Zhuangzi
- Language:
- English
- Status:
- Complete work
- Authorship:
- Attributed (authorship debated)
- Condition of the text:
- Some scanning errors (automatic measure over the whole text, not checked by hand) · 1 illegible passage, excluded from answers
- Extent:
- ~110,000 words · 545 passages
Cite this work
- APAZhuang Zhou. (n.d.). Chuang Tzu Mystic, Moralist, and Social Reformer [Zhuangzi]. Digital reproduction: SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/zhuangzi/chuang-tzu-mystic-moralist-and-social-reformer
- MLAZhuang Zhou. Chuang Tzu Mystic, Moralist, and Social Reformer [Zhuangzi]. Digital reproduction, SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/zhuangzi/chuang-tzu-mystic-moralist-and-social-reformer.
- ChicagoZhuang Zhou. Chuang Tzu Mystic, Moralist, and Social Reformer [Zhuangzi]. Digital reproduction, SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/zhuangzi/chuang-tzu-mystic-moralist-and-social-reformer.
Reference to the edition that SigPhi reproduces: SigPhi is its digital reproduction, not its publisher. The edition's year is not in the metadata (hence "n.d."), and the translator appears only when recorded.
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.
judgments, so in the speculative region we get behind and beyond the contradictions of ordinary thinking, and of speech which stereotypes abstractions. The sage knows nothing of the distinction between subjective and objective. It exists only _ex analogiâ hominis_. "From the standpoint of Tao" all things are one. People "guided by the criteria of their own mind," see only the contradiction, the manifoldness, the difference; the sage sees the many disappearing in the One, in which subjective and objective, positive and negative, here and there, somewhere and nowhere, meet and blend. For him, "a beam and a pillar are identical. So are ugliness and beauty, greatness, wickedness, perverseness, and strangeness. Separation is the same as construction: construction is the same as destruction" (pp. 19-20). The sage "blends everything into one harmonious whole, rejecting the comparison of this and that. Rank and precedence, which the vulgar prize, the sage stolidly ignores. The universe itself may pass away, but he will flourish still" (p. 29). "Were the ocean itself scorched up, he would not feel hot. Were the milky way frozen hard he would not feel cold. Were the mountains to be riven with thunder, and the great deep to be thrown up by storm, he would not tremble" (pp. 27-28). Si fractus illabatur orbis, Impavidum ferient ruinæ. He is "embraced in the obliterating unity of God," and passing into the realm of the Infinite finds rest therein (p. 31). It is impossible in reading this chapter on "The Identity of Contraries" not to be reminded of Heracleitus. The disparagement of sense knowledge, and the contempt for common views is indeed equally marked in Eleaticism, and there is much in Chuang Tzŭ which recalls Parmenides,[22] so far as the contrast between the way of truth and the way of error, the true belief in the One and the popular belief in the Many, is concerned.…