This article is one of the author’s serial writings to assimilate Ricoeur’s three-fold ethical investigation into various areas of human acts of forgetting, including 1) the therapeutic or pathological area, 2) the pragmatic area, dealing with individual and group’s self-identity in relation to time and otherness, and 3) the more explicitly ethical-political (social and institutional) area, in a wide context. Corresponding to the second area of the Ricoeurian three-fold investigation, this paper probes the ethical dimension of the Zhuangzian forgetfulness of (...) personal identity in relation to time and otherness. It first examines textual materials of the Zhuangzi to navigate on the narrative meanings of forgetting oneself or personal identity, and then delves into three domains of Zhuangzian conception on the forgetting of one’s fixed identity. Finally, it elaborates on the Zhuangzian notion of relational autonomy or agency that underlies the practice of forgetfulness of oneself or personal identity. (shrink)

An extraordinary horde of aberrant, deformed, and grotesque beings inhabits the writings collected in the Zhuangzi. Crippled, malformed, hideous, foolish, eccentric, and even outlawed individuals conquer the central place of philosophical narration, traditionally proscribed for them, and create one of the most important and intriguing voices echoing through the text. Yet, for all their undeniably significant presence, scholars of ancient Chinese philosophy have paid surprisingly little attention to the topic of monsters. Structured into three sections and adopting a critical, strictly (...) philosophical standpoint, this paper aims to draw attention to the crucial role played by monsters in the Zhuangzi. The first section underlines the essential characteristics of these monsters and, most particularly, their disruptive dimension together with the challenge they pose to philosophical thinking. The second section offers a detailed review of the recent bibliography on the Zhuangzi with regard to analysis of these aberrant figures. Finally, based on contributions in the work of Jacques Rancière, the third section highlights the political scope embodied by the monstrous beings of the Zhuangzi. (shrink)