Ziran: The Philosophy of Spontaneous Self-Causation

168 Pages·2022·3.076 MB·English

by  Brian Bruya

Ziran
SUNY series in Chinese Philosophy and Culture
——————
Roger T. Ames, editor
Ziran
The Philosophy of
Spontaneous Self-Causation
BRIAN BRUYA
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2022 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever
without written permission, with the exception of figure 3.4, which is from
Wikimedia Commons, and is available under a Creative Commons license.
No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any
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without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY
www.sunypress.edu
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Name: Bruya, Brian, author.
Title: Ziran : The philosophy of spontaneous self-causation / Brian Bruya.
Description: Albany : State University of New York Press, [2022] | Series:
SUNY series in Chinese Philosophy and Culture | Includes bibliographical
references and index.
Identifiers: ISBN 9781438488318 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781438488325
(ebook)
Further information is available at the Library of Congress.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For
Yuling and Giorgio
boundless love

Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction 1
1. Ziran and Its Absence in Western Philosophy 7
2. Saving Natural Human Action from the Paradox
of Spontaneity 37
3. Effortless Attention: A Missing Concept in Contemporary
Cognitive Science 65
4. Broadening Aesthetics: Spontaneity, the Somatic Arts,
and Improvisation 91
Epilogue 123
Notes 127
Works Cited 141
Index 145

Acknowledgments
I owe a debt of gratitude to the Collaborative Innovation Center of
Confucian Civilization at Shandong University, where I was visiting
scholar for the 2018–19 academic year and under whose auspices the
first three chapters of this book were delivered as lectures. Yu Xiaoyu,
with the help of Cui Xiang, expertly arranged all details of the lectures
and their recording. Thanks also to Ma Aiju and Ye Da, who tran-
scribed the lectures and translated them into Chinese for publication
in China, the original intended audience of this book. And thanks
to Kai Marchall and National Chengchi University’s Research Center
of Chinese Cultural Subjectivity in Taiwan, where a major portion of
the fourth chapter was delivered as a lecture. Thanks to Roger Ames,
who after writing a preface for the Chinese version, suggested that the
book also be published in English. The English version was arranged
and polished while I was on a Fulbright award as visiting professor at
National Taiwan University’s department of philosophy. Many thanks
to Shandong University, Fulbright, NTU, and Eastern Michigan Univer-
sity for allowing me the time and resources to complete this project. I
appreciate the close reading and detailed suggestions provided for the
Chinese edition (which often made their way into the English edition)
by Liu Chang (of People’s Publishing House), Ma Aiju, and Ye Da and
for the English edition by Sarah Mattice and an anonymous referee. The
book is much better for their objections, corrections, and suggestions.
Any remaining errors or oversights are due to my own limitations.
Thanks also to Bernhard Hommel for allowing me to use his
illustration on p. 83 and to Philosophy East and West and MIT Press
for allowing me to reproduce previously published material. The two
brain illustrations in Figure 3.4 are labeled versions of images created by
ix