Chuang-tzu: The Seven Inner Chapters

The book of Chuang-tzu shares with the Tao te Ch'ing the distinction of being one of the two fundamental sources for the philosophy of Taoism. As it developed through classical Chinese history, Taoism is conventionally characterized as the alternative to (or, more precisely perhaps, the complement of) Confucianism.

Whereas Confucianism is essentially a public philosophy, which takes for granted, without examination, the premise that the goal of the gentleman is duty and pursuit of the greater good, Taoism, as presented in the seven Inner Chapters-- the principal portion of the book of Chuang-tzu believed to have been actually written by that sage--is a private philosophy, essentially intent upon reconciling the individual with the reality of life and of death.

The central premise of the philosophy of Chuang-tzu might reasonably be characterized, in modern American idiom, as "go with the flow." Indeed, in the translation here discussed, A. C. Graham renders the title of the first of the seven Inner Chapters as "going rambling without a destination" (p. 43). Thus, for example, Chuang-tzu rejects from the outset the sort of logic-chopping which ancient Greek philosophers engaged in from Plato onward, and which was eagerly taken up by the medieval schoolmen and handed down by them into modern Western modes of thought. The s