In an insightful essay, Professor Paul Gewirtz of Yale Law School notes: “China today places great value on making money and on self-interested material success, long denied to the Chinese. But values in addition to individual materialism are needed to hold a country together and make it a good country. Where will these values continue to come from in China? The announced ideology of China’s Communist Party no longer seems to be a source of moral values for Chinese society.”

Those who find political inspiration in the Zhuangzi today see it as a native alternative to Legalist realism and Confucian idealism, both of which call for government intervention in the lives of individuals and an activist foreign policy (albeit in very different ways). Although it is still not a common text in political discourse, the Zhuangzi may increasingly come to be a resource for those in China defending a pluralist and non-interventionist approach to politics.

Bryan W. Van Norden is a professor of philosophy at Vassar College, and the author most recently of Introduction to Classical Chinese Philosophy (Hackett Publishing, 2011). You can follow him on twitter: @BryanVanNorden.

Image: Wikimedia Commons/如沐西风