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CoV\cltAsioV\ Cross-ClAltlAral IV\terpretatioV\s aV\d t-lermeV\elAtic ImplicatioV\s Multiple Levels of Meaning T o recapitulate briefly, this project evaluates the contributions of Martin Buber's much overlooked Reden und Gleichnisse des Tschuang-tse toward the ongoing sinological enterprise of interpreting the text of Chuang Tzu. The book includes both a series of annotated translations and rigorous analyses of the document's form and content with respect to three hermeneutic models: historical reconstruction, interactive interpretation, and aesthetic reception . In isolation, each hermeneutic chapter produces its own set of insights and challenges, yet what seems most significant is how readily the Chinese text lends itself to the various models of meaning, as well as how the models themselves fit together as components of one sustained argument. It is, in fact, the purely reconstructionist model which supplies the context for the discussion of the teaching and its parable, the discussion which itself generates and substantiates the new interpretive model focusing on the interaction between reader and text. Similarly, this dynamic view of interpretation is itself extended to produce a unique reception hermeneutic, one that makes meaningful an encounter between Buber's dialogical philosophy and Chuang Tzu's mysticism, by establishing the I-Thou relation as a legitimate lens through which to interpret the text. Thus, the combination of hermeneutic models employed in this study is imaginative, but not arbitrary. And the major themes elucidated in the three chapters-i.e., the text as parable, unity and transformation, the nature of presencethough brought to light through separate hermeneutic paradigms, 187 188 I and Too can be best understood as related moments within a singular yet organic and fluid interpretive process. Certainly, it is quite apparent that these multiple layers of interpretation -the conclusions produced both directly and indirectly by Buber's Taoist volume-are of considerable significance for one narrowly focused discourse, the critical study of a specific Chinese text. However, because of the peculiar nature of the encounter between Buber and Chuang Tzu, and because of the delicate hermeneutic issues involved, these conclusions also carry important ramifications for several broader areas of study. First, the credible rehabilitation of Reden und Gleichnisse leads one to inquire of Chuang Tzu specialists (and, by extension, Chinese textual scholars in general) exactly why its significance had not yet been acknowledged, or at least to speculate how such an oversight might be avoided in the future. Second, the newly established connections between Buber and Chuang Tzu may give cause to Buber scholars to reconsider the scope of Taoist influence in the dialogical writings and to note other resonances between Taoist and Jewish forms of mysticism. Finally, the direct juxtaposition of dialogical philosophy with Chuang Tzu's mysticism may suggest that the respective concerns of sinologists and Buber scholars-Buber's contributions toward explicating Chuang Tzu and the role of Chuang Tzu in Buber's philosophical development-are more closely related than one might anticipate, and that this relationship carries important implications for the methodological debate currently raging within the academic study of mysticism. Some of the implications for each of the three disciplines-sinology, Buber studies, mysticism-are illustrated briefly below. The Sinological Issue: Textual Study and Hermeneutic Self-Consciousness Although one can only speculate, albeit intelligently, as to the reasons for the legacy of sinological indifference to Buber's Taoist volume, one can assert with reasonable confidence that the interpretations represented by the text translation and commentary would continue to be deemed marginal or inadmissible were it not for the kinds of hermeneutic experiments undertaken in this study. Conclusion 189 This could suggest that the real factor keeping Reden und Gleichnisse in the shadows is not Buber's historical or linguistic limitation, but his overall interpretive framework, a particular perspective and agenda which simply do not speak substantively to the core of Chuang Tzu scholars. That is to say, the great divide separating Buber from genuine sinologists-a chasm that can be closed only through applications of alternative models of meaning -may actually be a matter more of hermeneutics than of competence. This hypothesis gains credence when one examines even briefly the fairly self-contained networks that have formed among modern scholarly readers of Chuang Tzu. With some exceptions, a surprising lack of interface among the established discourses testifies to a kind of "hermeneutic determinism." In one corner, a compendium of scholars concerned primarily with matters of history and language -Harold Roth, Chad Hansen, A. C. Graham, et al.-seems to...

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