My point of departure is the congruity of Jaina and Daoist perspectivalism. Jain philosophers hold that reality is non-one-sided (anekānta): any object of knowledge is knowable from infinite variety of viewpoints (nayas), and that no statement can provide an exhaustive account of a thing. All epistemic expressions implicitly reference one aspect (deśa) of a thing, rather than its totality.
These assumptions share remarkable similarities with Zhuangzi's “The sorting which evens things out” (Qiwulun). Like the Jain philosopher Samantabhadra, Zhuangzi saw knowledge as perspectival, that statements which express determinate knowledge are parameterized by viewpoints, and that uncareful combativeness in philosophical discourse is a major problem which should be assuaged through context-sensitivity and some way of embracing seemingly contradictory views. The paper draws these connections and explores how normative accounts of language-use in Jaina and Daoist traditions may be construed as mutually informative approaches to framing the soteriological value of dynamic perspective-shifting.