Episode 12: Play

This Is The Way: Chinese Philosophy Podcast

Play seems to constitute an important part of a flourishing human life. Most of us experience play through things like simple childhood games of hide-and-go-seek or more intellectual activities like chess or go. What these experiences of play have in common is that they are circumscribed in various ways by the times, places, and circumstances established by the boundaries and rules of those games. But what if the attitudes that we bring to play were applied to our lives more broadly? In this episode we explore the concept of play as a way of life. We explore it with Professor Pauline Lee (Saint Louis University), an expert in Chinese thought, focusing on the famous "gourd passage" from Chapter One of the Zhuangzi.
Please check out Professor Pauline Lee's faculty profile and list of publications here.
Many thanks to The Hong Kong Ethics Lab for sponsoring this podcast series.
Want to continue the discussion? Need links to some of the sources mentioned? Go to the support page for this episode on Warp, Weft, and Way.
We thank Lena Li (LI La 李拉 ) for her expert editing and sound engineering. We also thank the blog Warp, Weft & Way for hosting the discussion for this episode.
Co-hosts:
Richard Kim's website
Justin Tiwald's website

Chương

1. Part I -- Introduction (00:00:00)

2. • Preface to today's topic (00:10:21)

3. Part II -- Zhuangzi's playfulness, Zhuangzi on play (00:12:10)

4. • Introducing our guest: Pauline Lee (00:12:10)

5. • Preface to our topic (00:16:22)

6. • The Gourd Passage (Zhuangzi, chapter 1) (00:26:06)

7. • Usefulness and categorical flexibility (00:30:37)

8. • How to achieve the relevant sort of flexibility: finding a center, resting, and valuing things non-instrumentally (00:52:41)

9. • The monkey trainer passage (01:00:20)

10. • The axis/pivot of the Way (Daoshu 道樞) (01:07:29)

11. • Broadening the sense of play to cover one's life in general (01:14:39)

12. • Closing question for our guest (01:27:18)