For his part, Zhu Xi knew that the years of learning and practice—one’s moral apprenticeship—culminates in a responsive moral agent who can operate as intuitively and spontaneously in his or her personal and social ethical sphere as do Zhuangzi’s skilled artisans in theirs.
C. Graham once contrasted Zhu’s perception/response model ( gan-ying ) of ethical action with that of Zhuangzi by suggesting that Zhu’s notion of appropriate response was informed by rigorous adherence to rules and principles, whereas Zhuangzi’s was relatively intuitive and spontaneous (Graham 1986a: 143–145). This apparent contrast can be resolved by separating the stages of cultivation and mastery: Zhuangzi’s skilled artisans, such as Butcher Ding, all had to undergo prolonged periods of rigorously controlled apprenticeship before they could “forget” the “knowing that” in an integrated, spontaneous process of “knowing how”. For his part, Zhu Xi knew that the years of learning and practice—one’s moral apprenticeship—culminates in a responsive moral agent who can operate as intuitively and spontaneously in his or her personal and social ethical sphere as do Zhuangzi’s skilled artisans in theirs. [11 ] Zhu’s moral adept is in effect an artisan of interpersonal intercourse. Zhu could rightfully claim Confucius as a prime model for this view. After decades of cultivation, Confucius could say, “At sixty, my ear was attuned. At seventy, I could give my heart free rein and without overstepping the mark” ( Analects 2.4).
When writing first developed (only during the last 5,000 years — 2% of our existence as humans), it was first used to record debts and agreements and only later to communicate information regarding how things are and which things matter.
