The Study On Zhuangzi's Freedom

Zhuangzi, an important thinker of the Qin Dynasty in our country, lived during a time of conseguent wars. People in such an environment could neither change the society nor master his own fate. Therefore, in the thought of zhuangzi, he actually abandoned cares for anything outside himself and turned to care about the individual life and spiritual freedom. Zhuangzi inherited from Laozi's thought fundamentally, among which the ideas about how to govern the society was eliminated. Instead, he concentrated on ideas about the nature. In zhuangzi's eye, one whose conducts complied with the law of nature can achieve the ultimate freedom, which was reflected in his opinion towards life, knowledge and society. As far as life is concerned, he considered it as a circulation, which was just a stage in the development of "logos" in daoist's concept. Besides, he thought that death was much more fundamental than life. To knowledge, zhuangzi inherited completely from Laozi's thought and regarded the secular knowledge as the beginning of dispute about truth and false. Thus this kind of knowledge were not the absolute ones and should't be our goals to seek for. That's why we must get rid of the worldly knowledge and turn to pursuit for the ultimates ---- to get the understanding of logos. Only in this way, can we get rid of the countless dispute about truth and false. Although zhuangzi saw individual as the most significant, he still had his dream about the society. However, such a dream was closely connected with the spiritual freedom. The ideal society that zhuangzi put forward was a country of morality, with the ultimate freedom being its great feature.Zhuangzi's freedom was only about the individual freedom, having nothing to do with anything else, which made the freedom seem to be much more indifferent. This coincided with his lonely but proud characteristics. Another reason is that zhuangzi put less importance on the body, as his ultimate pursuit was the absolute spiritual freedom. Moreover, he considered body as the hindrance to freedom. Therefore, the freedom in zhuangzi seemed to be humble and tortuous, under the cover of the humble body.Now that zhuangzi looked down upon the body, he would belittle it as well as the feeling. In the pursuit of freedom. That's why we found those people with ugly appearance and deformity hold the noble characters. Zhuangzi accomplished his pursuit for freedom by belittling the body.The thought of Taoist school, being one kind of the important thought of our tradition, have the immeasurable effect on the following thought. He was followed by numerous genius, including "the seven person of virtue in Bamboos"; Tao yuanming, Libai and so on, who were nurtured by him. However, what we are looking forward to is that the positive aspect of Zhuangzi's freedom can have much more influence on the modem society.