Yizhi Weishi: The Zhuangzi’s View of Time for the Genuine Human and Its Modern Value

Abstract

In modern society, Time is developing into a dominant force, with time anxiety, time poverty, and time tyranny becoming increasingly prevalent. The Genuine Human’s “yizhi weishi” (以知为时, to take Understanding as composed of time), the concept of time found in the Zhuangzi, emphasizes the overall perception and active construction of characteristics of time, and offers the possibility of enhancing a proactive understanding of time. In the Zhuangzi’s perspective, time is not only continuous, infinite, and one-dimensionally linear, but also intermittent, finite, and cyclical. “Yizhi weishi” is intended to grasp these characteristics of time, to actively use and participate in the construction of time, which is the method of the “Genuine Human” for mastering time. For modern society, the “yizhi weishi” perspective of time enlightens people to harmonize their socially ordered time with the rhythms of nature, to reconstruct the vast connection between human beings and cosmic space with a contextualized concept of time, and to manage time from the perspective of “internal dynamics” rather than “external limitations”. Such a perspective has important inspirational value for enhancing the quality of human life and improving the order of human production and existence.