Daoism and Wu

Philosophy Compass 9 (10):663-671 (2014)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

This paper introduces the concept of nothingness as used in classical Daoist philosophy, building upon contemporary scholarship by offering a uniquely phenomenological reading of the term. It will be argued that the Chinese word wu bears upon two planes of reality concurrently: as ontological nothingness and as ontic nonbeing. Presenting wu in this dyadic manner is essential if we wish to avoid equating it with Dao itself, as many have been wont to do; rather, wu is the mystery that perpetually veils Dao while serving as the root and counter‐balance to being, and yet, Dao also imbues things with wu to the extant that their physical makeup and usefulness, or lack thereof, can be traced back to their source in Dao. This does not only mean that Daoist cosmogony and metaphysics are inherently informed by nothingness/nonbeing instead of being/beings but that it works to unground all moral and epistemological norms in play, a feat no other school of thought in ancient China could accomplish.

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 90,221

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

The significance of Xuwu 虚无 (Nothingness) in Chinese aesthetics.Minghua Fan - 2010 - Frontiers of Philosophy in China 5 (4):560-574.
Daoism, Nature and Humanity.David E. Cooper - 2014 - Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 74:95-108.
Daoism and Chinese Martial Arts.Barry Allen - 2014 - Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy 13 (2):251-266.
The universal sentiment of daoist morality.Jianliang Xu - 2009 - Frontiers of Philosophy in China 4 (4):524-536.
Nothingness in Asian Philosophy.JeeLoo Liu & Douglas L. Berger (eds.) - 2014 - New York: Routledge.
Zhuangzi’s Meontological Notion of Time.David Chai - 2014 - Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy 13 (3):361-377.
Typology of Nothing: Heidegger, Daoism and Buddhism.Zhihua Yao - 2010 - Comparative Philosophy 1 (1):78-89.

Analytics

Added to PP
2014-10-06

Downloads
61 (#236,621)

6 months
6 (#201,673)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author's Profile

David Chai
Chinese University of Hong Kong

Citations of this work

The Metaphysics of Dao in W ang Bi’s Interpretation of Laozi.Hao Hong - 2019 - Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy 18 (2):219-240.
Critique of Imperial Reason: Lessons from the Zhuangzi.Dorothy H. B. Kwek - 2019 - Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy 18 (3):411-433.
Zhuangzi on Yu, Zhou, and the ontic indeterminacy of the Dao.Qiu Lin - 2022 - British Journal for the History of Philosophy 31 (1):127-136.

View all 7 citations / Add more citations