The butterfly dream as ‘creative dream:’ dreaming and subjectivity in Zhuangzi and María Zambrano
Gabriella Stanchina
Asian Philosophy January 2, 2018 DOI: 10.1080/09552367.2018.1428049 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Topics | Dreaming |
| Citations | 1 |
| Key points | Argues that the butterfly parable in the Zhuangzi is structured in three stages rather than two, echoing other tripartite parables in the text. Drawing on María Zambrano's phenomenology of dreams, the author proposes that the story depicts a self-transformative process moving from a primal dream of wholeness through ordinary wakefulness to a creative dream of meaningful unity, ending in a joyous, multifaceted subjectivity centered in the timeless pivot of the Dao. |
Abstract
The ‘dream of the butterfly,’ which seals the second chapter of the Zhuangzi, is often interpreted as undergirded by the bipolarity of dreaming and awakening or by the elusive interchange of identities between Zhuangzi and the butterfly, dreamer and dreamed. In this paper I argue that the underlying structure of the story may be better interpreted as exhibiting not two, but three stages of development, consistently echoing other tripartite parables in the Zhuangzi. In my reinterpretation I rely on the phenomenology of dreams proposed by the Spanish philosopher María Zambrano, which distinguishes among three states: the primal dream, characterized by atemporality and wholeness; wakefulness, characterized by temporality and analytic thinking; and the creative dream, in which reality discloses itself as a meaningful, holistic unity. I suggest that Zhuangzi’s parable describes a similar self-transformative threefold process culminating in the joyous freedom of a shifting multifaceted subjectivity centered in the timeless pivot of the Dao.