![]() ![]() Since Immanuel Kant’s seminal essay “What is Enlightenment?”, independent, autonomous and critical thinking has stood at the forefront of any “progressive” (and even any reasonable) theory of education. This view is further developed by Wang Bi and Guo Xiang, both of whom adopt a view of ziran as the principle of development tied to the nature of a thing. This led him to a view of ziran as itself a principle of development and activity tied to the nature of a thing. He minimized the role of purposive activity in the determination of outcomes of life based on allotment, in part to make sense of the frequent inconsistencies between effort and outcomes. Wang used ziran primarily to make sense of causation in the absence of purposive activity. In this paper, I argue that WANG Chong’s view of the connection between nature (xing 性), generation (sheng 生), and their implications for ziran 自然 (spontaneity) influenced Xuanxue views of ziran, particularly those offered by Wang Bi 王弼 (226-249 CE) and Guo Xiang 郭象 (d. The connection of Xuanxue to the qingtan movement is also well known. ![]() 228 CE), and a number of others as aid in their argumentative pursuits, which largely followed the methods devised by Wang. His Lunheng 論衡 was prized and used by Cai Yong 蔡邕 (132-192 CE), Wang Lang 王朗 (d. The Eastern Han philosopher Wang Chong's 王充 (27-100 CE) influence on the “pure conversation” (qingtan 清談) movement in the 3rd century CE is well known. Its primordiality is disclosed and enacted in practices of emptying, forgetting, and letting go. It is irreducible to words, images, and ideas. Nothingness cannot be thematically grasped as a thing or something, and it resists being treated as a determinate idea or propositional said. This chapter elucidates Wang Bi's commentaries, focusing particularly on the relation between words (yan言), images (xiang 象), meanings (yi 意), and the forgetting (wang 忘) of words, images, and ideas in the context of Wang’s interpretation of responsiveness from nothingness. Wang interpreted the Yijing as a dynamic medium for reflecting on and interpreting nature, society, and one's own situation. ![]() This reconstructed Daoist notion of nothingness (wu無) functions as a key concept that informs his readings of the classics and his depiction of the relationship between language, imagination, and reflection. Despite his prioritization of Confucius (Kongzi 孔子) as the ultimate paradigmatic figure of the sage, Wang's works offer a syncretist Daoist, or "neo-Daost" mysterious learning (xuanxue 玄學), reasons for this priority. His Daodejing and Yijing commentaries shaped the reception and hermeneutics of these texts while his commentary on the Analects survived only in a fragmentary condition. Abstract: The philosophy of Wang Bi 王弼 (226-249) was articulated in his commentaries on the Analects (Lunyu 論語), the Daodejing 道德經, and the Yijing 易經 (Classic of Changes). Note: this is a pre-publication draft, see final published version (chapter 15) in: David Chai, ed., Dao Companion to Xuanxue 玄學 (Neo-Daoism). The present chapter aims to illustrate this process, which has led the prevailing currents of traditional Chinese theory of perception from a realist assessment of reality to a more complex philosophy of human understanding. In this context, meaning was no longer something directly and one-dimensionally connected with things or something, forming a part of them. Based on such an onto-epistemological agenda, their investigations were focused upon the inherent constitution of meaning. For most leading scholars of this period, reality was no longer reduced to the existence of objective things and their external forms but was understood as something that simultaneously includes our perception and understanding of these objects and their forms respectively. In the Xuanxue 玄學 discourses of the Wei-Jin period, however, we encounter a different, deeper, and much more complex, theoretically elaborated understanding of reality. In their disputes on names (concepts) and actualities (mingshi 名實), the classical scholars of the pre-Qin and Han era still viewed reality as being composed of tangible external objects and their objective forms.
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