Metaphor in the Zhuangzi: Transforming Conceptual Metaphor Theory

我的研究将展示中国古典道家哲学文本《庄子》如何为隐喻和形而上学之间的关系提供一个新的视角。我将用这一观点为概念隐喻理论提供另一种形而上学基础。我将展示这种对CMT的阅读如何帮助我们理解《庄子》中的身份和自我修养的概念。当代学者利用CMT来寻找早期中国哲学文本的语言背后，并找到意象概念的共同点。这些概念被认为是中国和西方概念框架的共同基础。因此，汉语翻译理论是解读文言文的有力工具。然而，在CMT中有一个假设的形而上学需要解决，以免将这种形而上学普遍应用于不同个人，文化和时代的各种哲学。本文将提出《庄子》作者有意识地讨论隐喻及其与形而上学的关系这一原创性论点。这种关系不同于上面讨论的关系。我认为，在庄子，隐喻被视为最好的方式来描述现实和我们的经验，因为隐喻的结构更接近现实的结构比字面语言。在转换本体论的语境中，隐喻模糊了事物之间的界限，从而更紧密地反映了事物的非独特性以及它们之间的关系。我建议将联合收割机对主要文本的文本分析与对当代中国学术和比较哲学的反思结合起来。这将包括与原始中文文本（特别是庄子）接触，并使用词源学方法研究古代汉字。我还将参与CMT及其对哲学解释的影响的历史和当前辩论。

My research will demonstrate how the classical Chinese Daoist philosophical text the Zhuangzi can offer a novel view of the relationship between metaphor and metaphysics. I will use this view to provide an alternative metaphysical foundation to conceptual metaphor theory (CMT). I will show how this reading of CMT can help us understand notions of identity and self-cultivation in the Zhuangzi. Contemporary scholars have used CMT to look behind the language of early Chinese philosophical texts and to find a common ground of imagistic concepts. These concepts have been argued to provide the shared foundations of Chinese and Western conceptual frameworks. Hence, CMT is a powerful tool in interpreting classical Chinese texts. However, there is an assumed metaphysics in CMT that needs to be addressed so as not to apply this metaphysics universally to the varied philosophies of different individuals, cultures and eras of time. I will make the original argument that the author of the Zhuangzi consciously discusses metaphor and its relationship to metaphysics. This relationship differs to that discussed above. I argue that within the Zhuangzi, metaphor is seen as the best way to describe reality and our experience of it, since the structure of metaphor is closer to the structure of reality than is literal language. In the context of a transformational ontology, metaphor is presented as blurring the boundaries between things and thereby more closely reflecting the non-distinct nature of things and the relationships that pertain between them. I propose to combine close textual analysis of primary texts with reflection on contemporary scholarship in Chinese and comparative philosophy. This will include engaging with original Chinese texts (particularly the Zhuangzi) and examining the ancient Chinese characters using an etymological approach. I will also engage with historical and current debate on CMT and its implications for philosophical interpretation.