsisting by the plunder of their neighbors, became the
scourge and the terror of the peaceable and defenceless subjects of
Ali. After a long sojourn in his seat of power, the Mahdi, about to
succumb to a fatal disease, determined to signalize his closing days
by an enterprise worthy of the pretensions he had assumed and of
the success which had hitherto favored his undertakings. An army of
forty thousand men was assembled for the capture of Morocco. In a
desperate conflict under the walls of that city, the Almoravides, who
outnumbered their opponents two to one, were put to flight and
pursued with terrible carnage to its gates. But the fortunes of the
Almohades, heretofore invincible, were now destined to receive a
serious blow. Unaccustomed to the conduct of a siege, the soldiers
of Abd-al-Mumen habitually neglected the precautions which, in the
presence of an enemy, are indispensable to the security of a camp.
Within the immense circuit of the capital were marshalled for a final
struggle the collected resources of the empire. Thousands of
fugitives from the recent disastrous battle had found an asylum
behind its walls. Reinforcements had been drawn from every African
province as well as from the diminished Andalusian armies, their
own strength already sorely taxed by repeated incursions of the
Christian foe. The constructing and handling of military engines were
confided to a body of Byzantine and Sicilian engineers enlisted for
that purpose. The soldiery was animated by the presence and the
example of the Sultan, who had for the time abandoned the Koran
for the sword, and stood ready to perform the part of a valiant and
resolute commander. The citizens, moved to desperation by the
approach of an enemy whose relentless character had been
established by the massacre of fugitives and prisoners, and from
whose ferocity, aggravated by prolonged opposition, they could
expect no indulgence, co-operated manfully with the garrison in the
defence of their homes, their families, their property, and their king.
The first sallies of the Almoravides, conducted by leaders trained to
partisan encounters in the wars of Spain, were signally disastrous to
the besiegers. The latter, suddenly checked in an uninterrupted
career of victory, were disconcerted and dismayed, and their
confidence was shaken in proportion as the spirits of their
adversaries rose. Encouraged by success, the attacks of the latter
became more vigorous and determined; a general engagement
followed, the Almohades were routed with terrific slaughter, and it
was only by the exertion of strenuous effort that Abd-al-Mumen and
a handful of survivors were enabled to escape the lances of the
Almoravide cavalry. The depression caused by a single disaster was
more potent in its effect on the minds of the disciples of the Mahdi
than the prestige derived from a score of victories. The influence
which had exercised its mysterious sway over the imagination of all
who had presumed to dispute the claims of the impostor was
perceptibly impaired. The fickle tribesmen deserted his standard by
thousands. But in the course of a few years his eloquence and tact
were able to repair the losses he had sustained; another army
commanded by Abd-al-Mumen issued from the mountains, and a
brilliant victory obtained over the followers of Ali retrieved the honor
and credit of the Almohade cause. The Mahdi did not long survive
his triumph. Overcome with the excitement occasioned by the return

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What Can't be Said: Paradox and

Contradiction in East Asian Thought

The Psychological and Cultural Foundations of East

The Great Paradox of Science: Why Its Conclusions Can

Facials Can Be Fatal Cohen

I Heard What You Said Jeffrey Boakye

Can Animals Be Persons? Mark Rowlands

Thought and Play in Musical Rhythm: Asian, African, and

Arabs and Israelis: Conflict and peacemaking in the

Facials Can Be Fatal Nancy J. Cohen

Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press

© Oxford University Press 2021

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in

You must not circulate this work in any other form

Library of Congress Cataloging-​in-​Publication Data

This book was written collectively. Although individual names

A special thanks goes to Naoya Fujikawa, whose material on

T. CBETA electronic version of the Taishō shinshū daizōkyō 大正新修大藏經,

Let us start with dialetheism, since this is a view that is likely to be

since Aristotle’s badly flawed but highly influential defense of it in

topics. The most high-​profile of these concerns paradoxes of self-​

can make therefore progress at a sum of instants. Clearly, the anal-

see Priest 1987, ch. 12.

East Asian Philosophy

As we have noted, Western philosophical traditions have gener-

conceded the dialetheism of his view. See Casati 2016.

Take, for example, South Asian philosophy. Early Indian philos-

Even when all such occurrences of contradictions are set aside,

13 Recent commentators sometimes prefer to translate satya in this context as reality,

empty is to be dependently originated, which is the very nature of

15 For a translation of, and commentary on, the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā, see

Where Are We Going?

So here is where we are going. In the next chapter, Chapter 2, we will

In Chapter 7, we come to our final East Asian thinker, Nishida

The Book’s Coda

What they have to say is part of ongoing and contemporary philo-

Introduction: Dao and Dialetheia

We begin our discussion of East Asian attitudes toward paradox

frequently courts paradox. And, as we shall show, some of these

Whereof One Cannot Speak: The Laozi on the

The Laozi is a poetic text, both allusive and elusive. Because of

The Dao that can be described in language is not the constant

Wang Bi glosses this as follows:

Nameless it is the origin of the myriad things; named it is the

Here is Wang Bi’s gloss:

Anything that exists originates in nothingness [wu], thus, before

3 On the influence of Neo-​Daoist readings of the Daoist classics on the development of

Chinese Buddhism, see Allen 2014.

The thought behind this reading is clear: behind—​and ontolog-

There is something created from the amorphous10 that was born

Here is Wang Bi’s gloss on the penultimate sentence:

Names [ming] are used to determine forms [xing], but, created

吾不知其名，字之曰道 (trans. Lynn 1999: 94f).

And in section 32 we have:

The Dao in its constancy is “nameless.” Although the uncarved

Wang Bi glosses the first sentence as follows:

The Dao is formless, not attached to anything, and in conse-

12 名以定形，混成無形，不可得而定，故曰，不知其名也 (trans. Lynn

The Explanation of Ineffability

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

topics. The most high-profile of these concerns paradoxes of self-

3 On the influence of Neo-Daoist readings of the Daoist classics on the development of

The thought behind this reading is clear: behind—and ontolog-

The 15th-century philosopher and theologian Nicholas of Cusa—

ineffability are developed in the East Asian tradition—one expla-

Gongsun Long’s argument is ultimately successful—it creates

Zhuangzi favors. He prefers to encourage a non-discursive understanding of human