ABSTRACT
Zhuang Zhou or Zhuangzi was probably a minor official in the Chinese state of Song who, if legend is to be believed, turned down an offer of high office, preferring to be like a turtle 'alive and dragging his backside through mud' than one ossified inside a royal palace. Like the Daodejing, the other great text of classical or 'philosophical' Daoism, the Zhuangzi is the work of many hands over many years. Wandering is Zhuangzi's metaphor for 'soaring above the restricted viewpoints of the worldly'. Spontaneity, then, is the paramount virtue that the Zhuangzi invites men and women to cultivate, the primary aspect of an authentic human life that accords with the de 'given' to human beings by the dao. That the Zhuangzi calls for humility and passivity rather than irony is indicative of a decisive difference from Nietzschean and Rortyan critiques of knowledge, one with an important bearing on the issue of the meaning of life.
