The historical figure behind the philosophical masterwork [[KR5c0051|Nánhuá zhēn jīng]] 南華真經 (the Zhuāngzǐ 莊子). Known to ancient biography almost entirely through the notice at Shǐjì 史記 63.2143–45 and a handful of incidental references in the Hán Fēi zǐ 韓非子 and the Lǚshì chūnqiū 呂氏春秋.
Native place and office. The Shǐjì records that Zhuāng Zhōu was a man of Měng 蒙, a township in the ancient state of Sòng 宋 near modern Shāngqiū 商丘 in eastern Hénán, at the intersection of present-day Hénán, Shāndōng, Jiāngsū, and Ānhuī. He held the minor office of functionary at the Lacquer Garden (Qī yuán lì 漆園吏) — the seat of a state-managed lacquer plantation — before retiring to the life of an impecunious philosopher. After the fall of Sòng in 286 BCE, the Měng region fell to Chǔ 楚, and Zhuāng Zhōu is therefore variably described in later sources as a man of Sòng or a man of Chǔ.
Dates. The Shǐjì places Zhuāng Zhōu’s floruit in the reigns of King Huì of Wèi 魏惠王 (r. c. 369–325 BCE) and King Wēi of Chǔ 楚威王 (r. c. 339–328 BCE), and records that King Wēi invited him to court with offers of high office — which Zhuāng Zhōu famously refused, comparing the prospect to that of a sacrificial ox. These anchor points place him in the second half of the fourth century BCE, making him roughly contemporary with Mèngzǐ 孟子 (c. 372–289 BCE). The standard modern tentative dates — given by Liú Xiàogǎn 劉笑敢 and widely accepted — are c. 369–286 BCE (Liú, Classifying the Zhuangzi Chapters 41). Earlier lifedate proposals include c. 369–298 BCE (Qián Mù 錢穆) and the simpler “second half of the fourth century” (Schipper 2004, 1:60).
The work under his name. Tradition ascribes to him the entire Zhuāngzǐ in its Hàn shū, Yìwén zhì 漢書藝文志 form of 52 piān (100,000+ characters). The received 33-chapter redaction of 郭象 (Guō Xiàng, d. 312) reduces this to ≈70,000 characters; virtually none of the excised 19 piān survives independently. Since Liú Xiàogǎn’s foundational stratigraphy and A. C. Graham’s subsequent analysis, scholarly consensus holds that only the seven Nèi piān 內篇 (1. Xiāoyáo yóu 逍遥遊, 2. Qí wù lùn 齊物論, 3. Yǎng shēng zhǔ 養生主, 4. Rén jiān shì 人閒世, 5. Dé chōng fú 德充符, 6. Dà zōng shī 大宗師, 7. Yìng dì wáng 應帝王) can be confidently attributed to Zhuāng Zhōu himself; the Wài piān 外篇 and Zá piān 雜篇 are the work of his immediate and extended philosophical descendants, with late additions continuing into the early Hàn.
Canonisation. Táng Xuánzōng 唐玄宗 in 742 CE enfeoffed Zhuāng Zhōu posthumously as Nánhuá zhēn rén 南華真人 (“Perfected of the Southern Florescence”), and decreed that the book be called Nánhuá zhēn jīng. The title refers at once to the cosmological flight southward of the Péng 鵬 bird in Xiāoyáo yóu and to the later Daoist hagiographic identification of Zhuāng Zhōu’s retirement place as Nánhuá Shān 南華山 in Cáozhōu 曹州 (modern Hézé, Shāndōng). He is one of the four disciples of Lǎozǐ 老子 canonised simultaneously under the Táng — the others being Lièzǐ (列禦寇), Wénzǐ, and Kàngcāng zǐ (庚桑楚).
Philosophical legacy. The Zhuāngzǐ has had a definitive influence on the entire subsequent Chinese tradition — not only on philosophical Daoism (by way of WèiJìn xuánxué 玄學, especially Guō Xiàng and Xiàng Xiù 向秀), but equally on Chán 禪 Buddhism (the butterfly-dream, the cook’s ox, the useless tree, and the drilling of Húndùn 渾沌 are all gōng àn 公案 staples), on the literati aesthetic of xiāoyáo 逍遥 freedom, and on the broader sān jiào 三教 synthesis of the late imperial period. On the strength of the Nèi piān alone, Zhuāng Zhōu is generally regarded — with Lǎozǐ and Kǒngzǐ — as one of the three most influential philosophical minds of pre-Imperial China.
No CBDB record exists for Zhuāng Zhōu given his pre-Qín dates and the scarcity of biographical detail.