This article offers a philosophical reflection on ambivalences inherent in the notion of craft analogy in the thought of Zhuangzi and Aristotle. Does it make sense to establish the analogy between the structure of the good conduct of life and the structure of the successful performance of craft? In turn, what are the reasons for rejecting this analogy? This study shows that both philosophers had strong reasons both for their commitment to some aspects of the analogy and for its decisive (...) denial in other respects. However, their particular reasons for this ambiguous view on the craft analogy are remarkably different and even opposite. This divergence owes to some central cosmological and ontological commitments that undergird their theories of action; while Aristotle’s conception of the human world calls for conscious interference and deliberate action, Zhuangzi’s view is that ideal action should spontaneously follow the order immanent in all things. (shrink)

A fair amount of recent Xunzi scholarship has focused on the problem of moral transformation. The problem being addressed supposedly arises this way. According to Xunzi, human nature is innately or inherently evil; individuals, nevertheless, can become moral agents capable to embracing and loving moral principles. Unfortunately, Xunzi does not provide any account of how individuals whose characters are inherently evil can transformed into full moral agents. Several scholars have proposed various ways in which Xunzi could address the problems, but (...) all are unsatisfactory for various reasons. In this paper, I will develop my own reading of Xunzi’s moral philosophy. My approach is to put Xunzi in the context of classical Confucianism, a tradition that shaped Xunzi’s thinking on his metaphysical assumption about the world, his reverence for the wisdom of sage kings, and his emphasis on education as the necessary condition for virtue development. (shrink)

There have been very few studies of the Daoist conception of time in either the West or the East. The only explicit study on this topic in the English literature is David Chai’s (2014). Chai maintains that “human measured time” manifested in myriad things in the Daoist universe is merely a mental construction, whereas the authentic time is cosmological time, which consists of neither an A-series (which is ordered by non-reducible pastness, presentness, and futurity) nor a B-series (which is ordered (...) by earlier-than relations) but something without order and directionality. In this paper, I start with Daoist texts (i.e., Dao De Jing and Zhuangzi) about fundamental reality and time. I then explain and analyze Chai’s interpretations of these texts. Lastly, I argue that Chai’s interpretations violate an important Daoist principle. In addition, the idea that human measured time is merely a mental construction is not the best available interpretation of the texts. (shrink)

Zhuangzi suggests that death is a transformation that we commonly and mistakenly think means the end of someone but really just marks a new phase of existence. This metaphysical thesis is presented at several points in the text as an explanation of distinctively Daoist responses to death and loss. Some take a Daoist response to death, as presented by Zhuangzi, to indicate dual perspectives on friendship and death. But I argue that the metaphysical view sketched above is consistent with a (...) unified perspective, allowing the Daoist to enjoy deep friendships without risking some potential for grief typically associated with strong attachment. However, it leaves the Daoist best suited to friendships with those who endorse the same metaphysics. Furthermore, while the grief associated with the death of a friend is somewhat mitigated, the Daoist has reason to mourn even given this thesis. (shrink)

Attributions of omnipresence, most familiar within the philosophy of religion, typically take the omnipresence of an entity to either consist in that entity's occupation of certain regions or be dependent upon other of that entity's attributes, such as omnipotence or omniscience. This paper defends an alternative conception of omnipresence that is independent of other purported divine attributes and dispenses with occupation. The resulting view repurposes the metaphysics of necessitism and permanentism, taking omnipresent entities to be those entities that exist at (...) all regions. This view is then shown to best accommodate attributions of omnipresence to a diverse range of metaphysical posits, like abstract entities, and a more diverse class of religious posits. (shrink)

This paper attempts to draw a comparison between Derrida’s idea of “trace” (in connection to the more famous notions of différance, supplement, and deconstruction) and the idea of dao 道 in classica...

The light metaphor is a perpetual favorite for philosophers, both East and West. I seek to revaluate its opposite, darkness. I claim that there are good reasons to favor darkness over light, or at least to not see them as mutually incompatible or in hierarchical fashion. In recent Western philosophy, both Heidegger and Derrida argue that what the light metaphor represents, the promise of clarity and objectivity, is exactly what makes Western metaphysics problematic. In Chinese philosophy, classical Daoism offers a (...) thinking that does not favor the light metaphor over its opposite. Daoists have the good sense to acknowledge darkness as a positive contribution to human life, at the very least on par with light. I argue that both the Western criticism of the light metaphor, and the Daoist approach to light and darkness, can be read as challenging the metaphysics of presence and providing an alternative way of thought. (shrink)

This article argues that Derrida’s thinking is relevant to comparative philosophy. To illustrate this, at various stages classical Daoism is compared with Derrida’s thought, to highlight Derrida’s “applicability” and to see how using Derrida can contribute to new interpretations of Daoism. The article first looks into Derrida’s engagement with non-Western thought, and then proceeds to his extensive work regarding language and translation, comparing this with views on classical Chinese language and translation of key Daoist characters. It then explores Derrida’s efforts (...) at opening up philosophy to its outside, and argues that he was very much concerned with other ways of thinking and their possible influence on Western thought. The final section argues both that Derrida’s abiding concern with otherness and alterity forms a fertile background from which to reinvestigate traditional interpretations of classical Daoism and that employing his way of thought can lead us to interesting new perspectives on Daoism. (shrink)

I argue that the main theme of the Zhuangzi is that of spiritual transformation. If there is no such theme in the Zhuangzi, it becomes an obscure text with relativistic viewpoints contradicting statements and stories designed to lead the reader to a state of spiritual transformation. I propose to reveal the coherence of the deep structure of the text by clearly dividing relativistic statements designed to break down fixed viewpoints from statements, anecdotes, paradoxes and metaphors designed to lead the reader (...) to a state of spiritual transformation. Without such an analysis, its profound stories such as the butterfly dream and the Great Sage dream will blatantly contradict each other and leave us bereft of the wisdom they presage. Unlike the great works of poetic and philosophic wisdom such as the Dao de Jing and the Symposium, the Zhuangzi will be reduced to a virtually unintelligible, lengthy, disjointed literary ditty, a potpourri of paradoxical puzzles, puns and parables, obscure philosophical conundrums, monstrous interlocutors and historical personages used as mouthpieces authoritatively arguing on behalf of viewpoints humorously opposite to what they historically held. (shrink)

Good chefs know the importance of maintaining sharp knives in the kitchen. What’s their secret? A well-worn Taoist allegory offers some advice. The king asks about his butcher’s impressive knifework. “Ordinary butchers,” he replied “hack their way through the animal. Thus their knife always needs sharpening. My father taught me the Taoist way. I merely lay the knife by the natural openings and let it find its own way through. Thus it never needs sharpening” (Kahn 1995, vii; see also Watson (...) 2003, 46). Plato famously employed this image as an analogy for the reality of his Forms (Phaedrus, 265e). Just like an animal, the world comes pre-divided for us. Ideally, our best theories will be those which “carve nature at its joints”. While Plato employed the “carving” metaphor to convey his views about the reality of his celebrated Forms, its most common contemporary use involves the success of science -- particularly, its success in identifying distinct kinds of things. Scientists often report discovering new kinds of things -- a new species of mammal or novel kind of fundamental particle, for example -- or uncovering more information about already familiar kinds. Moreover, we often notice considerable overlap in different approaches to classification. As Ernst Mayr put it: No naturalist would question the reality of the species he may find in his garden, whether it is a catbird, chickadee, robin, or starling. And the same is true for trees or flowering plants. Species at a given locality are almost invariably separated from each other by a distinct gap. Nothing convinced me so fully of the reality of species as the observation . . . that the Stone Age natives in the mountains of New Guinea recognize as species exactly the same entities of nature as a western scientist. (Mayr 1987, 146) Such agreement is certainly suggestive. It suggests that taxonomies are discoveries rather than mere inventions. Couple this with their utility in scientific inference and explanation and we have compelling reason for accepting the objective, independent reality of many different natural kinds of things.. (shrink)

This paper explores a few of the ways that the Zhuang-Zi can inform contemporary analytic epistemology. I begin, in section 1, by briefly outlining and summarizing the case for my fictionalist interpretation of the text. In section 2, I discuss how the Zhuang-Zi can be brought into productive dialogue with the question of how we should respond to skeptical arguments. Specifically, I argue that the Zhuang-Zi can be reasonably interpreted as exemplifying an approach that is different from dominant contemporary responses (...) to skeptical arguments in three ways: it is fictionalist; it motivates a skeptical perspective rather than a claim; and it accomplishes its aims in an atypical, but nonetheless contextually appropriate, way. However, the Zhuang-Zi is relevant to contemporary debates about skeptical arguments because it can be used: to respond to the same sorts of skeptical arguments that occupy contemporary commentators; to address a number of questions that arise in connection with such arguments; and to suggest important new questions for epistemologists to pursue. (shrink)

This paper examines and defends a conception of the education of emotions found in the Zhuang-Zi. I begin by exploring four principal features of Zhuang Zi’s philosophy as it relates to the emotions: his epistemological perspectivism, his view of the self, his ethics of wandering and natural spontaneity, and his playful non-seriousness. Together these four features allow us to discern a general orientation to the education of the emotions, including a normative account of a good emotional life as well some (...) suggestions for a pedagogy for the development of such a life. (shrink)