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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Freedom's Frailty: Self-Realization in the Neo-Daoist Philosophy of Guo Xiang's Zhuangzi

Freedom's Frailty: Self-Realization in the Neo-Daoist Philosophy of Guo Xiang's Zhuangzi

Ziporyn, Brook
Tan, Christine Abigail L.

Hardcover

Series: Suny Chinese Philosophy and Culture

General Eastern ReligionsTaoism

ISBN10: 1438497466
ISBN13: 9781438497464
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Published: Apr 1 2024
Pages: 218
Weight: 1.08
Height: 0.63 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English

Draws on Guo Xiang's commentary on the Zhuangzi to construct an account of freedom that is both metaphysical and political.

This book starts with the radical premise that the most coherent way to read the Zhuangzi is through Guo Xiang (d. 312 CE), the classic Daoist text's first and most important commentator, and that the best way to read Guo Xiang is politically. Offering an investigation of the notions of causality, self, freedom, and its political implications, the book provides a comprehensive account of freedom that is both ontological and political, using Guo's notion of self-realization (自得zide). This is a conception of freedom that introduces a dependence-based autonomy, in which freedom is something we achieve and realize through our connection to others. The notion that a subject is born with freedom-and that one can return to it by isolating oneself from others-would be a strange idea not just to Guo but to most Chinese philosophers. Rather, freedom is complex and frail, and only the kind of freedom that is collectively attained through radical dependence can be worth having. In sum, the book makes a new contribution to Chinese philosophical scholarship as well as philosophical debates on freedom.

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