Time transcending tense: An examination of heng 恒 in pre-Qin Daoist philosophy
Recent scholarship on the philosophy of time in pre-Qin Daoist thought has not yet produced a thorough examination of dao’s relationship to time. This essay resolves this omission through a systematic study of the concept heng 恒 in pre-Qin Daoist literature. While principally expressing the ‘constan...
| Main Author: | |
|---|---|
| Contributors: | |
| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | |
| Interlibrary Loan: | Interlibrary Loan for the Fachinformationsdienste (Specialized Information Services in Germany) |
| Published: |
2024
|
| In: |
Asian philosophy
Year: 2024, Volume: 34, Issue: 4, Pages: 291–307 |
| Further subjects: | B
heng 恒
B wu 無 B Pre-Qin Daoism B dao 道 B Time |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | Recent scholarship on the philosophy of time in pre-Qin Daoist thought has not yet produced a thorough examination of dao’s relationship to time. This essay resolves this omission through a systematic study of the concept heng 恒 in pre-Qin Daoist literature. While principally expressing the ‘constancy’ of dao, heng also significantly presupposes dao’s ability to change. This change is characterized in the texts as a cyclical movement of ‘return’ and identified with the universe’s circular metanarrative of generation and reintegration. The essay turns to examine pre-Qin Daoist literature’s use of primal wu 無 metaphors to describe dao. It concludes that they present dao as undifferentiated infinitude, liberating dao as heng from the tense structure of past-present-future that divides life in time. These metaphors further associate the movement of dao with the flow of time, reformulating time’s relentless ever-greater advancement into an endless cycle of creative transformation. |
|---|---|
| ISSN: | 1469-2961 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Asian philosophy
|
| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1080/09552367.2024.2344958 |