Zhuangzi once worked as a paint garden clerk and lived in poverty. According to Zhuangzi Waipian Qiushui, Chu Weiwang sent someone to invite Zhuang Zhou to govern Chu politics. Zhuangzi refused Chu Zhuangwang's invitation on the grounds that he would rather be a turtle playing in the mud than a turtle in a temple. He was indifferent to fame and fortune all his life, advocating self-cultivation and self-cultivation. Serenity has always lived in seclusion. .
Zhuangzi is a cynical person. There is an incisive exposition in Zhuangzi Duguan: "People only know San Lv's sorrow, but I don't know that Qi Yuan's sorrow is more than San Lv's. The sorrow of Gai San Lv is in one country, and the sorrow of Qiyuan is in the world; San Lv's sorrow is temporary, but the sorrow of fate is eternal. " (San Lv is Qu Yuan)
Zhuangzi's philosophical thoughts can be summarized as ontology with Tao as the entity and relativism epistemology with "everything is one", which leads to his unique tendency of subjective idealism and relativism sophistry. On this basis, Zhuangzi and Laozi, while profoundly exposing the political reality that "the thief of a country is a vassal", come down in one continuous line and advocate a social ideal of governing by doing nothing and having few people and few countries. At the same time, Zhuangzi advocated a kind of "harmony between man and nature", which was based on the theory of natural humanity and ethics, and provided another possibility of survival and value orientation for later intellectuals in China.
At the same time, Zhuangzi also used a literary way to explain his thoughts, which is the way of fable. In this way, Zhuangzi's thought seems to have the integrity of water, and he is not afraid of being dismembered by later generations. At the same time, his views will not be forgotten by history. Reading in different periods will bring new meaning. Zhuang Zhou's dream, from chaos to enlightenment and clever understanding of cattle are all his excellent fables. Zhuangzi's creation is a wonderful work in the history of China literature, which pushed the pre-Qin prose to a new peak.
Compared with Laozi, Zhuangzi's thoughts tend to pursue art and freedom. It can be seen from Zhuang Zhou's Dream Butterfly and Zi Fei's Fish Knowing Fish.
Traditionally, it is generally believed that Zhuangzi was written by Zhuangzi, while Waipian and Zapian were written by Zhuangzi, his disciples and later scholars. However, some people think that most of the contents of the foreign essays were written by Zhuangzi himself, but they were written in different periods, and although there were some works by later generations, there were not many.