David Chai
Biographic Data
| ID | 3873237 |
|---|---|
| NAME | David Chai |
| GIVEN NAMES | David |
| FAMILY NAME | Chai |
| SIGNATURE | CHAI D |
| AFFILIATIONS | Chinese University of Hong Kong |
| ORCID | 0009-0002-0422-8726 |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 16 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 4 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 14 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2009 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
Jia Yi's Rhapsody on an Owl: An Exercise in Daoist Self-Consolation
Jia Yi's Rhapsody on an Owl was written during his banishment to Changsha and is a beautiful example of Daoist self-consolation in a world of uncertainty and change. This paper argues the Rhapsody has three objectives: to disprove the Confucian linking of human fate and fortune, to explicate the Daoist philosophy of change, and to illustrate how the sage exemplifies the Daoist ideal of spiritual freedom. Despite the therapeutic words he imputes t…
Zhuangzi and the Friendship of Non-Friendship
Bidding farewell to a friend is a moment of change, not in terms of the nature of the friendship, but the proximity of nothingness between oneself and another. Existing studies on friendship in Daoism can be grouped into two broad camps: one favours comparison with notable Western thinkers such as Aristotle and Derrida to establish its ethical ground, while the other favours characterizing it as a shared experience, typically involving death or s…
The Way of Awareness in Daoist Philosophy
Journal Article The Way of Awareness in Daoist Philosophy Get access The Way of Awareness in Daoist Philosophy. By James Giles. (St. Petersburg: Three Pines Press, 2020. Pp. xi + 205. Price $35.00.) David Chai David Chai Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Philosophical Quarterly, pqae016, https://doi.org/10.1093/pq/pqae016 Published: 13 February 2024 Article hist…
Martin Buber and Daoism on Interhuman Philosophy
For Martin Buber, a person participates in two kinds of relationship: the I-Thou and the I-It. In the case of the former, the wholeness of being is employed resulting in genuine dialogue, while the latter objectifies things and is thus devoid of anything genuine. Among the influences on Buber’s thought, that of Daoism has not gone unnoticed by scholars of comparative philosophy. This paper will contribute to said discourse by examining Buber’s co…
Zhuangzi on No-Emotion
Publications
Publications David Chai ________ Books Boutonnet, Olivier. 2021. Le Char des nuages: Érémitisme et randonées célestes cherWu Yun, taoïste de VIIIe siècle. Paris: Les Belles Lettres. Chai, David. 2021. Reading Ji Kang's essays: Xuanxue in Early Medieval China. London: Routledge. Clart, Philip, Vincent Goossaert, Shu-wei Hsieh, eds. 2020. Daoism and Local Cults:Rethinking the Paradigms [道教與地方宗教─典範的重思國際研討會論文集]. Taipei: Hanxue yanjiu zhongxin. Cline,…
Guo Xi on Painting the Invisible Gaze of the Dao
For the Song dynasty painter and theorist Guo Xi, Daoism runs like veins through his Lofty Appeal of Forests and Streams, helping it become one of the greatest works of landscape painting theory in China. This essay explores the influence Laozi and Zhuangzi had on Guo Xi's thought, paying particular attention to the latter's implementation of spirit, nature, and incompleteness. Guo Xi succeeded in giving these Daoist themes an aesthetic significa…
Dao Companion to Xuanxue 玄學 (Neo-Daoism)
Daoist Encounters with Phenomenology: Thinking Interculturally about Human Existence
This collection is intercultural philosophy at its best. It contextualizes the global significance of the leading figures of Western phenomenology, including Husserl, Hegel, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Buber and Levinas, enters them into intercultural dialogue with the Daoism of Laozi and Zhuangzi and in doing so, breaks new ground. By presenting the first sustained analysis of the Daoist worldview by way of phenomenological experience, this book not o…
Daoism and the Meontological Imagination
Of the things needing to be forgotten if we are to partake in the oneness of Dao, language is perhaps the hardest. Since the purpose of words is to delimit things, words create an artificial division between things and their image qua form. While humanity views images as distinct entities, Dao leaves them in their jumbled collectivity; while humanity feels compelled to act upon our thoughts and feelings, Dao remains silent and empty. This leads t…
Zhuangzi and the Becoming of Nothingness
In the Shadows of the Dao: Laozi, the Sage, and the Daodejing
Thomas Michael's In the Shadows of the Dao seeks to boldly reread the Daodejing 道德經 by situating it “in a mountainous milieu where masters and disciples pursued a program of physical cultivation ca
Meontological Generativity: A Daoist Reading of the Thing
When it comes to the entity known as the Thing ( das Ding ), two philosophical interpretations are available: the ontological by Martin Heidegger and the ethical by Jacques Lacan. This essay offers a third in the guise of Daoist meontology. As Daoist cosmogony unfolds by way of nothingness ( wu 無) and Dao acting in conjunction, the Thing cannot exist at that primal level of creation; it arises in the undifferentiated wholeness of the One. By loca…
Zhuangzi’s Meontological Notion of Time
Daoism and Wu
This paper introduces the concept of nothingness as used in classical Daoist philosophy, building upon contemporary scholarship by offering a uniquely phenomenological reading of the term. It will be argued that the Chinese word wu bears upon two planes of reality concurrently: as ontological nothingness and as ontic nonbeing. Presenting wu in this dyadic manner is essential if we wish to avoid equating it with Dao itself, as many have been wont …
Musical Naturalism in the Thought of JI Kang
Daoism and Wu
This paper introduces the concept of nothingness as used in classical Daoist philosophy, building upon contemporary scholarship by offering a uniquely phenomenological reading of the term. It will be argued that the Chinese word wu bears upon two planes of reality concurrently: as ontological nothingness and as ontic nonbeing. Presenting wu in this dyadic manner is essential if we wish to avoid equating it with Dao itself, as many have been wont …
Martin Buber and Daoism on Interhuman Philosophy
For Martin Buber, a person participates in two kinds of relationship: the I-Thou and the I-It. In the case of the former, the wholeness of being is employed resulting in genuine dialogue, while the latter objectifies things and is thus devoid of anything genuine. Among the influences on Buber’s thought, that of Daoism has not gone unnoticed by scholars of comparative philosophy. This paper will contribute to said discourse by examining Buber’s co…
Guo Xi on Painting the Invisible Gaze of the Dao
For the Song dynasty painter and theorist Guo Xi, Daoism runs like veins through his Lofty Appeal of Forests and Streams, helping it become one of the greatest works of landscape painting theory in China. This essay explores the influence Laozi and Zhuangzi had on Guo Xi's thought, paying particular attention to the latter's implementation of spirit, nature, and incompleteness. Guo Xi succeeded in giving these Daoist themes an aesthetic significa…
Musical Naturalism in the Thought of JI Kang
Meontological Generativity: A Daoist Reading of the Thing
When it comes to the entity known as the Thing ( das Ding ), two philosophical interpretations are available: the ontological by Martin Heidegger and the ethical by Jacques Lacan. This essay offers a third in the guise of Daoist meontology. As Daoist cosmogony unfolds by way of nothingness ( wu 無) and Dao acting in conjunction, the Thing cannot exist at that primal level of creation; it arises in the undifferentiated wholeness of the One. By loca…
Zhuangzi’s Meontological Notion of Time
Daoism and Wu
This paper introduces the concept of nothingness as used in classical Daoist philosophy, building upon contemporary scholarship by offering a uniquely phenomenological reading of the term. It will be argued that the Chinese word wu bears upon two planes of reality concurrently: as ontological nothingness and as ontic nonbeing. Presenting wu in this dyadic manner is essential if we wish to avoid equating it with Dao itself, as many have been wont …
In the Shadows of the Dao: Laozi, the Sage, and the Daodejing
Thomas Michael's In the Shadows of the Dao seeks to boldly reread the Daodejing 道德經 by situating it “in a mountainous milieu where masters and disciples pursued a program of physical cultivation ca
Zhuangzi and the Becoming of Nothingness
Daoism and the Meontological Imagination
Of the things needing to be forgotten if we are to partake in the oneness of Dao, language is perhaps the hardest. Since the purpose of words is to delimit things, words create an artificial division between things and their image qua form. While humanity views images as distinct entities, Dao leaves them in their jumbled collectivity; while humanity feels compelled to act upon our thoughts and feelings, Dao remains silent and empty. This leads t…
Dao Companion to Xuanxue 玄學 (Neo-Daoism)
Daoist Encounters with Phenomenology: Thinking Interculturally about Human Existence
This collection is intercultural philosophy at its best. It contextualizes the global significance of the leading figures of Western phenomenology, including Husserl, Hegel, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Buber and Levinas, enters them into intercultural dialogue with the Daoism of Laozi and Zhuangzi and in doing so, breaks new ground. By presenting the first sustained analysis of the Daoist worldview by way of phenomenological experience, this book not o…
Guo Xi on Painting the Invisible Gaze of the Dao
For the Song dynasty painter and theorist Guo Xi, Daoism runs like veins through his Lofty Appeal of Forests and Streams, helping it become one of the greatest works of landscape painting theory in China. This essay explores the influence Laozi and Zhuangzi had on Guo Xi's thought, paying particular attention to the latter's implementation of spirit, nature, and incompleteness. Guo Xi succeeded in giving these Daoist themes an aesthetic significa…
Zhuangzi on No-Emotion
Publications
Publications David Chai ________ Books Boutonnet, Olivier. 2021. Le Char des nuages: Érémitisme et randonées célestes cherWu Yun, taoïste de VIIIe siècle. Paris: Les Belles Lettres. Chai, David. 2021. Reading Ji Kang's essays: Xuanxue in Early Medieval China. London: Routledge. Clart, Philip, Vincent Goossaert, Shu-wei Hsieh, eds. 2020. Daoism and Local Cults:Rethinking the Paradigms [道教與地方宗教─典範的重思國際研討會論文集]. Taipei: Hanxue yanjiu zhongxin. Cline,…
Martin Buber and Daoism on Interhuman Philosophy
For Martin Buber, a person participates in two kinds of relationship: the I-Thou and the I-It. In the case of the former, the wholeness of being is employed resulting in genuine dialogue, while the latter objectifies things and is thus devoid of anything genuine. Among the influences on Buber’s thought, that of Daoism has not gone unnoticed by scholars of comparative philosophy. This paper will contribute to said discourse by examining Buber’s co…
The Way of Awareness in Daoist Philosophy
Journal Article The Way of Awareness in Daoist Philosophy Get access The Way of Awareness in Daoist Philosophy. By James Giles. (St. Petersburg: Three Pines Press, 2020. Pp. xi + 205. Price $35.00.) David Chai David Chai Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Philosophical Quarterly, pqae016, https://doi.org/10.1093/pq/pqae016 Published: 13 February 2024 Article hist…
Jia Yi's Rhapsody on an Owl: An Exercise in Daoist Self-Consolation
Jia Yi's Rhapsody on an Owl was written during his banishment to Changsha and is a beautiful example of Daoist self-consolation in a world of uncertainty and change. This paper argues the Rhapsody has three objectives: to disprove the Confucian linking of human fate and fortune, to explicate the Daoist philosophy of change, and to illustrate how the sage exemplifies the Daoist ideal of spiritual freedom. Despite the therapeutic words he imputes t…
Zhuangzi and the Friendship of Non-Friendship
Bidding farewell to a friend is a moment of change, not in terms of the nature of the friendship, but the proximity of nothingness between oneself and another. Existing studies on friendship in Daoism can be grouped into two broad camps: one favours comparison with notable Western thinkers such as Aristotle and Derrida to establish its ethical ground, while the other favours characterizing it as a shared experience, typically involving death or s…
Chinese history and philosophy (16 works) · Philosophy (14 works) · Epistemology (11 works) · Aesthetics (7 works) · History (7 works) · Art (6 works) · Psychology (6 works) · Literature (5 works) · Theology (5 works) · Nothing (4 works)