VITAL NOURISHMENT

The philosophical tradition in the West has always subjected life toconceptual divisions and questions about meaning. In Vital Nourishment, Fran?oisJullien contends that although this process has given rise to a rich history ofinquiry, it proceeds too fast. In their anxiety about meaning, Western thinkerssince Plato have forgotten simply to experience life. In this installment of hiscontinuing project of plumbing the philosophical divide between Eastern and Westernthought, Jullien slows down, and, using the third and fourth century B.C.E. Chinesethinker Zhuanghi as a foil, begins to think about life from a point outside ofWestern inquiry.The question of how to "feed life," or nourish it, is thepoint of departure for the Chinese tradition that Jullien locates in Zhuanghi. Lifepasses through each of us, and we have a duty to become amenable to its ebbs andflows. We must cultivate a sense of being adequate to it so that we can house it.Exploring notions of breath, energy, and immanence, Jullien reopens a vibrant spaceof intellectual exchange between East and West. In doing so, he refuses to commit toa rigid framework of meaning, and his text unfolds as an elegant process thatmirrors the very type of thought he explores. Pointing out that it seemsintellectually and politically imperative today to reinvigorate Western thought withideas from the East, Jullien seeks to create a space of mutual inquiry thatmaintains the integrity of both Eastern and Western thinking. Vital Nourishment isboth a rich intellectual historical journey and a text very much attuned to thephilosophical politics of the present.Fran?ois Jullien is Professor at theUniversit? Paris VII-Denis Diderot and director at the Institut de la Pens?eContemporaine. He is the author of Detour and Access: Stratgies of Meaning in Chnaand Greece, The Propensity of Things: Toward a History of Efficacy in China, and InPraise of Blandness: Proceeding from Chinsese Thought and Aesthetics, all publishedby Zone Books.