Laozi. Zhuangzi

Author: Zhen Guanghao
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-09-13
Features: Cultivating the essence of traditional Chinese culture by its heritage, and enhancing the charm of traditional Chinese culture through its allure. Among the legacies passed down by the Chinese nation over thousands of years, the Tao Te Ching stands as the foremost embodiment of its fundamental thoughts and spirit. With its concise and elegant language, it constructs a grand framework of a simple, natural, open-minded, and ethereal worldview, philosophy of life, and methodology. It not only integrates with Confucianism and Buddhism, forming the foundational structure of Chinese civilization, but also, as the Chinese nation steps into the world, is increasingly admired by Western scholars.
Zhuangzi is the great synthesizer of the Taoist school. He inherited and developed Laozi's idea of "the Tao following nature," believing that "the Tao" is "self-originating and self-rooted" and "present everywhere," emphasizing that all things are self-generated and self-transforming. He did not provide a technique for rulers on how to govern their people, but rather explored the spiritual transcendence and freedom of the individual. Zhuangzi's philosophy critiques the hypocrisy and alienation of "ritual and music," becoming one of the most social critique theories in history. This philosophical reasoning is the most vibrant in the history of Chinese philosophy. The imaginative and unrestrained essays in the Zhuangzi pioneered the tradition of classical Chinese romanticism. His aesthetic concept of "beauty in nature" has had a profound and lasting influence.