Publication details
Života smrt v díle Zhuangzi : jak číst starověký čínský text
| Title in English | How to read an ancient Chinese text : the Zhuangzi on life and death |
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| Authors | |
| Year of publication | 2011 |
| Type | Article in Periodical |
| Magazine / Source | Acta Universitatis Carolinae. |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Field | Philosophy and religion |
| Keywords | Zhuangzi; text; textuality; philosophy; death; early China |
| Description | The proper human attitude to the fact of death is an important recurring topic in the text of the Zhuangzi. However, the book presents the reader with differing ideas about the significance of life and death (often mutually incompatible), which defies the reader's intutive attempt at constructing a coherent meaning out of the text. This article explores the reading strategies implied by the text and tests them on the passages concerning the individual's proper attitude towards life and death. The article follows recent trends in ancient Chinese textuality scholarship which view the Warring States period texts as being composed of short textual units, the original social context of which is known only fragmentarily. Some of the textual units, however, contain passages which state the intended meaning of the unit explicitly. The article argues the implicit reading of the text consists of constructing specific meanings of these explicit units and their careful extrapolation on less explicit units. However, no coherent meaning of the whole should be expected. The article further argues that different concepts of life and death found within the text may be read as instantations of one cosmological theory – the opposition of the Dao and the tangible world, the former being the position of power utilizable by human beings. It is argued that the differing concepts of life and death may be read as informed by this universal theory. At the same time these concepts retain their differences. They represent diverse ways of treating life and facing death properly and these differences cannot be effaced by recognition of the shared cosmological framework by the reader. |