SOURCE: Parkes, Graham. “The Wandering Dance: Chuang Tzu and Zarathustra.” Philosophy East and West: A Quarterly of Asian and Comparative Thought 23, no. 3 (July 1983): 235-50.

In the following essay, Parker examines the similarities between the philosophies of Chuang Tzu and Friedrich Nietzsche.

Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra and the collection of chapters known as the Chuang Tzu are philosophical texts from quite different times and places, written in absolutely unrelated languages and stemming from totally disparate historical and cultural circumstances. The Chuang Tzu dates from the end of the Warring States period in ancient China and is, along with the Lao Tzu, the central text of Taoist philosophy, a source ever returned to and a lasting formative influence on Chinese thought. While Zarathustra prophetically ushers in the twentieth century, it more ominously finishes off two and a half millennia of Western metaphysics. But in spite of these differences, the style...