Zhuangzi and Modernism and Postmodernism

Author: Liu Mengxi
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-01-01
Features: Zhuangzi himself, his book, and his philosophy, represent a uniquely extraordinary phenomenon in the history of Chinese thought, academic history, and literary history. It can even be said to be a rare exception. His essays that reveal the human heart and the world, with such elegant prose, so rich in imagination, and so magnificent in imagery, are unparalleled among the Pre-Qin philosophers. Perhaps only Qu Yuan's Li Sao can compare to it. However, Li Sao is a verse, while Zhuangzi is prose—the literary forms are different. Lu Xun called Records of the Grand Historian the "unrhymed Li Sao," and Zhuangzi should be considered the true unrhymed Li Sao. Historian Chen Yinque discussed the literary form of Rebirth in Paradise by saying, "Without free thought, there can be no beautiful literature." This statement perfectly applies to Zhuangzi. The freedom of individual life that Zhuangzi pursued manifests in daily life as an enjoyment; when applied to life, it becomes a form of aesthetics. Chinese academia cannot be without Confucius or Mencius, nor can it be without Laozi or Zhuangzi. Chinese culture cannot be without Confucianism or Buddhism, nor can it be without Taoism. The mutual rejection, integration, interaction, and complementarity of the three schools—Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism—are a unique state of existence in traditional Chinese thought and culture. We must certainly seek the ultimate reasons for the forms of thought in the social structure; similarly, the changes in the political and economic structures of traditional Chinese society can also be reliably inferred from the interaction and complementarity of the three schools.