ABSTRACT
Focusing on one perennial jointly concerned metaphysical issue, I examine how the classical Daoist approach as presented in Lao Zi’s Dao-De-Jing and Zhuang Zi’s Zhuang-Zi (jointly labeled the ‘Lao–Zhuang Daoist approach’) can engage with two representative and influential approaches to the issue in the Western tradition and contemporary philosophy: the Quinean approach as a mainstream approach in the (contemporary) analytic tradition and the Heideggerian approach in the European continental tradition. The purpose is to examine how the Lao–Zhuang Daoist approach can constructively talk to and engage with the two distinct representative approaches in the Western tradition and make joint contributions to our understanding and treatment of the philosophical issue of being. In the first part, I spell out the engagement background: I first explain relevant main points of the Quinean approach in the contemporary analytic metaphysics; I then examine the Heideggerian approach in the continental tradition in view of its engagement with the Quinean approach and also comment on the involved issue of philosophical interpretation. In the second part, I explain how, in five connections, Lao–Zhuang’s Daoist approach can constructively engage with the foregoing two approaches in the Western tradition in some philosophically interesting ways.
