Zhuangzi

~369–286 BCE · Chinese (Song state) · Warring States Period, Ancient China

Known for: Dreamed he was a butterfly, then wondered if he was a butterfly dreaming he was a man — the original mind-bender

Zhuangzi (also Chuang Tzu) was one of the foundational philosophers of Daoism and author of the text that bears his name. Unlike the terse Tao Te Ching, the Zhuangzi is wild, playful, and full of paradoxes, stories, and surreal imagery — including the famous butterfly dream that anticipates questions about consciousness that philosophy still can't answer 2,300 years later.

He reportedly turned down a position as prime minister of the Chu state, saying he'd rather be a living turtle dragging its tail in the mud than a dead sacred turtle venerated in a temple. He was a radical relativist who questioned whether human categories of good/evil, beautiful/ugly, useful/useless had any objective basis at all.

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