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Zhuangzi: Being One With Ten Thousand Things

September 28, 2025·11 min·1 clip

Zhuangzi asks whether humans, eels, or monkeys know the right place to live, challenging all notions of objective good and bad.

1. Philosophy Talk, hosted by Josh Landy and Ray Briggs from KALW San Francisco, presents an excerpt on Zhuangzi, the Taoist philosopher of the 4th century BCE. 2. Hosts Josh Landy, who directs the Philosophy and Literature Initiative at Stanford, and Ray Briggs, who teaches philosophy at Stanford, co-present with their characteristic debate format. 3. The episode's core question is what Zhuangzi can tell us about how to live when all standards of good and bad are relative to the knower. 4. Zhuangzi's eel-and-monkey passage is read aloud: eels thrive in damp places, monkeys in trees, and humans prefer beds under roofs — but this, Josh argues, implies humans do have something that is objectively good for them. 5. Ray argues Zhuangzi's target is Confucian prescriptivism — the idea that humans must respect elders, follow rituals, and perfectly inhabit social roles — which Zhuangzi undermines with the useless tree parable. 6. The useless tree, so gnarly no carpenter can use it, survives while useful trees are cut down — suggesting survival comes from refusing the logic of instrumental value. 7. The waterfall-swimmer story is introduced: a man who swims in a raging waterfall tells observers he was not taught, he simply followed his inborn nature, which Zhuangzi offers as a model of knowing without being told. 8. Josh catalogs the resulting paradoxes: 'The sage tells me not to listen to sages. The advice is not to listen to advice. There's a practice, but it doesn't involve practice. And it's good for us, except that nothing is good or bad.' 9. Ray responds with 'Oh Josh, you and your logic,' then says 'I'm not trying to tell you anything. How could I possibly know?' — enacting the Zhuangzi position within the debate itself. 10. Josh notes that while detachment might bring calm, Zhuangzi's quote — 'it burdens me with a physical form, labors me with life, eases me with old age, rests me with death' — does not describe a cheerful existence. 11. Reporter Holly J. McDede introduces Spley Lim Shu, Zhuangzi's fictional character with his chin in his navel and organs on display, who supports himself by sewing and sifting grain — living his best life by any standard Zhuangzi would accept. 12. Brian Van Norden of Vassar College explains that he co-wrote a New York Times op-ed arguing Zhuangzi challenged the equation of 'normal equals good and different equals bad' more than 2,500 years ago. 13. Disability scholar John Altman notes that Zhuangzi's knotted tree parable — plant it in the wasteland, rest under its shadow, 'no axe or bill prepares its end' — confers dignity on beings deemed useless by instrumental thinking. 14. Altman contrasts Zhuangzi with Aristotle, who wrote that deformed children should be left to die, and with Confucius, who judges the amputee Sushan Notos — whom Zhuangzi defends. 15. Sushan Notos tells Confucius he has 'something worth more than a foot' and that 'there is nothing that heaven doesn't cover, nothing that earth doesn't bear up.' 16. Brian Van Norden describes Zhuangzi as 'one of the earliest voices to say there's an immense beauty' in alterity — the philosophical term for otherness or difference. 17. Xinyu Pai, host of the 10,000 Things podcast about Asian-American life, explains that in Chinese classical poetry the number 10,000 conveys something infinite, vast, and unfathomable — consistent with Zhuangzi's 'oneness with 10,000 things.' 18. The episode's tone is brisk and playful: the hosts argue genuinely, the field report is narrative, and the philosophical stakes are kept accessible without being diluted. 19. This excerpt will most appeal to listeners who enjoy philosophy through wit, pop-culture bridges, and short-form debates rather than dense academic exposition. 20. Listeners looking for the full interview with Paul Chelberg are directed to philosophytalk.org, as this is an abbreviated excerpt.

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