Abstract
The concept of the cheng xin in the Zhuangzi claims that the cognitive function of the heart-mind is not over and above its affective states and in charge of them in developing and controlling virtue, as assumed by the Confucians and others. This joint cognitive and affective nature of the heart-mind denies ethical and epistemic certainty. Individual perspectives are limited given habits of thought, attitudes, personal orientations and particular cognitive/affective experiences. Nevertheless, the heart-mind has a vast imaginative capacity that allows the open-endedness and broadening of perspectives.
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Acknowledgment
A National Science Council of Taiwan grant allowed work on this paper at Soochow University 東吳大學 in Fall 2010. I thank Mi Chien-kuo 米建國 for arranging this and for discussing an early draft. I presented Zhuangzi’s view of the xin at the Taiwan Philosophical Association Conference in October 2010, where Norman Teng’s 鄧育仁 comments re-directed my focus onto the cheng xin. The paper was read at the Soochow University conference on “Virtue and Luck: Virtue Theory and Chinese Philosophy” and at National Tsing Hua University, Graduate Institute of Philosophy, Taiwan, in June 2011. Discussions with participants (especially Tan Sor-hoon, Stephen Angle, Huang Yong, Fung Yiu-ming, 趙之振, 吳瑞媛, 陳思廷, 鄭喜恆, and 黃文宏) at both places led to revisions.
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Kim-chong, C. Zhuangzi’s Cheng Xin and its Implications for Virtue and Perspectives. Dao 10, 427–443 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11712-011-9236-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11712-011-9236-z