Date of Pub.: 2018-05-15
ISBN: 978-7-300-25085-4
Author: ZHENG Kai
About the Author
ZHENG Kai is from Anhui Province. Born in 1965 in Hohhot, Inner Mongolia. In 1985, he graduated from Inner Mongolia University of Technology with a bachelor’s degree in Architectural Engineering. In 1999, he graduated from the Department of Philosophy and Religion of Peking University with a doctor’s degree. He used to be a researcher at the Institute of World Religions of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, and is now a professor and doctoral supervisor of the Department of Philosophy and Religion of Peking University, the director of the Department of Chinese Philosophy and the director of the Center for Taoist Studies of Peking University. He has published more than 60 professional research papers, and his books including The Metaphysics of Philosophical Daoism, Between De and Li, and Zhuangzi’s Philosophy Lecture, etc.
About the Content
Using a wide range of evidence from ancient and classical Chinese texts, this book argues that xingershangxue, the study of that which is “beyond form”, constitutes the core thesis and the intellectual foundation of the philosophical Taoism. Taoist xingershangxue forms a characteristic conception of metaphysics that is distinguished from that of natural philosophy and metaphysics in ancient Greece, for it aims at an understanding of the world that is above and beyond perceivable objects and phenomena as well as names that are definable for their relative positions in social, political, or moral structures. This theoretic tendency to transcendence is variously exemplified by the notions of dao, de, and “spontaneous self-so”, which are discussed in detail in comparison with other philosophical traditions east and west.