Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews
2018.06.18 View this Review Online View Other NDPR Reviews
Hans-Georg Moeller and Paul J. D’Ambrosio, Genuine Pretending: On the Philosophy of the Zhuangzi, Columbia University Press, 2017, 221 pp., $35.00, ISBN 9780231183994.
Reviewed by Susan Blake, Bard College
“A romp through ‘the vast wilds of open nowhere'” — Roger Ebert
“Better than any existing work on humor” — Aristotle
“Nothing more than a success” — Guy Smiley
“A demonstration of nothing . . . in a technical sense” — Ford Prefect
“A tour de force through the ‘homeland of non-even-anything'” — Steven Colbert
This book presents a novel reading of the Zhuangzi that illuminates its humor and presents it as responding to philosophical concerns of its day. To the extent that these philosophical concerns are also those of the present day — the search for a sane and healthy response to the impossible demands of sincerity — we can, through the discussion here, gain an understanding of an alternative to the unsatisfying ethical approaches of both sincerity and authenticity. The book is impressive in bringing together diverse passages in this difficult text under one interpretation.