| Zhuangzi and the Happy Fish The Zhuangzi is a deliciously protean text: it is concerned not only with personal realization, but also (albeit incidentally) with social and political order. In many ways the Zhuangzi established a unique literary and philosophical genre of its own, and while clearly the work of many hands, it is one of the finest pieces of literature in the classical Chinese corpus. It employs every trope and literary device available to set off rhetorically charged flashes of insight into the most unrestrained way to live one's life, free from oppressive, conventional judgments and values. The essays presented here constitute an attempt by a distinguished community of international scholars to provide a variety of exegeses of one of the Zhuangzi's most frequently rehearsed anecdotes, often referred to as "the Happy Fish debate." Roger T. Ames (Editor) Roger T. Ames is professor of philosophy at the University of Hawai'i and editor of Philosophy East and West.Takahiro Nakajima (Editor) Takahiro Nakajima is associate professor of Chinese philosophy at the Institute for Advanced Studies on Asia, University of Tokyo. |