In contrast with the focus on good morals and personal duty expressed by many Chinese philosophers of the period, Zhuang Zhou promoted carefree wandering and following nature, through which one would ultimately become one with the "Way" (Tao).

It has significantly influenced major Chinese writers and poets across more than two millennia, with the first attested commentary on the work written during the Han dynasty (202 BC – 220 AD).

[4] The American sinologist Burton Watson concluded: "Whoever Zhuang Zhou was, the writings attributed to him bear the stamp of a brilliant and original mind".

[5] University of Sydney lecturer Esther Klein observes: "In the perception of the vast majority of readers, whoever authored the core Zhuangzi text was Master Zhuang.

[12] Despite the lack of traceable attribution, modern scholars generally accept that the surviving chapters were originally composed between the 4th and 2nd centuries BC.

Guo plainly stated that he had made considerable edits to the outer and miscellaneous chapters in an attempt to preserve Zhuang Zhou's original ideas from later distortions, in a way that "did not hesitate to impose his personal understanding and philosophical preferences on the text".

The earlier Guodian Chu Slips—unearthed near Jingmen, Hubei, and dating to the Warring States period c. 300 BC—contain what appears to be a short fragment parallel to the "Ransacking Coffers" chapter (No.

Stein and Pelliot took most of the manuscripts back to Europe; they are presently held at the British Library and the Bibliothèque nationale de France.

The manuscript has seven complete selections from the outer and miscellaneous chapters, and is believed to be a close copy of a 7th-century annotated edition written by the Chinese Taoist master Cheng Xuanying.

This distinguishes the text from other works of the period, where anecdotes generally only appear as occasional interjections, and were usually drawn from existing proverbs or legends.

[22] A master of language, Zhuang Zhou sometimes engages in logic and reasoning, but then turns it upside down or carries the arguments to absurdity to demonstrate the limitations of human knowledge and the rational world.

Zhuang Zhou believed that the greatest of all human happiness could be achieved through a higher understanding of the nature of things, and that in order to develop oneself fully one needed to express one's innate ability.

[25] Chapter 17 contains a well-known exchange between Zhuang Zhou and Huizi, featuring a heavy use of wordplay; it has been compared to a Socratic dialogue.

This sequence has been cited as an example of Zhuang Zhou's mastery of language, with reason subtly employed in order to make an anti-rationalist point.

Zhuang Zhou seems to have viewed death as a natural process of transformation to be wholly accepted, where a person gives up one form of existence and assumes another.

Master Zhuang said: "I take heaven and earth as my inner and outer coffins, the sun and moon as my pair of jade disks, the stars and constellations as my pearls and beads, the ten thousand things as my funerary gifts.

It also encourages keeping a distance from politics and social obligations, accepting death as a natural transformation, and appreciating things otherwise viewed as useless or lacking purpose.

[5] Contrarily, Zhuang Zhou believed the key to true happiness was to free oneself from worldly impingements through a principle of 'inaction' (wu wei)—action that is not based in purposeful striving or motivated by potential gain.

It argues that humans, owing to their exceptional cognitive ability, tend to create artificial distinctions that remove them from the natural spontaneity of the universe.

Whereas reason and logic as understood in Ancient Greek philosophy proved foundational to the entire Western tradition, Chinese philosophers often preferred to rely on moral persuasion and intuition.

In some appearances, Confucius is subjected to mockery and made "the butt of many jokes", while in others he is treated with unambiguous respect, intermittently serving as the "mouthpiece" for Zhuang Zhou's ideas.

[48] Traces of the Zhuangzi's influence in late Warring States period philosophical texts such as the Guanzi, Han Feizi, and Lüshi Chunqiu suggest that Zhuang Zhou's intellectual lineage was already influential by the 3rd century BC.

[13] During the 4th century AD, the Zhuangzi became a major source of imagery and terminology for the Shangqing School, a new form of Taoism that had become popular among the aristocracy of the Jin dynasty (266–420).

Shangqing School Taoism borrowed numerous terms from the Zhuangzi, such as "perfected man" (真人; zhēnrén), "Great Clarity" (太清; Tài Qīng), and "fasting the mind" (心齋; xīn zhāi).

The Zhuangzi also played a significant role in the formation of Chan Buddhism—and therefore of Zen in Japan—which grew out of "a fusion of Buddhist ideology and ancient Daoist thought."

Traits of Chan practice traceable to the Zhuangzi include a distrust of language and logic, an insistence that the "Way" can be found in everything, even dung and urine, and a fondness for dialogues based on koans.

[52] In 742, an imperial proclamation from Emperor Xuanzong of Tang (r. 712–756) canonized the Zhuangzi as one of the Chinese classics, awarding it the honorific title 'True Scripture of Southern Florescence' (南華真經; Nánhuá zhēnjīng).

The 17th-century scholar Gu Yanwu lamented the flippant use of the Zhuangzi on the imperial examination essays as representing a decline in traditional morals at the end of the Ming dynasty (1368–1644).

[55] Jia Baoyu, the main protagonist of the classic 18th-century novel Dream of the Red Chamber, often turns to the Zhuangzi for comfort amid the strife in his personal and romantic relationships.

[58] In the introduction to his 1994 translation, Victor H. Mair wrote that he "[felt] a sense of injustice that the Dao De Jing is so well known to my fellow citizens while the Zhuangzi is so thoroughly ignored, because I firmly believe that the latter is in every respect a superior work".