中国人民大学哲学院“经典诠释与道家哲学”全英文系列讲座

第三讲：道家思想中的“物”：突破人类中心主义的一条可能路径

Lecture Three:

“Thinghood” in Daoist Thought:

A Possible Route for Breaking Through “Anthropocentrism”

Speaker主讲人：Cui, Xiaojiao 崔晓姣（北京师范大学）

Moderator主持人：Li, Jifen 李记芬（中国人民大学）

Date日期: 3.5, 2024

Time时间：18:00-21:00

Place地点：Room 2106, The Second Public Teaching Building 公二2106

About the speaker:

Xiaojiao Cui (崔晓姣) works as an assistant professor at the school of philosophy, Beijing Normal Univeristy. She is interested in Daoism and the manuscript culture of early China, focusing primarily on the political philosophy of the Laozi and the Huang-Lao Daoist. She received her B.A. from Sun Yat-sen University, and her Ph.D. from Peking University. During conducting her Ph.D., she spent one year at Dartmouth College as a joint Ph.D. student and 6 months at Cornell University as a visiting scholar. Her current research utilizes the newly excavated texts to explore the ideological connections between early Daoism, legalism, and the school of the military. Other fields of interest include: early Confucianism, Neo-Daoism in the Wei-Jin period.

Abstract:

Both Confucianism and Daoism have talked about 'thinghood' or “things”. Confucianism 'looks at things from the perspective of man' while Taoism 'understands man from the perspective of things'. In Confucianism, one should first 'respect the ghosts and gods and keep a distance from them' and secondly, one should distinguish them from things. Regarding 'things', Confucianism mainly considers the essential difference between human beings and thinghood, in order to highlight the uniqueness and the value of human beings. Daoism, on the other hand, brings 'thinghood' into a holistic philosophical context. The Laozi introduces the concept of 'myriad things'(wanwu 万物), and the Zhuangzi not only does not worry about the confusion between human beings and things, but even proposes to abolish the boundary between human beings and things. Daoism's understanding of “thinghood” and 'things' provides us with a new perspective of looking at the world that is different from Confucianism and offers new ideas for breaking down anthropocentrism.

主办单位：

中国人民大学哲学院

中国人民大学孔子研究院

中国人民大学当代中国哲学发展研究中心

转载自微信公众号“人大中哲全英文硕士CPRC”