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137 Chapter 5 CONVERGING NEW WORLDS: ZHUANGZI, NIETZSCHE, AND CONTEMPORARY PHILOSOPHY In this chapter I want to analyze and explore the possible implications and contributions of my present project for the contemporary study of philosophy. As seen in the preceding chapters, the two philosophers I have compared seemed to have many familiar concerns that coincide with themes discussed that coincide with themes discussed coincide with themes discussed by some postmodern thinkers, such as Foucault, Deleuze, and Derrida.There is no question about Nietzsche’s significant impact on the rise of postmodernism and specifically poststructuralism. What about Zhuangzi? Can his philosophy or writing, passed on for about twenty-four hundred years, be relevant in the context of postmodernity? My answer is “yes.” And I will indicate that both Zhuangzi and Nietzsche, as I read them, can be relevant not only in terms of postmodernist criticism of traditional philosophy but also in terms of a possible philosophy of the future. On the other hand, I would also like to show how my interpretation will help scholars in China who study Nietzsche, Zhuangzi, or both to have access to a new way of reading their works. Having so long struggled with either colonialist oppression or communist dictatorship in the last century, Chinese intellectuals have focused exclusively on how to surmount the political and economic crisis even in the field of philosophy. Zhuangzi and Nietzsche have been two of the many victims of this exclusivity. I will give a picture of Zhuangzi and Nietzsche somewhat different from that of my Chinese colleagues. At the same time, an attempt will be made in this chapter to show how my interpretation will open up a new dimension for my Western colleagues to understand Zhuangzi’s philosophy and its actual influence on configurations and transformations of Chinese culture. Finally, I will conclude this study with a reiteration of my concept of “religiosity” and a further explanation of its relation to the field of both philosophical and religious studies, with Zhuangzi’s and Nietzsche’s philosophies as special cases of this philosophical religiosity. 138 LIBERATION AS AFFIRMATION A FFIR MAT ION AFTER DECONSTRUCTION: Z HUA NGZ I AND NIETZSCHE CHALLENGE POSTMODERN SOLUTIONS Much has been written about Nietzsche’s influence on the intellectual movement named “postmodernism.”The term postmodernism here broadly refers to a multidimensional and polystylistic philosophic trend, arising after World War II, which, led by French poststructuralist “new philosophers” and other literary critics, questions and criticizes the philosophical tradition of modernity that had been theretofore seen as the apex of Western thought.There can be no question that Nietzsche appears at crucial points in the development of some of the postmodern thinkers such as Foucault, Deleuze, Derrida, and Lyotard, who credited Nietzsche with being the first champion against a modernity based on Renaissance and Enlightenment-inspired ideas. They discovered in Nietzsche’s writings “the systematic mistrust as concerns the entirety of metaphysics, the formal vision of philosophical discourse, the concept of the philosopher-artist, the rhetorical and philological questions put to the history of philosophy, the suspiciousness concerning the values of truth (‘a well applied convention’), of meaning and Being, of the ‘meaning of Being,’ the attention to the economic phenomena of force and of the difference of forces, etc.”1 Pursuing these themes originally addressed by Nietzsche, postmodern thinkers have tried to respond to the present epoch, after the death of God and all other absolute truths and values. Here in this section, I would like to contrast Nietzsche and Zhuangzi to a few of the postmodern thinkers, a few of the postmodern thinkers, few of the postmodern thinkers, particularly Derrida, one of the most influential thinkers of poststructuralism or deconstructionism. They are representatives of poststructuralism and postmodernism , I should make this clear, but not the only representatives of postmodernism.Therefore, when I use the term postmodernism or postmodernist I am referring only to these few thinkers. One of the central motifs of poststructuralism is to put an end to the logocentric tendencies of metaphysical thinking, the thinking constructed for and centered on the determination of the truth of Being as “presence,” and the logical and metaphysical thinking which supported this determination that dominated the history of Western philosophy. The crucial point poststructuralist thinkers have found to denounce or reject in metaphysics has been radical in metaphysics has been radical metaphysics has been radical reflection upon the nature of language and interpretation.2 Derrida substitutes the term logocentrism...

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