노장사유의 해체적 이해 = A Deconstructive understanding of Lao-Chuang's thinking

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

Tao (道) has many different meanings in the history of Chinese philosophy. It means a way, a method, or a truth. Moreover, it means ‘to speak’. Usually Tao is metaphysically regarded as a principle of being, as a moral principle of human life, as Absolute Truth, as Ultimate Reality, and as Eternal Ground of Being, etc. This has been true of the Taoist philosophy as well as the Confucian's.

The purpose of this study is to show that there are textual similarities between what Lao Tzo(老子) and Chuang Tzu(莊子) say about Tao and what Jacques Derrida says about ‘differance’, ‘trace’, and ‘play’, etc. This perspective in helpful to correct the notion that Tao is the Eternal Ground of Being. we can get a new insight into Taoist philosophy by way of Derridian deconstructive theory. Through our comparative study, we have established a philosophical affinity between Taoist thinking and Derridian deconstructive thinking.

Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu, like Derrida deconstruct all kinds of traditional and metaphisical thoughts which can be termed dualistic system of thinking. According to this dualistic thinking, such terms as truth, being, and beauty designate the state of self-presence or plentitude. And these terms inevitably generate their logical opposites such as falsity, nothing and ugliness, which are inferior than truth, being and beauty. This kind of thought maintains its identity through dividing the world of meanings into true and false, good and evil, beauty and ugliness. In this dichotomy, the former considers the latter as the object of negation.

Derrida calls this dominant tradition ‘the metaphysics of presence’, and criticizes it. The thinking of Taoist philosophy like Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu attacks and seeks to overthrow the metaphysical-dualistic system of thinking likewise. I call this philosophical tendency of the Taoist pholosophy ‘anti-dualistic thinking’.

Understanding ‘Tao’ of Lao-Chuang in this perspective, we find ourselves in a paradoxical situation of theorizing a non-theory and conceptualizing a non-conception. But the paradox of Tao itself, like differance, have the meaning in two aspects. On the one hand, it executes the disruption or the transgression of any metaphysical dualistic system of thinking, on the other hand, it reveals the interplay or the complicity between two apparently contradictionary concepts.

So Lao-Chuang like Derrida use many methods or strategies to overcome ‘the metaphysical dualistic system of thinking’: the extensive use of metaphor, the frequent employment of paradox and play-on-word. The pervasive use of metaphor and paradox, together with the non-serious and non-assertive gesture, produce a plural of ‘play-ful’ style and full of the de-centering free play of differance and Tao. I call this philosophical tendency of the Taoist philosophy ‘excessive thinking’ or ‘philosophy of play’.

Lao-Chuang insist that for human beings there has been and can be no pure world in any aspect. They consider thought systems which presuppose Absolute truth, Ultimate Ground, Perfect Virtue and Perfect Beauty, as illusions. Lao-Chuang suggest that in this world as a living space anything coexists with the opposites. For illustrating this suggestion they use the following terms: ‘Zhang(祥) of Chinese character(indicates both fortune and misfortune)’, and Chuang Tzu's saying of “There is Tao(道) for Thievery(盜)” like ‘pharmakon(means simultaneously medicine and poison)’, ‘hymen(means simultaneously the preservation of a virginity and the rupture of virginity)’, in Derrida. I call this philosophical tendency of the Taoist philosophy ‘the logic of cohabitation and coexistence’.

Like Derrida, Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu suggests that the logic of cohabitation and coexistence recognizes and affirms differences between opposites. In these thoughts of double affirmation, they deny the dictatorship of dichotomous thinking. In other words, their ways of thinking challenge the value system established or founded by a single truth, and implicate that all human values necessarily carry half-values. For Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu to search for only one meaning (Truth, Pure, Ground) is to produce non-meanings.

Therefore, we can say that some of Lao Tzu's concept of Tao is not different from Derrida's concepts of ‘differance’, ‘trace’, and ‘play’, etc. Especially Chuang Tzu's Tao has a close resemblance with Derridian terms as we pointed above on his free and literary ‘play-ful’ style.

Finally, in the point of Derrida's view, Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu pose a deconstructive critique of the exclusive truth and value system in traditional metaphysics. They unfold a kind of thinking that would deconstructs all centrisms like westerncentrism, malecentrism, phonocentrism, and moralcentrism, etc., and futrher create an enjoyable play-space for human beings in this world. In the transition towards the 21st century their suggestions provide us with a fresh perspective to look differently at human beings and this world we live in.