Like many of his contemporaries, Chan-Fai went to Europe to study philosophy, drawn to Germany by the work of Heidegger. Heidegger’s influence is felt in many of these essays, especially the concept of Existenz, which contrasts with a concept of essence found in both Chinese and Western traditions. There is also an essay on boredom which owes a lot to Heidegger. But Chan-Fai’s overriding preoccu¬pation in these essays is with a concept that does not figure importantly in Heidegger’s thought: love. He examines love from every angle, from the love of God and the love of truth through friendship and romantic love to the erotic and the sexual. He reflects on the ancient Western notions of eros, philia and agape, and notes that the Chinese tradition has no corresponding distinction. He concurs in the widespread view among experts that romantic love, so important in the literature and art of the West, has no counterpart in the Chinese tradition, at least until recently. At the same time he finds examples of erotic and even porno¬graphic depictions in older Chinese pictures and texts. The collection closes with very personal meditations on death, on the representation and symbolism of hell, and on utopia.
Table of Contents
Part I: Human Existence
- On the Problem of the Distinction Between Man and Animal
- Tang Chun-i on Human Existence: A Phenomenological Interpretation
- Heidegger and Lao Sze-Kwang on Human Finitude
- Boredom and the Beginning of Philosophy
- Can my Mind be Mad? A Daseinsanalytic Interpretation of Mental Illness
- One World or Many Worlds? On Intercultural Understanding
Part II: Love, Desire and Death
- The Western and Chinese Ideas of Love
- Western Love, Chinese Qing: A Philosophical Interpretation of the Idea of Love in Romeo and Juliet and Liang-Zhu (or The Butterfly Lovers)
- Between Myself and Others: Towards a Phenomenology of the Experience of Love
- On the Possibility of a Phenomenology of Philia
- Tang Chun-i’s Philosophy of Love
- Chi-po-zi-zhuan: On the Tension between Sexual Exploitation and Sexual Autonomy of Chinese Women in the Ming Period
- The Phenomenon of Death and Dying: A Meditation on My Mortality
- Hell: On the Absolutization of Suffering
Part III: Utopia
Another Place, Another Time: A Phenomenological Reflection on Utopia
Postscript
Acknowledgments
Index of Names
About the Author
