Zhuangzi

⚖The case for it

He is the funny one. “Chuang Tzu burns Confucius so hard on so many occasions,” including dressing a monkey up as the Duke of Chou, and that is what keeps him alive next to the Tao Te Ching. The butterfly dream is the passage most readers half-know before arriving. Cook Ding’s blade that never dulls and the gnarled tree nobody bothers to cut make the abstractions concrete. Readers who stay inside the seven Inner Chapters get the tighter book. “Watson’s translation remains for me the best,” while Ziporyn bundles centuries of commentary alongside the text.

— the honest librarian

✕The case against

Chapters 8 through 33 are where readers stop, material scholars attribute to followers rather than Zhuangzi and which lacks the charm. The format wears out too: “I got about halfway through and just couldn’t take another damn parable.” Some find it redundant beside its predecessor, saying it “says little the Tao Te Ching doesn’t say better.” Ziporyn rendering Dao as the Course rather than the Way sends readers into the footnotes, and Watson’s Wade-Giles spellings have dated. Without the Warring States background the political references land nowhere.

— the honest librarian

7h

honest hours

10

sittings