Zhuangzi said "useful" and "useless". Zhuangzi? At the end of the article "Human Life": "Everyone knows what is useful, but everyone doesn't know what is useless." In the past, most people in Xie Zhuang were interested in Zhuangzi's advocacy of "uselessness". It is true that Zhuangzi needs to know what is useful to know what is useless, but this is not the whole of Zhuangzi's thought. Both "useful" and "useless" look at things from the standpoint of "use". In addition, there are also things that are not viewed and treated from the standpoint of "use". Never look at things from the standpoint of "use", but "useless use" is also limited. Zhuangzi not only wants people to break through the barrier of "useful use" to inform and grasp "useless use", but also wants people to break through the barrier of "use" to look at things and treat things without using them. It is Zhuangzi's highest ideological realm not to look at and treat things with a "practical" vision and position. Therefore, in the vision of Zhuangzi's philosophy, there are three levels of demarcation about things and their uses: useful, useless and useless.

First, "useful use"

People look at things from the standpoint of utility, and things are "useful" and "useless" to people.

The so-called "use" refers to the use that a thing can meet a specific need of people, that is, the specific function and actual value of something, or the use value. Useful things must have their uses, because the useful side is called useful. The use of useful things, referred to as "useful". Useful uses are concrete and well known, such as trees, gourds, cows and horses.

Compared with the usefulness of things, it is useless. Useless means that something does not have the nature to meet people's actual needs. Because it does not meet people's actual needs, it can also be regarded as useless. Keiko complained to Zhuangzi:

Wei Wang is a great seed for me. I can make it, succeed and achieve five goals. In order to fill water slurry, its firmness cannot be bootstrapped. If you regard it as a ladle, there is no room for it. It's no big deal, but it's no use slapping it to death. ("Zhuangzi? Wandering around. The following quotations only note the title of the article)

In Keiko's view,