Neo-Daoism

This chapter argues that ZHU Xi was influenced by Daoism. His philosophy begins with the Diagram of the Great Polarity or Taijitu 太極圖 which has Daoist origins. Later in life he studied two Daoist texts, namely, The Seal of the Unity of the Three in the Zhou Book of Changes or the Zhouyi Cantongqi 周易參同契, and The Yellow Emperor’s Classic of the Secret Talisman or the Huangdi Yinfujing 黃帝陰符經. The chapter begins with a discussion about the nature of Daoism and (...) inner meditative alchemy. Then I discuss the Diagram of the Great Polarity. Finally, ZHU Xi’s study of the above two texts is analyzed. (shrink)

WANG Bi 王弼 develops a metaphysic of Dao 道 in his Commentary on Laozi and “The Structure of Laozi’s Subtle Pointers.” I summarize this metaphysic as the following thesis: Dao is featureless and is the ultimate reason why the myriad things exist and are the ways they are. I develop a systematic account of this thesis: I provide an interpretation of the featurelessness of Dao and show how Dao’s featurelessness relates to its fundamental explanatory role as the ontological ground for (...) the myriad things. (shrink)

Wei-Jin period is characterized by neo-Daoism ( xuanxue 玄學), and J I Kang lived in the midst of this philosophical exploration. Adopting the naturalism of the Zhuangzi , J i Kang expressed his socio-political concerns through the medium of music, which was previously regarded as having moral bearing and rectitude. Denying such rectitude became central for J i Kang, who claimed that music was incapable of possessing human emotion, releasing it from the chains of Confucian ritualism. His investigation into the (...) name and reality of musical expression gave music an “aesthetic turn” lacking in Qin and early Han thought, and by making use of concepts such as natural harmony and spontaneity, J i Kang was able to turn away from the negative aesthetics of earlier thinkers such as H e Yan and W ang Bi to one cherishing the naturalism espoused by Zhuangzi. (shrink)

This is a study of the ninth chapter of the Huai-nan-tzu, a Chinese philosophical text compiled in the mid-second century BC. The chapter (entitled Chu-shu [The techniques of the ruler]) has been consistently interpreted as a proposal for a benign government that is rooted in the syncretic Taoist principles of the Huai-nan-tzu and is designed to serve the best interests of the people. I argue, on the contrary, that the text makes skilful (and deliberately deceptive) use of vocabulary from the (...) major philosophical traditions of the day, in an attempt to subdue all philosophical sectarianism and wrench various antecedent philosophical ideas into the justification of a supreme political state. The best interests of the people are understood as nothing more than their material needs, since the text also denies that the ruler's subjects are possessed of 'minds' in any philosophical sense. It is this process of systematically undermining other philosophical traditions that I call 'insidious syncretism. '. (shrink)

Seemingly, “independent genesis” refers to the independent existence and changes of each thing, but it is clear that there cannot be any truly “independent” things at all. Each thing in the world has to stay in connection or relationship with other things outside itself if it wants to represent its own “independence” and “genesis” in terms of form; and inevitably such connection or relationship itself has to be embodied in the internal nature of each thing. In the metaphysical thought of (...) Guo Xiang, the former was known as the quality of “interdependence”; and the latter the characteristics of “quality” or “quality image.” Such characteristics of “quality” or “quality image” were interdependent, which constituted the essence of each thing itself as “beingness” and “beinglessness,” and thus resulted in the independent manifestation and change of things in terms of their external forms. The grasping of essence of things as “beingness” and “beinglessness” depended upon comprehension or rational intuition, and that was the realm of “profundity” in Guo Xiang’s terms. (shrink)

From its earliest origins in the Dao De Jing, Daoism has been known as a movement that is skeptical of the ability of language to fully express the truth. While many scholars have compared the earliest works of Daoism to language-skeptical movements in twentieth-century European philosophy and have debated to what degree early Daoism does or does not resemble these recent movements, Daniel Fried breaks new ground by examining a much broader array of Daoist materials from ancient and medieval China (...) and showing how these works influenced ideas about language in medieval religion, literature, and politics. Through an extended comparison with a broad sample of European philosophical works, the book explores how ideas about language grow out of a given historical moment and advances a larger argument about how philosophical and religious ideas cannot be divided into "content" and "context.". (shrink)

The question of ontological foundation has undergone a noteworthy revival in recent years: metaphysicians today quarrel about how exactly to understand the asymmetrical and hypertensional relationship of grounding. One of the reasons for this revival is that the old quantificationalist meta-ontology inherited from Quine has been effectively criticised by leading philosophers favourable to a meta-ontology, the aim of which is to come to know “which facts/items ground (constitute the base of) which other facts/items”, thus to examine the relation of ontological (...) dependence between beings (e.g. chemical properties depend on physical properties, the economic situation on the behaviour of individuals etc.), i.e. to explore the hierarchical structure of reality. I shall not discuss here the relationship of grounding in itself, but make some historical-formal remarks on the properties of the ultimate ontological foundational item itself and its aporetic nature. To do so I explore various more or less exotic philosophical ecosystems in the following order: Heidegger (Seyn), Plato (ἕν), Wáng Bi (道, dào). On the way I shall propose a new interpretation both of certain hypotheses in the Parmenides and of the nature of the opposition between Wáng Bì and Guō Xiàng in regard to the logical grammar of the expression “nothing (無, wú)” (transl. J. Dudley). (shrink)

From its earliest origins in the Dao De Jing, Daoism has been known as a movement that is skeptical of the ability of language to fully express the truth. While many scholars have compared the earliest works of Daoism to language-skeptical movements in twentieth-century European philosophy and have debated to what degree early Daoism does or does not resemble these recent movements, Daniel Fried breaks new ground by examining a much broader array of Daoist materials from ancient and medieval China (...) and showing how these works influenced ideas about language in medieval religion, literature, and politics. Through an extended comparison with a broad sample of European philosophical works, the book explores how ideas about language grow out of a given historical moment and advances a larger argument about how philosophical and religious ideas cannot be divided into "content" and "context.". (shrink)

Ji Kang’s “An Essay on Nourishing Life” has, for much of its history, been overshadowed by his more famous work “Sound is without Grief or Joy.” Be that as it may, “An Essay on Nourishing Life” is also an important text in that it delves into the interdependence of the heart-mind, spirit, and vital breath, and into how harmony between them is the key to ensuring physical longevity. In addition to investigating this aspect of his thought, this paper will also (...) discuss Ji Kang’s attention to the vicissitudes of knowledge and desire and to the need to temper them with tranquility and stillness. “An Essay on Nourishing Life” can thus be read as an extension of classical Daoist theories of self-cultivation while at the same time elaborating upon them by bringing together their disparate components into a coherently unified doctrine. (shrink)