Zhuangzi Discussed How to Transcend the Life Plight
Date Issued
2007
Date
2007
Author(s)
Kuo, Fang-Ru
DOI
zh-TW
Abstract
This thesis aims to discuss Zhuangzi’s method of transcending the predicaments in life. I will first quote the opinions of both Mr. Feng Yo Lan and Mr. Liu Xiao Gang for my following argument.
The interpretations of the two remarkable scholars have a lot in common, despite something different: Mr. Feng puts his eyes on the contradiction between freedom and necessity in Zhuangzi’s thought, while Mr. Liu pays more attention to argue that Zhuangzi make an incompatibility between ideal and reality. This thesis, then, may be roughly divided into two parts. First, I will point out the main ideas and even difficulties of the two scholars’ studies. Second, based on the former task, I will demonstrate what Zhuangzi’s method of transcending the predicaments in life is through the elimination of fission between ideal and reality.
In short, the two scholars’ excessive generalizations of both “handle things without any damage of self” and “to be content with anything as with fate” cause the conflicts between freedom and necessity and between ideal and reality in Zhuangzi’s philosophy.
It is right to make a distinction between “handle things without any damage of self” and “to be content with anything as with fate” as the two scholars do, but it must be a biased way to interpret Zhuangzi by either, through which Feng and Liu——Feng through the former and Liu the latter——claim that there is a contradiction in Zhuangzi’s thought. It is a result of excessive generalization as mentioned above and then it is a pseudo contradiction, however.
Furthermore, this thesis believes that the pseudo contradiction Feng and Liu have made is caused by their neglect of “clarity” and “true knowledge”. A true man recognizes Dao and then holds the highest wisdom, so he regards the situations that he is inability to meet as his fate. He faces every predicament with unconcerned attitude, what he faces, then, is just a general situation everyone cannot improve. He feels no helplessness in this case. Such a “true knowledge” denotes not only “handle things without any damage of self” but also “to be content with anything as with fate”, so the hold of “true knowledge” is essentially the method of transcending the predicaments in life Zhuangzi claims.
True knowledge is not that organoleptic, but an understanding of Dao. For Zhuangzi, the change of viewing this world, not the transformation of particular circumstances, makes the true man be capable of transcending the predicaments in life. The understanding of Dao is what causes the true knowledge to cultivate a true man.
Although the substance of Xiaoyao in true man is heart-mind, his Xiaoyao should be embodied in the reality through various behavior patterns. Rather than the separation between “handle things without any damage of self” and “to be content with anything as with fate”, the sentence that “just go along with things and let your mind move freely” is therefore a correct standpoint to interpret true man’s human life.
Subjects
莊子
生命
勝物
安命
真知
遊心
Zhuangzi
life
true knowledge
mind
Xiaoyao
Type
thesis
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