A World-based View of Personal Identity in the Zhuangzi

The concern about death and life is a major issue in the philosophy of Zhuangzi. What happens to me when I die? Will I survive death? These are the issues that fundamentally concern us. To suitably address them, it requires an in-depth inquiry into the nature of self and personal identity. I have exposed a no-self thesis held by Zhuangzi in his dream of the butterfly argument, which leads to the conclusion that a persistently existing self is an illusion (Cheng, 2014). In this talk, I ty to further show what it is to be a human person across time, absent a persistently existing self in the conscious mental realm, in Zhuangzi’s view. I conduct this inquiry in the context of philosophical discussions on personal identity by John Locke, Derek Parfit, and Mark Johnston. I offer a novel interpretation of Zhuangzi where a Genuine Human could literally survive death in a world-based view of personal identity.

Kai-Yuan Cheng obtained his B.S. from the Department of Civil Engineering, National Chiao-Tung University, Taiwan (1992), and Ph.D from the Graduate Institute of Philosophy, City University of New York, Graduate Center, U.S.A. (2002). He was formerly Associate Dean (2012-2015) and Dean (2015-2017) of School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Vice President (2017-2018) and Dean (2019-2020) of Office of Student Affairs of National Yang-Ming University, and is currently Professor at the Institute of Philosophy of Mind and Cognition, National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University in Taipei, Taiwan, and member of advisory committee of Monash Center for Consciousness and Contemplative Studies in Melbourne, Australia. He was visiting faculty at the Divinity School of University of Chicago, U.S.A. and the Royal Ottawa Mental Health Center of University of Ottawa, Canada in the year 2018-9, and is currently a visiting fellow at the School of Philosophical, Historical, and International Studies of Monash University in 2023. He is a recipient of several prestigious research awards in Taiwan, including Wu Da-Yu Memorial Award from National Science Council (2010), Young Investigator Award from Academia Sinica (2011), and Distinguished Research Award from National Science Council (2012). His area of research lies in philosophy of language and mind, metaphysics, Wittgenstein, Zhuangzi, and neurophilosophy.