Zhuangzi

⚖The case for it

Where the Tao Te Ching reads like scripture, the Zhuangzi reads like jazz. Wildly imaginative, genuinely funny, philosophically radical. Zhuangzi dreams he's a butterfly and wonders who's dreaming whom. His relativism anticipates postmodernism by 2,300 years. The 'Cook Ding' passage on butchering an ox is the most beautiful description of mastery ever written.

— the canon

✕The case against

Only the seven Inner Chapters are reliably the master's; the other twenty-six are later hands of wildly uneven quality, and most editions don't warn you where the voltage drops. The wordplay dies in English, so translation choice decides whether you get wit or porridge. And the relativism that delights philosophers has a quietist underside: it works equally well as advice for serving any ruler.

— the honest librarian