Zhuangzi
Wander freely among things as they transform.
Zhuangzi, whose personal name was Zhuang Zhou, was a thinker of the Warring States period whom tradition remembers as a minor official from Meng who refused high office. Through parables, dialogues and paradoxes, the book that bears his name questions fixed judgments of right and wrong, explores skill, transformation and death, and imagines a free and easy wandering beyond ordinary usefulness.
How can we loosen fixed points of view without losing the way?
Biography
Zhuangzi, whose personal name was Zhuang Zhou, was a thinker of the Warring States period whom tradition remembers as a minor official from Meng who refused high office. Through parables, dialogues and paradoxes, the book that bears his name questions fixed judgments of right and wrong, explores skill, transformation and death, and imagines a free and easy wandering beyond ordinary usefulness.
02 /Philosophy
Xiaoyao you names a freedom that does not depend on reaching a fixed goal: one moves with changing circumstances instead of measuring everything by a single scale of size or usefulness.
03 /Reading guides
Original introductions to enter the works, discover their central questions and take the reflection further.
04 /Bibliography
Works, testimonies and further readings are distinguished. Dates refer to composition or first publication, as specified in each entry.
A first reading.
Wandering with the Inner Chapters
Follow perspective, skill and the usefulness of the useless through the seven Inner Chapters, from the great bird Peng to Cook Ding.
Inner ChaptersFish, tortoise and mourning
Read the debates and anecdotes of the outer and miscellaneous chapters on knowledge, office and death, and compare them with the inner core.
Outer and Miscellaneous ChaptersReading through Guo Xiang
Examine how Guo Xiang’s commentary turns the parables into a philosophy of spontaneity and allotted nature that shaped later readings.
Guo Xiang’s Commentary