Abstract

In the last part of the volume, we shall study the ideas of latter-day schools of Zhuang Zi's teachings on the basis of the so-called outer chapters and irregular, or miscellaneous, chapters of the text known as Zhuang Zi. We shall not, however, be making a full, comprehensive study of either of these outer and miscellaneous chapters of Zhuang Zi, nor shall we be making a full study of the ideas of latter-day schools of Zhuang Zi teachings. Rather, we will be studying the ideas of these latter-day Zhuang Zi schools from the angle of exploring the various strands and lines of thought followed by the evolution of Zhuang Zi's philosophy down through the ages. In the third chapter of Part 1 of this book, we have already made rather detailed research and argumentation regarding the classification of the outer and miscellaneous chapters of the book Zhuang Zi, and we have separated the "essays" in these outer and miscelleneous chapters largely into three groups, representing the works of three major schools, which we have labeled as the "Shu Zhuang pai", the "wu jun pai", and the "Huang-Lao pai". [Translator's note: For the sake of clarity and convenience, in the following we shall refer to these schools as the Shu Zhuang School, the Wu Jun School, and the Huang-Lao School.] In this final portion of the book we shall discuss and describe the characteristics of these three schools and their relationship with the philosophy of Zhuang Zi. Thus, we hope to add further evidence that our scheme of classification of the writings in the outer and miscellaneous chapters of Zhuang Zi is a reasonable one.