Zhuangzi and the Friendship of Non-Friendship

Chai, David (author)

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 self-forgetting. This paper takes a different approach by arguing that Daoist friendship does not lie with the physical self or its emotional disposition but the nothingness of the in-between—the domain of the interhuman encounter. Focusing on the Zhuangzi, this paper will also argue that Daoist friendship can be reframed as the friendship of non-friendship.

• Language: English
• Keywords: friendship, interhuman encounter, nothingness, Zhuangzi, Daoism
• Work type: Article
• Typology: 1.01 - Original Scientific Article
• Organization: FF - Faculty of Arts
• Publication status: Published
• Publication version: Version of Record
• Publication date: 09.05.2025
• Number of pages: Str. 57-72
• Numbering: Vol. 13, no. 2
• PID: 20.500.12556/RUL-178264
• ISSN: 2232-5131
• eISSN: 2350-4226
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.4312/as.2025.13.2.57-72
• Publication date in RUL: 22.01.2026

Record is a part of a journal

• Title: Asian studies
• Publisher: Znanstvena založba Filozofske fakultete, Znanstvena založba Filozofske fakultete, Založba Univerze v Ljubljani
• ISSN: 2232-5131
• COBISS.SI-ID: 265206272

Licences

• License: CC BY-SA 4.0, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International
• Link: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/
• Description: This Creative Commons license is very similar to the regular Attribution license, but requires the release of all derivative works under this same license.

Secondary language

• Language: Slovenian
• Title: Zhuangzi in prijateljstvo neprijateljstva

Abstract

Slovo od prijatelja, prijateljice je trenutek spremembe, ne v smislu narave prijateljstva, temveč bližine ničnosti med seboj in drugim. Obstoječe študije o prijateljstvu v daoizmu lahko razdelimo v dve široki skupini: ena daje prednost primerjavi z uglednimi zahodnimi mislicami in misleci, kot sta Aristotel in Derrida, da bi utemeljila njegovo etično osnovo, medtem ko druga poudarja njegovo opredelitev kot skupno izkušnjo, ki običajno vključuje smrt ali pozabo samega sebe. Ta članek zavzema drugačen pristop, saj trdi, da daoistično prijateljstvo ne temelji na fizičnem jazu ali njegovem čustvenem stanju, temveč na ničnosti vmesnega – na področju medčloveškega srečanja. S poudarkom na delu Zhuangzi bo članek prav tako zagovarjal, da je mogoče daoistično prijateljstvo preoblikovati v prijateljstvo neprijateljstva.

• Keywords: prijateljstvo, medčloveško srečanje, nič, Zhuangzi, daoizem