Engaging Chinese Philosophy
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The main aim of this series is to analyse and evaluate key ideas, texts and themes in Chinese philosophy in an accessible and appealing way. Each book both engages with aspects of one or more of the various practices and traditions that make up Chinese philosophy and explores ideas and texts that are themselves engaging. There is increasing recognition across the world of the richness and relevance of Chinese philosophies and growing interest in analytic approaches to understanding them. This series encourages these developments, to foster deeper dialogue between analytic and Chinese philosophy.
This book introduces some central ideas and themes in ancient Chinese philosophy through a detailed analysis of one famous passage – the happy fish dialogue – in the Zhuangzi, one of the two founding texts of Daoism. The Zhuangzi is the most exhilarating and intellectually challenging of all the texts of ancient Chinese literature, and appreciating its spirit is as important as understanding its ideas. Methodologically, this book shows how we can approach Chinese philosophy analytically, an approach that is needed if Chinese philosophy is to be recognized in Western (analytic) philosophy today. At the same time, it seeks to broaden our conceptions and practices of analysis and our methods and styles of philosophizing in learning from Chinese philosophy. Throughout the book the emphasis is on engaging the reader in thinking through the issues for themselves.
