Zhuang Zi

Zhuang Zi

Zhuang Zi (369-286 BC), whose real name is Zhuang Zhou, is a renowned thinker, philosopher, and litterateur. Born in Mengyi (present-day Shangqiu, Henan Province) in the Warring States Period, he is a chief representative of Daoism after Lao Zi, and the two of them are often collectively referred to as "Lao-Zhuang."

The core of Zhuang Zi's thinking is dao. He further developed Lao Zi's idea that dao follows nature and advocated that people should follow dao of nature and heaven, minimize human interference, and strive to attain dao as the ultimate realm of personal achievement. Zhuang Zi's ideas contain naive dialectics and the theory of relativity. He believed that things are always conflicting and mutually promoting, that everything contains two opposing yet interdependent aspects, and that things always evolve toward their opposites.

Zhuang Zi's writings, immense in quantity and mostly fables and allegories, are collected in an eponymous treatise. Zhuang Zi is a well-conceived, widely imaginative illustration of subtle and abstract philosophical assertions written in an apprehensible and engrossing way. A paradigm of articles by pre-Qin thinkers and philosophers, the book has left far-reaching influences on the development of Chinese philosophy, literature, and art.

莊子

莊子（約公元前369年—約公元前286年），姓莊名周，出生于戰國時期宋國蒙邑（今河南省商丘市），著名思想家、哲學家和文學家，是繼老子之后道家學派的主要代表人物，與老子并稱“老莊”。

“道”是莊子思想的核心。莊子繼承和發展了老子的“道法自然”學說。莊子的“道”是天道，是效法自然的“道”。他主張順從“天道”，而摒棄“人為”，把“道”和人緊密結合，使“道”成為人生所要達到的最高境界。莊子思想蘊含著樸素辯證法以及相對論認知，其自然原則是和相對主義聯系在一起的。他認為，事物總是相對而又相生的，也就是說任何事物都具有既互相對立，又互相依賴的正反兩個方面，事物的變化總是向其對立的方面轉化。

莊子著說十余萬字，大多都是寓言，收錄于《莊子》中?！肚f子》一書想象奇幻，構思巧妙，用寓言故事表達哲學主張，把微妙難言的哲理寫得引人入勝，乃先秦諸子文章的典范之作，對中國哲學思想和文學藝術發展產生深遠影響。