Passage to the 'Book of Changes': The Metaphysics of Change in Chinese Passage to the 'Book of Changes': The Metaphysics of Change in Chinese Thought from the Perspective of Process Philosophy
Abstract
This study draws on the tradition of Chinese and European interpretations of the I-Ching and examines that book's structure and its philosophical or metaphysical background with the help of contemporary western process philosophy. The main aim is to defend the thesis that the I-Ching presents a grasp of a basic insight that prioritises becoming over being and process or event over state - an insight that is insisted upon by process philosophy in opposition to the mainstream of the entirety of western thought.
In the first and second parts, employing mutual comparison, the paper traces how the I-Ching attempts to capture the processes of becoming rather than fixed states. In the third part, the study discusses the convergence between the grasping of change in the I-Ching and, above all, Whitehead's process philosophy, and the concluding fourth part provides evidence for the validity of the aforementioned hypotheses, placing the aspects examined in the wider context of Chinese nature lyrical poetry.