ABSTRACT
Bohun Wuren had such unshakeable composure that he could lecture the Daoist worthy Liezi on personal cultivation while standing with his heels over the edge of a precipice. These and other depictions of ethical adepts in the classical Daoist anthology Zhuangzi illustrate a eudaimonistic ideal focused on developing and applying distinctively human virtuosity. Foucault identifies four major elements implicated in the activity of constituting ourselves as ethical agents. The remaining element in the Foucauldian scheme is the ethical work. In early Chinese metaphysics, qi was the fluid-like ether from which everything was thought to be constituted. The empty state that the author had been describing, along with its relation to skills, brings to mind the autotelic or intrinsically rewarding state of total absorption in challenging, goal-directed activities that Csikszentmihalyi has dubbed flow. Emptiness and mirroring are metaphorical, not literal notions. Emptiness is the fasting of the heart. This mirroring characteristic purportedly yields practical efficacy.
