Zhuangzi’s Butterfly

Are you listening to the world’s only Chinese Literature podcast right now? Or are you just a butterfly floating around who is dreaming that you are a human who is listening to this podcast? How can you prove that you are actually the human rather than a butterfly dreaming they are a human? Is it even possible to prove something like that?

You have now entered a world of philosophical pleasure and pain that is the Zhuangzi, an ancient Chinese text that has teased and troubled scholars for almost three millennia. We will game around with some of the issues playing out in the dream of the butterfly, the most famous passage in the text.