Is Freedom in Necessity or in Happiness ?

The opening of Zhuangzi 莊子1 is subject of a long and ongoing controversy in both Chinese and Western interpretive tradition.2 The most debated issue in this discussion is the nature of relationship between big things, as represented by a huge Peng bird, and small things, as embodied by a cicada and dove. This paper will work with two traditional Chinese commentaries on Zhuangzi that represent the earliest articulations of two opposing perspectives on this relationship, charting the battlefield for later interpreters.3 Since this study will confine itself solely to the commentaries on the first