Following Deleuze’s analysis of expressivity, this article approaches the two opening aphorisms of the Dao De Jing 道德經 as two movements of a triadic differentiation of expressive elements. These aphorisms are further presented within four Deleuzean paradoxes which necessarily accompany linguistic expression. Simultaneously, the opening lines are also analyzed as philosophical problems which constitute the core of the Daoist project itself within which the unthinkable or ineffable must be conceived of not as conditioned by privation or negation, but as being (...) located within the movement of differentiation which is by nature positive and creative. As the paper shows, the linguistic involvement here is not one of discrimination but of a fundamentally dynamic immersion in problematic thought which underlies the mechanism of sense-making. This dynamism is presupposed by the disequilibrium between what expresses itself and its expressions, which is the birthplace of sense as the expressed. Our analysis of the latter is unfolded through an analogy drawn between Daoist and Spinozian expressionism supported by Deleuze’s study on Spinoza. (shrink)

This article argues that a phenomenological notion of “lived body” emerges in the Zhuangzi’s 莊子 critique of the Confucian body of ritual and morality. It also argues that a philosophical account of body cannot be reduced to a Sinological account. This article draws on the phenomenological distinction between “object body” and “lived body,” especially the “three ontological dimensions” of Jean-Paul Sartre to argue that the Zhuangzi criticizes the Confucian body of ritual and morality as being a “body-for-others” and that it (...) maintains a concept of “lived body.” Finally, it argues that through such methods of cultivation as “sitting and forgetting” a liberation of the body is achieved where one is connected to dao 道 and achieves a state of heightened experience. (shrink)