Quotation
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“Everyone knows the use of the useful, but nobody knows the use of the useless.”
Zhuangzi · Daoism · Ancient · c. 4th–3rd century BCE
Part of:Ancient questions, modern life →
What does it mean?
The mainstream reading is that usefulness to other people's projects gets you cut down, while what looks useless can be why a life is left intact. A competing reading stresses the politics: the carpenters are rulers and moralists who size beings up for timber, so the joke is about surviving the state, not about hobbies. The line is tagged to the tales of useless trees in chapter 4 of the Inner Chapters. The English is in Watson's free manner.
Did Zhuangzi really say this?
The library’s label is Paraphrase or translation. A familiar English of the moral tagged to the tales of useless trees, which carpenters spare because the wood is good for nothing they want. Inner Chapters. Watson-style translation, somewhat free.
Where it comes from
Zhuangzi, chapter 4 (Inner Chapters)
Approximate date: c. 4th–3rd century BCE.
How to use it
Protect one activity that is useless to your status: a walk with no podcast, a friend with no networking value, half an hour that will not go on a form. Notice that its uselessness is the use, and that a culture which can only see tools will call that waste. The tree in the story is spared because the carpenter cannot sell it.
A mindset reading
Eyes trained only on use will misread freedom as waste. The habit is to ask who the carpenter is in a given week, who is sizing you up for timber, and what you are calling useless only because it serves no plan of theirs.
Understand the philosophy
The useless tree answers how to last in a world of people who value you as material. 'Use' means fitness for someone else's project, and Zhuangzi is both mocking that eyesight and giving a political image. The Inner Chapters are the core that scholars most often link to him, while later chapters continue the school. Survival, in the tale, belongs to what the carpenters pass over.
- knowledge
- society
- freedom
FAQ
What does it mean?
The mainstream reading is that usefulness to other people's projects gets you cut down, while what looks useless can be why a life is left intact. A competing reading stresses the politics: the carpenters are rulers and moralists who size beings up for timber, so the joke is about surviving the state, not about hobbies. The line is tagged to the tales of useless trees in chapter 4 of the Inner Chapters. The English is in Watson's free manner.
Did Zhuangzi really say this?
Paraphrase or translation. A familiar English of the moral tagged to the tales of useless trees, which carpenters spare because the wood is good for nothing they want. Inner Chapters. Watson-style translation, somewhat free.
Which work is it in?
Zhuangzi, chapter 4 (Inner Chapters) Approximate date: c. 4th–3rd century BCE.