Multiple Perspectives: The First Chapter Of Zhuangzi

Zhuangzi, titled after the author himself, explores the idea of multiple perspectives and the ability to recognize the limitations of each of these perspectives due to the fact that there is no “view from nowhere,” or such a thing as a God’s-eye perspective. This concept is established from the first chapter of the Zhuangzi, which he opens with the story of the great bird. The story begins with the great bird rising up ninety thousand li in order to gain enough wind to support her massive wings and carry her to the south. The small creatures, observing from the ground, laugh at the bird, not understanding why so much energy would be expended to go that high up, when they themselves struggle to even make it up a tree. (208-209) Two perspectives

The frog is so proud of himself and boasts to the turtle about the “collapsed well” that he lives in where he can “float in the water...[and] stomp in the mud” all while controlling all the “larvae and shrimp and polliwogs” of which “none of them can match [him].” (246) The turtle tells the frog of the sea, which “A thousand li wouldn’t measure its breadth. A thousand fathoms wouldn’t plumb its depths.” (246) It is so vast that it doesn’t “shift for and instant [nor]...advance or retreat a little or a lot.” The frog has a partial perspective, limited by the frog’s inability to go no further than “spring[ing] on the railing, or...rest[ing] in the hollow of a missing brick.” Therefore, the frog’s narrow mindedness leads him to naively believe that just because he “control[s] the water of an entire gully,” that his perspective is best and no other exists out there, but once again it is show that there is no God’s-eye view. Technically both perspectives are right and it only makes the frog be narrow-minded through his unwillingness to look out beyond the “well” of his perspective. Zhuangzi is trying to teach against that, instead teaching appreciation for other