Understanding the Zhuangzi: Essential Conceptions and Important Issues

The exegetical and theoretical investigation of the important and essential conceptions in the Zhuangzi is key to understanding Zhuangzi's views. This edited volume brings together twelve papers that advance the ongoing scholarly study of the Zhuangzi through exegetical investigation and philosophical engagement with twenty-first-century debates in metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, moral psychology, philosophy of language, and political philosophy. The book is divided into two parts. The first presents novel interpretations of several most important and essential conceptions in the Zhuangzi, including dao 道, hua 化, yan 言, zhi 知, and ren 仁. The second engages the Zhuangzi with contemporary debates, addressing issues concerning evocative indirect communication, forgetting, fictionalist interpretation, narrative theory, relativism, responsive agency, and political quietism, among others. This volume makes a substantial contribution to Chinese philosophy, Zhuangzi scholarship, and comparative philosophy, while offering original insights into debates across multiple areas of contemporary philosophy.