Classic library

Zhuangzi

The Zhuangzi is one of the most imaginative and subversive works in classical Chinese philosophy. Traditionally attributed to the 4th-century BCE thinker Zhuang Zhou, it uses parables, paradoxes, and biting humor to dismantle fixed categories and open up new ways of thinking. Where Confucianism emphasizes duty and social order, the Zhuangzi celebrates spontaneity, perspectival flexibility, and the liberation that comes from seeing beyond conventional distinctions. Herbert Allen Giles's 1889 translation captures the wit and strangeness of the original while making it readable for an English-speaking audience.