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Fulfilment of Fate as Zhuangzian Freedom

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Luyao Li
PhD candidate, Chinese Philosophy, Nanyang Technological University (Singapore)
Visiting Student, University of Chicago Divinity School
Fulfilment of Fate as Zhuangzian Freedom
ABSTRACT: Freedom, as a prominent theme in Zhuangzi’s philosophy, attracts much attention from scholars.  Although the term has a broad and rich meaning, it could be understood primarily as a matter of overcoming constraints. In the pursuit of Zhuangzian freedom, fate exerts as an avoidable constraint, which is given by Heaven and out of human control. In this paper, I focus on the influences of constraints of fate on freedom and how to overcome it in the Zhuangzi. I will first argue that mingding lun 命定论, in the form of either fatalism or determinism fails to explain it because Zhuangzi always encourages people to think outside the box and change a default behavior pattern. Contentment with/acceptance of fate (anming lun 安命论), another popular theory, is merely workable when fate has already come upon us, but is inadequate to get us well-prepared before fate arrives. I then propose to use fulfillment of fate (zhiming lun 致命论) as a supplement to “contentment with fate” in Zhuangzian freedom, which is a recurring point, directly or indirectly in the Zhuangzi. Finally, I will further illustrate the way to fulfill one’s fate. It is different from working within the limits of fate and realizing it to the ultimate as argued by Guo Xiang, because it is similar to working without/with constraints in the assumption that we know the constraints in advance. Nevertheless, fate is unpredictable in the Zhuangzi. People are aware of it merely when fate comes or in other words when we arrive at the boundary of fate. Fulfillment of fate suggests following one’s virtuosities and trying one’s best to achieve fate’s limitation.

This workshop will be involve a presentation and discussion of Luyao‘s paper, the abstract of which is above. There will be no materials to read ahead, and anyone interested is invited to participate.  We hope to see you there!

Tuesday, January 17th, 12:30 PM, Swift 200

Hosted by the Philosophy of Religions Workshop at the University of Chicago.

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The Workshop on the Philosophy of Religions is committed to being a fully accessible and inclusive workshop.  Please contact Workshop Coordinators Danica Cao (ddcao@uchicago.edu), Audrey Guilbault (rguilbault@uchicago.edu), or John Marvin (johnmarvin@uchicago.edu) in order to make any arrangements necessary to facilitate your participation in workshop events.

Chapter 3 “Too Much Sad” from Untying Things Together: Philosophy, Literature, and a Life in Theory (2022)

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Prof. Eric L. Santner

Philip and Ida Romberg Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of Germanic Studies, University of Chicago

Respondent: Tyler Neenan
 

PhD Student, Philosophy of Religions, Divinity School

Chapter 3 “Too Much Sad” from Untying Things Together: Philosophy, Literature, and a Life in Theory (2022)

Untying Things Together helps to clarify the stakes of the last fifty years of literary and cultural theory by proposing the idea of a sexuality of theory.
In 1905, Freud published his Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, the book that established the core psychoanalytic thesis that sexuality is central to formations of the unconscious. With this book, Eric L. Santner inverts Freud’s title to take up the sexuality of theory—or, more exactly, the modes of enjoyment to be found in the kinds of critical thinking that, since the 1960s, have laid claim to that ancient word, “theory.” Santner unfolds his argument by tracking his own relationship with this tradition and the ways his intellectual and spiritual development has been informed by it.
Untying Things Together is both an intellectual history of major theoretical paradigms and a call for their reexamination and renewal. Revisiting many of the topics he has addressed in previous work, Santner proposes a new way of conceptualizing the eros of thinking, attuned to how our minds and bodies individually and collectively incorporate or “encyst” on a void at the heart of things. Rather than proposing a “return to theory,” Santner’s book simply employs theory as a way of further “(un)tying together” the resources of philosophy, art and literature, theology, psychoanalysis, political thought, and more.

This workshop will focus on a pre-circulated book chapter (attached below) and will be largely discussion-based. We hope to see you there!

WEDNESDAY, December 7th, 12:00 PM, Swift 201

Hosted by the Philosophy of Religions Workshop at the University of Chicago.

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The Workshop on the Philosophy of Religions is committed to being a fully accessible and inclusive workshop.  Please contact Workshop Coordinators Danica Cao (ddcao@uchicago.edu), Audrey Guilbault (audreyrg@uchicago.edu), or John Marvin (johnmarvin@uchicago.edu) in order to make any arrangements necessary to facilitate your participation in workshop events.

An Edifying Conversation between Early Chinese Conception of Relationality and the Radical Empiricism of William James

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Yunqi Zhang

PhD Student, Philosophy, Peking University

An Edifying Conversation between Early Chinese Conception of Relationality and the Radical Empiricism of William James
In William James’ radical empiricism, he employs “experience” as a relational notion as an attempt to overcome the subject-object dualism, which in many ways differ from the mainstream use of the term. This cause difficulty in understanding James’ radical empiricism. On the other hand, a distinctive characteristic of early Chinese thinking is its understanding of existence as based on interaction, and understanding determination of things as emergent in such interaction. This relational thinking structure may help us better understand James’ notion of the “context of experience.” Through this comparison we might be able to better understand the continuity and complexity of the content of the human experience, and to also celebrate the capacity of human beings to optimize the creative possibilities of this experience to live significant lives.

This workshop will focus on a pre-circulated paper and will be largely discussion-based. Email one of the coordinators below for the password. We hope to see you there!

November 30th, 12:00 PM, Swift 201

Hosted by the Philosophy of Religions Workshop at the University of Chicago.

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The Workshop on the Philosophy of Religions is committed to being a fully accessible and inclusive workshop.  Please contact Workshop Coordinators Danica Cao (ddcao@uchicago.edu), Audrey Guilbault (audreyrg@uchicago.edu), or John Marvin (johnmarvin@uchicago.edu) in order to make any arrangements necessary to facilitate your participation in workshop events.

Reimagining Solidarity

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Prof. Stephen S. Bush

Professor of Religious Studies, Brown University

Reimagining Solidarity

The Philosophy of Religions Workshop is proud to host a discussion with Prof. Stephen S. Bush of Brown University, a leading scholar on the philosophy of religions, religious ethics, and the theory of religion.  His 2014 monograph Visions of Religion has become a modern classic in the academic study of religion, and his next book, William James on Democratic Individuality, was a novel study of the title thinker’s notoriously obscure political philosophy.  Prof. Bush will be discussing a chapter from his upcoming book manuscript Beauty and Solidarity: The Aesthetics of Political Ecology titled “Reimagining Solidarity.”  Prof. Bush describes the “heart of that project” as “the proposal of a notion of political beauty that is relevant for emancipatory, pluralistic politics,” and draws from thinkers including Iris Murdoch and Emmanuel Levinas, and in this chapter especially, from Georges Bataille.

This workshop will focus on a pre-circulated paper and will be largely discussion-based. We hope to see you there!

November 10th, 4:30 PM, Swift 207

Hosted by the Philosophy of Religions Workshop at the University of Chicago.

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The Workshop on the Philosophy of Religions is committed to being a fully accessible and inclusive workshop.  Please contact Workshop Coordinators Danica Cao (ddcao@uchicago.edu), Audrey Guilbault (audreyrg@uchicago.edu), or John Marvin (johnmarvin@uchicago.edu) in order to make any arrangements necessary to facilitate your participation in workshop events.

Extended Innate Knowledge as a Path to Virtue and Happiness

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Brad Cokelet

Associate Professor, University of Kansas

Extended Innate Knowledge as a Path to Virtue and Happiness: Wang Yang-ming’s optimistic Neo-Confucian Model of Human Self-Perfection

The presentation will be on the neo-Confucian philosophy Wang Yang-Ming (1472-1529) and his optimistic Neo-Confucian model of human self-perfection. It will focus on interpretive debates about how to understand his view and on how to assess it today. In short, Wang argues that all human beings have innate knowledge of good and bad and that to live well and embody true virtue we need only recognize and extend that knowledge into in all our activities and all the corners of our lifeworld. Wang explicitly pitched this optimistic, egalitarian view as an alternative to Zhu Xi’s then overwhelmingly influential theory, which pictures people as initially mired in a kind of ignorance that can only be overcome by diligent study and reflection. On Zhu Xi’s broadly intellectualist view – which is commonly compared to Aristotle’s and Plato’s – we must study texts and the things of the world to gain knowledge of the principle or principles that govern the universe. The basic idea is that we need to gain philosophical or metaphysical knowledge via education and long study before we can embody that knowledge in sagely virtue and ease. Wang rejected that potentially elitist picture, offered an egalitarian alternative, and argued that the pursuit of genuine knowledge and action are unified in a way Zhu Xi’s followers missed – because they assumed that one should first aim to gain knowledge through long philosophic and textual study and only then aim to embody that knowledge in virtuous activity.

The documents may be accessed here.

Tuesday, May 10th, 4:30PM, Swift 403

This workshop will focus on two pre-circulated documents and will be largely discussion based. The first is a brief introduction to the project, the second a recently published review to help people to understand the background motivations that have sparked Professor Cokelet’s interest in Wang and debates about how to interpret him. Workshop participants should feel free to read as much or as little as they want!

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The Workshop on the Philosophy of Religions is committed to being a fully accessible and inclusive workshop.  Please contact Workshop Coordinators John Marvin (johnmarvin@uchicago.edu) or Tyler Neenan (tjneenan@uchicago.edu) in order to make any arrangements necessary to facilitate your participation in workshop events.

The Looping Structure of Buddhist Thought (Or, How Chan Buddhism Resolves the Quantum Measurement Problem)

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Robert Sharf

Professor; Chair of the Berkeley Center for Buddhist Studies
The Looping Structure of Buddhist Thought (Or, How Chan Buddhism Resolves the Quantum Measurement Problem)

Is there a world out there when nobody is looking? This is a question that medieval Buddhist scholiasts struggled with over many centuries, giving rise to a variety of competing positions. In this article, I identify a loop that runs through and structures seemingly antithetical positions—some realist, some antirealist—in these debates. My claim is that the loop is a feature of our lifeworld, and thus any serious reflection on the mind/ world relationship is bound to get entangled in it. Even modern physics has come up against it, such that rival positions advanced by quantum theorists are structurally analogous to positions proffered in medieval Buddhist writings. I conclude by turning to the Chan Buddhist tradition, which is often mischaracterized as hostile to philosophical analysis. Chan is among the few Buddhist schools that recognize, foreground, and cele- brate the manner in which mind and world enfold each other. As such, this paper foregrounds the decidedly philosophical insights of the Chan tradition.

This workshop will focus on a pre-circulated paper (available here) and will be largely discussion-based.

Friday, March 4th, 5:00PM, Swift 200

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The Workshop on the Philosophy of Religions is committed to being a fully accessible and inclusive workshop.  Please contact Workshop Coordinators John Marvin (johnmarvin@uchicago.edu) or Tyler Neenan (tjneenan@uchicago.edu) in order to make any arrangements necessary to facilitate your participation in workshop events.

Progressive Confucianism & Its Critics

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Stephen C. Angle

Professor of Philosophy and East Asian Studies, Wesleyan University

Progressive Confucianism & Its Critics

For more than 2500 years, the teachings of Confucius have been debated and developed as times have changed. New social or political circumstances and new knowledge have meant that Confucianism itself has continually been in a process of renewal. A recent moment in this development took place in the spring of 2017, when the U.S.-based Confucian philosopher Stephen C. Angle took part in a series of dialogues with Chinese Confucians in Beijing. The dialogues engage with topics like the relation between Confucianism and modernity; its status as philosophy, religion, and/or chief ingredient in a distinctively Chinese culture; the status of pivotal modern Confucians like Kang Youwei and Mou Zongsan; and more generally, the prospects for what Angle calls “Progressive Confucianism.”

The papers may be accessed here.

Friday, February 25th, 4:30PM, Swift 200

This workshop will focus on two pre-circulated documents and will be largely discussion based. The first is an Introduction to the project, the second a translated dialogue. Workshop participants should feel free to read as much or as little as they want!

The Workshop on the Philosophy of Religions is committed to being a fully accessible and inclusive workshop.  Please contact Workshop Coordinators John Marvin (johnmarvin@uchicago.edu) or Tyler Neenan (tjneenan@uchicago.edu) in order to make any arrangements necessary to facilitate your participation in workshop events.