The Western Jìn 西晉 xuánxué 玄學 philosopher who produced the definitive thirty-three-chapter redaction of the [[KR5c0051|Nánhuá zhēn jīng]] (the Zhuāngzǐ 莊子) together with its authoritative commentary, and whose interpretive system of dú huà 獨化 (“lone self-transformation”) shaped the entire subsequent reception of the Zhuāngzǐ in China.
Lifedates and native place. Guō Xiàng’s dates are generally given as c. 252–312 CE (some sources give c. 253 or c. 250 for the birth). Native of Hénán 河南 — his preface to the Nánhuá zhēn jīng is signed Hénán Guō Xiàng Zǐxuán zhuàn 河南郭象子玄撰, i.e. Guō Xiàng of Hénán, zì Zǐxuán. Best biographical source is the Jìn shū 晉書 50.1396–97, with supplementary material in Shìshuō xīnyǔ 世說新語, especially the Wén xué 文學 and Shǎng yù 賞譽 chapters.
Career and intellectual circle. Under the Western Jìn he served briefly in the central administration and was associated with the cháng zhū xiāng zǎo mò ér guò nánxīng court circle and with the regent Sīmǎ Yuè 司馬越 (d. 311), who employed him as his head of staff (zhǔ bù 主簿) in his closing years. The Jìn shū notice states that Guō Xiàng’s eloquence in qīng tán 清談 (“pure conversation”) was compared to “the torrent of an overflowing river,” and that his contemporaries regarded him as Wáng Bì’s 王弼 (226–249) only serious successor in xuánxué philosophy. He was part of the generation of xuánxué scholars that included Wáng Yǎn 王衍 (256–311), Lè Guǎng 樂廣 (d. 304), and Xiàng Xiù 向秀 (c. 227–272).
The Zhuāngzǐ redaction and commentary. Guō Xiàng’s most consequential work — and his monument to the philosophical tradition — is his Zhuāngzǐ zhù 莊子注, which reduced the Hàn shū, Yìwén zhì 漢書藝文志 52-piān Zhuāngzǐ (7 inner, 28 outer, 14 miscellaneous, 3 jiěshuō 解說) to the 33-piān redaction (7 inner, 15 outer, 11 miscellaneous) that has been the sole transmitted form of the text ever since. His preface declares that he “considered sizeable parts of the work spurious or superfluous and therefore discarded them” (per Guō Qìngfán 郭慶藩, Zhuāngzǐ jí shì 莊子集釋) — and virtually none of the excised piān survives independently. The commentary itself expounds a distinctive philosophical system in which each thing is understood to “self-transform” spontaneously (zì huà 自化, dú huà 獨化) without external cause or cosmic architect, in the absence of any genuinely transcendent dào 道. This reading is deeply at odds with the Wáng Bì–Lǎozǐ reading of dào as ontological ground, and its long-range influence — especially on Sòng Neo-Confucian philosophers like Zhū Xī 朱熹 — has been profound.
The Xiàng Xiù plagiarism question. Shìshuō xīnyǔ, Wén xué 17 notoriously alleges that Guō Xiàng plagiarised the commentary of his elder contemporary Xiàng Xiù 向秀 (c. 227–272), elaborating only the Qiū shuǐ 秋水 and Zhì lè 至樂 chapters himself. The charge has been debated continuously from the fifth century to the present. The modern consensus — developed in Tāng Yòngtóng 湯用彤 (Wèi Jìn xuánxué lùn gǎo 魏晉玄學論稿), Wáng Shūmín 王叔岷 (Zhuāngzǐ jiào quán 莊子校詮), and Brook Ziporyn (The Penumbra Unbound, 2003) — is that the overlap between Xiàng Xiù’s (now lost) commentary and Guō Xiàng’s is substantial (the two worked in an overlapping Zhú Lín 竹林 xuánxué milieu) but that Guō Xiàng’s reworking represents a genuinely distinct philosophical synthesis, and that the charge of outright plagiarism is exaggerated.
Other surviving work. Guō Xiàng is also credited with commentaries on the Lúnyǔ 論語 and the Lǎozǐ (both lost, preserved only in quotation in Huáng Kǎn 皇侃 and elsewhere).
Canonical significance. In the Táng and after, Guō Xiàng’s 33-chapter Zhuāngzǐ was the only available text, and his xuánxué reading became the default interpretive frame for the text. Later commentators — Chéng Xuányīng 成玄英 (Táng), Lín Xīyì 林希逸 (Southern Sòng), and Guō Qìngfán 郭慶藩 (late Qīng) — all work from within the Guō Xiàng redaction. The preface of Guō Xiàng’s edition is preserved at the head of DZ 670 / KR5c0051.
No CBDB record is located given the early medieval dates.