The Ethics of the Infinity of the Other: Developing Postmodern Literary Criticism with Daoism

Abstract

The Ethics of the Infinity of the Other: Developing Postmodern Literary Criticism with DaoismLee, Jae-Seong This paper is an attempt to show how contemporary metaphysicians and literary critics can understand Laozi and Zhuangzi’s Daoism right and take advantage of it for the further development of the world of ideas. Not mixing bluntly Western metaphysics and Eastern philosophy with a mere intention to find a unity or similarities of the two, I try to show that Buddhism or Daoism should not be considered as systems of ideas that aim at prevailing chaos and disorder, nor as mysticism. I first explain how Emmanuel Levinas’s philosophy truly goes beyond traditional Western philosophy and really deserves to be called “ethics” and how it can be used for literary criticism and destroy the structure and value of the usual meaning of the totality. I then explore Gilles Deleuze and Jacques Lacan. Then turning to critical theory for literature studies, I focus on Laozi and Zhuangzi and demonstrate how Laozi and Zhuangzi’s Daoism can be used for the explanation of the reader’s experience of the sublime totality, which is the passageway to infinity, we would contribute to the development of postmodern critical theory for the studies of arts and literature.