A literary and philosophical masterpiece of its age, and yet one of the most puzzling and elusive texts ever written, the Zhuangzi has been continuously reinterpreted. Here the age-old hermeneutic project of reading the Zhuangzi is brought up to the present with new essays addressing an array of interrelated topics from a variety of perspectives. These include how the work stands in relation to such issues as mystical experience, "skeptical" and "relativist" attitudes, individual value, ethical orientation, folk psychologies and popular beliefs, and rhetorical logic and structure. By...

A literary and philosophical masterpiece of its age, and yet one of the most puzzling and elusive texts ever written, the Zhuangzi has been continuously reinterpreted. Here the age-old hermeneutic project of reading the Zhuangzi is brought up to the present with new essays addressing an array of interrelated topics from a variety of perspectives. These include how the work stands in relation to such issues as mystical experience, "skeptical" and "relativist" attitudes, individual value, ethical orientation, folk psychologies and popular beliefs, and rhetorical logic and structure. By...