Discussions About The Free Will Thinking Of Caoyu’s Works

When explaining what forces drive the generation and development of all things in the universe, it comes two kinds of arguments: the determinism and the free will. Determinism takes the causal theory as the core, holds the idea that every states of the world are determined by their leading status through causal relationship, with the characteristics of causality and inevitability. And the free will thinks that the current state is decided by man’s free will. The idea of Determinism and free will exist since the ancient Greek period when philosophy came into being, the discussion about this relationship has never been interrupted. Meanwhile, more than the field of philosophy, debate of this pair of philosophical proposition also exists in the field of literature. Caoyu’s plays showed depth and set aside some space for further ask on this issue. Therefore, this thesis takes Caoyu’s drama scripts as a starting point, showing the progressive thinking of determinism and free will in his works.The thesis is based on the works written before Caoyu changed his style, seeking the consideration of self-realization in Caoyu’s works by discussing the topic that whether man can realize their free wills or not. Thus, we may find some new thinking directions about personality liberation which are provided by Caoyu’s plays.This paper is not intended to make a qualitative analysis of Caoyu but takes the play itself as a starting point, free will as the breakthrough point, and explore the depth of Cao yu’s play scripts. The discussion is just to explain Caoyu’ s works in my way, the point of the paper is not that Caoyu wrote them in this way intentionally or why he wrote like this,it’s the way the works are.The paper includes four parts. The first chapter is the prolegomena, introducing the research status of the issue, stating the space in Caoyu analysis,pointing out the necessity of the paper. The second part discusses the limit suffered by free wills, such as identity、culture、destiny, explaining it’s difficult for free will to break through the boundary set up by multiple difficulties. The third part is about the self-limit set by free will itself. The fourth part will talk about a special kind of character in Caoyu’s plays before he changes his style: spiritual heroes, this part will analyize the inner reasons of their rebellion and the final results of the plays, in order to highlight the potential power of free will and prepare for the following discussion. And the final part is the contents of the paper, pointing out the wandering path on the question of free will in Caoyu’s playscripts, showing the depth of Caoyu’s works.