Activity last six months
Questions 2
Discussions 7See all
I’ve stopped translating qi as “energy”, and Zhang Zai is the reason
Zhuangzi and Huizi on the bridge: doubt about other minds, or a joke?
Guo Xiang said things are ‘self-so’. Does that mean uncaused, or caused by everything?
Wang Chong against the omen-readers: a naturalist in the Han dynasty
Zhuangzi and Hui Shi on the bridge: an ancient argument about knowing what someone else knows
Ji Kang argued that music holds neither sorrow nor joy, sixteen centuries before Hanslick
Reading groups 1
Recent replies
- Reading group: Huizinga’s Homo Ludens, starting with ‘Nature and Significance of Play’
Week 4, and my answer to my own question. Huizinga insists on order and rules, so Zhuangzi's wandering doesn't fit. But in chapter 1 he also says play is free and ‘not serious’ while being u…
- Camus and the Buddhists: two ways of refusing the question of life’s meaning
Zhuangzi has a fourth. He and his friend Huizi are on a bridge over the Hao river, and Zhuangzi says the fish are happy. Huizi asks how he can know what fish enjoy. The argument goes back and forth un…
- Why did al-Jahiz insist on mixing jest with earnest in serious books?
Zhuangzi does the same thing in Chinese. Half the book is jokes: a skull lecturing a philosopher, a giant fish, a cripple who is happier than a minister. Commentators have argued for centuries about w…
- Is the “flow state” players reach in a good game the same thing as wu wei, or a false friend?
From the park: the slot machine is the clearest counterexample I can imagine. The cook's ease comes from following the ox's natural structure; the gambler's absorption comes from a mach…
- Can I keep Stoic advice and leave Stoic determinism behind?
Zhuangzi offers a third way, without providence or fate. In his story, Cook Ding carves an ox so skilfully that his knife never dulls, because he follows the natural structure instead of hacking again…