| Summary: | Recent research on Daoism has distinguished various models of self-cultivation present in the tradition, in particular those which aim at returning humanity to a natural, spontaneous form of existence (often associated with early pre-Qin “philosophical” Daoism), and those which aim at transcending human nature through technical practices (often associated with later “religious” Daoism). During the Wei-Jin period, organized Daoist religion was still in its early stages, yet the difference between the two models was very much an issue in the Dark Learning (<i>xuanxue</i>) thought of the intellectual elite. In this paper, I trace this debate as expressed in Wei-Jin thinker Guo Xiang’s <i>Commentary to the Zhuangzi</i>, in particular in Guo’s criticisms of the desire or attempt to exceed the limits (<i>ji</i>) of one’s inherent nature and his reinterpretation of the <i>Zhuangzi</i>’s criticisms of technical practices. While Guo follows Xiang Xiu in rejecting many of the claims of radical transcendence through self-cultivation, I argue that this does not imply that he lacks any positive conception of self-cultivation, but rather that he sees such cultivation as only possible through an immanent historical process in which both natural spontaneity and artificial techniques have a role to play.
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