Living Chinese Philosophy (eBook)

In Living Chinese Philosophy, Roger T. Ames uses comparative cultural hermeneutics as a method for contrasting classical Greek ontology ("e;the science of being in itself"e;) with classical Chinese "e;zoetology"e; ("e;the art of living"e;), which is made explicit in the Yijing ?? or Book of Changes. Parmenides, Plato, and Aristotle give us a substance ontology grounded in "e;being qua being"e; or "e;being per se"e; (to on he on) that guarantees a permanent and unchanging subject as the substratum for the human experience. This substratum or essence includes its purpose for being (telos) and defines the "e;what-it-means-to-be-a-thing-of-this-kind"e; (eidos) of any particular thing, thus setting a closed, exclusive boundary and the strict identity necessary for a particular thing to be "e;this"e; and not "e;that."e; In the Book of Changes, we find a vocabulary that makes explicit cosmological assumptions that are a stark alternative to this substance ontology. It also provides the interpretive context for the canonical texts by locating them within a holistic, organic, and ecological worldview. To provide a meaningful contrast with this fundamental assumption of on or "e;being,"e; we might borrow the Greek notion of zoe or "e;life"e; and create the neologism "e;zoe-tology"e; as "e;the art of living"e; (shengshenglun ???). This cosmology begins from "e;living"e; (sheng ?) itself as the motive force behind change and gives us a world of boundless "e;becomings"e;: not "e;things"e; that are but "e;events"e; that are happening, a contrast between an ontological conception of human "e;beings"e; and a process conception of what the author calls human "e;becomings."e;