Vom Sein zum Leben

From Being to Life is François Jullien's critical summary of his lifelong engagement with Chinese thinking and speaking. Through twenty pairs of concepts, he unfolds the differences between Western and Eastern cultural and intellectual spaces. For instance, in highly original essays, he contrasts "coherence" with "meaning," "persistence" with "will," "reliability" with "sincerity," and "upswing" with "stagnation." However, Jullien does not merely illuminate one concept through the other to understand the associated culture. In this book, he takes a step further, attempting to distance himself equally from both the West and the East to gain a third position that allows him to develop his own philosophical framework. This book is for anyone who wants to understand China without indulging in exoticism, and for all those who have not lost the joy of independent thinking.