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Once Zhuangzi dreamed he was a butterfly. Waking, he no longer knew whether he was a man who had dreamed he was a butterfly, or a butterfly now dreaming it was a man.

Zhuangzi, chapter 2

Philosophy

The story behind the card

The story is in the second chapter of the Zhuangzi, a book of Daoist philosophy named after the thinker Zhuang Zhou, who lived in China in the 4th century BC. Daoism, which the book shaped together with the Tao Te Ching, questions fixed categories and values moving with change. The passage does not end in pure doubt: it adds that there must be some difference between Zhuangzi and the butterfly, and calls this 'the transformation of things'. Some two thousand years later, René Descartes raised a similar question about dreaming and waking.

Türkçe oku
Zhuangzi bir keresinde rüyasında kelebek olduğunu gördü. Uyanınca, kelebek olduğunu düşleyen bir insan mı, yoksa şimdi insan olduğunu düşleyen bir kelebek mi olduğunu bilemedi.
Zhuangzi, 2. bölüm

Öykü, adını MÖ 4. yüzyılda Çin'de yaşamış düşünür Zhuang Zhou'dan alan Taocu felsefe kitabı Zhuangzi'nin ikinci bölümünde geçer. Tao Te Ching ile birlikte Taoculuğu biçimlendiren bu kitap, katı kalıplardan kuşkulanır ve değişimle birlikte akmayı değerli bulur. Pasaj salt bir kuşkuyla bitmez: Zhuangzi ile kelebek arasında mutlaka bir fark olmalıdır, der ve buna “şeylerin dönüşümü” adını verir. Yaklaşık iki bin yıl sonra René Descartes da rüya ile uyanıklık üzerine benzer bir soru sordu.

Sources and further reading

Background reading: Zhuangzi (book)
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