Zhuangzi vs Nietzsche: Who Really Frees You From Values?

Zhuangzi vs Nietzsche: Who Really Frees You From Values?

Both men tell you the values you inherited aren't sacred. Then they split. Nietzsche wants you to write a replacement table and enforce it on yourself. Zhuangzi wants you to stop weighing things at all. The labels are backwards: the famous destroyer builds, and the famous drifter is the radical one.

Key Takeaways

• Nietzsche calls real philosophers "commanders and law-givers" who say "Thus SHALL it be!" That's legislation, not demolition, and it makes you the enforcer.
• Zhuangzi removes the ranking instead of rewriting it: 以道觀之，物无貴賤 (Autumn Floods, ch. 17).
• Neither man thinks values are discovered. They split entirely on what you owe once you know that.

What is the real difference between Zhuangzi and Nietzsche?

The difference is what happens after the old standard falls apart.

Nietzsche's answer is replacement. In The Joyful Wisdom he states his creed in one line: "That the weights of all things must be determined anew" (§269). Note the verb: the weights get re-determined, not discarded. Somebody still weighs.

Zhuangzi's answer is subtraction. In "Autumn Floods," the sea god tells the river god that seen from the Way (以道觀之，物无貴賤) no thing is noble and no thing is base, while seen from the things themselves (以物觀之，自貴而相賤) each one treats itself as noble and everything else as base.

That's not a better ranking. It's a claim that the ranking was your own posture the whole time. One man reforms the court. The other questions why you convened one.

Why do so many readers feel torn between them?

Because both do work, and the work pulls in opposite directions.

A reader on r/taoism laid the bind out plainly in a thread that drew 80 upvotes and 41 comments. They described real benefit from Daoist stillness, then wrote that they'd "also, however, experienced great joy from Nietzsche's 'will to power' and the invention of a new table of values for myself." Their conclusion: "I am getting some weird kind of emotional headache from this as if some cognitive dissonance is happening."

That headache is accurate. It isn't confusion, it's detection. A separate r/taoism thread put the same tension as a slogan: "Nietzsche is yang to Lao Tzu's yin." Comfortable, but it papers over a real conflict. You cannot both build your own measuring stick and put the measuring stick down. Pick the one that matches your actual problem, which the last section here helps you do.

Does Nietzsche destroy values, or does he legislate new ones?

He legislates, and he says so directly.

[UNIQUE INSIGHT] The popular Nietzsche smashes tablets. The Nietzsche on the page hands you a courthouse. Beyond Good and Evil §211: "THE REAL PHILOSOPHERS, HOWEVER, ARE COMMANDERS AND LAW-GIVERS; they say: 'Thus SHALL it be!' ... Their 'knowing' is CREATING, their creating is a law-giving, their will to truth is—WILL TO POWER."

Thus Spake Zarathustra makes the demand personal, and it's brutal: "Canst thou give unto thyself thy bad and thy good, and set up thy will as a law over thee? Canst thou be judge for thyself, and avenger of thy law?"

Judge and avenger. You don't get released from the tribunal. You get promoted inside it, and now you work both benches. Anyone who reads Nietzsche as permission to stop caring has read the demolition notice and skipped the building permit stapled behind it.

What does Zhuangzi do instead of re-ranking?

He questions the instrument rather than the reading.

"Autumn Floods" runs through the standard moves and disarms each one. Judge by difference (以差觀之，因其所大而大之，則萬物莫不大), call a thing large because it happens to be larger than something else, and nothing in the world fails to come out large. Scale up your comparison class and the same object flips, which tells you the verdict was never in the object.

The same chapter explains why people miss this. You can't discuss the sea with a frog in a well, because it's confined to its hole (井蛙不可以語於海者，拘於虛也), and you can't discuss the Way with a narrow scholar, because he's bound by his training (曲士不可以語於道者，束於教也).

That last clause matters here. Zhuangzi treats a rigid value system as a spatial limit, not a moral failing. Nietzsche treats inherited morality as an injury to be avenged. Different diagnosis, and the diagnosis drives the whole treatment.

How do Zhuangzi and Nietzsche compare side by side?

Same six questions, put to each man, with the passage each answer rests on.

Question	Nietzsche	Zhuangzi
Where do values come from?	People made them: "they took it not, they found it not" (Zarathustra I)	Use makes them: 道行之而成，物謂之而然 (齊物論)
What's wrong right now?	You're obeying a table built by and for someone weaker	You're running a scale that sets you against everything (秋水)
So what should you do?	Write a new table and enforce it (Beyond Good and Evil §211)	Stop assigning noble and base (秋水)
What about self-improvement?	"Thou shalt become what thou art" (Joyful Wisdom §270)	Don't stretch the duck's leg: 鳧脛雖短，續之則憂 (駢拇)
Who is the model person?	The creator, the law-giver	One who uses distinctions without being ruled by them (兩行)
What does it cost you?	You become your own judge and avenger	You get no program for Monday morning

Does Zhuangzi think nothing matters?

No, and the text blocks that reading explicitly.

This is the most common misreading, so it's worth the space. Zhuangzi doesn't tell you to abandon distinctions, but to hold them loosely and keep using them. The "Discussion on Making All Things Equal" (齊物論) names the practice as 為是不用而寓諸庸, meaning the adept declines to insist on a position and lodges it instead in the ordinary use of things.

He calls the result 兩行, walking both ways at once. You keep calling the bus late and the soup hot, and you just stop believing the universe ever signed off on your rankings.

Then comes his sharpest joke. A monkey keeper offers his monkeys three chestnuts in the morning and four at night; they're furious. He offers four in the morning and three at night; they're delighted. Nothing in name or substance had changed, yet delight and anger were both put to work (名實未虧而喜怒為用). That isn't nihilism. It's a warning about which totals actually move you.

Why would Zhuangzi reject "become what you are"?

Because on his account that project is an injury with good branding.

[UNIQUE INSIGHT] Nietzsche's self-overcoming and Zhuangzi's carpenter's tools are the same instrument wearing different labels. Zarathustra is explicit that creation requires damage: "he who hath to be a creator in good and evil—verily, he hath first to be a destroyer, and break values in pieces."

"Webbed Toes" (駢拇) answers that sentence 2,200 years early. The duck's legs are short, but stretch them and it suffers; the crane's are long, but cut them and it grieves (鳧脛雖短，續之則憂；鶴脛雖長，斷之則悲). What's long by nature isn't to be cut, and what's short by nature isn't to be extended (故性長非所斷，性短非所續).

The general rule follows: whatever needs hook and line, compass and square to be made straight is having its nature whittled away (待鉤繩規矩而正者，是削其性也). Nietzsche calls the tool a hammer. Zhuangzi calls it a plane. Both shape a person against the grain, and only one of them counts that as a cost.

Do Zhuangzi and Nietzsche agree about anything?

Yes, on the exact point most people assume divides them.

[UNIQUE INSIGHT] The usual framing says the split is East versus West on whether values are objective. Both men answer no, and they answer it almost identically. Zarathustra, in "The Thousand and One Goals": "Verily, men have given unto themselves all their good and bad. Verily, they took it not, they found it not, it came not unto them as a voice from heaven."

Now set that beside 齊物論, where a road becomes a road by people walking it and a thing is so because people call it so (道行之而成，物謂之而然).

Two writers, roughly 2,200 years and one continent apart, with no evidence of contact, landing on the same anti-realism about value. So the interesting disagreement was never about the source, but about the obligation that follows. Nietzsche reads "we made it" as a summons to make a better one. Zhuangzi reads it as permission to stop treating any of them as binding.

Does Zhuangzi's own argument defeat itself?

Yes, and he says so before you can.

[UNIQUE INSIGHT] Every seminar raises the same objection: if no view is privileged, isn't "no view is privileged" also unprivileged? Zhuangzi got there first, in 齊物論, where he writes that he has now said something but doesn't know whether what he said really says anything or not (今我則已有謂矣，而未知吾所謂之，其果有謂乎？其果无謂乎？).

He doesn't patch the hole. He leaves it open and keeps writing, which is the move his position requires. A view that claimed to be the correct one would be self-refuting. A view that declines to claim correctness survives its own application, at the price of never being a doctrine you can defend.

Nietzsche can't afford that. His revaluation has to land, or the higher type is just one more opinion with better prose. He needs a rank order among values while denying any external ground for one. That tension is his to carry, and he carries it openly rather than solving it.

Where is Nietzsche's weakest point?

In the gap between "you make your values" and "yours are better."

He needs both. The first claim is his demolition; the second is his whole project. But if no table comes as "a voice from heaven," the table you write doesn't either. Strength is his usual answer, which risks defining the good as whatever the strong prefer, an answer that only satisfies people already inclined to it. The Stanford Encyclopedia's survey of his moral and political thought treats this as a live scholarly problem, not a settled one.

Zhuangzi's weakness is the mirror image, and it's just as real. Drop the scale and you're left holding very little on a Tuesday when a decision is due. "Autumn Floods" tells you the frog's well is small, but it doesn't tell you which job to take. His honesty about that is admirable and completely unhelpful when you need an answer by five.

How do you tell which one you need?

Ask what's actually tiring you out, then follow it.

1. Name the fatigue. Are you exhausted from obeying a standard you didn't pick, or exhausted from measuring yourself at all? These feel identical and aren't.
2. If it's the first, take Nietzsche. You already have a standard you'd rather live by and haven't dared to state. His answer is work, not relief: write the table, then be the judge and avenger of it.
3. If it's the second, Nietzsche will make it worse. Here's the test. Imagine you win completely by a standard you wrote yourself. If the relief lasts about a week before the next benchmark appears, the scale is the problem, not the reading. That's when 秋水 becomes useful.

Most people asking this question are in case three and shopping in case two. If you'd rather work through your own version out loud, ask Zhuangzi directly.

How is this different from your other comparisons?

Different question, different chapters, no overlap.

Zhuangzi vs Marcus Aurelius asks what to do when acceptance still hurts, and runs on 至樂. This piece asks where value comes from, and runs on 秋水, 駢拇, and unused parts of 齊物論. Stop caring what people think uses 逍遙遊 on other people's opinions of you; here the issue is your own scale, which survives an empty room.

The other paired studies sit elsewhere. Xunzi vs Hobbes and Mencius vs Rousseau argue about human nature. Han Feizi vs Machiavelli asks whether power sits in the person or the post. Sun Tzu vs Clausewitz and Sun Tzu vs Machiavelli concern conflict, not value. And Taoism vs Stoicism for anxiety is a practical comparison, not a textual one.

Frequently asked questions

Did Nietzsche ever read Zhuangzi? There's no evidence he did. Nietzsche's working life ended in January 1889, and Martin Buber's German selection, Reden und Gleichnisse des Tschuang-Tse, appeared in 1910 from Insel Verlag, made from the English of Legge and Giles. Any resemblance is convergence, not influence.

Is Zhuangzi a nihilist? No. Nihilism says nothing has value. Zhuangzi says values are real as human practices and unreliable as cosmic verdicts, which is why he keeps using them (兩行) instead of abandoning them.

Is Daoism compatible with the will to power? Partly. Both reject inherited morality as binding. They diverge on self-shaping: 駢拇 treats it as damage, while Nietzsche treats it as the point. You can hold both attitudes in sequence, but not at once.

Which one is easier to actually practice? Nietzsche is harder to do and easier to describe. Zhuangzi is easier to do and nearly impossible to describe, which is why his text is mostly stories rather than arguments.

Does this mean I should stop setting goals? Not on Zhuangzi's account. He targets the ranking of yourself against others, not action. The monkey keeper still feeds the monkeys; he just isn't fooled by the arithmetic.

Sources

• Zhuangzi, 齊物論 ("Discussion on Making All Things Equal"), zh.wikisource.org (retrieved 2026-09-03)
• Zhuangzi, 秋水 ("Autumn Floods"), zh.wikisource.org (retrieved 2026-09-03)
• Zhuangzi, 駢拇 ("Webbed Toes"), zh.wikisource.org (retrieved 2026-09-03)
• 南華真經註疏 (Guo Xiang's commentary with Cheng Xuanying's subcommentary), vols. 2, 10, 19, Wikisource (retrieved 2026-09-03) — used as the independent cross-check edition
• Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra, trans. Thomas Common, Project Gutenberg ebook 1998 (retrieved 2026-09-03)
• Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, trans. Helen Zimmern, Project Gutenberg ebook 4363 (retrieved 2026-09-03)
• Nietzsche, The Genealogy of Morals, trans. Horace B. Samuel, Project Gutenberg ebook 52319 (retrieved 2026-09-03)
• Nietzsche, The Joyful Wisdom, trans. Thomas Common, Project Gutenberg ebook 52881 (retrieved 2026-09-03)
• Graham Parkes, ed., Nietzsche and Asian Thought (University of Chicago Press, 1991), publisher page; see also his 1983 essay "The Wandering Dance: Chuang-tzu and Zarathustra," and the overview of the collection
• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, "Zhuangzi" and "Nietzsche" (retrieved 2026-09-03)

A note on texts and translation. Chinese passages were taken from the Wikisource base text of the 莊子 and checked character by character against a second, independent edition, the 南華真經註疏 with Guo Xiang's commentary and Cheng Xuanying's subcommentary. The two agree throughout, with routine glyph variation (无/無, 爲/為) and one substantive difference worth naming: where the base text reads 鳧脛雖短 ("the duck's shins"), the commentary edition reads 鳧經雖短, and Cheng Xuanying glosses the character himself as 經，腳也 ("經 means leg"). Same sentence, same sense, one character apart. English renderings of the Chinese are mine. All Nietzsche quotations are verbatim from the public-domain translations listed above, not my own, with the translators' capitalisation preserved. Note that Project Gutenberg's catalogue record for ebook 52319 credits J. M. Kennedy, who translated the appended fragment; the title page of the Genealogy itself reads Horace B. Samuel.

Related reading

• What Zhuangzi would tell a mid-career professional asking "am I in the right job?"
• Fear of death is ruining my life
• The workaholic who can't switch off
• How to cope with the fear of getting older
• How to stop comparing yourself to more successful people
• Aristotle's virtue ethics, explained by Confucius
• Meet Zhuangzi or put your own question to him