Perfect Action in the Zhuangzi – Reading a Heterogeneous Text
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| Year of publication | 2014 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
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| Description | This paper constructs the meaning of the pair of terms “heaven” and “man” in the Zhuangzi by reading the dichotomy in context of its textual unit, or even the whole chapter (in the case of chapter 5, and partially chapter 6). The diversity of the individual concretizations of the dichotomy is stressed. This is why it is regarded as highly problematic to read the pair “heaven” – “man” as a (philosophical) concept with fixed meaning. If the dichotomy was read as a direct statement about the nature of certain human beings (mostly the perfect persons), it would have to be concluded that the concept is full of contradictions. Instead, it is argued that the dichotomy is best understood as a literary device used to make arguments to support various ideas. This reading strategy accounts for the variability of the concretizations of the dichotomy. |