Zhuangzi’s Lone Project of Personal Freedom

2021 ◽  
pp. 287-338
Author(s):  
Tao Jiang
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual History ◽  
Classical Period ◽  
Chinese History ◽  
Critical Space ◽  
Personal Freedom ◽  
Chinese Intellectual

This chapter argues that Zhuangzi was an intellectual outlier who was not a significant participant in the debate on humaneness versus justice, carried out primarily among the Confucians, the Mohists, the Laoists, and the fajia thinkers during the classical period. He ridiculed the misguided character of the dominant intellectual projects and warned against their potential for inhumanity and injustice, the very opposite of what is intended by the participants of the mainstream discourse. He extoled personal freedom within the context of overwhelming emphasis on order, structured by humaneness and/or justice, and single-handedly opened up a critical space for the discourse on personal freedom in Chinese intellectual history. However, the marginal nature of the Zhuangist vision of personal freedom did not portend well its prospect in the subsequent Chinese history. The kind of freedom envisioned by Zhuangzi is an effortless navigation through and around the constraints of the human lifeworld, not a reimagining of those very constraints.

Conclusion

2021 ◽  
pp. 459-476
Author(s):  
Tao Jiang
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Political Discourse ◽  
Political History ◽  
Chinese History ◽  
Personal Freedom ◽  
Moral Transformation ◽  
Chinese Intellectual ◽  
Political Project ◽  
The Ideal

The Conclusion offers a reflection on the tragic fate of the Zhuangist idea of personal freedom in Chinese intellectual and political history. It scrutinizes the widely shared premise of self-cultivation, what the author calls the “regime of self-cultivation” in Chinese moral-political philosophy, among most classical thinkers including Zhuangzi, and explores its constraint on the development of personal freedom in the mainstream moral-political discourse as well as in the building of political institutions. In this respect, it was the fajia thinkers who built their theories on the givenness of ordinary human dispositions, instead of on the promissory note of moral transformation. The author reflects on a path that was not taken in Chinese history, i.e., the integration of the Zhuangist idea of personal freedom into the mainstream moral-political project in conceptualizing a polity that can accommodate the ideal of personal freedom institutionally.

XUNZI'S CRITICISM OF ZISI—NEW PERSPECTIVES

Early China ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 37 ◽  
pp. 291-325 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kuan-yun Huang
Keyword(s):  
Detailed Analysis ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Chinese Intellectual ◽  
Intimate Knowledge

AbstractThis study considers Xunzi's criticism of Zisi, Confucius' grandson, providing a detailed analysis of some of the most famous but also difficult passages in the Xunzi. By drawing on the newly excavated text, “Wuxing” (The five conducts), the study shows that not only did Xunzi have an intimate knowledge of Zisi's teachings, but in fact he had available to him a certain version of the “Wuxing.” This understanding makes it possible to evaluate Xunzi's role as a reporter of Zisi's teachings, and to the extent that Xunzi reported these teachings fairly and accurately, the study offers specific suggestions for reimagining a period that has been little understood in Early Chinese intellectual history, or the transition from Confucius to Mencius.

Klassische chinesische Philosophie

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hubert Schleichert ◽  
Heiner Roetz
Keyword(s):  
Prior Knowledge ◽  
Third Century ◽  
Classical Period ◽  
Chinese History ◽  
Fourth Edition ◽  
Philosophical Thought ◽  
Ancient Civilization ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Enlightenment

Chinese philosophical thought, which has fascinated Europe ever since the Enlightenment, originated in one of the most turbulent periods of Chinese history, the period from the sixth to the third century BC, in response to a crisis of disruption in ancient civilization. This book is dedicated to this "classical" period because of its lasting significance. It is intended to provide readers, even those without prior knowledge, with a reliable introduction to all the essential thinkers of the epoch, beginning with Confucius. Through numerous quotations, all translated from the original sources, the reader is introduced to the content, style and methodology of the ancient philosophies. In doing so, the book also gives repeated indications of the undiminished relevance of the positions represented. This fourth edition has been extensively revised and enhanced.

Authentication Studies (辨偽學) Methodology and the Polymorphous Text Paradigm

Early China ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 32 ◽  
pp. 1-43 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual History ◽  
Textual Criticism ◽  
Han Dynasty ◽  
Chinese Intellectual ◽  
History Of ◽  
Chinese Scholars ◽  
Chinese Texts ◽  
To Come ◽  
The Last Two Millennia ◽  
Made In

The foundation of Chinese intellectual history is a group of texts known as “masters texts” (子書). Many masters texts were authored in the Han dynasty or earlier and many of these have as their title the name of a master who was generally regarded as the author. The inclination to treat a given book as the product of a single writer is apparently a strong one. Nevertheless, from the very beginning there were Chinese scholars who doubted the veracity of the putative authorship of some of these works and suggested that they may in fact have been the product of several authors. Over time, such scholars developed criteria by which to judge the authenticity of ancient masters texts. But as such textual criticism grew more penetrating, the object of its scrutiny began to come apart at the seams. In the last two decades there has been a growing consensus that most early Chinese masters texts were originally quite permeable and that only later were their received forms settled upon.The branch of textual criticism that deals with authenticating early Chinese texts is called “Authentication studies.” This paper is a survey of the methodological advances made in the field of Authentication studies over the last two millennia. It is not a history of the field, as such a history would be a much longer project. The survey concludes with the idea of the “polymorphous text paradigm,” a paradigm that paradoxically obviates much of the preceding scholarship in its own field. Simply put, if authentication relies largely on anachronism, and anachronism relies largely on the dates of the putative author, then a multi-author work with no known “last author” will be impossible to authenticate. Furthermore, the polymorphous text paradigm does not posit these texts as necessarily having earlier and later “layers,” but rather as having had no set structure over the course of their early redactional evolution.This survey examines the contributions of seventeen scholars to Authentication studies methodology, and concludes with how the changes in this field have influenced the work of three modern, Western scholars.

Summaries of Doctoral Dissertations

2009 ◽  
Vol 102 (4) ◽  
pp. 497-503
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual History ◽  
East Asian ◽  
Republican China ◽  
Buddhist Tradition ◽  
Chinese Intellectual ◽  
Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation explores the rise of Buddhist scholasticism in Republican China (1911–1949) through the career of one of its most outspoken leaders, Ouyang Jingwu (1871–1943). Ouyang Jingwu, a lay Buddhist intellectual, charismatic teacher and polemical writer, is most recognized for his critique of the East Asian Buddhist tradition, and this critique stands at the heart of the dissertation. In addition to presenting this critique, this dissertation explores one of the most innovative hermeneutical alternatives offered by this influential and creative thinker. To date, scholars have overlooked the importance of Ouyang for later intellectual developments. I argue here that understanding Ouyang's critique is crucial for later developments in Chinese intellectual history both within and outside of Buddhism.

Disappearing Objects/Elusive Subjects

2013 ◽  
Vol 124 (1) ◽  
pp. 96-124 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paula Varsano
Keyword(s):  
Tang Dynasty ◽  
Classical Period ◽  
Chinese History ◽  
Literary Representations ◽  
Literary Subject ◽  
Gradual Transformation

This paper examines changes in the philosophical and literary representations of mirrors—and mirroring—in a foundational period of Chinese history beginning with the pre-classical period and ending in the medieval Tang Dynasty. Inspired by the peculiarity of this object, which acts upon subjects at least as much as it is acted upon by them, this study of the literary mirror, of reflection and reflexivity, provides a glimpse into the larger issue of the construction of subjectivity in premodern China. Through the examination of each stage of the literary mirror’s gradual transformation from metaphor, to lyrical stimulus, and ultimately to its subsumption as an evocative predicate, it is possible to observe concomitant shifts in the construction of the literary subject as it displays increasing—but never absolute—degrees of specificity, distinctness, and autonomy.

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