Chuang-Tzu's Anti-intellectualism And True Wisdom

The ancient Chinese philosophy mainly concerns people's life, not cognition. However, talking about life can't depart from cognition, it must have connection with cognition. Among the philosophers of Pre-Qin Dynasty, Chuang-tzu's epistemology is quite remarkable.Instead of analyzing how knowledge is built, Chuang-tzu's epistemology is distinctive with his questioning about cognitive activity and knowledge, which can be called anti-intellectualism. His anti-intellectualism depends on the rheological and relative properties of the world, and limitation of human's cognitive ability, finally negates experiential cognitions and knowledge. Therefore, he draws a conclusion that experiential cognitions and knowledge are completely unreliable, it is just "little recognition", and then we should give up knowledge. However, Chuang-tzu doesn't just stop here, he creates the theory of "true wisdom", which is based on "Tao", and tells us how to get " Tao "On the study of Chuang-tzu's thinking system, we also have to refer to Chuang-tzu's self-experience and the age he lived in. Meanwhile, as Chuang-tzu's ideas are mostly included in the book of Zhuang-Zi, the book is the most important foundation. These are the simple frame and contents as abstract below:Preface:This part states value and worth of this topic, the ways and the questions I use. The anti-intellectualism is the core of Chuang-tzu's epistemology, also the reason and method of Chuang-tzu's whole philosophy, and the important part of ancient Chinese philosophy.Chapter I:It introduces Chuang-tzu and his book. It has two sections:one is a statement of Chuang-tzu's self-experience and his living age. The other is about the editon of classical book Zhuang-zi:and because of the angle of this text, the book is taken as a whole, all of its texts are regarded as a reflection of Chuang-tzu's thought, and would not make the difference between each parts of the book. Chapter II is about Chuang-tzu's anti-intellectualism. First, it analyzes Chuang-tzu's special anti-intellectualism by comparing with Yu Yingshi. Then, it analyzes Chuang-tzu's anti-intellectualism from three sections:(I) the rheological and relative properties of the world; (II) the limitation of human abilities of cognition; (â…¢) the unavoidable subjectivity of experiential cognitions and knowledge, and so the complete abnegating of experiential cognitions and knowledge.chapterâ…¢is about the true wisdom of Chuang-tzu. This part continues from the negatation side of last chapter, and analyzes the destination of Chuang-tzu's epistemology. This content consists of two parts. It is about the true wisdom and Tao, and come to conclusion that Tao can not be gotten by common cognitive ways, but only can be reached by three special ways such as:"Zuo Wang", "Xin Zhai", "Jian Du", all of which are super-rational intuition and practice of spirit accomplishment.Conclusion:This part presentes a summary of the text, a brief analysis the feature and influence of Chuang-tzu's epistemology, also the role and position in the history of Chinese philosophy, and its worth and value for modern society.