PHIL 3920 Lecture Notes - Lecture 21: Pyrrhonism
26 Mar 2017
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Document Summary
Most of zhuangzi"s concerns are about epistemology. Zhuangzi can be characterized as skeptical relativism. Pyrrhonian skepticism: everything is an appearance we can"t create a solid foundation (of a basis of knowledge). If the water isn"t deep it can"t support big boats . Breeze is dependent of the big wind. These large creatures are dependent on something. The cicada laughs at breeze, and comments on her habits. This is the theme of perspective: it shows the cicada has a limited perspective. Little knowledge doesn"t add up to big knowledge . Cultural critique we"re becoming narrower, and we should be more vast and compare ourselves to the tree. These people have so much control of their qi they don"t need to it. Shoulder dig is basically being called an idiot by step brother. Step brother is accusing shoulder dig of a narrow perspective: these people have achieved a broader perspective and become useless (recall the stink tree).
