Le saint ne rêve pas : De Zhuangzi à Michel Jouvet

Abstract

Jean-Pierre Diény : Saints do not dream. From Zhuangzi to Michel Jouvet. Until recent times, the aphorism of Zhuangzi has drawn the attention of scholars who pondered the questions of dreams and sainthood. The present article sketches a panorama in three chapters of how this aphorism has been interpreted. In the first chapter, after placing the paradox in its original context, the author reviews the different paraphrases which have been proposed, then the manner in which writers of various sensibilities have used it for their own purposes, and finally its profound implications and the thesis of «the great dream » and «the great awakening ». In the second chapter, the author examines the objections, then the inconclusive debates incited by the paradox, notably in the Song period, as well as the compromise solutions invented on the theme of the specific nature of saintly dreams, their mecanism, the ganying, their foundation, the notion of cheng. The third chapter is devoted to the conceptions of Zhang Zai and Wang Fuzhi, in relation to the dreams of the great saints of antiquity, Gaozong of the Yin and Confucius, and finally to the spectacular rapprochement during the Ming period between the dreams of saints and those of infants. An appendix echoes this last point by mentioning the work of Michel Jouvet, a world-renowned specialist in the science of sleep.