Philosophy
c. 369 to 286 BC, Meng, State of Song (China)
The Daoist master who dissolved fixed right and wrong, prized effortless spontaneity and the useless, and wandered free and easy through life and death.
Start learning Zhuangzi →Zhuangzi’s Qiwulun - the argument that fixed distinctions of right and wrong, this and that, are not carved into reality but arise from limited standpoints, so the sage abandons rigid judgment and rests at the &ls…
Zhuangzi’s ideal of wu wei - acting in accord with the natural grain of things rather than forcing them - dramatized by Cook Ding, whose knife has not dulled in nineteen years because he follows the ox’s own…
Zhuangzi’s dream of being a butterfly - waking unsure whether he is a man who dreamed he was a butterfly or a butterfly now dreaming it is a man - opens his teaching on the fluidity of the self and the ‘tran…
Zhuangzi’s praise of the ‘useless’ - the giant gnarled tree too twisted to be timber, and so never cut down - as a critique of conventional value: to be prized as useful is to be used up, while apparen…
Zhuangzi’s vision of spiritual freedom - xiaoyao you , ‘free and easy wandering’ - soars with the vast Peng bird beyond every narrow measure, and completes itself in his serene acceptance of death, mos…
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