No More Learning

Now, propriety is a superficial expression of loyalty and faithful-
ness and the beginning of disorder.
Those who are the first to know have the flowers of Dao but are
the beginning of ignorance.
For this reason the great man dwells with the thick, and does not rest
with the thin.
He dwells with the fruit, and does not rest with the flower. Therefore he rejects the one, and accepts the other. 27
The analogy to the field might make this clearer. I interpret Laozi to be saying that all people feel and express compassion, filial piety, loyalty, and humaneness, and perhaps righteousness and propriety, just as all black-eyed susans have yellow flowers with a brown cone, daisylike heads of ten to twenty rays, and hairy stems of one to three feet in length. This is the natural condition of things, and just as in the natural field black-eyed susans grow this way spontaneously, unaware of it, in a sense effortlessly, so too, when the Dao has not declined, do people feel and express these attitudes spontaneously, effort- lessly, and without self-consciousness.
However, that is not to say that they all do so in the same way at the same time. Just as black-eyed susans differ from one another in their number of petals, in their length of stalks, and even perhaps in their shade of color, so too do people differ in their degree of feelings and their modes of expression.
But the evaluation of certain feelings and actions, the labeling of them as good, brings about self-consciousness and inevitably leads to the defining of a standard. The cultivation of virtue, like the cultivation of a field, aims at de- veloping a hybrid crop by weeding out variety. This means that one way of expressing loyalty will be set up as the true way; there will be only one true way to be filial in any given situation. And it would be comparable to saying that all black-eyed susans ought to have, say, fifteen petals, stems of two feet, and a dark shade of yellow to be ''good'' black-eyed susans.
If flowers are anything like people the results of this would be (a) conflict, as each flower takes its own properties as the standard for all to follow; (b) hypocrisy, as flowers deny their given properties and try to become something they are not; and (c) discontentment, dissatisfaction with one's given condi- tion when it does not match the norm.
All of this could be avoided by maintaining the variety, spontaneity, and natural harmony of the uncultivated field--that is, by returning to the Dao.
On the problem of afterlife/immortality, Laozi never comes right out and says that there is or is not life after death, or if there is, what it would be like. One can reach different conclusions on this point, depending on how one understands certain passages.
To begin with there are several places where Laozi claims that those who live in accord with the Dao will live out their life free from harm. At the end of chapter 16 we find: ''Being one with Nature, he is in accord with Dao. Being in accord with Dao, he is everlasting, and is free from danger throughout his lifetime. ''28 In chapter 32 we find: ''It is by knowing when to stop that one can be free from danger. ''29 This is repeated in chapter 44: ''He who knows when to stop is free from danger. Therefore he can long endure. ''30 Chapter 52 reads: ''He who has found the mother (Dao) and thereby understands her sons (things), And having understood the sons, Still keeps to its [their] mother, Will be free from danger throughout his lifetime. ''31 And finally in chapter 59 we find the conclusion: ''He who possesses the Mother (Dao) of the state will last long. This means that the roots are deep and the stalks are firm [note the relevance to the analogy], which is the way of long life and everlasting vision. ''32
Since no more than freedom from harm is claimed here, the conclusion seems to be that for the Daoist, long life--or at least to reach one's natural or destined end--is the limit of expectation. However, the words ''he is everlast- ing'' (chapter 16) and ''he can long endure'' (chapter 44) in these passages could be read as suggesting an unnaturally long life, or even continued life, either physical immortality or life beyond the limits of the body. 33
Physical immortality may be found in chapter 50, where we hear about one who is good at preserving his life:
the dao and the field 41
42
approaching the daode jing
I have heard that one who is a good preserver of his life will not meet tigers or wild buffaloes,
And in fighting will not try to escape from weapons of war. The wild buffalo cannot butt its horns against him,
The tiger cannot fasten its claws in him,
And weapons of war cannot thrust their blades into him. And for what reason?
Because in him there is no room for death. 34
In later Daoism, when it was thought that one could transform his body into something refined and subtle, and thus impervious to harm, through breathing exercises, drugs, and other means, these lines would be taken quite literally. And I do not know that we can conclude for sure that Laozi himself did not have that in mind. However, the lines are certainly open to other interpretations. For example, that tigers and buffaloes and weapons of war could not harm such a man might come about because he lives cautiously and avoids dangerous sit- uations. 35 Or it could be that he adapts to the natural tendencies of things and thus knows how to act with wild animals and soldiers so that they are not moved to anger. 36 That there is in him ''no room for death'' might only mean that he is not vulnerable in the ways that others are, that he will not be easily killed. Or it could mean that to the true Daoist ''death'' is not really ''death''; he does not dwell on or fear it as others do, and he can thus better avoid it.
The end of chapter 33 is also a problem area. There we have the lines: ''He who does not lose his place (with Dao) will endure. He who dies but does not really perish enjoys long life. '' What does this last line mean? On the surface of it, it seems to say that life can go on (perhaps in a spiritual way) even after the body dies, and that this is true long life (i. e. , not simply a matter of living many years). But maybe the death he speaks of refers to dying in a spiritual sense, a dying to the old ways, that is, and a rebirth to a life lived in accord with the Way. Or perhaps ''perish'' means to die an ''unnatural'' death, to come to an end before one's time: to reach one's natural end, then, is long life. Or finally, one could follow Wing-tsit Chan on this, who reads this as speaking of an im- mortality of virtue; so long as one is remembered by future generations one does not really perish. 37
There would seem to be three ways to read Laozi on the problem of af- terlife/immortality: (1) he believed in physical immortality, continual life in the body for those who had lived right and learned how to preserve their lives; (2) he believed in some form of life after death (not specified) for those who had become one with the Dao;38 and (3) he recognized death as final for all: the Daoist hope was for a long, natural life, free from danger and harm.
Moreover, the possibility of life after death may be understood in two different ways. It could be understood in a mystical sense. Insofar as the Dao is that one, eternal reality that gives rise to everything else, and insofar as the Daoist in some sense becomes one with the Dao, he could, at death, become fully identical with it--one with the eternal and unchanging. But in a more materialistic sense, insofar as the Dao is in some sense equivalent to the on- going process of life and material change, the Daoist could see death as just a stage in that process, and by developing matter and energy he does continue on.
The analogy of the field does not solve this problem; it does not show us for sure what Laozi thought. But it does help us visualize several distinct ways in which the problem could work out. The analogy does not, so far as I can see, support a notion of physical immortality; wildflowers do not continue on past their season. But that option aside, there are three different views to which it could point. One is that at death we merge once again with that storehouse of matter and vitality, the Dao, and that as matter and energy we are constantly recycled, reemerging in new forms of life, forms other than the human--in the analogy, the stuff of this year's sunflowers, bluebells, dandelions, and so on.
This is a view that other Daoist texts seem to draw out,39 and it is presented as the natural way of things, a prospect that we ought to be willing to accept and perhaps even look forward to. For example, in chapter 6 of Zhuangzi when a certain Master Li is on the verge of dying, his friend Master Lai says to him, ''How marvelous the Creator is! What is he going to make out of you next? Where is he going to send you? Will he make you into a rat's liver? Will he make you into a bug's arm? ''40 And he continues:
The Great Clod burdens me with form, labors me with life, eases me in old age, and rests me in death.
So if I think well of my life, for the same reason I must think well of my death. When a skilled smith is casting metal, if the metal should leap up and say ''I insist upon being made into a Mo-yeh! '' he would surely regard it as very inauspicious indeed.
Now having had the audacity to take on human form once, if I should say, ''I don't want to be anything but a man! --Nothing but a man! ,'' the Creator would surely regard me as a most inauspicious sort of person. 41
Second, the field of flowers analogy could also lead to a transmigration of souls theory. That is to say, we could argue that the essence of each plant is contained in the seed, and that this provides a continuum of identity in the different plants that appear each year (i. e. , the seeds from this year's black-eyed susans will give rise to next year's).
the dao and the field 43
44 approaching the daode jing
I do not know of Daoists ever developing this possibility, but it was used by an early Chinese convert to Buddhism, Mouzi, to explain rebirth:
The spirit never perishes. Only the body decays. The body is like the roots and leaves of the five grains, the spirit is like the seeds and kernels of the five grains. When the roots and leaves come forth they inevitably die. But do the seeds and kernels perish? Only the body of one who has achieved the Way (here the Buddhist Way) perishes. 42
Finally, one could also conclude from looking at the field that unique forms of life are unique forms of life, that this year's flowers will live and die to be replaced by a totally new crop next year. In short, one might conclude that death is final, and that the best one can hope for is a long life of health, natural growth, and a natural end.
notes
This essay first appeared in St. John's Papers in Asian Studies series, no. 27, in 1981. It is reprinted with kind permission of St. John's University, Institute of Asian Studies.
1. Wing-tsit Chan, Sourcebook in Chinese Philosophy (Princeton: Princeton Uni- versity Press, 1963), 97. This is Chan's translation. Note that where I cite Chan's translation, words in parentheses are his own; my own comments or suggested var- iant translations are included in brackets. This article was written before I completed my own translation of the Laozi: Robert G. Henricks, tr. , Lao-tzu Te-tao ching: A New Translation Based on the Recently Discovered Ma-wang-tui Texts (New York: Ballantine Books, 1989).
2. Ibid. , 97. The silk texts of the Laozi, read differently here. They both say, ''The Nameless is the beginning of the 10,000 things. '' The silk texts (there are two, des- ignated chia and I) were discovered in 1973 in a Han dynasty tomb at Mawangdui in Changsha. They are the earliest known versions of the Laozi, dating from the first half of the second century b. c. While the content of the texts is generally the same as other known versions, there are occasional interesting variations, and I note some of these in the pages that follow. The silk texts are now readily available to Chinese scholars in book form in Laozi: Mawangdui Han mu bo shu (Peking: Wen-wu, 1975), hereafter cited as Laozi: Mawangdui. For the references to chapter 1, see p. 82.
3. Chan, The Way, 124.
4. Ibid. , 152.
5. Max Kaltenmark, Lao Tzu and Taoism, trans. Roger Greaves (Stanford: Stan-
ford University Press, 1969), 29.
6. Chan, The Way, 97. This is literally the ''10,000 things''; in some of my own
translations below I use that term. The term is a comprehensive way to refer to all forms of life.
7. Ibid. , 134.
8. Ibid. , 192.
9. Ibid. , 205.
10. Ibid. , 97.
11. Ibid. , 105.
12. Ibid. , 137.
13. Ibid. , 110.
14. Ibid. , 160. The silk texts read somewhat differently, and the lines about
''clothing and feeding'' are not present at all. My translation of the silk texts is as follows (for the Chinese, see Laozi: Mawangdui, 93):
The Way floats and drifts.
It can go to the left or right.
It accomplishes tasks and completes affairs,
And yet it does not have a name.
The 10,000 things entrust their lives to it,
And yet it does not act as their master.
And therefore it is constantly without desires. [This line seems out of place. ] It can be named with the things that are small.
The 10,000 things entrust their lives to it,
And yet it does not act as their master.
It can be named with the things that are great.
Therefore the Sage's ability to accomplish the great,
Comes from his not playing the role of the great.
Therefore he is able to accomplish the great.
15. This is my own translation of the silk texts. For the Chinese, see Lao-tzu Ma- wang-tui, 70. The line I translate ''It brings them to life,'' however, is missing from both texts and is supplied from other versions. See Chan, The Way, 190, for an alternative translation of this line.
16. Wuwei, acting by not acting, is one of the traits of the Dao and the Sage. The opening line of chapter 37 in the Laozi is ''Dao invariably takes no action, and yet there is nothing left undone. '' Chan, The Way, 166.
17. Chan, The Way, 192.
18. Ibid. , 194.
19. Ibid. , 128.
20. See especially chapter 6 and the phrase: ''The Great Clod burdens me with
form, labors me with life, eases me in old age, and rests me in death. '' Burton Watson, Chuang Tzu: Basic Writings (New York: Columbia University Press, 1964), 76. The Dao as the ''great Clod'' is the subject of H. G. Creel's essay ''The Great Clod,'' in Herrlee G. Creel, What is Taoism? And other Studies in Chinese Cultural History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970), 25-36.
21. From John G. Neihardt, Black Elk Speaks: Being the Life Story of a Holy Man of the Oglala Sioux (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1961), 3.
22. We quite often find the combination of Sky-father and Earth-mother as world parents. However, there are instances of the Earth Mother herself giving birth out of
the dao and the field 45
46 approaching the daode jing
her own fecundity. On this see Mircea Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane (New York: Harper & Row, 1967), 144-145.
23. The dates here given are traditional. Our evidence from the Shang oracle bones actually accounts only for the period 1324-1225 b. c. , the reign of Wu Ding. H. G. Creel The Birth of China (New York: Frederick Ungar, 1937), 180-181. The she and fang sacrifices were offered to the god(s) of the land and the spirits of the four quarters, respectively, in the spring and summer for aid in the growing season. Lester J. Bilsky, ''The State Religion of Ancient China'' (PhD diss.
, University of Washington, 1971), 59-62.
24. Shangdi is the name given to the supreme deity in the oracle texts of the Shang; Heaven, or Tian, is more commonly used by the Zhou, although they at times also use the name Shangdi. Both names refer to a deity of the ''sky-god'' type, an all- powerful, supreme deity who is constantly watching what goes on below. Both can and do intervene in human events; with Heaven this is done for moral purposes: he gives a mandate to a ruler, a contract to rule, and intervenes to remove this if the conditions are not upheld. Shangdi and Tian could be two distinct deities, the former of the Shang and the latter of the Zhou. Or it could be that Tian is another name for Shangdi, or a Shangdi who has been transformed. The best reading on this problem is found in D. Howard Smith, Chinese Religions from 1000 b. c. to the Present Day (London: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1968), 12-21, and H. G. Creel, The Origins of Statecraft in China, vol. 1: The Western Chou Empire (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970), 81-100, 493-506.
25. Both Laozi and Zhuangzi are reported to have come from the state of Chu, an area whose customs and beliefs are well known to have differed markedly from those of the Zhou states to the north.
26. I have in mind the controversial lines in chapters 5 and 3. Respectively they read: ''The sage is not humane. He regards all people as straw dogs''; ''Therefore in the government of the sage, He keeps their hearts vacuous, Fills their bellies, Weakens their ambitions, And strengthens their bones. '' Chan, The Way, 107, 103.
27. Ibid. , 131, 132, 167. 28. Ibid. , 128.
29. Ibid. , 157.
30. Ibid. , 179.
31. Ibid. , 192.
32. Ibid. , 205.
33. That the Chinese here is jiu (''long time'') in the first case and chang jiu (much
the same meaning) in the second suggests to me life's coming to an end at some point.
34. Chan, The Way, 188. It is interesting to note that in the Mawangdui copies of the Laozi, the opening line of this chapter has ''one who is good at holding on to life (zhisheng),'' instead of ''one who is a good preserver of his life (shesheng). '' (zhish- eng). See Laozi: Mawangdui, 69.
35. In chapter 17 of the Zhuangzi we have a passage where this kind of inter- pretation of how the Daoist avoids harm seems to be implied. Either that, or the
Daoist simply does not see harm as harm and accepts whatever comes his way. The passage reads: ''And he who knows how to deal with circumstances will not allow things to do him harm. When a man has perfect virtue, fire cannot burn him, water cannot drown him, cold and heat cannot afflict him, birds and beasts cannot injure him. I do not say that he makes light of these things. I mean that he distinguishes between safety and danger, contents himself with fortune and misfortune, and is constant in his comings and goings. '' Watson, Chuang Tzu, 104.
36. In chapter 4 of the Zhuangzi we read of the tiger trainer who succeeds by not going against the fierce dispositions of the tigers: he does not give them any- thing alive that they would have to kill, or anything whole that they would have to tear up. Ibid. , 59.
37. Chan, The Way, 159. The silk texts would seem to support this since they substitute ''not forgotten'' (bu wang) for ''not perish'' (bu wang). But since the character for ''forgotten'' is made by adding the ''heart'' element to the character for ''perish,'' and since the adding of an element to the correct character is common in the silk texts, ''perish'' might still be the intended word. See Laozi: Mawangdui, 93.
38. I should note that in addition to the evidence already cited, there is one other thing that could support this. Ellen Ch'en, in her essay ''Is There a Doctrine of Physical Immortality in the Tao-te-ching? ,'' History of Religions 12, no. 3 (1973): 231- 247, notes the phrase mo shen bu dai (in chapters 16 and 52), which she translates as ''to lose the body without coming to an end. '' Unfortunately this phrase is open to interpretation. Chan translates it as ''free from danger throughout his lifetime'' in both places. Arthur Waley has ''though his body ceases is not destroyed'' in chapter 16, which supports Professor Ch'en, but ''and to the end of his days suffers no harm'' in chapter 52. See Arthur Waley, trans. , The Way and its Power: A Study of the Tao Te Ching and Its Place in Chinese Thought (New York: Grove, 1958), 162, 206.
39. In addition to the Zhuangzi passages cited below, the Liezi follows this line and specifies what is involved. Man is a combination of dense qi (breath, energy) from the earth (his body), and subtle, active qi from heaven (his breath and vital energies). At death these qi return to their sources and are then recycled. See A. C. Graham, trans. , The Book of Lieh-tzu (London: Lewis Reprints, 1973), 14-15, 18-20, 20-23, especially the anecdotes.
40. Watson, Chuang Tzu, 81. I would not take ''Creator'' here in a literal sense. I think it is used by Zhuangzi as another way to talk about the creative work of the Dao; natural transformation is all that is involved.
41. WatsonnotesthatMoyewasafamousswordofKingHelu(reigned514-496 b. c. ) of Wu.
42. William Theodore deBary, The Buddhist Tradition in India, China and Japan (New York: Random House, 1972), 134-135. From a text called Mouzi li huo lun (Mouzi Settling Doubts), which is traditionally believed to date from the end of the second century a. d.
the dao and the field 47
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? The Daode Jing and Comparative Philosophy
David L. Hall
The Confucian asks, ''Master Lao, you say that 'the way that can be spoken of is the constant way. ' Why, then, do you offer so many words which speak of the Way? ''
To which Laozi replies, ''I make for you a golden embroidery of drakes and pass it along for your enjoyment. I cannot, however, show you the golden needle by which it was made. ''
Before beginning any classroom discussion of the Daode jing I always recount this apocryphal exchange as a means of making a point about the language of that work and, indeed, of language generally. That cautionary tale is useful in warning us not to mis- take the embroidery, however fine, for the ''golden needle'' that permits its creation. And, of course, the Daoist would believe that the sentiment of this story suggests the mood with which we might well approach language itself.
Words, the Daoist might say, serve as both signposts and barriers. It is as if the very sign that tells us where to go stands in the way of our getting there. Were I, for example, to encounter a sign in the form of a roadblock across the only highway leading into town that read ''El Paso 99 Miles,'' I would know that I was heading in the right direction but would be prevented from going home.
Knowing this, we may be reconciled to the fact that traveling along the way that can be spoken of is the only means whereby we may celebrate the Nameless Dao. Its ability to provide its
50 approaching the daode jing
readers important experiences of the evocation of meaning beyond any words is what makes the Daode jing one of the most provocative of all the texts of world literature.
My first encounter with this book was as oblique as is the language of the work itself. As a high school student, I was on a long bus trip across the western states. While at a rest stop in Pecos, Texas, I was browsing through books and magazines displayed at the bus depot. Amid the usual examples of romance and detective fiction were two books whose titles immediately caught my eye: The first was A. N. Whitehead's Adventures of Ideas; the second was a work entitled The Way of Life. Its subtitle was The Tao Te Ching. I recall being fas- cinated by both works, each of which promised to transform my rather dull bus trip into a far more exciting journey. I had only enough money for one book, however, and so had to make a decision. After several minutes, I finally selected Adventures of Ideas.
I have come to believe that my encounter with these two books was more significant than I initially thought. For, some years later, as a graduate student, I selected the philosophy of Whitehead as the subject of my dissertation re- search. And it was not long after I began teaching that I found myself extending my interest in process philosophy by comparing Whiteheadian thinking with the Daoist sensibility through a consultation of the Daode jing.
Comparative Philosophy as a Collaborative Enterprise
Before discussing the manner in which I use the Daode jing in the classroom, it might be useful to address another issue concerning the pedagogy of that text. For those such as I who do not read classical Chinese, the question arises as to how one might approach the work. I assume that relatively few of those who employ this text in undergraduate teaching are expert in Chinese language and culture. In my experience, this is particularly true of those who use the work as a philosophical text. I would like to ask, therefore, by way of introducing the remainder of my remarks: ''What is the role of the Western philosopher in furthering the appropriate use of classical Chinese texts in the classroom? ''
The first thing to be said is that, quite obviously, if a translation of the Daode jing is to be relevant to the Western context, it is not enough that the translator be expert in only Chinese thought and culture. A reasonably subtle understanding of the Western philosophical tradition is presumed in every adequate translation of that work into Anglo-European languages. In the ab- sence of this combination of sinological and Western philosophical skills in a
the daode jing and comparative philosophy 51
single individual, the translation of the Daode jing into an English-speaking context suggests the need for collaboration between Chinese and Western specialists. Often this collaboration is minimally accomplished when the in- dividual ignorant of the Chinese language consults a number of different translations of a given text and seeks some broad understanding of the history and culture of the period that contextualizes the work he or she is seeking to understand. Without some such concern, the Western interpreter of texts such as the Daode jing is likely to present either a superficial or a distorted inter- pretation. By the same token, when the sinologist seeks to translate a Chinese classic into English, he or she has the responsibility of gaining some under- standing of the general cultural context into which he or she is seeking to translate the given work. Nothing is more disappointing than to pick up a copy of the Daode jing, the Zhuangzi, or the Analects translated by someone who, however subtle his or her sinological skills, is relatively innocent of the Western intellectual tradition. The result is always a travestied, trivialized, and un- teachable text.
My own understanding of Chinese texts has benefited significantly from a collaboration begun some fifteen years ago with the sinologist Roger Ames of the University of Hawai'i. Ames's expertise in classical Chinese language and Chinese philosophical texts, combined with my knowledge of Western phi- losophy and the methodology of comparative cultures, has provided each of us with a more solid foundation from which to communicate the language of Chinese philosophy to undergraduate and graduate students.
Moreover, it is important to note that, though I am not trained in Chinese language, the speculative interpretation of Daoism contained in some of my earliest published writings has in fact influenced the translation of key terms in the more specialized treatments in subsequent works by Ames and me. Moreover, that interpretation is elaborated in our discussions of Daoism in our recent work, Thinking from the Han, as well as in articles on the subject of Daoism by the two of us in the Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
My intent here is really not to boast about my understanding of Daoism. I merely wish to correct what I consider to be a serious misunderstanding that affects the appropriate exercise of comparative Chinese/Western thought. In the case of texts such as the Daode jing, Western-trained philosophers have, on the whole, a great deal more to contribute to the translation of Chinese intel- lectual culture into Western cultural contexts than they might otherwise be- lieve. Making sense of texts such as the Daode jing within an Anglo-European philosophical milieu is, first and foremost, a collaborative effort. Until this fact is endorsed by both (sometimes) overly confident sinologists and (often) all too
52 approaching the daode jing
timid Western specialists, the translation of Chinese philosophical texts into Anglo-European contexts will never reach the most desirable level.
The Daode Jing and Comparative Philosophy
As one of my principal philosophical interests is comparative thought, I most often have recourse to the Daode jing in classes devoted to Chinese and Western comparisons. The strategy of such a course is to suggest some fundamental assumptions of Western thought that might not be common to mainstream Chinese cultural sensibilities. The method involves attempting to bracket these assumptions in order better to understand the presupposi- tions of Chinese intellectual culture. There are, of course, many possible topics for such ''uncommon assumptions. '' Chinese and Western classical cultures originate from alternative assumptions that shape dramatically con- trasting senses of ontological and cosmological issues, such as the nature of ''being'' and ''existence,'' the sense of ''cosmos'' or ''world,'' the understand- ing of ''natural laws'' and ''casual relations. '' In addition, classical Chinese approaches to such Western philosophical topics as ''self,'' ''truth,'' ''tran- scendence,'' ''reason,'' ''logic,'' and ''rhetoric'' are quite distinct from the dominant family of Western understandings of these topics.
I have found that the Daode jing is helpful in making all of these im- portant cultural comparisons. In what follows I wish merely to highlight a few of these issues as a means of demonstrating the value of the Daode jing as a text in comparative philosophy.
The first topic permits a contrast of Chinese and Western treatments of ''Being'' and the sources of world-order. The second involves the general treatment of the person construed in terms of the tripartite structure of the psyche originating in Plato, a model of ''personality'' that has been central to our tradition since that time. These two issues allow for a general under- standing of some striking differences among concepts of ''self and world'' found in Chinese and Western cultures.
This approach is relevant beyond the efforts merely to train philosophers. Issues fundamental to the way we commonsensically think about the world are sedimented in the patterns of thought and expression of every reasonably ed- ucated person. Unless we seek to uncover at least some of our ''uncommon assumptions,'' we shall err in our interpretation of alternative cultural sensi- bilities through the unthinking presumption that our common sense is uni- versal.
the daode jing and comparative philosophy 53
Ontological and Cosmological Issues
In the Western metaphysical tradition, ''Being'' is most generally thought to be either a common property of things, in the sense of a universal applying to all things, or a container that relates things by placing them within its own structure. Metaphysical notions of Being are generally associated with the concept of ground; the relation of Being and beings, then, is thought to be that of indeterminate ground and determinate things. Nonbeing is characterized as the negation of Being either in a simple, logical sense, or as the Nihil, the Void, the experience of which, as in Heidegger's philosophy, evokes a sense of existential angst or dread.
The disposition of the Chinese from the beginning to the present is highly inhospitable to fixed forms of asymmetrical relations such as is ex- pressed by the relation of Being and nonbeing. The Chinese existential verb you (''being'') overlaps with the sense of ''having'' rather than the copula, and therefore you, ''to be,'' means ''to be present,'' ''to be around,'' while wu, ''not to be,'' means ''not to be present,'' ''not to be around. '' This means that wu does not indicate strict opposition or contradiction, but absence. Thus, the you/wu distinction suggests mere contrast in the sense of either the presence or absence of x, rather than an assertion of the existence or nonexistence of x.
Thus, if one translates you and wu in chapter 40 of the Daode jing as being and nonbeing, respectively, the following translation might result: ''The things of the world originate in Being. And Being originates in Nonbeing. '' Such language can be most misleading if taken in the classical Western senses of Being and Nonbeing. Following the general preference of the Daode jing for reversing certain classical contrasts, wu appears to be given preference over you, as is yin (''passive,'') over yang (''active''). Interpreting wu as ''Nonbeing'' would, then, suggest a preference for Nonbeing over Being, and this has led to some rather ridiculous mystical speculations to the effect that the Nihil or the Void, as Nonexistence, has priority over Being-Itself. Such an assumption of the senses of being and nonbeing deriving from the metaphysical contexts of Western philosophy can lead to total misunderstanding of the text. For, as a Chinese saying has it: ''If one is off an inch at the bow, then one will be off several feet at the target. '' Thus in place of the claim that, for the Daoist, nonbeing is superior to being, it would be best to claim that nothing takes precedence over some- thing. An alternative translation--ironically, with strong Marxist overtones-- would be: ''not having'' is superior to ''having. ''
The distinctive character of the you/wu problematic in the Daode jing allows for an interesting discussion of the presently topical postmodern critiques of
54 approaching the daode jing
reason. For one of the implications of the absence in that work of any notion of Being as existence per se is that there is no notion of Being as ontological ground and no need for a metaphysical contrast between Being and beings. There is no need to overcome the logocentrism of a language of presence grounded in ontological difference if no distinction between Being and beings, or beings and their ground, is urged by the classical Chinese language and its philosophical employment. A Chinese language of presence is a language of making present the item itself, not its essence.
Language that does not lead one to posit ontological difference between Being and beings, but only a difference between one being and another, sug- gests a decentered world whose centers and circumferences are always defined in an ad hoc manner. The mass of classical Chinese philosophical discourse, then, is in no need of deconstruction since the senses of you and wu within the Chinese sensibility do not lead to the creation of texts that could legitimately be targets of the deconstructor.
One may gain greater insight into this rather unusual sense of the being/ nonbeing relation in Chinese thought through an interpretation of the fa- mous first lines of the Daode jing:
The Way that can be spoken of is not the constant Way. The name that can be named is not the constant name. The nameless is the beginning of the ten-thousand things. 1
Nameless Dao is best construed here, not as ontological ground, but merely as the noncoherent sum of all possible orders. The natural cosmology of classical China does not entail a single-ordered cosmos, but invokes an understanding of a world constituted by myriad unique particulars: ''the ten thousand things. ''
An important implication of the you/wu relationship in Chinese intellec- tual culture is that the relevant contrast is not, as in the West, between the cosmological whatness of things and the ontological thatness of things; rather, it is a contrast between the cosmos as the sum of all orders and the world as construed from some particular perspective--that is, any particular one of the orders.
In the absence of a sense of Being as a common property or a relational structure, the world is not coherent in the sense that a single pattern or telos could be said to characterize its processes. It is not a whole, but many such wholes. It is not the superordinate One to which the Many reduce. Its order is not rational or logical, but aesthetic; that is, there is no transcending pattern determining the existence or efficacy of the order. The order is a consequence of the particulars comprising the totality of existing things.
the daode jing and comparative philosophy 55
This interpretation of being of the world makes of it a totality not in the sense of a single-ordered cosmos, but in the sense of the sum of all cosmo- logical orders. Any given order is an existing world that is construed from the perspective of a particular element within the totality. But, as a single world, it is a selective abstraction from the totality of possible orders that are presently not around. The being of this order is not ontological in a foundational sense, but ''cosmological'' in the sense that it concerns, not Being-Itself, but the ''beings'' of the world and their relational order. Such an abstracted, selected order cannot serve as fundament or ground. Thus, the Chinese sense of being entails the notion, rather striking from our Western perspective, that all differences are cosmological differences.
The Chinese understanding of the you/wu relationship has profound im- plications for the manner in which philosophic discourse is shaped throughout the Chinese tradition. Without recourse to the senses of ''Being'' associated with Western speculative philosophies, assumptions we take for granted as conditions for philosophizing are simply not present. The proper under- standing of ''being'' in the Chinese tradition helps us to account for the fact that there is no real ''metaphysical'' tradition in China if we mean by metaphysics anything like a universal science of first principles or a study of Being-Itself. In fact, within the strictly Chinese philosophical tradition there is little interest in asking about what makes something real or why things exist.
When we address distinctly cosmological issues--such as ''What kinds of things are there? '' or ''What are the basic categories that make up the world as we know it?