Zhuangzi presents a radical challenge to conventional morality and social norms by exposing the relativity of the values on which they rest. Distinctions such as good and bad, noble and base, useful and useless are treated as human projections rather than features of the underlying reality of the Dao. Through parables, he shows that what appears beneficial in one context may be harmful in another, and that judgments shift with perspective and circumstance. This relativizing of value undermines confidence in fixed moral categories and calls into question the authority of any single moral framework.

A central target of this critique is role-based and virtue-centered ethics, especially those that emphasize rigid social hierarchies and ritual propriety. Zhuangzi portrays formal virtues such as righteousness, benevolence, and ritual as artificial constraints that arise only after a loss of original simplicity. By mocking strict adherence to roles like ruler and minister, or wise and foolish, he suggests that such identities bind people to external expectations and estrange them from their natural spontaneity. The figures who embody genuine insight in his stories are often butchers, hermits, cripples, or other marginal characters, indicating that spiritual realization is not tied to status, reputation, or conventional success.

Against deliberate moral striving, Zhuangzi sets an ideal of spontaneity grounded in harmony with the Dao. Rather than calculating right and wrong, the exemplary person responds fluidly and appropriately, acting without coercive effort or attachment to outcomes. This is expressed in the notion of wu wei, non-coercive action, where skill and responsiveness emerge from deep attunement rather than from adherence to rules. Excessive moralizing, by contrast, is portrayed as generating anxiety, hypocrisy, and even violence, as people attempt to force themselves and others into rigid patterns of supposed virtue.

Zhuangzi also loosens the grip of social norms by relativizing the values that usually sustain them, such as life over death, success over failure, and fame over obscurity. Stories of those who accept death calmly or live contentedly in obscurity weaken the usual motivations for ambition, reputation-seeking, and fear-based conformity. The pursuit of status and power is depicted as a distraction from a more authentic, natural way of being. In this light, the “useless” and the socially disregarded may actually enjoy greater freedom, precisely because they are not entangled in the demands of recognition and achievement.

From this perspective emerges the image of the “true person,” inwardly free from the tyranny of praise and blame, honor and disgrace. Such a person can participate in social life without being defined by its shifting evaluations, remaining rooted in a spontaneity that precedes and exceeds conventional norms. Moral teachers, sages in the political sense, and reformers who seek to rectify the world through imposed order are treated with deep irony, as their efforts often intensify the very disorder they aim to cure. Zhuangzi’s vision thus invites a release from rigid moral frameworks into a more flexible, responsive way of living that aligns with the ever-changing flow of the Dao.