Zhuangzi's butterfly dream

In the second chapter of the Zhuangzi, titled roughly Discussion on Making All Things Equal, a short passage tells of Zhuang Zhou dreaming that he is a butterfly. He flits about, happy and following his whims, with no idea that he is Zhou. Then he suddenly wakes and is solidly Zhou again. He does not know whether he was Zhou dreaming he was a butterfly, or is now a butterfly dreaming he is Zhou. The text adds that between Zhou and the butterfly there must be some distinction, and calls this the transformation of things.²

Zhuang Zhou lived in the fourth century BCE in the state of Song, during the Warring States period, and the first seven chapters of the book, the inner chapters, are usually credited to him, while the rest was added by later hands. The standard 33-chapter text was edited by Guo Xiang around 300 CE. The parable belongs to a chapter arguing that every viewpoint is partial: what seems certain to one creature, whether a man, a fish or a butterfly, seems different to another. The point is less a worry about whether anything is real than a way of loosening the grip of fixed categories, including the distinction between life and death. A few lines earlier the chapter speaks of a great awakening, after which we will see that this life is a great dream. Elsewhere the book shows Zhuangzi drumming on a bowl and singing after his wife's death, because he treats it as one more transformation.¹²

Readers compare the passage to Descartes' dream argument, which uses the same doubt to arrive at a firm certainty, while Zhuangzi uses it to dissolve the demand for certainty. It has inspired poets, painters and, in modern times, philosophers and filmmakers.²