Undermining the Person, Undermining the Establishment in the Zhuangzi

This article draws a parallel between the Zhuangzi's discussions of having no sense of oneself or I, on the one hand, and its critique of institutionalized order and visions of the unification of society, on the other. Highlighting the way the text distances itself from rituals and tradition, this article identifies the source of the shift in its view on personhood not simply in the situating of humans in the wider world or in acknowledgment of natural processes of change, but in the character of one's relation to the wider world and change. Although special attention is given here to the socially and politically disengaged tone of the text, I reject the view that the Zhuangzi's goal is to help shed the external, social, or constructed layers of one's person in order to unearth a natural or authentic core.