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"Become hard!" is the supposedly "new tablet" that Nietzsche's Zarathustra has placed above us. It can hardly be denied that modernization in particular has relentlessly imposed a need to develop one's hardness and strength. Is it even possible to imagine a form of modernization based on the commandment to "Become soft!"? While this is the old and always new instruction to which Lǎozǐ pointed in his advice to become like water, Nietzsche finds it unbearable. He asks, "Why so soft?", and "Why so soft, so retiring, and yielding?" And Lǎozǐ answers that hardness is deadly: "The hard and strong are the followers of death." Then Nietzsche responds, "Don't you want to conquer and win?" And Lǎozǐ replies, "The soft and weak win over the hard and strong". Where are the modernizers who believe in the old "tablet" Lǎozǐ has given us in the praise of softness and weakness? Where are the modernizers who know about the hard but are able to preserve the soft? Where are the modernizers who are able to philosophize not with the hammer but with the brush?
The "good old authoritarian character" (Theodor W. Adorno) has been educated to (masculine) hardness. For this mode of being human (feminine) softness is nothing but a form of weakness on which the creator wants to put his stamp. As a philosophical source of criticism of the authoritarian character, the Daoist classic Lǎozǐ has a value that can hardly be overestimated. It moves toward a paradigm of self-relation or subjectivity in which the eye and light cannot claim primacy as the means by which humans can access the true and the good, but touch and breath form a pivot by which they can learn to walk a Way that wanders between hardness and softness. Therefore, at the centre of character formation and cultivation is a self-relation described in the sixth chapter of the Lǎozǐ by the paradoxical image of the "ravine" (gǔ 谷).
The ravine is a natural image in which the hard stone of the mountain cliffs and the soft water flowing through them belong together. At the same time, this chapter of the Lǎozǐ has been associated with the motif of the female in commentaries since antiquity. Moreover, the analogy between the ravine and the female sex organ opens up a thought-provoking approach to the relation between the female and the soft in the Lǎozǐ. However, the ravine as a paradoxical image does not stop there. Rather, the Way it suggests leads in a direction that can be summed up in the phrase "knowing hardness and preserving softness". In the following paper, the discussion of the female and the male in relation to the soft and the hard aims at a broader reflection on a theory and practice of breath (qì 氣) that constitutes a transcultural philosophy of the Way (dàozhéxué 道哲學).

This essay argues that comparative and transcultural philosophy are interdependent, and so opting for only one of the two is an impossibility. The comparative approach persists as long as we distinguish identities and make differences. As long as people do not speak only one language, the need to move between different languages and to translate, and thus the need to relate and compare different possibilities of philosophical articulation, will remain. Any attempt to free oneself from the problem of cultural identity is doomed to failure, as it leads to further entrapment in the very same problem. Comparative philosophy works with more or less fixed identities, transcultural philosophy transforms them and thereby creates new identities. Those two approaches combined constitute what I call intercultural philosophy.
In this essay I try to explain the relation between comparative and transcultural philosophy by connecting François Jullien's "comparative" and Martin Heidegger's "transcultural" understanding of "Being" (Sein) and "Between" (Zwischen). In part 1 I argue that by turning Between and Being into opposing paradigms of Chinese and Greek thinking, respectively, Jullien causes both to become more or less fixed representatives of different cultural identities within a comparative framework: Greek thinking ossifies into traditional metaphysics, and Chinese thinking ossifies into the non-metaphysical thinking of immanence. Part 2 argues that Heidegger takes a decisively different direction. He explores the Between in Being, and even makes an attempt to think of Being as Between. Heidegger's invocation of "Greekdom" is undoubtedly Eurocentric. But, ironically, Heidegger's "Greek thinking" is less Eurocentric than Jullien's "Chinese thinking", because he discovers the "Chinese" Between in the midst of "Greek" Being. Part 3 touches upon the task of speaking about European philosophy in Chinese terms. While modern Chinese philosophers frequently speak about Chinese philosophy in European terms, Heidegger's work points to the possibility of speaking about European philosophy in Chinese terms. Because Jullien and Heidegger both connect Greek and Chinese thought, it seems to me that the discussion of their different approaches is helpful in clarifying perspectives for intercultural philosophy between China and Europe.

Taiwan is an island in East Asia on which the complex effects of hybrid modernization have been experienced particularly directly and strongly. This situation also gave rise to perspectives in the study of literature and philosophy which differ significantly from those on the Chinese mainland. Why did transcultural philosophy find good conditions for development in contemporary Taiwan? This paper addresses this question by situating the recent development of "transcultural Zhuangzi-studies" within a larger cultural and political constellation. It begins with very general reflections on "transcultural Taiwan" and ends with a more specific discussion of Yang Rubin's 楊儒賓 conceptual paradigm of a "material-energetic-spiritual subject". My aim is to give an overview of the broader cultural and political situation, in which "transcultural Zhuangzi-studies" appeared and developed. Moreover, the paradigm of triadic subjectivity that Yang has been developing for decades can be read as "transcultural" because it allows the communication of different, often disparate cultural sources, classical and modern, Eastern and Western. This proposal is not only philosophically but also politically significant: Taiwan's complex path to democratization and the development of this new "paradigm of subjectivity" deeply correspond to one another.

Taiwan is an island in East Asia on which the complex effects of hybrid modernization have been experienced particularly directly and strongly. This situation also gave rise to perspectives in the study of literature and philosophy which differ significantly from those on the Chinese mainland. Why did transcultural philosophy find good conditions for development in contemporary Taiwan? This paper addresses this question by situating the recent development of "transcultural Zhuangzi-studies" within a larger cultural and political constellation. It begins with very general reflections on "transcultural Taiwan" and ends with a more specific discussion of Yang Rubin's 楊儒賓 conceptual paradigm of a "material-energetic-spiritual subject". My aim is to give an overview of the broader cultural and political situation, in which "transcultural Zhuangzi-studies" appeared and developed. Moreover, the paradigm of triadic subjectivity that Yang has been developing for decades can be read as "transcultural" because it allows the communication of different, often disparate cultural sources, classical and modern, Eastern and Western. This proposal is not only philosophically but also politically significant: Taiwan's complex path to democratization and the development of this new "paradigm of subjectivity" deeply correspond to one another. ; Tajvan je otok v Vzhodni Aziji, ki je še posebej neposredno in močno izkusil zapletene učinke hibridne modernizacije. To stanje je prav tako pripomoglo k oblikovanju vrst perspektiv v literarnih in filozofskih študijah, ki se močno razlikujejo od tistih na celini. Zakaj je transkulturna filozofija našla primerne pogoje za razvoj prav na sodobnem Tajvanu? Članek to vprašanje naslavlja tako, da nedavni razvoj »Zhuangzijevih transkulturnih študij« postavlja v širšo kulturno in politično konstelacijo. Študija se začne s splošnim premislekom o »transkulturnem Tajvanu« in zaključi s podrobnejšo razpravo o Yang Rubinovi 楊儒賓 konceptualni paradigmi »materialno-energetsko-duhovnega subjekta«. Moj namen je podati pregled širše kulturne in politične situacije, v kateri so se prvič pojavile in razvile »Zhuangzijeve transkulturne študije«. Poleg tega je paradigmo triadne subjektivnosti, ki jo je Yang razvijal desetletja, mogoče brati kot »transkulturno«, saj dopušča prenos med različnimi, pogosto povsem drugačnimi kulturnimi viri, tako klasičnimi kot modernimi, tako vzhodnimi kot zahodnimi. Takšen predlog ni pomemben samo v filozofskem, ampak tudi političnem smislu: zapletena pot Tajvana k demokratizaciji namreč globoko sovpada z razvojem te nove »paradigme subjektivnosti«.

This essay has been inspired by the writings of the contemporary Neo-Confucian philosopher Mou Zongsan and the German sinologist Wolfgang Bauer. It assumes that the power of Mao Zedong's thought sprung from its ability to systematically subordinate the transformative philosophy of the classical Book of Changes to the Marxist model of revolutionary class struggle. If dialectical thinking requires thought to think against itself and thereby be able to continuously change itself from the inside, Mao seems to have been a master of dialectical thinking. One of the intellectual impulses for the Great Cultural Revolution was the radically unsentimental judgement that, in order for the socialist revolution to succeed, it was necessary to erase the ancient Chinese legacy of paradoxical thinking, and that this was a precondition of the possibility of Mao's Sino-Marxist discourse. But the enormous power that Mao's thought derived from the tension between revolutionary heroism and transformative flexibility revealed itself as self-destructive. Mao tried to fight against the failure of his revolutionary vision and the possibility that the wisdom of paradoxical thinking and the classical heritage of China could, finally, gain the upper hand in the ongoing struggle for modernization. From this perspective, this essay touches upon a contradiction, which can be understood as the principle contradiction of contemporary Chinese philosophy: the contradiction between the defence of Sino-Marxism as the ideological foundation of a "socialism with Chinese characteristics" on the one hand, and the renaissance of traditional culture and classical learning on the other, which entails a powerful challenge to this very foundation.

Abstract
Foucault's understanding of the history and contemporary significance of ascetic practices or exercises of cultivation (ascesis) differs significantly from attempts which consider the renewal of asceticism in spiritual or even religious terms. This paper tries to show that he thought about related problems from the perspective of aesthetic cultivation. The first part will discuss his analysis of sexuality within the broader context of his theory-formation and elaborate on the theoretical structure of his concept of self-cultivation. In the second part I will situate the idea of creative ascesis in a broader historical context. The third part will provide a preliminary perspective on the transcultural significance of relating Foucault and contemporary Chinese philosophy.

Abstract
In this dialogue, Dr. Xuetao Li and Dr. Fabian Heubel approach the concepts of Hanxue (Sinology) and Guoxue (Traditional Chinese Studies) from the perspectives of history and intercultural philosophy. Their in-depth analysis suggest that one of the most important problems of Chinese culture lies in the transformation of traditional values in the contemporary context. The two scholars discuss the question how Chinese studies can transcends rigid, narrow-minded, and arbitrary ways of thinking and knowledge production.