Unknown patterns of intersubjectivity : Zhuangzi, the Seabird and the Happy Fish

Rošker, Jana S. (author)

Basic assumption of this chapter is that Western epistemology represents only one of the many different models of human thought and our perception of reality. Therefore, I aim to present a specific epistemology that has evolved in the Chinese intellectual tradition and differs in its characteristics from the standards that have been shaped and developed in Euro-American epistemological traditions. The basic paradigms of this model are based on the idea of seeing the world as a complex network of interconnections, and they allow for specific forms of intersubjectivity that have not yet been explored by Western scholarship. Such paradigms cannot be grasped on the basis of analytical approaches alone, but also require an understanding of specific kinds of embodied knowledge. Using two chapters from the classical Daoist work Zhuangzi, I demonstrate the epistemological foundations as well as the operation and implications of such intersubjective epistemologies based on a specific, innovative hermeneutic method that the author tentatively refers to as ‘the fusion of the aesthetic realms (or jingjies).

• Language: English
• Keywords: Zhuangzi, jingjie, hermenutics, intersubjectivity, aesthetic realms
• Typology: 1.16 - Independent Scientific Component Part or a Chapter in a Monograph
• Organization: FF - Faculty of Arts
• Publication status: Published
• Publication version: Version of Record
• Year: 2025
• Number of pages: Str. 195-209
• PID: 20.500.12556/RUL-180611
• UDC: 1
• DOI: 10.4324/9781032659985
• COBISS.SI-ID: 226252291
• Publication date in RUL: 12.03.2026

Record is a part of a monograph

• Title: Knowing life : the ethics of multispecies epistemologies
• Editors: Brianne Donaldson
• Place of publishing: London
• Publisher: Routledge
• ISBN: 978-1-03-265996-1
• COBISS.SI-ID: 226514947
• Collection title: Multispecies Encounters

Licences

• License: CC BY 4.0, Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
• Link: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
• Description: This is the standard Creative Commons license that gives others maximum freedom to do what they want with the work as long as they credit the author.

Secondary language

• Language: Slovenian
• Keywords: Zhuangzi, jingjie, hermenevtika, intersubjektivnost, estetska sfera