Zhuangzi (369-286 B.C.), along with Laozi, author of the founding tracts of Daoism, argued against Confucius, upheld the freedom of the individual as opposed to a socially circumscribed potential, and averred that efforts to improve the world are not only useless but even harmful.
This attractive figure has appealed now for some 2,500 years and the collected fragments of his work, here in a superb newly revised translation, have found whole generations of grateful readers, thankful that a human solution has been found to a human problem.
As the translator, Burton Watson, has phrased it: "Essentially, all the philosophers of ancient China addressed themselves to the same problem: how is man to live in a world dominated by chaos, suffering, and absurdity?"
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