Beyond method: Zhuangzi’s philosophy of dream and the deconstruction of pragmatism

This paper argues that the Zhuangzi's famous dream passages are not merely literary devices or skeptical tools, but the foundation of a coherent philosophical project dismantling the pragmatic, utilitarian worldview. This knowledge-application (zhi-yong 知—用) system, which reduces all value to function, rests on the unexamined assumption that our awakeness possesses a monopoly on reality. Zhuangzi attacks this foundation directly through philosophy of dream. By grounding the dream's transformative power in the metaphysics of qi 氣 and establishing an existential parity between dreaming and waking, he reveals our waking certainty to be a 'Great Dream' built on the biases of chengxin 成心. The iconic butterfly dream thus becomes an experiential gateway to new realms of co-existence and no-self. This framework ultimately resolves the apparent contradiction of the 'dreamless True Person', who represents not a rejection of the dream, but the successful culmination of its deconstructive power.