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The Relativity of Perception of Affairs and Things in the Chuang Tzu and the Integration of Tao: Regarding the Law of Contradiction as a Moment
탈경계인문학Trans-Humanities
2010,
3(1), pp.31-73
Publisher : Ewha Institute for the Humanities: EIH
Research Area : Other Humanities
Publisher : Ewha Institute for the Humanities: EIH
Research Area : Other Humanities
1한림대학교
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This essay tries to eliminate the view that the relativity of the perception of affairs and things is implied in the Chuang Czu's Philosophy regarding the law of contradiction as a moment, and this entails examining the synthetic characteristic of Tao. It has been common to prior interpretations of the Chuang Czu to consider the dissolution of compositive mind (成心), phenomena, and the linguistic definition of affairs and matters, among other things, as the aim of Chuang Czu's Philosophy. In particular, this paper suggests that Chuang Czu aimed at the realm of the absolute Tao, within which he continually reconciled the relative affairs and matters of the world harmoniously. In Chuang Czu, the phenomenal world of affairs and matters has relative characteristics, on the one hand, but is saved positively as the objective Tao is implied within it, on the other hand. Chuang Czu thus regarded characteristics as such as the representation of a concrete Tao that one must experience positively irrespective of the correlative characteristics of relative phenomenal affairs. According to Chuang Czu, the long and the short, the large and the small, and so on are relative, and qualities of the absolute don't exist in the world. That is to say, time and space are not constituitive of reality but a form of recognition. There is thus no meaning in comparing them schematically with each other by absolutizing and objectifying them. That reality of which time and space are not substances and of which understanding must derive from the realm of subjective experience or from a theory of knowledge is the core point of Chuang Czu's philosophy. Summing up, because the realm of Tao in Chuang Czu implies continuous changes within, it is the criterion of making all affairs and matters harmonize while not sticking to a transient right or wrong. In contrast to this, in that many affairs and matters response to the Way(道) and manifest their relative characteristic as phenomena of the Way, they in vain have not been dismantled and is included in the totality and reconciliation and harmony of the Way.
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