KUO HSIANG (347)

Neo-Taoist thinker who died in China in AD 312 to whom is attributed a celebrated work on the Chuang-tzu, one of the basic Taoist writings.

Kuo was a high government official.

His Chuang-tzu chu (Chuang-tzu Commentary) is thought to have been begun by another Neo-Taoist philosopher Hsiang Hsiu. When Hsiang died Kuo is said to have incorporated Hsiang´s commentary into his own. For this reason the work is sometimes called the Kuo-Hsiang commentary.

Kuo maintained that there is no agent that causes things but that all things spontaneously reproduce themselves. Applying this principle to human affairs he argued that one cannot impose a system on life. Rather, one should try to move with events as they occur. Nevertheless Kuo felt that social change was important and he believed that institutions and moral ideas must be changed when situations change. In adopting this position he gave a more positive meaning to the Taoist term wuwei (nonaction) by interpreting it to mean spontaneous action, not sitting still.

In these points Kuo deviated from original Taoism but the result agreed with the Chuang-tzu.