A Preliminary Study Of Chuang Tsu's Death Viewpoint

In reviewing China's traditional culture of death, we never have been able to bypass Confucianism and Taoism, because since the pre-Qin period Confucianism and Taoism have gradually constituted the two main parts of the Chinese culture. For practical considerations of advantages and disadvantages, Confucianist emphasis life, and avoid talking much about death. Their attitude to death is what Confucius said "not knowing life, how can we know death". Although the Taoist and Confucian theory are tit for tat, the Taoist theoretical point of departure is "preserving life and avoiding harm". Preserving life is not surviving simply, but living in a real state with Tao, which is the truth essence of life. In this state, death is not the opposite of life. So Taoist especially Chuang Tsu not only dare to facing death, but also consider death in Tao's movement. Death is seen as death itself, not nihil, and then the differences between life and death disappeared. People show no anxiety about life, and no horror about death.On the basis of understanding above, the paper elaborates Chuang Tsu's death viewpoint. There are altogether five sections. The introduction part is about the development of Chinese thanatology and the value of researching death as a philosophical notion. The first chapter briefly introduces Chuang Tsu and his masterpiece, and the reason to his attitudes toward death. As we know theory is necessarily based on many notions, in the second chapter the paper introduces some notions like Tao, Qi, and fate, which are concerned with Chuang Tsu's death viewpoint. The third chapter elaborates the details of Chuang Tsu's death viewpoint, so it is the most important part.The forth chapter analyzes the practical significance of Chuang Tsu's death viewpoint. Because in the introduction part the meaning has been mentioned, this part focuses on the significance of eliminating anxiety of death.