Zhuangzi and the Happy Fish

by Roger T. Ames (Editor), Takahiro Nakajima (Editor)

Overview

The Zhuangzi is a deliciously protean text: it is concerned not only with personal realization, but also (albeit incidentally) with social and political order. In many ways the Zhuangzi established a unique literary and philosophical genre of its own, and while clearly the work of many hands, it is one of the finest pieces of literature in the classical Chinese corpus. It employs every trope and literary device available to set off rhetorically charged flashes of insight into the most unrestrained way to live one's life, free from oppressive, conventional judgments and values. The essays presented here constitute an attempt by a distinguished community of international scholars to provide a variety of exegeses of one of the Zhuangzi's most frequently rehearsed anecdotes, often referred to as "the Happy Fish debate."

The editors have brought together essays from the broadest possible compass of scholarship, offering interpretations that range from formal logic to alternative epistemologies to transcendental mysticism. Many were commissioned by the editors and appear for the first time. Some of them have been available in other languages—Chinese, Japanese, German, Spanish—and were translated especially for this anthology. And several older essays were chosen for the quality and variety of their arguments, formulated over years of engagement by their authors. All, however, demonstrate that the Zhuangzi as a text and as a philosophy is never one thing; indeed, it has always been and continues to be, many different things to many different people.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780824846831
Publisher:	University of Hawaii Press, The
Publication date:	03/31/2015
Pages:	336
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 9.40(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Roger T. Ames (Editor)
Roger T. Ames is professor of philosophy at the University of Hawai‘i and editor of Philosophy East and West.

Takahiro Nakajima (Editor)
Takahiro Nakajima is associate professor of Chinese philosophy at the Institute for Advanced Studies on Asia, University of Tokyo.

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

1 Zhuangzi: The Happy Fish Hideki Yukawa 23

2 Yuzhile: The Joy of Fishes, or, The Play on Words Hans Peter Hoffmann 30

3 The Relatively Happy Fish Chad Hansen 50

4 Zhuangzi's Notion of Transcendental Life Eske Janus Mølfgaard 78

5 Knowledge and Happiness in the Debate over the Happiness of the Fish Sham Yat Shing Joseph Harroff 102

6 The Relatively Happy Fish Revisited Norman Y. Teng 130

7 Knowing the Joy of Fish: The Zhuangzi and Analytic Philosophy Kuwako Toshio Cart M. Johnson 141

8 Of Fish and Knowledge: On the Validity of Cross-Cultural Understanding Zhang Longxi 149

9 Zhuangzi and Theories of the Other Takabiro Nakajima Carl M. Johnson 170

10 Of Fish and Men: Species Difference and the Strangeness of Being Human in the Zhuangzi Franklin Perkins 182

11 The Happy Fish of the Disputers Han Xiaoqiang 206

12 Fact and Experience: A Look at the Root of Philosophy from the Happy Fish Debate Peng Feng Tu Qiang 229

13 Rambling without Destination: On Daoist "You-ing" in the World Hans-Georg Moeller 248

14 "Knowing" as the "Realizing of Happiness" Here, on the Bridge, over the River Hao Roger T. Ames 261

Contributors 291

Index 295

Editorial Reviews

. . . a collection of thought-provoking and multi-perspectival readings of one of the most fascinating and intoxicating stories in Zhuangzi — “the happy fish” . . . Through interpretations as well as the collision of the various interpretations, the life of the text of the happy fish story is constantly rejuvenated and revitalized.

China Review International