Zhuangzi
- Language:
- English
- Status:
- Complete work
- Authorship:
- Attributed (authorship debated)
- Condition of the text:
- Clean text · 1 illegible passages, excluded from answers
- Extent:
- ~110,000 words · 545 passages
Cite this work
- APAZhuang Zhou. (n.d.). Zhuangzi. SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/zhuangzi/chuang-tzu-mystic-moralist-and-social-reformer
- MLAZhuang Zhou. "Zhuangzi." SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/zhuangzi/chuang-tzu-mystic-moralist-and-social-reformer.
- ChicagoZhuang Zhou. Zhuangzi. SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/zhuangzi/chuang-tzu-mystic-moralist-and-social-reformer.
What it is about
The 'Zhuangzi', the second great text of Taoism after the 'Daodejing', and the funniest of the ancient books of philosophy.
Context and history
Written probably in the fourth century BC, and probably not all by one hand: the first seven chapters, called the 'inner' ones, are those tradition ascribes to Zhuang Zhou. The book does not argue, it tells stories: the cook who carves an ox without ever sharpening his knife because he follows the gaps; the butterfly who dreams he is a man; the useless tree that lives long for that very reason. The underlying thesis is that the distinctions by which we cut up the world — useful and useless, great and small, life and death — are ours and not the things', and that wisdom lies in moving among them without getting caught. Giles's translation, of 1889, is old and gives it a Victorian vocabulary that is not there; it reads well and should be cited with that reservation.
Editorial context, not a citable source: unlike the passages of the work itself, these statements cannot be checked against the corpus.
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.) CHUANG TZŬ _Mystic, Moralist, and Social Reformer_ TRANSLATED FROM THE CHINESE BY HERBERT A. GILES _H. B. M.'s Consul at Tamsui_ LONDON BERNARD QUARITCH _CONTENTS._ _Page_ INTRODUCTION v NOTE ON THE PHILOSOPHY OF CHUANG TZŬ, _by Canon Moore_ xviii CHAPTER I--TRANSCENDENTAL BLISS 1 " II--THE IDENTITY OF CONTRARIES 12 " III--NOURISHMENT OF THE SOUL 33 " IV--MAN AMONG MEN 38 " V--THE EVIDENCE OF VIRTUE COMPLETE 56 " VI--THE GREAT SUPREME 68 " VII--HOW TO GOVERN 91 " VIII--JOINED TOES 99 " IX--HORSES' HOOFS 106 " X--OPENING TRUNKS 110 now found in the _Tao-Tê-Ching_, mixed up with a great many other similar sayings which are not to be found there. But he also puts sayings, which now appear in the Tao-Tê-Ching, into the mouth of Confucius (p. 275)! And even into the mouth of the Yellow Emperor (pp. 277-278), whose date is some twenty centuries earlier than that of Lao Tzŭ himself!! Two centuries before the Christian era, an attempt was made to destroy, with some exceptions, the whole of Chinese literature, in order that history might begin anew from the reign of the First Em← Back to Zhuang Zhou