The Tension Between Illusion and Reality in Zhuangzi’s ‘Dream of the Butterfly.’ Philosophical Analysis of Western Reception

• Main Author: Agnė Budriūnaitė
• Format: Article
• Language: deu
• Published: Institute of Philosophy of the Jagiellonian University 2014-03-01
• Series: The Polish Journal of Aesthetics
• Subjects: allegories in daoism; zhuangzi; illusion; reality; forgetting
• Online Access: https://pjaesthetics.uj.edu.pl/documents/138618288/138871836/eik_32_8.pdf/66e2e55d-d1cf-4e41-9c8d-c9f28ea7e890
• ISSN: 2544-8242; 2544-8242

One of the most important allegories of Daoism is the ‘Dream of the Butterfly’ in the second chapter of the Zhuangzi (Qi wu lun). Sometimes it is supposed to be a representation of all Daoist or even all Chinese philosophy in the West. This allegory encompasses fundamental Daoist notions, such as spontaneity, ‘free and easy wandering,’ non-action (wu wei), natural self-alternation (ziran), the no-perspective of a sage and the understanding of correlation between life and death. The purpose of this paper is a philosophical analysis of the relationship between illusion and reality in the Zhuangzi looking from the ‘Western’ perspective. To achieve this, I will review some of the most distinct English translations of the allegory that show possible multiple meanings of the allegory and many fundamentally different, sometimes opposite interpretations of it and discuss the significance of the relationship between illusion and reality. There is a huge body of academic literature about translating and interpreting the texts ascribed to the Zhuangzi. I will mention only some of the commentaries and will pay more attention to other stories of the Zhuangzi, looking there for the explication and explanation of the main ideas found in the ‘Dream of the Butterfly.’