Guo Xiang

Guo Xiang was a Chinese thinker and official of the Western Jin dynasty, active in Luoyang, and a leading figure of Xuanxue ('profound learning'). His commentary on the Zhuangzi, attached to the 33-chapter version of the text that he edited and that survives today, argues that things are self-so (ziran): each arises spontaneously through its own transformation within a web of mutual conditioning, with no external creator or first cause. Ancient sources accused him of drawing on Xiang Xiu's earlier commentary, and how much is his own is debated.

Key ideas

• Things are self-so: each comes about of itself, not by the agency of a creator or a first cause.
• Nothingness cannot produce something, so there is no original source behind beings.
• Each thing has its own allotment, and fulfilling it is freedom and contentment.
• Things condition one another without any of them being the master of the rest.

Major works

• Commentary on the Zhuangzi (Zhuangzi zhu)
• The 33-chapter recension of the Zhuangzi, edited by him and the basis of the received text

In the conversation

• Discussion Guo Xiang said things are ‘self-so’. Does that mean uncaused, or caused by everything? Liu Mingqiao · 5 replies
• Question What does ziran, “self-so”, actually mean, and why do people call it the centre of Daoism? Ignacio Cárcamo · 5 replies
• Question How did Buddhist ideas first get into Chinese, and why did Daoist words matter so much? Kavya Menon · 5 replies