A Zhuangzi Who Is Attentive to the World of Man: Rethinking Zhuangzi’s Ethics in the Light of Eske Møllgaard’s Interpretation

According to Eske Møllgaard, Zhuangzi’s ethics is religious rather than positive, as its central aim is not to promote social harmony but to transcend and unbind people from artificially constructed socio-political orders, helping them gain an experience of the world as it originally is. This paper critically reexamines Møllgaard’s view and offers an alternative account of Zhuangzi’s ethics that is more secular, positive, and socially grounded. First, the paper argues that Zhuangzi’s attitude toward social misfits is actually quite negative, which reveals that Zhuangzi regards social clumsiness as a mistake and believes that a perfected person must be adept at worldly affairs. Next, the paper contends that Zhuangzi’s moral law is essentially different from the Kantian one suggested by Møllgaard. It involves respecting individual differences by adapting one’s actions according to the ethical standards of the specific recipient of the action, which can harmonize interpersonal relationships within social settings. Finally, the paper suggests that Zhuangzi does not draw an ontological distinction between the realm of Heaven (i.e., the world as it originally is) and the realm of man (i.e., an artificially constructed world), which renders any interpretation of Zhuangzi’s ethics that presupposes such a distinction untenable.