Enter the Realm of Clarity (A New Direction in Philosophy)

Author: Zhang Shiyi
Publisher:
Publish Date: 1999-04-01
Features: The humanism of Western modern philosophy is not satisfied with traditional philosophy's ascent from the sensory to the understood, with the "eternally present" abstract identity or essence concept as the root of things in the "presence metaphysics." Instead, it demands a return to the concrete, ever-changing real world, thereby turning toward the philosophy that combines the present with the absent yet equally individual, forming an endless whole. The highest task of philosophy is no longer simply achieving a single universal identity but rather reaching a connection and fusion among all different things in the world. The way philosophy admires to grasp things is no longer mere thought but imagination. This turn of philosophy has had a significant impact on historical perspective, artistic perspective, and many other aspects. For example: in the perspective of art, the theory of imitation shifts to the theory of manifest and hidden; in the perspective of history, the focus shifts from restoring the original state of history to the theory of the fusion of ancient and modern. And so on. In short, it expands the boundaries, transcends the present, transcends the self, in a word, transcends the boundaries and limitations of everything present, and looks toward the unmanifested, and an infinite vast world will be revealed. This is the direction that the new philosophy guides us toward. Based on this turn, this book changes the traditional Western academic framework, which mainly discusses categories such as thought, subject and object, essence and phenomenon, sensory knowledge and rational knowledge, the individual and the universal, and the concrete and the abstract. Instead, it combines and focuses on discussing philosophical categories such as presence and absence, manifest and hidden, similarity and connection, ancient and modern, thought and imagination, speech and silence, center and periphery, as proposed and emphasized in ancient Chinese philosophy. The new philosophical direction is primarily a spiritual space that communicates through imagination. In the end, the author uses poetic language to conclude that life's homeland is the ultimate goal of the entire book.