Essays on Skepticism, Relativism, and Ethics in the Zhuangzi

The Chinese philosophical text Zhuangzi was written by Zhuangzi in the fourth century BCE. With humor and relentless logic Zhuangzi attacks claims to knowledge about the world, especially evaluative knowledge of what is good and bad or right and wrong. This book is about the man and the text.The Chinese philosophical text Zhuangzi, written in part by a man named Zhuangzi in late fourth century B.C.E. China, is gaining recognition as one of the classics of world literature. Writing in beautiful prose and poetry, Zhuangzi mixes humor with relentless logic in attacking claims to knowledge about the world, particularly evaluative knowledge of what is good and bad or right and wrong. His arguments seem to admit of no escape. And yet where does that leave us? Zhuangzi himself clearly does not think that our situation is utterly hopeless, since at the very least he must have some reason for thinking we are better off aware of our ignorance.>Paul Kjellberg is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Whittier College. Philip J. Ivanhoe is Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Stanford University. He has also written Confucian Moral Self-Cultivation and Ethics in the Confucian Tradition: The Thought of Mencius and Wang Yang-ming.