On Learning to Think: “Free” Like Zhuangzi’s Butterfly at Descartes’ Window
Kyoo Lee
Dreaming as a mode of thinking is philopoetic, as exemplified by the key philosophical ideas of both René Descartes and Zhuangzi. Dream, an experience or an event, metaphoric or literal, is often a source of both inspiration and perspiration in the theatre of edgy cogitation. If Cartesian reflection is alert to boundaries, Zhuangzi alters them through transgressive gestures, and yet, they both in their own unique ways illustrate a performative finesse of “thinking free, for oneself.” As Jacques Derrida observes in the final years of his life, perhaps to do philosophy, to learn to do philosophy, is not just “to practice death,” as with good old Socrates, but to “learn to live finally”—or do I mean, initially?
<<BIO>>
Kyoo Lee is a Professor of Philosophy, Gender Studies and Women’s Studies at John Jay College and the Graduate Center, CUNY. She authored Reading Descartes Otherwise: Blind, Mad, Dreamy, and Bad (2013) and coedited Women’s Studies Quarterly Issue on “Safe” (2011), Critical Philosophy of Race Issue on “Xenophobia & Racism” (2014) and Derrida Today Issue on “Derrida in China Today” (2018).
Trained nomadically in European philosophy and literary theory, she works widely in the interwoven fields of the Arts and Humanities. Some of her recent academic recognitions include faculty fellowships from the Mellon Foundation, Korea Institute for Advanced Study (KIAS) and The CUNY Graduate Center, along with John Jay Faculty Research Excellence Award. A member of PEN America Translation Committee and Poetry Translation Center (London, UK), she also serves as the coeditor of philoSOPHIA: A Journal of Continental Feminism (2018-23). Currently, she is leading a Mellon Public Seminar on mp3: Merging Poetry, Philosophy, Performativity at the CUNY Graduate Center.
Prof. Kyoo Lee, John Jay College and The Graduate Center, CUNY
Office Mail: Philosophy Dept., 524 W59, John Jay, NY NY 10019, USA
Reading Descartes Otherwise: Blind, Mad, Dreamy, and Bad (2012)
Mellon mp3 Seminar, Center for the Humanities, CUNY Graduate Center, USA
Visiting Professor, Dept. of Philosophy, Seoul National Uinv., KOREA
Visiting Professor, Institute of Arts & Humanities, Shanghai Jia Tong Univ., CHINA
Co-editor of philoSOPHIA: A Journal of Continental Feminism (2018-2023), SUNY Press
