Lao Zi And Zhuang Zi's "natural" Concept Generation And Change

Zi ran is one of the most important ideas in the ancient Chinese ideology.Among the ancient Chinese thinkers,Lao Zi was the first man who introduced Zi ran into Chinese thought history.The idea is also interpreted as "Tian" by Zhuang Zi who was the most excellent descendent of Lao Zi's thought.This dissertation disscuses the origins of Zi ran.We think that the idea of Zi ran origins as historicity and cultural experience,as consious assertions of ideas and ideals.Chinese culture is an intrinsic reverence for heaven and ancetral spirits,which provide the source of meaning for the ethical,social and political life of Chinese people.In the life-world of ancient Chinese,what is important is life in the totality of nature and an entity is not worthy of reverence if it does not benefit life and specifically human life as the a whole.We think that there is an intrinstic organic interrelation between the rise of belifs in Shang di and Tian,the institutionalization of Li as a system of social ordering and the formation of a unified social-political economy based on agritulture.The spirit of this development is the sense of non-separation between an individual man and his family,his community,his state and nature as a whole.There is a deeply rooted sense of affective accord and consanguine harmony among all these entities.In the Dao De Jing,there are two main themes:first,the deconstraction and critique of human knowledge and cultural artificality and their consequentical desire-hidden styuggles and strife;second,the disclosure or presentation of an onto-cosmological ponit of view which shows the selfless,desireless,speechless, ceaseless,creativity of life and truth.The former theme leads to the idealization of a government or non-action;the latter theme leads to a full-scale philosophy or metaphysics of Dao.Lao Zi's idea of Zi ran is the result of thinking deeply the meaning of Dao.The dissertation discusses that the origin of Lao Zi's Zi ran and analyzes the characteristics of the idea."Dao fa zi ran"(way-making emulates what is spontaneously so道法自然) is the core of Lao Zi.This proposition is a metaphorical structure which zi ran is target domain and dao is source domain.The meaning of zi ran is the result of interactions between target domain and source domain in which some of the structural relations and domain-specific properties of one domain,the source domain(dao),are mapped onto the other,the target domain(zi ran).Similarity can be physical or psychological.It can exist in the real world or in an imaginary world.The degree of metaphoricity of a metaphor depends on the degree of similarity between the two domains in the proposition.The interactions between zi ran and dao create two new important meanings which are chang(常) and you-wu(有-无).Lao Zi uses the meanings to the social sphere.He judges all things on the basis of the meanings of dao-fa-zi-ran.Zhuang Zi deepened LaoZi's thought,especially the idea of zi ran.He developed Lao Zi's dao and abandoned the entity of dao.Zhuang Zi holds that the crisis of the Spring and Autumn Period(770-476 B.C) and the Warring States(475-221 B.C) is derived from philosophical,ideological and linguistic fators deeply.He creates lot of new ideas which explain the meaning of dao and zi ran.He develops the proposition dao-fa-zi-ran to dao-jian-yu-tian(道兼于天) which highlights the transcendence of zi ran.The idea of zi ran changes and has lot of new meaning in the system of Zhuang Zi's thought.The dissertation further investigates the new meaning of zi ran in Zhuang zi and its potential for intiating deep thinking based on the transcendence. This is mainly reflected in the depth experience,open cognitive,diligent practice and meditation.