39. Robin Wang on Yin-Yang Thinking
An interview on the pervasive use of the yin-yang relational pair in classical Chinese thought generally, and in Daoism in particular.
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Themes:
• R.R. Wang, “Understanding of Yin Yang,” Religion Compass 7 (2013), 214-24.
• R.R. Wang, Yinyang : the Way of Heaven and Earth in Chinese Thought and Culture (Cambridge: 2012).
• R.R. Wang, “Ideal Womanhood in Chinese Thought and Culture,” Philosophy Compass 5 (2010), 635–44.
• R.R. Wang, “The Virtuous Body at Work: The Ethical Life as Qi in Motion,” Dao: Journal of Comparative Philosophy 9 (2010), 339-51.
• R.R. Wang, “Yinyang: The Art of Emergence” in R. Littlejohn (ed.), Riding the Wind with Liezi: New Essays on the Daoist Classic (Albany: 2010), 209-24.
• R.R. Wang, “Can Zhuangzi Make Confucians Laugh? Emotion, Propriety and The Role of Laughter” in H.-G. Moeller and G. Wohlfart (eds), Laughter in Eastern and Western Philosophies (Freiburg: 2009).
• R.R. Wang, “Kundao: A Lived Body in the Female Daoist Text, ” Journal of Chinese Philosophy 36 (2009), 277-92.
• R.R. Wang, “Dong Zhongshu’s Transformation of Yin/Yang Theory and Contesting of Gender Identity,” Philosophy East and West 55 (2005), 209-31.
• R.R. Wang (ed.), Images of Women in Chinese Thought and Culture: Writings from the Pre-Qin Period through the Song Dynasty (Indianapolis: 2003).
Comments
Endless funding?
This was a beautiful and comprehensive interview, thank you Peter and professor Wang! I especially liked the epistemological discussion. In some ways, what she calls yin/yang thinking reminds me of Husserl, for whom anything given to conscious intentional perception is given complete with its inside/backside etc., as a horizon. Add to this Merleau-Ponty's idea of philosophy as endless limping, rather than a project to complete. Philosophy and painting can only capture reality in the moment it is coming into being, with its horizons and gaps. Trained in analytic philosophy, I remember how this appalled me when I first read it, philosophy is all about progress, right? Towards something more precise, more elegant? We'll crack the hard problem of consciousness, right? Create the best semantics for modal logic ever?.. or maybe Daoism as understood by professor Wang had it right all along, all knowledge is complemented by infinite unknowing. Well, if that is so, they will have to fund philosophy forever, right?
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