Title: Vital nourishment : departing from happiness /
Authors: Jullien, François, 1951-
Publisher: Zone Books ; Distributed by the MIT Press,
Year: 2007
Subjects: Life.; Meaning (Philosophy); Philosophy, Chinese.
Abstract: "The philosophical tradition in the West has always subjected life to conceptual divisions and questions about meaning, Although this process has given rise to a rich history of inquiry, it proceeds too fast, contends Francois Jullien. In its anxiety about meaning, Western thinkers since Plato have forgotten simply to experience life in vital Nourishment, Jullien slows down and begins to think about life from a point outside of Western inquiry, using the third- and fourth-century B.C.E. Chinese thinker Zhuanghi as a foil in this installment of his continuing project of plumbing the philosophical divide between Eastern and Western thought."--Jacket.
Contents: Feeding the body/feeding the soul: the symbolic divide -- Preserving the freedom to change -- To feed one's life/to force one's life; or, how the attachment to life turns against life -- Vacations: finding heaven in ourselves -- Without "soul" -- Do we have a "body"? -- Feeding your breath-energy -- Procedures of vital nourishment -- Exempt from happiness -- On hygiene; or, the desperate desire to endure -- Anti-stress: cool, Zen, and so on -- Condemned to the eternal silence of processes.