The Freedom Beyond Language

The title of the dissertation implies three meanings: 1) the ideal state of Chuangtzu's thought is to achieve the freedom of life; 2) the tiptop freedom is beyond the existence and language; 3) there is a transform action from existent concern to linguistic concern in the process of accomplishing freedom.The Happy Excursion is the first and the most important episode of Chuangtzu, to which the scholars pay great attentions through the ages."The Happy Excursion"means mental freedom and lays much stress on human nature. We provide a close reading of the text as well as the comprehensions of previous scholars to"The Happy Excursion"to categorize the happy excursion into three levels: no self freedom, no achievement freedom and no name freedom, which is an obvious clue to understand Chuangtzu's thought.The Happy Excursion is the kernel conception of Chuangtzu's thought. Most of the scholars put special emphasis on the meaning of carefree, instead of the different gradations of the Happy Excursion and the premise of reaching these gradations. The author analyses the understanding of previous researchers and declares that it is the prerequisite of reaching the Happy Excursion to distinguish between Small and Great. At the same time, the author makes a distinction between different categories of Big in the pro-Qin dynasty literature. The Big of Chuangtzu's cultural poetics thought transcends the moral meaning, thus has aesthetic connotation and can be integrated with the Sublime of Longinus. Longinus and Chuangtzu establish the position of sublime in the society and art creation, which sublimes the human free spirit and confirms the promotion of the status quo.Availing himself of Laozi's standpoint and opposing Confucian theory, Chuangtzu constructs his cultural poetics thought on the foundation of the exegeses to the world and human nature. Chuangtzu's viewpoint of human nature is an important portion of the whole system. Chuangtzu yearned for living in harmony of human and nature. This viewpoint of human nature has important meaning in the aspect of adjusting the relations of human and nature.We elucidate the meaning of"mirror stage"theory, which is the jumping-off point of...