Summary
Brook Ziporyn's *Zhuangzi: The Complete Writings* offers a translation and engagement with the foundational Daoist text. The book's central argument, as understood through Ziporyn's work, suggests that the "godless epiphanies" found within Zhuangzi, particularly concerning Daoist mysticism, provide an alternative to the Western philosophical divide between theism and scientism. This perspective challenges both traditional religious belief and reductive atheism by proposing a "mystical atheism."
By engaging with Zhuangzi, readers are introduced to a "deeper form of atheism" that moves beyond the need for a creator god or finite beings dependent on one. Ziporyn's work highlights how Daoism, alongside other traditions like Buddhism and the philosophies of Spinoza, Nietzsche, and Bataille, develops a critique of theism that results in a new, affirmative sensibility. This sensibility is both atheist and "richly religious," offering a path to renew philosophy by embracing "godless epiphanies."
Key concepts
- Mystical Atheism — An affirmative rejection of God that bypasses both theomania and reductionism.
- Godless Epiphanies — Moments of profound realization found in philosophies that are deeply atheist and yet religious in sensibility.
- Theism-Scientism Divide — The perceived irresolvable conflict in Western philosophy between religious and scientific approaches to understanding existence.
- Affirmative Atheism — A form of atheism that is not merely a negation but a positive outlook without dependence on a creator or created beings for meaning.
From the book
Description: A new approach to the theism-scientism divide rooted in a deeper form of atheism. Western philosophy is stuck in an irresolvable conflict between two approaches to the spiritual malaise of our times: either we need more God (the “turn to religion”) or less religion (the New Atheism). In this book, Brook Ziporyn proposes an alternative that avoids both totalizing theomania and atomizing reductionism. What we need, he argues, is a deeper, more thoroughgoing, even religious rejection of God: an affirmative atheism without either a creator to provide meaning or finite creatures in need of it—a mystical atheism. In the legacies of Daoism and Buddhism as well as Spinoza, Nietzsche, and Bataille, Ziporyn discovers a critique of theism that develops into a new, positive…
Snippet: Godless Epiphanies from Daoism to Spinoza and Beyond Brook <b>Ziporyn</b>. 1. <b>Zhuangzi</b>, <b>Zhuangzi: The Complete Writings</b>, trans. Brook <b>Ziporyn</b> (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing, 2020), 272; slightly modified. 2. E3p27 refers to Ethics, Part ...