How to be yourself, when you have no self. Lessons from Zhuangzi | Aeon Essays

Detail from Zhuangzi Dreaming of a Butterfly (full image below). Courtesy the Smithsonian National Museum of Asian Art is senior lecturer in philosophy at the University of St Andrews in Scotland, UK. He is the author of Against Identity: The Wisdom of Escaping the Self (2025). Edited byNigel Warburton ‘Most people are other people,’ wrote Oscar Wilde. ‘Their thoughts are some one else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.’ This was obviously meant as a criticism, but what exactly is the criticism? Most people are other people, in a different sense to how Wilde meant it: the vast majority of people are not me. The enormous size of this majority – billions to one – guarantees that there will be somebody better than me at anything I can think of. If I make a dress for the first time, I am wise to follow a pattern. If I cook a meal for the first time, I am wise to follow a recipe. This is (as far as I know) my first time living as a human being, so why wouldn’t it

Detail from Zhuangzi Dreaming of a Butterfly (full image below). Courtesy the Smithsonian National Museum of Asian Art is senior lecturer in philosophy at the University of St Andrews in Scotland, UK. He is the author of Against Identity: The Wisdom of Escaping the Self (2025). Edited byNigel Warburton ‘Most people are other people,’ wrote Oscar Wilde. ‘Their thoughts are some one else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.’ This was obviously meant as a criticism, but what exactly is the criticism? Most people are other people, in a different sense to how Wilde meant i