Two Paradigmatic Strategies for Reading Zhuang Zi\u27s Happy Fish Vignette as Philosophy: Guo Xiang\u27s and Wang Fuzhi\u27s Approaches

One of the most beloved passages in the Zhuang-Zi text is a dialogue between Hui Zi and Zhuang Zi at the end of the “Qiu-shui” chapter. While this is one of many vignettes involving Hui Zi and Zhuang Zi in the text, this particular vignette has recently drawn attention in Chinese and comparative philosophy circles. The most basic question concerning these studies is whether or not the passage represents a substantial philosophical dispute, or instead idle chitchat between two friends. This vignette has not only received much attention as of late, but commentators from at least Guo Xiang onward have taken the conversation as substantial rather than merely charming. Of the traditional readings that take the passage as substantial, there are two main strategies for taking Zhuang Zi as “winning” a substantial dispute: (1) One that argues Zhuang Zi is undermining Hui Zi’s position without offering a positive position, and (2) another that argues that Zhuang Zi is undermining Hui Zi’s position by offering a positive position. Guo Xiang’s “official commentary” is paradigmatic of the first “negative” strategy, while Wang Fuzhi’s reading is paradigmatic of the second “positive” strategy. The goal in the present article is to present these two strategies for reading the passage by translating and analyzing Guo’s and Wang’s annotations, thereby showing how the passage might be and has been taken as more than frivolous chitchat

The “Beauty in Sound” and “Beauty in Form” in English Translation of Zhuang Love Songs from Variation Theory of Comparative Literature

Zhuang people love singing. Their folk songs are diverse in form and rich in content. As one of the dozens of Zhuang folk songs, love songs of Zhuang are diverse, melodic and rich in content. As Zhuang love songs is an important part of Zhuang folk songs, translating the classic works of Zhuang love songs into English is conducive to the dissemination of Zhuang culture, showing the diversity of Chinese national culture and telling Chinese stories well. From the perspective of variation theory of comparative literature, the paper will take the existing English versions of Zhuang love songs as examples, such as Poya Love Songs and Liao Songs of Pingguo Zhuang, and analyze the variation of “beauty in sound” and “beauty in form” in the process of translating Zhuang love songs into English

Zhuang Zi and the “Greatest Joyousness”: Wang Fuzhi’s Approach

The present article presents Wang Fuzhi 王夫之 (1619-1692 C.E.)’s reading of the eighteenth chapter of the Zhuang-Zi 莊子 (ZZ) by looking at his entry from Zhuang-Zi-Tong 莊子通 and other key glosses from Zhuang-Zi-Jie 莊子解. The philosophical upshot, I aim to show, is that Wang takes ZZ as presenting the consummation of “the greatest joyousness” (zhi-le 至樂) as requiring getting rid of joyousness as one’s desideratum. Using Derek Parfit’s work as a point of reference, I aim to show that this is not paradoxical or even inconsistent or even (directly or indirectly) self-defeating but is instead an interesting instance of a self-effacing theory

The Perspective and Perspective-Transcending Dimensions of Consciousness and Its Double-Aboutness Character: Bridging Searle and Zhuang Zi

What I intend to do here are closely related three things. First, in response to Searle’s “reply” comments on my previous article “Searle, Zhuang Zi, and Transcendental Perspectivism”, I will clarify and further elaborate one of the central points concerning the “perspective” dimension and “perspective-transcending” dimension of consciousness there. Second, more substantially, I will strengthen my point by explaining the “double-aboutness” character of consciousness which is intrinsically related to the foregoing two dimensions of consciousness concerning its “hooking-up-to-objects” capacity; through a semantic-ascent strategy, I will also explain how the point has substantial theoretic implications for exploring the issue of how the cross-perspective engagement is possible. Third, I will explain how bridging Searle’s and Zhuang Zi’s resources in view of the double-aboutness character of consciousness can contribute to our understanding and treatment of the foregoing issue

Research on Ethnic Identity of Zhuang Ethnic in Red River Basin of Guangxi

The Questionnaire on Ethnic Identity of Zhuang Ethnic in Red River Basin of Guangxi is formulated based on Multi-Ethnic Identity Questionnaire Design of Phinney, integrated with the results of previous interviews to Zhuang Ethnic, 490 samples with different gender, ages, regions, occupations and educations were randomly selected in this questionnaire research. It is found in the research that 50-year-olds rank highest on the identity degree of the ethnic identity and the dimension of sense of ethnicity belonging, 20-year-olds rank lowest; farmers rank highest on the identity degree of the dimension of sense of ethnicity belonging, public sector staffs rank lowest; secondary and polytechnic education group ranks highest on the identity degree of the dimension of sense of ethnicity belonging, primary education group ranks lowest; there is no difference among the remaining. Effectively intensifying the ethnicity education of Zhuang Ethnic and enhancing the cultural heritage protection of Zhuang Ethnic perhaps will be the effective ways to change the unsatisfactory situation of heritage of current ethnicity culture.

Dreaming Philosophers: The Daoist and the Metaphysician

Is this just a dream? Daoist philosopher Zhuang Zi and metaphysician Descartes both considered this question but came to very different conclusions. In his Dream Hypothesis, Descartes imagined that all of his beliefs about the external world could be mistaken, which led him to the realization that the only thing that he could be certain of was his own existence: “I think therefore I am.” But what am “I”? “I am a thinking thing”, he said and concluded that the existence of one’s mental self is clear, certain and indubitable, while the existence of a physical world was open to doubt. Zhuang Zi, in a similar vein, dreamt that he was a butterfly, and, on awakening, could not be sure that he was not a butterfly dreaming that he was a man. Rather than drawing a distinction between dreams and reality, or between certainty and dubitability, however, he concluded that our identities, like everything else in the world, are fluid and subject transformation and transmutation. The very different treatments of the dream scenario by these two thinkers stem from fundamentally different assumptions embedded in the two philosophical traditions. Analyzing them side by side, we realize how the resources of each intellectual tradition cast light on the unquestioned assumptions underlying the philosophy of the other. This cross cultural engagement highlights the ways in which these two varieties of skepticism fall short of complete, universal skepticism and potentially points the way towards a synthesis of the resources of Western rationalism and philosophical Daoism that may lead to novel formulations of radically skeptical world views

Two-part Negation in Yang Zhuang

The negation system of Yang Zhuang includes two standard negators and an aspectual negator, all of which occur before the verb; the negator meiz nearly always co-occurs with a clause-final particle nauq, which can also stand as a single-word negative response to a question. Although it is tempting to analyze nauq with a meaning beyond simply negation, this is difficult to do synchronically. Comparison with neighboring Tai languages suggests that this construction represents one stage in Jespersen's Cycle, whereby a negator is augmented with a second element, after which the second element becomes associated with negation; this element subsequently replaces the historical negator. A Jespersen's Cycle analysis also explains the occurrence of nauq as a preverbal negator in some neighboring Zhuang languages