From Temporal Ecstasis to Eternal Wandering: A Zhuangzian Hermeneutic of the Phenomenological Ontological Turn

This paper employs Zhuangzi’s concept of Xiaoyao (free and easy wandering) as a hermeneutic lens—an interpretive instrument rather than a claim of philosophical correspondence—to re-examine the phenomenological “ontological turn” from Edmund Husserl to Martin Heidegger as a debate fundamentally about temporal ontology. Based on textual evidence drawn primarily from the Inner Chapters of the Zhuangzi, the study reconstructs three experiential-ontological levels in the path toward Xiaoyao: breaking free from the shackles of external things, overcoming the prejudiced mind (Cheng Xin), and achieving selfless merging with nature. This reconstructed path exhibits a formal, heuristic resonance with the three stages of Husserl’s phenomenological reduction, yet their ultimate destinations diverge decisively on the conceptualization of time. Whereas Husserl constitutively reduces “yesterday” and “tomorrow” to intentional modifications of an epistemologically enclosed living present, and Heidegger grounds authenticity in anxiety before finite temporality, Zhuangzi dissolves the linear binary of past and future in the transformation of things (Wu Hua), attaining a non-linear temporal ontology. Acknowledging the internal paradox of willing non-willing, the study shows that Zhuangzi’s freedom is not the absence of struggle but its transformation into tranquility amidst turbulence (Ying Ning)—a phenomenology of liberty fundamentally distinct from the Western phenomenologies of being. Finally, the three frameworks are synthesized as complementary resources for reclaiming what no artificial agent can replicate: constitutive consciousness, finite temporality, and Dao-attuned freedom.