Zhuang Zhou
Chinese Taoist philosopher (c. 369-286 BC) · China · Academics · Lived 369 BC to 288 BC · aged 81
Zhuang Zhou is read about 937 times a day, in 71 languages.
A typical day, 30 days to 15 October 2026
The middle day of the days counted, so one week of news cannot move it. The line under it is the last 390 days, one point a day.
Something wrong?A philosopher who wrote parables so strange they still unsettle: dreams where you can't tell if you're a man who dreamed of being a butterfly, or a butterfly now dreaming it's a man.
Also in Deutsch
Photos 8
In their own words 10
, The great bird rises on the wind to a height of a thousand miles. What does it see from on high there in the blue? Is it droves of wild horses galloping?
Great wisdom is generous; petty wisdom is contentious. Great speech is impassioned, small speech cantankerous.
We cling to our own point of view, as though everything depended on it. Yet our opinions have no permanence; like autumn and winter, they gradually pass away.
About this person
Zhuang Zhou lived in 4th century BCE China, during the Warring States period - an era when a hundred competing schools of thought fought for attention. He wrote or co-wrote the Zhuangzi, a text that became one of Taoism's two founding works alongside the Tao Te Ching. Where other philosophers of his time built systems, he built riddles. The work carries his name and his method: thought experiments that dissolve the border between self and world, waking and sleep.
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