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Daoist Conception of Time: Is Time Merely a Mental Construction?

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Abstract

There have been very few studies of the Daoist conception of time in either the West or the East. The only explicit study on this topic in the English literature is David Chai’s (Chai 2014). Chai maintains that “human measured time” manifested in the myriad things in the Daoist universe is merely a mental construction, whereas the authentic time is cosmological time, which consists of neither an A-series (which is ordered by nonreducible pastness, presentness, and futurity) nor a B-series (which is ordered by earlier-than relations) but something without order and directionality. In this article, I start with Daoist texts (i.e., Dao De Jing 道德經 and Zhuangzi 莊子) about fundamental reality and time. I then explain and analyze Chai’s interpretations of these texts. Lastly, I argue that Chai’s interpretations violate an important Daoist principle. In addition, the idea that human measured time is merely a mental construction is not the best available interpretation of the texts.

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References

  • Chai, David. 2014. “Zhuangzi’s Meontological Notion of Time.” Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy 13.3: 361–377.

  • Chen, Gu-ying 陳鼓應. 2006. Annotations on the Laozi 老子今注今譯. Beijing 北京: Shangwu Yinshuguan 商務印書館.

  • Chen, Suzhen 陳蘇珍. 2009. “Investigation of Laozi’s Conception of Time 老子時間觀探微.” Journal of Chongqing University of Posts and Telecommunications 重慶郵電大學學報 21.5: 1–4.

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  • Liu, Xiaogan. 2009. “Daoism (I): Lao Zi and the Dao-De-Jing.” In History of Chinese Philosophy, edited by Bo Mou. New York: Routledge.

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Acknowledgment

I am in great debt to Prof. Peter J. Lewis, the audience in the Philosophy Department at University of Miami, and the Institute of Philosophy at National Tsing Hua University—this articlewould have been impossible without them.

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  1. Department of Philosophy, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan

    Nihel Jhou

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  1. Nihel Jhou
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Correspondence to Nihel Jhou.

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Jhou, N. Daoist Conception of Time: Is Time Merely a Mental Construction?. Dao 19, 583–599 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11712-020-09747-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11712-020-09747-8

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