Skip to Main Content

Zhuangzi and the Happy Fish

Online ISBN:
9780824868185
Print ISBN:
9780824846831
Publisher:
University of Hawai'i Press
Book

Zhuangzi and the Happy Fish

Roger T. Ames (ed.),
Roger T. Ames
(ed.)
University of Hawaii
Find on
Takahiro Nakajima (ed.)
Takahiro Nakajima
(ed.)
Institute for Advanced Studies on Asia, University of Tokyo
Find on
Published online:
17 November 2016
Published in print:
31 March 2015
Online ISBN:
9780824868185
Print ISBN:
9780824846831
Publisher:
University of Hawai'i Press

Abstract

This volume of essays constitutes an attempt by a community of international scholars to provide their own exegesis of one of the most frequently rehearsed anecdotes of the Zhuangzi that is often referred to as “the Happy Fish debate.” The Zhuangzi is perhaps the most deliciously protean text in all of the Chinese philosophical canons. As a canonical text, it is for the most part addressed to the project of personal realization, and only derivatively and incidentally concerned with social and political order. In many ways the Zhuangzi establishes a unique literary and philosophical genre of its own, and although clearly the work of many hands, it is still one of the finest pieces of literature in the classical Chinese corpus. It uses every trope and literary device available to set off rhetorically charged flashes of insight into the most free and unrestrained way to live one’s life in the world without being constrained by often oppressive conventional judgments and values. And as the essays collected in this volume demonstrate all too well, the Zhuangzi as a text and as a philosophy is never one thing; indeed, as we will see, it always has been and continues to be, many different things to many different people.

Contents
Close
This Feature Is Available To Subscribers Only

Sign In or Create an Account

Close

This PDF is available to Subscribers Only

View Article Abstract & Purchase Options

For full access to this pdf, sign in to an existing account, or purchase an annual subscription.

Close