First, Zhuangzi is different from other philosophers. Others are keen on cities, politics and dealing with princes, hoping that they can reuse themselves and govern the country according to their own ideas. However, Zhuangzi is a countryman. He doesn't seem to go to town much all his life, and he doesn't deal with princes much. More often, he "only talks in a secluded place" (Zhu Yu), instead of talking to princes, or finding others to reason and doing his best. Related to this, he is often down and out, and even makes himself "bitter yellow" (his neck is wrinkled, his face is yellow and emaciated), and even makes a living by weaving straw sandals.
Secondly, he was also the only one among the pre-Qin philosophers who spoke for the people instead of the princes. In other words, his writing object is ordinary people or everyone, not "state-owned people" like other philosophers. When others are talking about politics and the way of "ruling the country and leveling the world", Zhuangzi tells us how to save ourselves from difficulties, how to maintain peace and purity of mind, how to maintain self-esteem and love in an ugly world, how to be at a loss because of the present situation, and how to "keep fit" in the sinister situation of "there is nowhere to escape between heaven and earth" in order to spend the rest of our lives. To put it simply, most other philosophers talk about political, ethical and social issues. Zhuangzi talks about life, humanity and human heart, which is a personal issue. His philosophy is the philosophy of life.
There is no doubt that Zhuangzi was the most attractive philosopher in ancient China. The charm of Zhuangzi is inseparable from the charm of Zhuangzi. Among the ancient writers in China, the charm of personality and the charm of article style are integrated, which makes us unable to tell whether people love their articles for love or because they love them. There are not many people who are both cute. Zhuangzi is the earliest and the most famous. The charm of Zhuangzi and his articles is something that even those who oppose Zhuangzi Thought have to admit. Mr. Lu Xun spoke highly of Zhuangzi's article, saying that Zhuangzi's article "The wind of Wang Yang is graceful and restrained, and the works of late Zhou philosophers should not be the first" (Outline of China Literature History). Yes, the artistic achievement of Zhuangzi is indeed the highest among the essays of pre-Qin philosophers.
The charm of Zhuangzi and Zhuangzi is mainly reflected in his passion and detachment, and they are miraculously merged together. Passion and detachment are two things with opposite or opposite nature, which negate and dissolve each other. Generally speaking, people can only choose between passion and detachment, which is already very rare. For example, Mencius won with passion, while Laozi was good at detachment. But Zhuangzi can combine the two.
From the perspective of detachment, he despises everything, ignores everything, laughs at everything, looks down on everything, scoffs at it, and regards the prevailing social values as dirt. But at the same time, he discussed everything with passion and described everything with poetic language, thus making the world vivid and full of the brilliance and warmth of human nature. He sentenced the world to death, but at the same time he showed great fascination with the world. While expressing contempt for the world, he showed the ubiquitous vitality of the world to the fullest-in his works, the world is full of vigorous life and desire, and everywhere is full of interest in life. It turns out that Zhuangzi constructed a poetic world with his "endless cliff talk", "absurd talk" and "absurd talk". This is another world we didn't expect, where the clouds are grey, the wind is swaying, the virgin is graceful and the baby is naive. The activities here are all "broad-minded, unreasonable" experts, all of whom have the ability to give birth to Yao and Shun in Tao Zhu.
Therefore, the world he wrote is a real world, a ruthless world; One is the world in his "idea", a world that loves justice and righteousness. Faced with the boredom and helplessness of the real world, those who live in it are so passionate, ideal, eager, poetic and extraordinary-it is the strong contrast between the two that shows the ultimate absurdity and meaninglessness of life and the greatness and dignity of human beings themselves. In this desolate and cold world, there are so many extraordinary but passionate figures: they are either singing against, being caring and attentive in a few words, being in the shape of dead wood, or being disheartened (and once revived, they are so enthusiastic and prosperous). Sometimes they are complacent, look around, sometimes they sing and sometimes they cry. Sometimes I lie down in the south as a noble scholar, but sometimes I jump up as an urchin with joy. It's easy to recover (health master), but you can't lose the feeling of life (thumb), but everything is there, infinite, but all the good things follow it (deliberately). They are so far away from us, but they attract us so much. They are so heartless, but they are so enthusiastic. They are so ugly, but they are so beautiful. They are so disdainful to the world, but they are so compassionate and compassionate to the world. "Take the meaning of heaven and earth, resist the discrimination of six qi, and swim endlessly" ("Xiaoyao Tour"); "Heaven and earth are born with me, and everything is one with me" ("Theory of Homology"), how confident and arrogant!
It's not just people. Animals and plants are as full of humanity and highly personalized as in Zhuangzi: the admirable Dapeng, the angry mantis who stopped the car, the self-satisfied reprimand, and the mole who drank his stomach into the river ... If the works of Kong, Meng, Xun and Han are full of social concepts and social and political words such as courtesy, benevolence, loyalty, forgiveness and monarch and minister, then they are like wild flowers everywhere, swaying in the morning breeze.
Wandering freely ranks first in Zhuangzi, which is regarded as Zhuangzi's masterpiece both ideologically and artistically ... and it can best reflect the combination of Zhuangzi's passion and detachment. The beginning of the article is-
There is a kind of fish named Kun in the north; Kun is so big, I don't know its thousands of miles; Adult bird, whose name is Peng; Peng's back is thousands of miles away.
Such a big fish and such a big bird are completely out of our experience and knowledge. In fact, we can also regard Zhuangzi's description as the threshold he deliberately set: if you bring experience and knowledge, you can't and don't need to enter the book Zhuangzi, because the so-called experience and knowledge are incompatible with the world described by Zhuangzi. To enter and appreciate the realm described by Zhuangzi, we must abandon the inherent knowledge, experience and customs, completely emancipate our minds and break all barriers. Happy Travel is about people who are "waiting for nothing to depend on" and "waiting for something to depend on". We often rely on our limited knowledge and experience to explain the world arrogantly. In Zhuangzi's words, it means "looking at the sky with a tube and pointing to the ground with a cone". Note that Zhuangzi is not laughing at pipes and cones, but at those who use them so confidently. In other words, it is not the "body" of the tube and the cone that is ridiculous, but the "use" of the tube and the cone. Just as toothpicks are not funny, it is not funny to use toothpicks to pick your teeth, but it is ridiculous to use toothpicks as weapons-they are not used properly. Similarly, knowledge and experience are not ridiculous, even valuable, but they also have limitations. It would be ridiculous to explain the infinite world arrogantly with these limited knowledge and experience. The ridicule, dove imitation and ridiculousness in Happy Travel are not because they are small and limited, but because they use their own small and limited experience to explain the world. Their confidence and complacency in doing so is a rare joke. Yes, the book "Zhuangzi" condenses all kinds of jokes in life, so that we can appreciate the absurdity of life, the boredom of the world and our own absurdity through laughter. When we smile, we will suddenly understand that we are the poor and ridiculous reprovers and imitators full of swagger and ugliness. At this time, Zhuangzi has probably turned his back on us and left us flushed in this world-as far as art is concerned, this way of reasoning by fable is a very distinctive feature of Zhuangzi.
But most importantly, when Zhuangzi wrote these fables, he didn't just pay attention to the allegories. On the contrary, he is very concerned about the vividness and readability of the fable itself-in a word, the formal beauty of the fable. He just wants to describe our ugliness and describe the beauty or loopholes in this world. If fables are divided into "speech" (form) and "meaning" (meaning), then Zhuangzi is also very concerned about the "speech" of fables. For another example, if the fable is that there are people living in the apartment, then he not only wants us to know those people, but also wants to make the apartment building magnificent and dazzle us with the beauty of the building. So he wrote with his heart, vivid, realistic, delicate and realistic. For example, write a letter of reprimand:
He laughed at him and said, "Why are you so ridiculous? I jumped to my feet, but after counting down, I flew among Artemisia, which is also flying. And he is comfortable? "
There is a sentence "Bie and Xi Shi Ye" before and after this passage, and the word "er" is added before the latter sentence for more emphasis and repetition. This simulation of the sound port has reached a realistic level. As we know, this is just a fable he made up to illustrate the difference between size and size. There have been similar fables before. He could have been perfunctory, but he took things so seriously and made a fabricated story "look real". This little reproachful expression is really like being in the present-yes, it is yourself in the mirror.