Philosophers · 哲學家 · China
Zhuangzi 莊子 · 莊周 Zhuang Zhou
A minor official who turned down a kingdom’s highest office, and whose book of stories is the funniest and most unsettling work of ancient philosophy.
一個回絕了一國相位的小吏；他那本由故事組成的書，是古代哲學裡最好笑、也最讓人不安的作品。
- Born 出生
- c. 369 BCE, Meng (probably near modern Shangqiu, Henan)
- Died 去世
- c. 286 BCE
- Personal name 名
- Zhou 周; “Zhuangzi” means Master Zhuang
- Post 職位
- Clerk at the Lacquer Garden 漆園吏
- The book 著作
- Zhuangzi, 33 chapters in the received text; the first seven are thought to be his own
- Contemporaries 同時代
- Mencius, Hui Shi; Kings Hui of Liang and Xuan of Qi
中文翻譯Every paragraph has a Chinese translation. Tap 中譯▾ under a paragraph to open that one, or use Show Chinese · 顯示中譯 at the top to open them all. 每一段都有中譯：點段落下方的「中譯」只開那一段，或按上方的「顯示中譯」一次全部打開。
Life · 生平
A life in three scenes 三幕人生
The clerk at the Lacquer Garden 漆園的小吏
Almost everything known about Zhuangzi’s life fits into a paragraph. Sima Qian, writing about two centuries later, records that he was a man of Meng, that his name was Zhou, and that he once held a post at a place called the Lacquer Garden. He lived at the time of King Hui of Liang and King Xuan of Qi, which puts him in the second half of the fourth century BCE, the most violent period of the Warring States. The historian adds that there was nothing his learning did not look into, that his writing ran to more than a hundred thousand characters, and that it was mostly made of parables. His words, says Sima Qian, were like a flood that spread wherever it pleased, and for that reason no king or minister could make use of him.
關於莊子生平，我們所知的幾乎一段話就說得完。大約兩個世紀之後的司馬遷記載：他是蒙人，名周，曾經在一個叫漆園的地方當過小吏。他與梁惠王、齊宣王同時，這把他放在西元前四世紀的後半，戰國最暴烈的時期。這位史家還說，他的學問「無所不闚」，著書十餘萬言，「大抵率寓言也」。司馬遷說，他的話「洸洋自恣以適己」，像大水一樣隨意漫開，所以王公大人都沒辦法用他。
One story is told in two versions. In Sima Qian’s, King Wei of Chu sent messengers with rich gifts and the offer of the post of chief minister. Zhuangzi laughed and asked whether they had seen the ox that is fattened for the great sacrifice. It is fed for years and dressed in embroidered cloth, and on the day it is led into the temple it would gladly change places with a lonely piglet. “Go away, and do not defile me.” In the version in the Zhuangzi itself he is fishing and does not turn his head. He has heard that Chu keeps a sacred tortoise, three thousand years dead, wrapped in cloth in the ancestral hall. Would that tortoise prefer to be dead with its bones honored, or alive and dragging its tail in the mud? Alive in the mud, the officials admit. “Then go. I will drag my tail in the mud.”
有一個故事流傳著兩個版本。在司馬遷的版本裡，楚威王派使者帶著厚禮，許他當宰相。莊子笑了，問他們見過郊祭用的那頭犧牛沒有：養了好幾年，披上繡花的衣料；等到被牽進太廟的那一天，牠就算想當一隻孤單的小豬，也辦不到了。「你們快走，不要玷污我。」在《莊子》書裡的版本，他正在釣魚，連頭也不回。他聽說楚國有一隻神龜，死了三千年，用布包著供在廟堂之上。這隻龜是寧願死了、留下骨頭受人尊貴呢？還是寧願活著、拖著尾巴在泥巴裡爬？兩位大夫承認：寧願活著在泥裡。「那就請回吧。我要拖著尾巴在泥巴裡爬。」
The friend he argued with 跟他抬槓的朋友
The other person who appears again and again in the book is Hui Shi, called Huizi, the leading logician of the age and for a time chief minister of Liang. The two disagreed about everything. When Zhuangzi came to visit, Huizi was told that he had come to take his post, and had the city searched for three days. Zhuangzi walked in and told him about a southern bird that rests only on the parasol tree and drinks only from sweet springs. An owl that had got hold of a rotten rat looked up as it flew over and screeched to protect its prize. “Are you screeching at me over your state of Liang?” The debate on the bridge over the Hao, about whether one can know that fish are happy, is the most famous of their exchanges.
書裡一再出現的另一個人是惠施，人稱惠子；他是當時首屈一指的名家，有一段時間還當了梁國的宰相。兩個人什麼事都意見不合。莊子去看他，有人告訴惠子，莊子是來搶他的相位的；惠子就在國都裡搜了三天三夜。莊子自己走了進去，跟他講南方有一種鳥，非梧桐不棲，非甘泉不飲。一隻剛弄到腐鼠的貓頭鷹，看見牠飛過，仰頭「嚇！」了一聲護住自己的寶貝。「現在你是要拿你的梁國來『嚇』我嗎？」濠梁橋上那場關於「能不能知道魚快樂」的辯論，是兩人交鋒當中最有名的一次。
Years later, passing Huizi’s grave, Zhuangzi told his companions a story. A plasterer of Ying used to let a speck of plaster as thin as a fly’s wing sit on the tip of his nose, and have his friend the carpenter slice it off with an axe. The axe whirled like the wind and the nose was never touched. A lord heard of it and asked the carpenter to do it for him. “I could once do it,” said the carpenter, “but my partner has long been dead.” Zhuangzi went on: “Since the Master died, I have had no one to use as my partner. I have no one to talk to.” It is the best thing ever said about what a thinker owes to an opponent.
多年以後，莊子路過惠子的墳墓，對跟隨的人講了一個故事。郢地有個泥水匠，常讓一點薄如蠅翼的白灰沾在鼻尖上，再叫他的朋友、一位木匠，用斧頭把它削掉。斧頭揮得像一陣風，鼻子卻從來沒有碰到。有位國君聽說了，要木匠表演給他看。木匠說：「我從前是辦得到的；不過我的搭檔已經死了很久了。」莊子接著說：「自從先生死了以後，我沒有搭檔了，我沒有可以說話的人了。」關於一個思想者欠他的對手什麼，沒有比這更好的話了。
The drum and the open sky 鼓盆與天地
When Zhuangzi’s wife died, Huizi came to offer condolences and found him sitting with his legs sprawled, drumming on a pot and singing. This was too much. She had lived with him, raised his children, and grown old. Zhuangzi answered that when she first died he had grieved like anyone. Then he had looked back to her beginning, to the time before she had life, or form, or even the breath that takes form. Out of some dim confusion there came breath, then form, then life, and now another change had brought death. It was like the passage of the four seasons. “She is lying at rest in a great chamber. If I were to follow after her sobbing, I would show that I do not understand what is ordained. So I stopped.”
莊子的妻子死了，惠子去弔喪，卻看見他伸開兩腿坐著，敲著瓦盆唱歌。這太過分了。她跟他一起生活，為他養大孩子，陪他到老。莊子回答：她剛死的時候，他也跟任何人一樣悲傷。後來他回頭去看她的開始，回到她還沒有生命、沒有形體、甚至連成形的那股氣都還沒有的時候。在某種恍惚渾沌之中，有了氣，然後有了形，然後有了生；現在又一次變化，帶來了死。這就像四季的運行。「她正安安穩穩地躺在一間大屋子裡。我要是跟在後面嗚嗚地哭，那就表示我不懂得命。所以我就停了。」
When he himself was dying, his students planned a grand funeral. He told them that heaven and earth would be his inner and outer coffins, the sun and moon his jade discs, the stars his pearls, and the ten thousand things his funeral gifts. What could they add? They said they were afraid the crows and kites would eat him. “Above ground I will be eaten by crows and kites, and below ground by ants and crickets. To rob the one and give to the other: how partial that would be!”
輪到他自己快死的時候，弟子們打算辦一場隆重的葬禮。他告訴他們：天地就是他的棺槨，日月是他的連璧，星辰是他的珠璣，萬物是他的陪葬。他們還能添什麼呢？弟子說，怕烏鴉和老鷹會吃了老師。「在地上給烏鴉老鷹吃，在地下給螻蛄螞蟻吃。從這一邊搶過來、送給那一邊，這是多麼偏心啊！」
- c. 369 BCEBorn in Meng生於蒙
- 339–329Reign of King Wei of Chu, who is said to have offered him office楚威王在位；相傳曾聘他為相
- c. 310Death of Hui Shi惠施去世
- c. 286Dies去世
- c. 94 BCESima Qian’s short biography司馬遷為他立傳
- c. 300 CEGuo Xiang edits the 33-chapter text we read today郭象編定今本三十三篇
The central idea · 核心觀念
Every view is a view from somewhere 每一個看法，都是從某處看出去的
The philosophers of Zhuangzi’s day, Confucians and Mohists above all, argued about which course of action is right and which is wrong. The second chapter of his book, “On Making Things Equal,” steps back from the quarrel. Each side, he observes, calls right what the other calls wrong, and each can see the other’s blindness without seeing its own. Words such as “this” and “that” depend on where the speaker stands, and he suggests that “right” and “wrong” work in the same way. “‘That’ comes out of ‘this,’ and ‘this’ depends on ‘that.’” A keeper told his monkeys they would get three nuts in the morning and four at night, and they were furious. He offered four in the morning and three at night, and they were delighted. Nothing had changed except their joy and anger. The sage, says Zhuangzi, does not take up a position among the positions. He stands at “the hinge of the Way,” the still point from which every view can be seen to be one view.
莊子那個時代的哲學家，尤其是儒家與墨家，爭論的是哪一種作法是「是」、哪一種是「非」。他的書的第二篇〈齊物論〉從這場爭吵裡退了一步。他觀察到：每一方都把對方說的「非」稱為「是」；每一方都看得見對方的盲點，卻看不見自己的。「此」與「彼」這樣的詞，取決於說話的人站在哪裡；而他暗示「是」與「非」也是這樣運作的。「彼出於是，是亦因彼。」養猴子的人告訴猴子：早上給三顆、晚上給四顆，猴子都大怒。他改說早上四顆、晚上三顆，猴子都高興了。除了牠們的喜怒，什麼都沒變。莊子說，聖人不在各種立場當中選一個立場。他站在「道樞」，那個靜止的點；從那裡看得出來，每一個看法都只是一個看法。
This could be a recipe for paralysis, and Zhuangzi means it as a release. His heroes are people who do something supremely well without deliberating: a wheelwright, a swimmer, a catcher of cicadas, and above all Cook Ding, who cuts up an ox for his lord with the grace of a dance. Asked about his skill, the cook says that what he cares for is the Way, which goes beyond skill. After nineteen years he no longer sees the ox with his eyes. His blade, which has no thickness, moves through the spaces that are already there in the joints, and it is as sharp as on the day it left the whetstone. The lord replies that he has learned from this how to care for life. To stop forcing one’s categories on things and to follow their grain is what the tradition calls wuwei, action without strain. The book’s first chapter is titled “Wandering Far and Free.”
這本來可以是一帖讓人動彈不得的藥方；莊子卻把它當作一種解放。他筆下的英雄，是那些不經盤算就把某件事做到極致的人：做車輪的、游泳的、捕蟬的，尤其是庖丁，他為國君解牛，優雅得像一場舞蹈。被問到他的技術時，這位廚子說：他所愛好的是道，那已經超過技術了。十九年下來，他不再用眼睛看那頭牛。他的刀刃沒有厚度，在骨節之間本來就有的空隙裡遊走，還像剛從磨刀石上下來那天一樣鋒利。國君回答說，他從這裡學到了養生的道理。不再把自己的分類硬套在事物上，而是順著它們的紋理，這個傳統稱之為「無為」，不費強力的行動。這本書的第一篇，篇名就叫〈逍遙遊〉。
What your servant cares for is the Way, which goes beyond skill. … Now I meet the ox with my spirit and do not look with my eyes.臣之所好者，道也，進乎技矣。……方今之時，臣以神遇而不以目視。
Cook Ding to Lord Wenhui. The Chinese is the original text. 庖丁對文惠君說的話。中文是原文。
The strongest objection · 最強的反駁
Blinded by heaven 蔽於天而不知人
The first serious criticism came within a generation of his death. The Confucian philosopher Xunzi listed the partial views of his predecessors, each of whom had seen one corner of the truth and taken it for the whole, and gave Zhuangzi one line: he “was blinded by Heaven and did not know the human.” Zhuangzi saw so clearly how small human distinctions look from the standpoint of nature that he lost sight of what those distinctions are for. People must decide how to raise children, share food, and restrain the violent, and a state at war cannot be governed by a man who is dragging his tail in the mud. Refusing office is a clean choice for one person. It is no answer for a society.
第一個認真的批評，在他死後一代之內就出現了。儒家的荀子列舉了前人的種種偏見（每一位都看見了真理的一角，卻把它當成全部），給莊子的只有一句：「莊子蔽於天而不知人。」莊子把「從自然的立場看，人的區分有多麼渺小」看得太清楚，以致看不見那些區分是做什麼用的。人必須決定怎麼養育孩子、怎麼分配食物、怎麼約束強暴的人；一個在打仗的國家，不能交給一個拖著尾巴在泥裡爬的人來治理。拒絕做官，對一個人來說是乾淨的選擇。對一個社會來說，它不是答案。
The second objection is logical. If every judgment of right and wrong is only a view from somewhere, then so is that judgment, and Zhuangzi has no ground for preferring his outlook to the Confucian one. His defenders reply that he never says all views are equally good. The clumsy cook who hacks at the bone and changes his knife every month is plainly worse at living than Cook Ding. What Zhuangzi denies is that any fixed set of words can capture the difference in advance. He writes in stories and jokes because a doctrine would be one more position. His school understood this: the last chapter of the book describes his writing as “absurd talk and extravagant words.”
第二個反駁是邏輯上的。如果每一個是非判斷都只是從某處看出去的一個看法，那麼這個判斷本身也是；莊子就沒有根據說他的眼光比儒家的更可取。為他辯護的人回答：他從來沒有說過所有看法一樣好。那個對著骨頭亂砍、每個月換一把刀的笨廚子，顯然比庖丁更不會過日子。莊子否認的是：有任何一套固定的言詞，可以預先把這個差別抓住。他用故事和笑話來寫，因為一套學說只會是又一個立場。他的學派懂得這一點：全書的最後一篇〈天下〉形容他的文字是「謬悠之說，荒唐之言」。
How we know · 史料
A book by many hands 一本出自眾手的書
The Zhuangzi that we read was put into its present shape around 300 CE by the commentator Guo Xiang, who cut a version in fifty-two chapters down to thirty-three and arranged them in three groups. Scholars generally accept the seven Inner Chapters as the work of Zhuang Zhou, or very close to him. The fifteen Outer Chapters and eleven Miscellaneous Chapters were written by followers and sympathizers over the next two centuries, and they vary in outlook and quality. This matters for the stories told here. The butterfly dream and Cook Ding are in the Inner Chapters. The fish on the Hao, the tortoise in the mud, the drumming on the pot, Huizi’s grave, and the deathbed are all in the later sections. They are what his school remembered or invented about him, and we cannot tell which. The figure they draw is so consistent, and so unlike anyone else in ancient literature, that readers have always felt they were meeting a real person. It is safer to say that they are meeting a character whom a real person made possible.
我們今天讀的《莊子》，是西元 300 年前後由註家郭象編成現在這個樣子的；他把一個五十二篇的本子刪成三十三篇，並且分成三組。學者大體上接受內篇七篇是莊周本人、或非常接近他的人所作。外篇十五篇、雜篇十一篇，是此後兩個世紀裡的後學與同情者寫的，觀點與水準參差不齊。這對這裡講的故事是有影響的。夢蝶與庖丁在內篇。濠上的魚、泥裡的龜、鼓盆、惠子的墳墓、臨終的話，全都在後面的部分。它們是他的學派對他的記憶，或者是對他的創作，而我們分不出是哪一種。這些故事描繪出來的人物是那麼一致，又那麼不像古代文獻裡的任何別人，以致讀者總覺得自己遇見了一個真人。比較穩當的說法是：他們遇見的是一個角色，而這個角色是因為有一個真人才成為可能的。
Dharma and the West · 佛法與西方哲學
Zhuangzi and the Buddha 莊子與佛陀
When Buddhist texts reached China in the first centuries of the common era, the only native vocabulary subtle enough to translate them was that of Laozi and Zhuangzi. Emptiness was first rendered by the Daoist word for nothingness, and nirvana by wuwei. The practice was later called geyi, “matching concepts,” and it took Chinese monks some three hundred years to see how much it distorted. But the meeting left a permanent mark. Sengzhao, the first great Chinese exponent of the Middle Way, was formed by reading Zhuangzi before he ever saw a sutra, and Chan Buddhism owes to Zhuangzi much of its manner: the humor, the craftsmen and cooks as teachers, and the distrust of anything that can be put into words.
佛典在西元最初幾個世紀傳到中國的時候，本土唯一夠精微、足以翻譯它們的語彙，是老子與莊子的語彙。「空」最初是用道家的「無」來譯的，「涅槃」是用「無為」來譯的。這種作法後來被稱為「格義」；中國的僧人花了大約三百年，才看出它造成了多大的扭曲。但這次相遇留下了永久的印記。中國第一位偉大的中觀闡釋者僧肇，在還沒見過任何一部經之前，就已經被《莊子》塑造了；而禪宗的風格有許多得自莊子：那份幽默、以工匠與廚子為師，以及對任何說得出口的東西的不信任。
The resemblances are real. Zhuangzi’s “I lost myself” and his “sitting and forgetting,” in which one lets the limbs fall away and dismisses the intellect, would be recognized by any meditator, and his calm before death is what the Buddhist texts call equanimity. The two part company on what the trouble is. For Zhuangzi the endless transformation of things is to be welcomed: one rides the changes, and death is one more turn of the seasons. For the Buddha, being carried from birth to birth by causes one does not understand is the very thing from which liberation is sought. Zhuangzi offers no analysis of why we suffer and no graded path, and compassion for other beings is not among his themes: his fish do best when they can forget one another. The Buddha taught for forty-five years because he thought that the stranded fish should be helped back to the water (Dharma and the West, D24).
相似之處是真的。莊子的「吾喪我」，還有他的「坐忘」（任肢體脫落、屏除聰明），任何禪修者都認得出來；而他在死亡面前的平靜，就是佛典所說的「捨」。兩者分道揚鑣的地方，在於「問題出在哪裡」。對莊子來說，萬物無窮的變化是該歡迎的：人乘著變化而行，死亡不過是四季又轉了一輪。對佛陀來說，被自己不明白的因緣帶著，一生又一生地流轉，正是要從中求解脫的東西。莊子沒有提供對「我們為什麼受苦」的分析，也沒有次第分明的道路；對其他眾生的悲憫，也不在他的主題之中：他的魚，在能夠彼此相忘的時候過得最好。佛陀說法四十五年，因為他認為，擱淺的魚應該有人幫牠們回到水裡（佛法與西方哲學 D24）。
Terms of art · 哲學術語
Words that come with him 跟著他一起來的詞
Ch. 道 dào ‘road, way’
The course that things follow of themselves, which cannot be captured in any fixed form of words.
萬物自己依循的路徑；任何固定的言詞都無法把它抓住。
Ch. 無為 ‘without doing’
Action that follows the grain of a situation without forcing it. Often translated “non-action.”
順著情勢的紋理而不強求的行動。常譯作 non-action。
Ch. 齊物 qíwù
Seeing that the distinctions we draw, including right and wrong, depend on a standpoint.
看出我們所作的種種區分（包括是與非）都取決於立足點。
Ch. 物化 wùhuà
The passing of one form into another, as of Zhuang Zhou into a butterfly or of life into death.
一種形態轉成另一種形態，如莊周之於蝴蝶、生之於死。
The view that all judging is done from some standpoint. Distinguished from relativism, which adds that all standpoints are equally good.
主張一切判斷都是從某個立足點作出的。與相對主義有別；後者還多主張所有立足點一樣好。
Ch. 寓言 yùyán ‘lodged words’
Zhuangzi’s own term for his method: placing one’s words in the mouth of someone else.
莊子自己對他的方法的稱呼：把話寄放在別人口中說出來。
Reading check · 理解測驗
Did it land? 讀懂了嗎
1. Why did Zhuangzi refuse the offer from the king of Chu?
2. What does the story of the monkeys and the nuts illustrate?
3. What was Xunzi’s criticism?
Go further · 延伸
Where he appears 他出現在哪幾課
- The Complete Works of Zhuangzi, translated by Burton Watson (2013)The standard complete English version, clear and lively. 標準的英文全譯本，清楚而生動。
- Chuang-tzŭ: The Inner Chapters, translated by A. C. Graham (1981)The most philosophically careful translation, with the chapters sorted by author. 哲學上最嚴謹的譯本，並且依作者把各篇重新分類。
- Zhuangzi, Chinese text at the Chinese Text Project ↗
- Sima Qian, Records of the Grand Historian, chapter 63 ↗The biography is a single paragraph. 他的傳只有一段。
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Zhuangzi” ↗