Abstract

My thesis is that Zhuangzi and Nietzsche share a similar religiosity of life affirmation that expresses itself in the former as a vision of xiao-yao-you or "carefree and boundless wandering," and in the latter as "Dionysian spirit." This topic was motivated by a more or less singular concern. I noted the widely diverse and contradictory readings of both Zhuangzi and Nietzsche in the literature. I wanted to test my alternative reading of these two philosophers, separated by 2500 years and by an enormous historical and cultural gap, by finding a common attitude between them. I decided to look for that commonality under the rubric "religiosity." ;From this new perspective, I found that both Zhuangzi and Nietzsche's attack on traditional values was not so much an attempt to present new values as it was an attempt to overcome and transcend tradition to create an option for a new state of human life. To understand this unexpected convergence, I try to make a comparative study of Zhuangzi and Nietzsche in order to find a common ground in these two great, seemingly disparate thinkers, separated by centuries. Zhuangzi and Nietzsche nevertheless reflected a common concern with spiritual emancipation, though they expressed different ways of achieving this emancipation. ;By looking at each philosopher in light of the other, I propose a way of seeing Zhuangzi and Nietzsche as complementary, rather than opposed, in their philosophical outlooks. In the creative and vital spirit of Nietzsche's work, as in the tranquil and inward spirit of Zhuangzi's work, a surprisingly similar vision of human freedom exists---one in which spiritual transcendence is possible by religiously affirming life, this life, as sacred and divine. ;In a concluding chapter I reflect upon the importance of this rethinking of the religiosity of Zhuangzi and Nietzsche for some issues in Western postmodern philosophy and contemporary Chinese thought