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Bell & Howell Information and Learning: Foreign Text Omitted.
This is how Herbert A. Giles rendered the famous "Dream of the Butterfly" episode from the Zhuangzi ... into English:
Once upon a time, I, Chuang Tzu, dreamt I was a butterfly, fluttering hither and thither, to all intents and purposes a butterfly. I was conscious only of following my fancies as a butterfly, and was unconscious of my individuality as a man. Suddenly, I awaked, and there I lay, myself again. Now I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly, dreaming I am a man. Between a man and a butterfly there is necessarily a barrier. The transition is called Metempsychosis.1
Giles' translation turned out to be rather influential in the Western philosophical world, since it was eventually used by Martin Buber as a main source for his Reden and Gleichnisse des Tschuang-Tse2 (Speeches and allegories of Zhuangzi). Buber's edition became very popular among Western intellectuals and inspired a new wave of exoticism among certain well-known philosophers and writers like Martin Heidegger and Hermann Hesse.3
I cite Giles' translation not so much because of its impact on the Western image of Chinese philosophy (and, I presume, the impact this image has had in turn on the contemporary understanding of Chinese philosophy, especially of Daoism, in China itself) as because of the peculiar interpretation it confers on the "Dream of the Butterfly." This interpretation on the one hand is highly representative of what might be called the general understanding of Daoist philosophy in our time while on the other it quite obviously contradicts a traditional Daoist understanding of the text in China. The present essay may thus also be understood as a case study of contemporary misconceptions of "Eastern" philosophy or "wisdom."
Giles' translation of this short, but extremely complex passage of the Zhuangzi is more or less compatible with most Western and modern Chinese interpretations and commentaries.4 This general line of understanding of the "Dream of the Butterfly" and its corresponding philosophical teaching can be summed up in the following manner: Zhuang Zhou ... dreams he is a butterfly; then he wakes up, remembers his dream, and, because of his remembrance,...