Das Wirken in den Dingen

The work of the Chinese scholar Zhuangzi, which emerged during the Warring States period, is considered a foundational text of Daoism, but is typically described as unfathomable from our Western and modern perspective. Jean François Billeter challenges this trivializing exoticism and asserts that Zhuangzi's writings are understandable and reveal the master as a subversive philosopher of radical autonomy. More than that: through the confrontation with thinkers like Wittgenstein, Kleist, and Montaigne, an intellectual dialogue spanning more than two thousand years emerges, addressing the fundamental questions of modern philosophy. In doing so, Billeter not only makes one of the most beautiful texts of Chinese intellectual history finally accessible, but also highlights its potential to shake our contemporary lives, for "perhaps we are even the readers that Zhuangzi envisioned.".