Zhuangzi

Category: People
Key figures: Laozi (spiritual predecessor and founder of Daoism), Confucius (philosophical rival and interlocutor), Huizi (friend and philosophical rival), Butterflies and fish (philosophical subjects of his most famous thought-experiment)

Summary

Zhuangzi (莊子, c. 369–286 BCE), also known as Zhuang Zhou, was a Daoist philosopher of the Warring States Period and the author of the Zhuangzi (The Book of Zhuangzi or Inner Chapters), one of the two foundational texts of Daoism and a masterpiece of Chinese philosophical literature renowned for its imaginative power, philosophical wit, and profound insights into the nature of being, freedom, and the Dao (the Way). Living during the same tumultuous era as Confucius’s later followers and the Legalists, Zhuangzi represented a radically different approach to the question of how to live: rather than the Confucian emphasis on social ritual, moral cultivation, and hierarchical relationships, or the Legalist focus on law and punishment, Zhuangzi advocated for wu wei (non-action, effortless action, or acting-in-accordance-with-nature)—a state of spontaneous, unforced movement in harmony with the Dao. His philosophy emphasized the relativity of values and perspectives, the futility of human striving against natural process, the transcendence of conventional distinctions between good and bad, life and death, self and other. Through elaborate parables, playful dialogues, and bewildering paradoxes, Zhuangzi communicated a vision of freedom achieved through the abandonment of rigid mental categories, social ambition, and the illusion of the separate self. Though his ideas had little direct influence on Han Dynasty politics (unlike Confucianism, which became state orthodoxy), Zhuangzi’s Zhuangzi became a canonical text of Chinese thought, profoundly influencing Chinese poetry, painting, aesthetics, and the spiritual-philosophical tradition known as Chan Buddhism. The Zhuangzi is celebrated not only as philosophy but as literature; its imaginative freedom, humor, and stylistic beauty have made it one of the most beloved and frequently quoted texts in the entire Chinese literary canon.

Life and Context

Very little is known with certainty about Zhuangzi’s biographical details. The information that survives comes primarily from scattered references in later texts, particularly a brief biographical entry in Sima Qian’s Records of the Grand Historian. According to this account, Zhuang Zhou lived during the Warring States Period in the town of Meng (in modern-day Henan Province), then part of the state of Song, serving at some point as a low-ranking official—famously, he was offered a high position at the royal court but declined it, choosing instead a life of poverty and freedom. His most famous friendship was with Huizi (c. 370–310 BCE), an equally brilliant logician and Mohist philosopher with whom Zhuangzi engaged in playful intellectual sparring; their friendship is commemorated in several passages of the Zhuangzi text itself. Beyond these sparse biographical facts, little can be confirmed about his life. His birth and death dates are approximate, his family circumstances unknown, and much of the legendary material that later accumulated around his name—tales of his moral purity, his mystical experiences, his miraculous feats—belongs to the hagiography of later religious Daoism rather than to reliable historical information.

What we know with much greater certainty is the intellectual and political context in which Zhuangzi wrote. The Warring States Period was an age of intense competition among the various Chinese kingdoms, each vying for territorial and military dominance. This relentless competition generated immense human suffering—warfare, displacement, famine, and the constant threat of violence. Politically ambitious philosophers, such as the Confucians and Legalists, sought to convince rulers that their philosophies would lead to victory and stable rule. Zhuangzi’s response was radically different: he rejected the entire premise that rulership was a matter of human scheming and moral self-cultivation. Instead, he advocated for a kind of political non-action—a ruler who governed through wu wei, by doing nothing (in the sense of not imposing artificial order), would paradoxically achieve perfect order, as all things naturally aligned themselves in harmony with the Dao.

This political philosophy was practically useless to ambitious rulers and politically explosive in its implications: it suggested that the entire edifice of Confucian and Legalist political philosophy was fundamentally misguided. For this reason, Zhuangzi had virtually no direct influence on Han Dynasty political practice. However, Daoism—which Zhuangzi represented at its highest intellectual level—did eventually gain a place in Han political thought as a complement to the officially adopted Confucianism. The Han emperors occasionally adopted “Daoist non-action” (wu wei) as a governing principle, meaning they would minimize active state intervention and allow the people to prosper through their own efforts. This appropriation of Daoism was limited and imperfect; nevertheless, Zhuangzi’s influence on Chinese thought proved durable and profound.

The Zhuangzi Text and Its Composition

The Zhuangzi as it survives is a composite text, likely compiled over several centuries from various sources. The modern edition consists of 33 chapters (pian), traditionally divided into three sections:

• The Inner Chapters (neipian, 7 chapters) — generally considered the earliest and most reliable attestation of Zhuangzi’s own thought, written in his voice and style.
• The Outer Chapters (waipian, 15 chapters) — attributed to later disciples and followers of Zhuangzi, developing themes from the inner chapters.
• The Miscellaneous Chapters (zapian, 11 chapters) — even later accretions and materials from various sources.

Scholars debate the precise dating and authorship of these sections, but most agree that the Inner Chapters contain the most authentic representation of Zhuang Zhou’s original philosophy, while the Outer and Miscellaneous Chapters represent the development and elaboration of his thought by later Daoist thinkers.

The Zhuangzi is written in a highly distinctive style that resists conventional philosophical exposition. Rather than systematic argumentation, the text employs parables, dialogues, absurdist humor, paradoxes, and imaginative thought-experiments. Many passages are allegorical or fantastical—a giant tree too twisted to be useful for lumber becomes a metaphor for the uselessness (and thus freedom) of the sage; a cook’s blade remains forever sharp because his hand never touches bone; a man climbs to the top of a mountain and finds emptiness. This stylistic approach was not merely aesthetic; it was philosophically intentional. Zhuangzi believed that conventional logic and language could not capture the nature of the Dao, which transcended all categories and distinctions. Therefore, the text’s playfulness, paradox, and linguistic ambiguity were ways of pointing toward a truth that could not be directly stated.

Core Philosophical Doctrines

The Dao and Wu Wei: At the heart of Zhuangzi’s philosophy is the Dao (the Way), a concept he inherited from Laozi and the Daodejing. The Dao is the fundamental, ineffable principle underlying all existence—that which gives rise to all things yet is itself beyond description or conceptualization. It is not a god or a supreme being; it is the process of being itself, the flow of natural process, the pattern underlying apparent chaos. To be in harmony with the Dao is to flow naturally in accordance with its currents, without resistance or forced action. This is wu wei (non-action or non-forcing), often translated as “effortless action” or “acting-in-accordance-with-nature.” Wu wei does not mean literal passivity or complete inaction; rather, it means acting without forced intention, without struggling against the grain of circumstances, without ego-driven ambition. The sage achieves wu wei through the cultivation of ziran (spontaneity, naturalness), a state in which action flows from genuine nature rather than from artificial social conditioning or rigid moral rules.

Zhuangzi illustrates wu wei through vivid examples: a skilled craftsman becomes so absorbed in his work that he ceases to be consciously aware of his own actions; his hands move with perfect precision because he has transcended the calculating, self-conscious mind. A skilled swimmer dives into dangerous rapids with perfect ease because he surrenders to the movement of the water rather than resisting it. A skilled cook’s blade never dullens because his sensitive perception allows him to navigate the spaces between bones rather than hacking blindly. In all these cases, excellence is achieved not through intense effort or moral discipline but through a kind of relaxation, a surrender to the natural rhythm of the activity.

Perspectivism and the Relativity of Values: A radical theme running through the Zhuangzi is the relativity of all human values and judgments. What seems good from one perspective appears bad from another. A twisted, gnarled tree is useless for lumber—but this uselessness becomes its virtue, as no one will fell it for timber. A ugly, hunchbacked man is rejected for military service—but this deformity preserves his life, as he is not conscripted into endless warfare. Riches seem desirable until one realizes they breed anxiety and envy; poverty seems pitiable until one recognizes the freedom it can confer.

This perspectival philosophy extends even to the distinction between self and other. In one of the Zhuangzi’s most famous passages, Zhuangzi dreams that he is a butterfly, flying freely and enjoying itself, forgetting that he is Zhuangzi. Upon waking, he is uncertain whether he is Zhuangzi who dreamed he was a butterfly, or a butterfly now dreaming that it is Zhuangzi. The boundary between self and other, between human and animal, between reality and dream, dissolves. This dissolution is not presented as a problem to be solved but as an insight into the fundamental nature of reality: all distinctions are human impositions on a reality that transcends them.

Zhuangzi’s perspectivism served a philosophical and spiritual purpose: by demonstrating the relativity of all human value-judgments, he sought to free the reader from attachment to conventional distinctions. If wealth is not truly good and poverty is not truly bad, if life and death are merely different states within the Dao, then the anxieties and strivings that dominate human behavior are revealed as based on illusory distinctions. Freedom is achieved through the recognition of this relativity and the consequent liberation from the frantic pursuit of conventional goods.

The Transcendence of Opposites and Paradox: Closely related to perspectivism is Zhuangzi’s insistence on the transcendence of opposites. In passages reminiscent of the Daodejing, Zhuangzi argues that what is called “good” cannot be understood except in relation to “bad”; the two arise together. Moreover, they are not ultimately distinct; they are two aspects of a single reality. The sage perceives both sides simultaneously and is bound by neither. The Zhuangzi frequently employs paradox to communicate this transcendence: “Know the male, but keep to the female”; “Fill yourself with emptiness”; “The sage does nothing, yet nothing remains undone.” These paradoxes cannot be resolved through logical analysis; they point to a truth that lies beyond the dualistic logic of ordinary language.

The Critique of Confucianism and Conventional Morality: Running throughout the Zhuangzi is an implicit (and sometimes explicit) critique of Confucianism and all systems of conventional morality. Zhuangzi argues that the Confucian emphasis on ritual propriety, moral self-cultivation, and hierarchical relationships is artificial and alienating. It imposes external structures on human nature, creating hypocrisy and moral anxiety. The endless Confucian injunctions to self-improvement, to moral perfection, to the proper execution of ritual—all of this arises from a fundamental misunderstanding of human nature and the Dao.

Zhuangzi’s critique here is subtle but devastating. He suggests that Confucian morality is not a response to a genuine moral order in the universe but rather a reaction to the breakdown of natural human harmony. In a naturally ordered society, people would not need elaborate moral teachings; they would flow naturally in accordance with the Dao. The very existence of morality-teaching is a sign of moral disorder: “When the great Dao is forgotten, goodness and righteousness appear.” In other words, morality (in the sense of explicit moral teaching and rigid moral codes) emerges only when natural harmony has been lost. The cure is not more morality but the abandonment of morality altogether, a return to simplicity, to the natural way (ziran).

Death and the Acceptance of Natural Process: Unlike most Chinese philosophical traditions, which focused on ethics and governance, Zhuangzi devoted considerable attention to death and the acceptance of mortality. He advocated an attitude of complete equanimity toward death, viewing it not as a catastrophe but as a natural transformation. In one famous passage, when his wife died, Zhuangzi sang and drummed on a tub, shocking his disciples. When asked why he did not mourn, Zhuangzi explained that life and death are both part of the great transformation (huaqü) of the Dao. To mourn death while celebrating life would be to show partiality toward one aspect of nature. The truly wise person maintains perfect equanimity, acknowledging both life and death as necessary phases of the cosmic process.

This attitude is not callousness or emotional numbness; rather, it represents the transcendence of egoistic attachment. The sage has released the illusion of a fixed, unchanging self that must be protected and perpetuated. With that illusion released, there is no ground for fear of death or grief at the loss of loved ones. This does not mean the sage becomes indifferent to others; rather, the sage’s compassion flows naturally from the Dao itself, not from sentimental attachment.

The Cook Ding Parable: Wu Wei as Skilled Action

Chapter 3 of the Inner Chapters contains what many scholars regard as the Zhuangzi’s most powerful single illustration of wu wei: the story of Cook Ding (庖丁, Páo Dīng) cutting up an ox. When Cook Ding’s blade meets the carcass, “the sound was like the Jingshao [a piece of music], always in perfect rhythm, in accord with the Dance of the Mulberry Grove, and the harmonies of the Jingshou [another piece].” Prince Hui, watching, marvels at his skill. Cook Ding explains:

What I follow is the Tao, something beyond mere skill. When I first began cutting up bullocks, I saw nothing but whole bullocks. After three years of practice, I saw no more whole animals. And now I work with my mind and not my eye. Laying aside the sense of sight, I follow my mind without limitation. In harmony with the eternal principles, I glide through such great joints and cavities as there may be, according to the natural constitution of the animal.

Cook Ding’s blade remains perfectly sharp after nineteen years of cutting thousands of oxen, not because of material hardness but because he has learned to navigate the natural spaces and joints of the carcass without forcing his blade against bone. He perceives the inner structure of things and moves accordingly, expending no unnecessary effort, meeting no resistance.

The story illustrates Zhuangzi’s philosophy at several levels simultaneously. At the most concrete level, it shows that mastery in any skilled activity requires the transcendence of explicit, conscious calculation—the expert perceives and responds directly without the mediating layer of deliberate thought. At a deeper philosophical level, it models the relationship between the sage and the natural world: the sage perceives the inherent structure (li—the grain of wood, the joints of the carcass, the patterns of historical change) and moves in accordance with it rather than imposing force. The blade that never dulls is the sage-king’s rule that proceeds without coercion, following the grain of human nature rather than cutting against it.

The Cook Ding story became one of the most frequently cited parables in Chinese literary and philosophical history. Later scholars invoked it to discuss artistic mastery, political governance, and spiritual cultivation alike. The Chinese phrase “to cut oxen as Cook Ding does” (庖丁解牛) became a standard idiom for effortless, perfectly calibrated skill.

The Roc and the Cicada: Scale, Perspective, and Freedom

The Zhuangzi opens with one of the most vivid parables in all philosophical literature: the transformation of a vast fish (kun, 鯤) in the northern darkness into a gigantic bird (peng, 鵬), the Roc, whose wings “are like clouds covering the sky.” The Roc rises ninety thousand li (roughly 45,000 km) into the sky and flies southward to the “Southern Darkness” (another mythical ocean). But while the Roc soars at inconceivable altitude, a cicada and a small dove laugh at it from their mushroom and elm tree: “What does it think it’s doing? I spring into the air and make it to the elm tree—sometimes I don’t even get that far, and I just drop to the ground. What’s the point of going ninety thousand li to go south?”

Zhuangzi’s response is philosophical rather than moralistic: the cicada cannot understand the Roc because the cicada’s horizon of experience is bounded by mushrooms and elm branches. Its knowledge (zhi) is genuinely adequate to its nature but fundamentally limited. The problem is not that the cicada is stupid but that different beings have fundamentally different scales of experience and understanding, and these differences create incommensurable perspectives. “Small knowledge cannot hold a candle to great knowledge, just as a short year cannot match a long year.”

The parable serves multiple purposes. It introduces Zhuangzi’s perspectivism—no single perspective captures the whole—while simultaneously celebrating the vastness of freedom available to those who are not limited by small perspectives. The Roc is not simply larger; it represents a mode of being in the world that transcends the ordinary categories of big/small, long/short, near/far. The sage who moves in harmony with the Dao achieves something analogous to the Roc’s flight: not literally physical altitude, but a perspective so encompassing that the conventional distinctions that generate human anxiety—wealth versus poverty, honor versus disgrace, life versus death—are seen from a distance that renders them proportionate and non-threatening.

The Butterfly Dream and Philosophical Idealism

Among the Zhuangzi’s most famous passages is the “Butterfly Dream” (hudie zhi meng), found in Chapter 2:

Once Zhuang Zhou dreamed he was a butterfly, a butterfly fluttering happily about, enjoying himself. He did not know that he was Zhuang Zhou. Suddenly he awoke, and there he was, solid and unmistakable, Zhuang Zhou again. But now I don’t know whether it was Zhuang Zhou dreaming that he was a butterfly, or whether it is now the butterfly dreaming that it is Zhuang Zhou.

This passage has been interpreted in many ways—as an argument for the illusory nature of the self, as a meditation on the nature of consciousness and identity, as a playful paradox without a definite solution. The passage resists definitive interpretation precisely because it functions on multiple levels. On one level, it challenges the assumption that there is a clear, permanent distinction between self and other, or between waking reality and dream. On another level, it suggests that the question itself—which is the “real” identity—cannot be answered because the very categories of self and reality that frame the question may be illusory. The passage embodies Zhuangzi’s conviction that reality is not as fixed and determinate as we usually assume, and that freedom comes from releasing our rigid sense of a permanent, separate self.

The Butterfly Dream has become one of the most iconic passages in all of Chinese literature and philosophy, inspiring countless poets, painters, and thinkers to meditate on the nature of identity and reality. Its influence extends far beyond philosophy into Chinese aesthetics and the visual arts, where the butterfly became a symbol of liberation and the transcendence of ordinary categories.

Literary and Philosophical Achievement

The Zhuangzi is celebrated not only as philosophy but as literature. Later Chinese critics recognized Zhuangzi as a master of prose style—his language is vivid, witty, often hilarious. The text employs wordplay, puns, absurdist humor, and grotesquely exaggerated scenarios to communicate its philosophical points. A man whose body is so bent that he becomes invisible to robbers; a tree so useless that it survives precisely because no one wants to cut it; a man who offers the most absurd advice to a ruler in need—these scenarios communicate philosophical insights more effectively than systematic argumentation could.

This stylistic achievement also addresses a fundamental philosophical problem. Zhuangzi believed that ordinary language and logic were inadequate for communicating the truth of the Dao. Words impose categories and distinctions; they carve up a unified reality into artificial pieces. Conventional philosophical discourse—thesis, argument, proof—operates within the dualistic logic of subject and predicate, being and non-being, true and false. But the Dao transcends all such distinctions. Therefore, to truly communicate the Dao, one must break the conventions of discourse itself, use language playfully and paradoxically, and lead the reader not to rational conclusions but to a transformative insight that transcends rational thought. The Zhuangzi’s literary freedom and stylistic innovation are thus not merely aesthetic choices but philosophical necessities.

Guo Xiang’s Commentary and the Transmission of the Zhuangzi

The Zhuangzi as it survives owes its present form largely to the scholar Guo Xiang (郭象, c. 252–312 CE), a philosopher of the Wei-Jin period who compiled and edited the text and wrote a comprehensive commentary that became the standard interpretive framework for reading the Zhuangzi for centuries. Guo Xiang reduced an apparently longer version of the text to the 33-chapter edition that survives today, dropping sections he regarded as later accretions. His commentary offered a distinctive philosophical interpretation: where Zhuangzi seemed to posit a transcendent Dao beyond things, Guo Xiang argued that things simply are what they are (ziran, self-so), and that there is no external Dao beyond the totality of self-transforming nature. This interpretation became enormously influential; the Zhuangzi of later Chinese tradition was frequently Guo Xiang’s Zhuangzi, and many philosophical debates about “Zhuangzi’s” views are actually debates about Guo Xiang’s interpretation of Zhuangzi.

Guo Xiang’s edition was completed during the early Eastern Jin Dynasty (317 CE), a period of political fragmentation and aristocratic retreat from politics. This context—intellectual elites seeking philosophical resources for withdrawal from turbulent public life—made Guo Xiang’s Zhuangzi especially timely. The Wei-Jin intellectual movement known as xuanxue (玄學, “Dark Learning” or “Mysterious Learning”) drew heavily on the Zhuangzi and the Daodejing to develop a sophisticated metaphysics of spontaneity and naturalness that satisfied the spiritual needs of educated elites alienated from official Confucian culture. Through xuanxue, Zhuangzi’s ideas permeated the aesthetics, poetry, and calligraphy of the Six Dynasties period and profoundly shaped Chinese culture in ways that continue to the present day.

Huizi and the Philosophical Dialogues

Among the Zhuangzi’s most charming features are the recorded dialogues between Zhuangzi and his friend Huizi (惠子, Hui Shi, c. 370–310 BCE), a logician and Mohist-influenced philosopher who served as Chancellor of the state of Wei. Their friendship, despite radical philosophical disagreement, is one of the most humanly appealing relationships in early Chinese philosophical literature. Huizi represented the tradition of “School of Names” (mingjia) philosophy, which emphasized logical precision, the analysis of concepts, and the distinction between names and actualities. Where Zhuangzi sought to dissolve conventional categories through paradox and imagination, Huizi tried to sharpen them through rigorous logical analysis.

Their dialogues are playfully combative. In one famous exchange, Huizi tells Zhuangzi he has a great gourd so large that no vessel can hold it—so he smashed it. Zhuangzi accuses Huizi of having no imagination: the gourd should be used as a boat to sail the seas. In another, Huizi tells Zhuangzi that a tree is so large and gnarled that a carpenter would never use it for timber. Zhuangzi replies that the tree’s uselessness is precisely its virtue—it has lived to a great age precisely because no one has wanted to cut it down. Following Huizi’s death, Zhuangzi lamented that he had lost his whetstone—without Huizi’s challenges, there was no one left against whom he could sharpen his arguments. This lament, brief and understated, is one of the most moving expressions of friendship in Chinese literature, and reveals a Zhuangzi far more emotionally engaged than his philosophy of equanimity might suggest.

Influence and Legacy

During Zhuangzi’s own lifetime and the subsequent Qin and early Han dynasties, his philosophy had relatively little direct political influence. Zhuangzi was too radical, too skeptical of conventional values and the entire project of rulership, to appeal to ambitious rulers. The Han Dynasty’s adoption of Confucianism as state orthodoxy, followed by Legalism’s influence at various points, meant that Zhuangzi’s ideas occupied a marginal position in official political thought.

However, the Zhuangzi became profoundly influential in other domains. It became one of the two foundational texts of Daoism, eventually incorporated into the Daoist canon and venerated in religious Daoism. The Zhuangzi and the Daodejing together shaped the development of Chan Buddhism in China; the Chan (Zen) emphasis on sudden enlightenment, direct insight, and the limitations of conceptual thought were deeply influenced by Zhuangzi’s philosophy. Through Chan Buddhism, Zhuangzi’s ideas spread to Japan and beyond.

In the cultural and literary sphere, the Zhuangzi became a canonical text studied by poets, painters, and literati. Its themes of freedom, spontaneity, and harmony with nature inspired the development of landscape painting, poetry, and aesthetic theory. The ideal of the immortal sage wandering freely in nature, unencumbered by conventional social responsibilities, became a recurring theme in Chinese poetry and painting. This ideal represented a powerful counter-cultural force within Chinese civilization, a standing reminder that there were alternatives to the Confucian values of social hierarchy, moral self-cultivation, and political responsibility.

In the modern era, as Western philosophy and science challenged traditional Chinese thought, the Zhuangzi has experienced renewed interest. Philosophers and spiritual seekers have found in Zhuangzi’s ideas resources for addressing modern alienation, anxiety, and the search for meaning in a world where traditional frameworks have collapsed. Some have found parallels between Zhuangzi’s perspectivism and modern relativism; others have seen in his wu wei an anticipation of psychological theories about flow and optimal experience; still others have appreciated his non-dualistic philosophy as a parallel to modern phenomenology and deconstruction.

The Zhuangzi has been translated into English and other languages, making it accessible to global audiences. It remains one of the most read and cited works of Chinese philosophy, a perennial source of inspiration and philosophical insight.

Related

• Daoism — the philosophical tradition to which Zhuangzi was a foundational contributor alongside Laozi.
• Confucius — the founder of the Confucian tradition whose values Zhuangzi implicitly critiqued.
• Mencius — the Confucian philosopher and near-contemporary whose optimistic doctrine of innate human goodness and moral cultivation stands in direct contrast to Zhuangzi’s advocacy of abandoning moral striving altogether.
• Sima Qian — the Han Dynasty historian who preserved the only early biographical account of Zhuangzi in the Records of the Grand Historian, making Sima Qian the primary historical source for Zhuangzi’s existence and life.
• The Warring States Period — the era of political chaos and philosophical ferment in which Zhuangzi lived and wrote.
• Buddhism in China — the tradition that synthesized with Daoism, incorporating many of Zhuangzi’s ideas through Chan Buddhism.
• Calligraphy — an artistic tradition profoundly shaped by Zhuangzi’s aesthetics of spontaneity and naturalness.

Sources

• Burton Watson (trans.). The Complete Works of Zhuangzi. Columbia University Press, 2013. Authoritative translation of the full text.
• A.C. Graham. Chuang Tzu: The Inner Chapters. George Allen & Unwin, 1981. Scholarly translation and philosophical commentary on the Inner Chapters.
• Fung Yu-Lan. A History of Chinese Philosophy, Vol. 1: The Period Before Christ. Princeton University Press, 1952. Historical analysis of Zhuangzi within Chinese philosophical development.
• Victor H. Mair (trans.). Wandering on the Way: Early Taoist Tales and Parables of Chuang Tzu. Bantam Books, 1994. Accessible translation emphasizing the text’s literary qualities.
• Angus C. Graham. Disputers of the Tao: Philosophical Argument in Ancient China. Open Court, 1989. Analysis of Zhuangzi’s philosophical methods and arguments.