The Ethical Dimension of Forgetfulness

Engaging the Daoist Zhuangzi in Studies of Cultivated Forgetting
1. Auflage 2024
ISBN: 978-1-032-30073-3
Verlag: Routledge

Buch, Englisch, 254 Seiten, Format (B × H): 161 mm x 240 mm, Gewicht: 552 g

Reihe: Routledge Studies in Asian Religion and Philosophy

This book investigates the various meanings of forgetting and their ethical dimension in the Daoist classic Zhuangzi.

It responds to recent scholarship in the study of the ethics of forgetting, which has only emerged within the past two decades in the wake of the widespread memory-studies of the late 20th century. This book accomplishes two goals: First, it assimilates insights from contemporary scholarship, and specifically applies Ricoeur’s three areas of ethical examinations of forgetting, to the study of the Zhuangzi. It addresses a wide range of ethical themes related to acts of forgetting, such as the meaning of well-being and healing, the issue of personal identity and relational autonomy, the norm of spontaneity, naturalness and suitability, the capacities for being empathic, altruistic and responsive to others, and the values of accommodation, receptivity and all-inclusive friendliness. Second, it places forgetfulness in the wider context of the Zhuangzi’s ethical inquiry, and offers a novel understanding of this age-old notion and its exegetic tradition, bringing them into dialogue with Western philosophy and contributing to contemporary discourse on the ethics of forgetting.

As the first book to present a comprehensive examination on the ethical dimension and meanings of forgetting or forgetfulness in the Daoist philosophy of the Zhuangzi, this monograph will be of interest to researchers in Asian philosophy, religion and culture, moral philosophy or ethics, the study of memory and forgetting, and comparative or cross-cultural philosophy and ethics.

Zielgruppe

Postgraduate

Autoren/Hrsg.

Wang, Youru

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Spezielle Soziologie Stadt- und Regionalsoziologie
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Mentalitäts- und Sozialgeschichte
• Sozialwissenschaften Ethnologie | Volkskunde Volkskunde
• Interdisziplinäres Wissenschaften Wissenschaften Interdisziplinär Regionalwissenschaften, Regionalstudien

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Introduction; Chapter 1. A Critical Survey of Recent Scholarship on Human Forgetting and Its Ethical Dimension; Chapter 2. Therapeutic Forgetting in the Zhuangzi; Chapter 3. Forgetting Oneself or Personal Identity in Relation to Time and Otherness; Chapter 4. The Ethical Dimension of Forgetting at the Social-Institutional Level (I): The Conception of Responsiveness to Others in Relation to Forgetting Oneself; Chapter 5. The Ethical Dimension of Forgetting at the Social-Institutional Level (II): The Zhuangzian Capacity for Responsiveness to Others; Chapter 6. From Suitableness and the Forgetting of Invariable Norms, to Patient-Centeredness and Altruistic Elements; Chapter 7. Empathic Capacity in the Zhuangzi and How It Works with the Forgetting of Oneself; Chapter 8. Forgetfulness and Friendship in the Zhuangzi and in Derrida; Epilogue: Answers to Two Questions about Forgetting; Bibliography; Index

Über Autor(innen)

Youru Wang is Professor in the Department of Philosophy and World Religions, Rowan University, USA. He is the author of Linguistic Strategies in Daoist Zhuangzi and Chan Buddhism: The Other Way of Speaking (Routledge/Curzon, 2003), Historical Dictionary of Chan Buddhism (Rowman & Litlefield 2017), the editor of Deconstruction and the Ethical in Asian Thought (Routledge 2007) and the co-editor of Dao Companion to Chinese Buddhist Philosophy (Springer 2019).