This is a past event
The Confucius Institute of the University of Aberdeen is pleased to be hosting Professor Wang Aiju and Professor Wu Genyou from our partner university, Wuhan University, China.
Professor Wu Genyou is Dean the School of Philosophy at Wuhan University, and titled as the Distinguished Professor of “Changjiang Scholars Program” in 2016. His major interest is in the philosophy of Chinese Ming and Qing Dynasties, Chinese political philosophy and comparative philosophy.
Comparisons of Views of Life and Death Embodied in the Seven Inner Chapters of The Book of Zhuangzi and Heidegger’s Being and Time
Zhuangzi and Heidegger are two philosophers who possess profound views of life and death issues. Zhuangzi insists that conforming to, and complying with, the premise of the nature of philosophy, individuals are well-advised to obtain a sense of optimism towards death. In the age that Zhuangzi lived, the common people were exposed to baseless torture due to frequent outbursts of war. Thus, Zhuangzi sympathetically feels the grief of life as an individual, and proposes views of not being content with life and also not having hatred towards death. Heidegger was a German philosopher of the 20th century. When he wrote the book Being and Time, the German Nazi forces were in their prime, with the modernization process of Germany in the burgeoning stage. Heidegger’s reflection on the issues of life and death bears ideological features of German Existentialism. Heidegger cares deeply for the value and importance of individual significance and supports the positive view of “being towards death”. Advocating the phenomenon of “being yourself and perceiving yourself” for mortal beings, Heidegger insists that individuals in the real world seek individual significance in their own life. However, Heidegger’s view of life and death implies a kind of modern anxiety in life and lacks the philosophical feelings of death which Zhuangzi holds. From the comparison of Heidegger and Zhuangzi, it can be concluded that their views of death complement each other.
- Speaker
- Professor Wu Genyou
- Hosted by
- Confucius Institute
- Venue
- The Sir Duncan Rice Library
- Contact
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