The following dissertation is a philosophical exploration of the cosmology of the Zhuangzi, arguing it is meontological due to the prominence afforded the Chinese word wu 無, rendered as both nothingness and nonbeing. It puts forth the argument that the Zhuangzi’s cosmology creates a relationship whereby nonbeing and being are intertwined under the purview of Dao 道. As a result, the text’s axiology is unique in that it states cosmological freedom is attainable via uniting with primal nothingness. Chapter one seeks to disprove the notion that nonbeing cannot be anything but a transcendental other by arguing that Dao is a negatively creative source that simultaneously gives birth to nonbeing and being, making it impossible for nonbeing to be nihilistic or seen as an absolute void. Chapter two delves into the manifestation of things and how the sage, as an epitome of the naturalness of Dao, follows the becoming and returning of things to the One, darkening himself in nothingness in order to cultivate his life. Chapter three poses the question of whether or not the ontological movement of things is temporal and how temporality can even be possible considering the meontological nature of the universe. The next two chapters focus on the arts of useful uselessness and forgetting, the two principal means by which the sage achieves harmony with the oneness of things. Chapter six concludes by arguing that freedom attained by perfecting the arts of uselessness and forgetfulness is not rooted in ethical virtue but is the pinnacle of one’s cosmological relationship with Dao and is embodied in the act of carefree wandering. Zhuangzi’s cosmology is thus rooted in the life force of nothingness and doing away with ontic distinctions so as to return to natural equanimity and stillness of spirit.

The following dissertation is a philosophical exploration of the cosmology of the Zhuangzi, arguing it is meontological due to the prominence afforded the Chinese word wu 無, rendered as both nothingness and nonbeing. It puts forth the argument that the Zhuangzi’s cosmology creates a relationship whereby nonbeing and being are intertwined under the purview of Dao 道. As a result, the text’s axiology is unique in that it states cosmological freedom is attainable via uniting with primal nothingness. Chapter one seeks to disprove the notion that nonbeing cannot be anything but a transcendental other by arguing that Dao is a negatively creative source that simultaneously gives birth to nonbeing and being, making it impossible for nonbeing to be nihilistic or seen as an absolute void. Chapter two delves into the manifestation of things and how the sage, as an epitome of the naturalness of Dao, follows the becoming and returning of things to the One, darkening himself in nothingness in order to cultivate his life. Chapter three poses the question of whether or not the ontological movement of things is temporal and how temporality can even be possible considering the meontological nature of the universe. The next two chapters focus on the arts of useful uselessness and forgetting, the two principal means by which the sage achieves harmony with the oneness of things. Chapter six concludes by arguing that freedom attained by perfecting the arts of uselessness and forgetfulness is not rooted in ethical virtue but is the pinnacle of one’s cosmological relationship with Dao and is embodied in the act of carefree wandering. Zhuangzi’s cosmology is thus rooted in the life force of nothingness and doing away with ontic distinctions so as to return to natural equanimity and stillness of spirit.

Thesis advisor: Catherine Cornille / While no dogmatic declarations have been made on the definition of the body, creeds, councils, and constitutions have affirmed its resurrection. The present work of comparative theology explores the body and divinization in Jesuit Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955) and Daoist Xiao Yingsou (fl. Song Dynasty 960-1278). Early in his writing, Teilhard loses interest in discovering the theological significance of the human body in favor of addressing the fulfillment of the Cosmic Body of Christ. Accordingly, studies of Teilhard easily overlook the individual's body. This work derives a theory of the body and its role in divinization from Teilhard by introducing an anthropological category not present in traditional theological language. Shen, the experiencing body, is the word Xiao uses to describe the Daoist in the process of divinization. Shen challenges conventional notions of body, physicality, and their importance to Christian spiritual life. The experiencing body is a living community of souls in relationship to an essential soul, who receives bonding power from Christ. On their own, humans cannot maintain the relationships within themselves, but must surrender them to perfection in Christ. Biblically, Christian anthropology departed from a monistic to a tripartite view with Paul. In the early Church, Irenaeus and Augustine defended a unity of body and soul against the gnostics heresies. Later, Thomas Aquinas formulated a theory of the body as largely defined by the soul. The bodies did not give positive contributions to people's life in God. Teilhard inherited this view of the human, but was unsatisfied with it. At the same time, he read contemporary French philosophers who provided the spark he needed to develop his ideas on creation and divinization. Early in his writing, he considers the body in light of Christology and biology. He drops the question in favor of strengthening an argument for the divinization of the entire cosmos in the Cosmic Body of Christ. Nonetheless, in the pursuit of this answer, his writings imply the individual body. Human bodies most clearly appear in his mysticism of action, which he explains in The Divine Milieu. Teilhard cannot articulate the individual body because he lacks a cosmology that does not choose between non-subsistent matter and selfsubsistent spirit. Xiao Yingsou's commentary on Daoism's Scripture of Salvation provides such a cosmology. Xiao utilizes both word and image to describe a divinizing cosmic body using three terms: dong, ti, and shen. The individual's body in a process of perfection is shen. This body is not a static collection of interworking parts, but a movement of transformation that generates salvific energy for the entire cosmos. Shen highlights in Teilhard's work a body understood as a community interacting with other beings to perfect relationships in Christ. Therefore, the body is physical, but with Teilhard's expanded notion which exceeds the limitations of time and space. This view yields a body that is not an obstacle to divinization, but absolutely necessary for it. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2011. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Theology.

This dissertation seeks to extract the Zhuangzi from a variety of problematic interpretations in English-speaking scholarship. The text has been accused of supporting a variety of moral or epistemic positions, including moral relativism, transcendental mysticism, skepticism, anarchism, and anti-societal asceticism. Against these interpretations I demonstrate the text has a complex but coherent diagnosis of human suffering in a cosmology of change. In response to this diagnosis the text also presents a complex but coherent set of ideals that treat human suffering. This suffering takes many forms, but is particularly problematic in the xin, the organ conventionally regarded as being responsible for wisdom and guidance in human activity. This dissertation performs a thorough analysis of the idea of xin in the Zhuangzi, and demonstrates how the Inner Chapters provide a coherent prescriptive regimen to treat the afflictions of discrimination, completion, and acquisition. When discriminations in the xin are released through forgetting and emptiness, this allows the zhenren to harmonize his conscious attention and bodily activity to dao. Integrating mind, body and spirit with dao allows the sage to wander effortlessly through the emergent processes of yin and yang. Not only does this mean paying attention to the changes of dao, but also means acclimating to those changes.

Mainstream leadership studies are concerned mostly about western values. To fill the gap between Western and Eastern perspectives on leadership, this study examines female leadership from a Daoist perspective. Daoism is a valuable and rich philosophical system from China and has a history of more than 2,500 years. Key concepts from Daoism (e.g., harmony, Wei Wu-Wei, Yin-Yang, water-like leadership, and its high regard for females and mothers) were used as alternative and resourceful theoretical foundations for this study. This study was a between-subject 2 x 2 x 2 factorial design (leader candidate’s gender: male vs. female; leadership style: agentic vs. Daoist; and participants’ gender: male vs. female). Four vignettes were created and assigned as stimulus materials to each of the four conditions in the study (agentic male, agentic female, Daoist male, and Daoist female). Participants (N=383) were asked to read one leader candidate vignette and evaluate this candidate on seven aspects (positivity, likeableness, effectiveness, follower empowerment, follower autonomy cultivation, democracy, and leader emergence). Data were collected from MTurk and analyzed using MANOVA. The results indicated a significant main effect for leadership style and a significant two-way interaction effect for leadership style and leader gender. These findings demonstrate that Daoist leadership style was more preferable than agentic leadership style on positivity, likeableness, effectiveness, empowerment, follower autonomy cultivation, democracy, and leader emergence. Additionally, the Daoist female leader candidate was perceived more positively, likeable, empowering, and democratic, than agentic male leader candidate.

Thesis advisor: David E. Storey / Thesis advisor: Ron Tacelli / One of the most critical issues facing contemporary healthcare is that which is called “doctor burnout,” a term that is used within the medical field to describe the range of energetic collapses that doctors experience due ultimately to the demanding nature of their work. This thesis seeks to address burnout specifically in the field of surgery on account of this field’s proximity to patient death. Hallmark texts from the Daoist tradition, the Daodejing and Zhuangzi, refer to sages who possess a transcendent, far-reaching wisdom that allow them to emotionally supersede the quarrels and tribulations of life. This is precisely the ethos that this thesis seeks to investigate in order to determine the ways in which this sage wisdom can be utilized to prevent surgeon burnout. As such, the Daoist model as presented in the Zhuangzian tradition offers an effective resolution to the burnout that many surgeons face. Sages from this tradition have a highly cultivated sense of self, heightened perspective on death and meditative lifestyle that allows them to maintain their equanimity and longevity even in the face of life’s greatest antagonist, death, a model which can be utilized by surgeons for the same purpose. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2022. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Departmental Honors. / Discipline: Philosophy.

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abstract: This is a comparative study of two advanced ordination rituals, Daoist chuanshou (conferral of ordination rank) and Buddhist abhiṣeka (guanding) in the mid-late Tang and Five Dynasties (763-979). I analyzed a number of not-well-studied Daoist ritual protocols in the early medieval period, and revealed that rituals recast gender and fostered monastic relations. On the other hand, relying on both canonical materials and a manuscript preserved in Japan that recorded an abhiṣeka performed during the Tang dynasty in 839 C.E., I demonstrated how the canonical prescriptions of Indian origin, with modified actions and reinterpreted meaning, were transformed to respond to the Chinese religious and social environment. Having examined the language of the texts and the step of the rituals, I interpreted how these rituals were made sense in their own religious context, and compared their frame, structure, modality, symbol, and meaning. Ordination rite concerns the transmission of religious knowledge and authority, and the establishment of religious identity. It is in the relationship between the individual body and the community that Daoists and Buddhists found the form of apprenticeship that led to the embodiment of the community. The mastery of religious knowledge within the community––scriptures, register, mantras, and precepts, etc., was known only through the actual ritual practice. In other words, the ritual body became the locus for coordination of all levels of bodily, social, and cosmological experience via the dialectic of objectification and embodiment in the ordination rites. As the ritualized bodies, those who were ordained coherently comprised the community, which in turn remolded them with dynamically and diversely shaped identities. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation East Asian Languages and Civilizations 2019

This dissertation will compare the concept of nature as it appears in the philosophies of the American pragmatist John Dewey and the Chinese daoist Zhuangzi (Chuang Tzu) and will defend two central claims. The first of these is that Dewey and Zhuangzi share a view of nature that is non-reductive, philosophically liberal, and more comprehensive than the accounts recurrent in much of the Western tradition. This alternate conception of nature is non-reductive in the way that it avoids the physically mechanistic outlook underwriting much of contemporary Anglo-American thought. It is philosophically liberal in that it accepts a more generous and progressive position than predominant Western orthodoxies. And, it is more comprehensive in scope insofar as it draws as much from the social sciences as it does from the natural sciences. The second claim defended will be that the synoptic vision gained from such a comparison offers a new heuristic program for research into the philosophical position known as naturalism, a program that can, at once, avoid the scientistic tendencies of the current, mainstream treatment of nature and reconnect with earlier, more inclusive models. Where Dewey's and Zhuangzi's ideas converge, one finds similarities in the prescriptions each made for human action, and where they differ, one finds mutually complementary insights. Finally, this heuristic will be used to refute various interpretations of Dewey and Zhuangzi that tend to understate or ignore the importance of nature within their schemes.

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