Conférencier :
M. Stéphane FEUILLAS
(Maître de conférences, Université Paris Diderot)
(Chercheur, Centre de recherche sur les civilisations de l'Asie orientale)

Titre :
THE ZHUANGZI, A CONFUCIAN POLITICAL WORK?
A Reading by Wang Anshi (1021-1086) and his School

Date :
Mardi, 16 décembre 2014, à 15h

Lieu :
Salle de conférence au 1er étage, Institut de littérature et de philosophie chinoise,
Academia Sinica, Nankang Dist., Taipei City

Résumé en anglais :
In the reception that has been done since the late nineteenth century in Europe and in the Western Sinology of the twentieth century, the Zhuangzi 莊子 is the work of a thinker who seems to reject all legitimacy to the political field, offering a natural philosophy of self-liberation that leaves little room for social considerations and articulations. His criticism of values often put in ridiculous and laughable scenes despising princes or Confucius himself seems to be the source of a Chinese form of anarchist thought. There is thus some paradox to consider the Zhuangzi as a book that helps to gain a better approach to the Confucianism of the Master and that that could provide an intellectual and theoretical base to  “a best policy”. Yet that was the task which some Northern Song thinkers 北宋 (960-1127) dedicated themselves to, and especially those who define a interventionist and centralized policy often likened to a kind of ancient Legalism. Su Shi 蘇軾 (1037-1101) was not the only one who shared the idea that the Zhuangzi as a book had to be read as a helping tool to a better understanding of Confucian thought. But Wang Anshi王安石 (1021-1086) is even more remarkable in leading this interpretative turn of the Zhuangzi, failover which was to be continued and amplified in his school by Lü Huiqing 呂惠卿 (1032-1111). The purpose of this conference will be to highlight this paradox and to show how the Zhuangzi could play a role in redefining the Confucian literate missions and in the development of a theoretical basis for policy decision.

(Le séminaire sera en anglais et animé par Mme. Paola Calanca, resposable du centre EFEO de Taipei, et M. Huang Kuan-min, chercheur associé de l'Institut de la littérature et de la philosophie chinoise, Academia Sinica. Entrée libre, sans inscription.)


 conférence