I think n historical reading should focus instead on the way that the shared political culture of ancient Chinese
thinkers
differs from the shared political culture that shapes modern thought.
Teaching-the-Daode-Jing
)
184 recent scholarship and teaching the daode jing
''But this doesn't apply to me. I'm one of the people, not one of the rulers. '' I try to emphasize that a historical approach to the Daode jing is not an alternative to one that considers its potential relevance to people today. The message of the Daode jing is one that can be generalized and applied to many situations other than the specific ones envisioned by the original authors. I often have students break down into small groups to discuss specific chapters of the Daode jing and encourage them in these discussions to consider what it might mean if a person wanted to apply these passages to her own life today. One of the biggest obstacles to this in many students' minds is the fact that so much of the Daode jing consists in advice about how to rule a country. I try to point out that much of this advice can be generalized and applied, for example, as advice to parents about how to deal with their children. Still, students typically find this aspect of the Daode jing at best irrelevant to their lives, and at worst objectionably elitist. Advice is relevant only if it ''applies to the lives of ordinary people like us. '' There seems to be something objec- tionable in itself about writing a book advising people in authority on the best
way of maintaining and using that authority.
This is an excellent opportunity for illustrating what I mean by ''confron-
tational hermeneutics. '' That is, the student reactions just mentioned reflect a set of assumptions implicitly taken for granted in much Western thought. Our general tendency is to take these assumptions as a normative framework within which to understand and evaluate works like the Daode jing. Whatever we can, we interpret in a way that accords with these basic assumptions. Whatever does not accord with these assumptions we reject as fundamentally mistaken. (This is the way that I myself read the Daode jing when I first became attracted to it in my hippie days in the 1970s'. ) When this is done, our own basic assumptions are protected from any kind of questioning. There is never a confrontation between them and the different assumptions the text's authors may have held. What I think needs to be done instead is to make our own assumptions explicit and hold them at arm's length, temporarily suspending our commitment to them, in order to seriously consider a set of assumptions differing from ours on a very basic level.
In the present case, I try to articulate as a basis for discussion some assumptions prevalent in the United States today, first asking students if my list accurately articulates their sense of things. My list is something like the following:
All important truths are universal truths, equally applicable to the lives of all. The very idea that some people should have authority over others is of
questionable legitimacy.
hermeneutics and pedagogy: old-time historicism 185
''The people'' are in general good. They usually have complaints and want to reverse various decisions made by those in power. Our sympathies should generally lie with the people protesting against the establish- ment.
The proper way to react to the abuse of authority is to limit the power of authorities and give more power to the people. This applies especially to ''bureaucrats,'' who, being appointed rather than elected, are not directly responsible to the people.
If an idealistic individual finds herself living in a society whose norms she cannot respect, the proper responses are (1) withdrawal, (2) publicly dramatizing one's dissent, or (3) working to undermine the present order and bring about fundamental, revolutionary change. Revolu- tionaries inevitably represent themselves as working on behalf of the people.
Politics is ideally the struggle for the victory of what is right, and also the struggle for the victory of the people over the powers that be. These are for the most part identical.
One should generally assume that people who aspire to positions of power do so out of egotistic desire to assert that they are ''better than other people,'' one of the worst sins in modern egalitarian democratic societies. Identifying oneself with the people is a basic precondition for moral respectability in this kind of society.
Side by side with this list, we can list a set of assumptions taught or taken for granted by the authors of the Daode jing:13
What the people most need is an orderly and harmonious social order, an environment conducive to peace and moderate prosperity. Such social order depends on the ability of the government to unify the people under its leadership and on its paternalistic work for the common good, in contrast to individuals striving on behalf of personal and private interests. The government is able to do this only by gaining the willing allegiance and cooperation of the people. So the prime concern of political thought is, first, how to gain this willing allegiance and cooperation and, second, how to wield the power thus gained in a way that will produce a social environment most conducive to human flourishing.
If an idealistic individual finds herself living in a society whose norms she cannot respect, the proper response has two aspects, one personal and one social. First, on a personal level, one must internally free oneself from the distorting influences of social pressure so as to cultivate a
186
recent scholarship and teaching the daode jing
more organically harmonious way of being. And one must develop a relation to some reality beyond and superior to the norms of society-- thus the importance of developing a relation to a ''transcendent'' Dao. Second, on the social side, one should devote oneself to making society a better place for others. One can be most effective in doing this by gaining positions of responsibility and influence within the present sociopolitical structure or by winning the ear of those who have the most power and influence. The crucial thing is that people in such positions must use those means of gaining allegiance and cooperation and carry out those public policies that are most conducive to harmony and prosperity in society.
These two endeavors are governed by different ideals, described in differ- ent aspects of Laoist teaching. Teachings related to self-cultivation are not universal truths applicable to the lives of all, but are intended for idealistic individuals who voluntarily take on the project of self-transformation. This group is open to all, but the general assumption is that not everyone in the society will have this ambition. So this teaching about the mental qualities or states of mind to be cultivated is not the basis for a proposed transformation of the entire society, nor a curriculum to be taught to all the people. (The Daode jing shows no interest in the internal state of ''the people'' [min], and never speaks about them as anything other than the objects of rule. ) One does not teach the people Daoist values and self-cultivation, but concentrates on fos- tering unity, harmony, and moderate prosperity in the society. Thus politics is not the struggle for the public victory of those values one believes in most passionately and cultivates in one's personal life. It is the practical attempt to provide an environment conducive to a relatively good life for people not like oneself.
Tendencies commonly found in rulers--exploitation, self-aggrandizement, meddlesomeness, arbitrary imposition of rules, willing resort to armed violence--are regarded as some of the main obstacles in the way of achieving a unified and organically harmonious society, since such a ruler acts as a foreign presence stirring up people's resentment rather than gaining their willing cooperation. But the solution is not to limit the power of rulers and give more power to the people. Instead, the solution is to convert rulers to a style of lead- ership that will make them both worthy of respect and effective in gaining it. 14
Setting these two sets of assumptions side by side invites a comparative evaluation of the strengths and weaknesses of each. To stimulate discussion, I try to present a case for integrating some of these ancient Chinese ideas into
hermeneutics and pedagogy: old-time historicism 187
our own attitudes--not as a substitute for the democratic ethos and institu- tions, but as a counterbalance correcting some of its weaknesses.
We can start with the problem of alienation. Alienation occurs when the influences that dominate the public realm--influences that determine who receives recognition, status, prestige, wealth, and power--are not correlated with what people regard as true values. Alienation in this sense is widespread today, at both ends of the political spectrum. I think that it is justified: people with good moral sensitivities should be alienated. The development of good moral sensitivities requires that one strongly resist the tendency to assume that most successful people in our society deserve their success, that the views and values of the most powerful and influential people in our society actually de- serve our respect, that there is some close correlation between yielding to social pressure and actually being a good person.
There is an assumption in modern Western culture that the proper re- sponse to alienation is denunciation and opposition. If one feels that the system is corrupt, not publicly taking a stand against it also feels like moral compro- mise. This I think is ultimately shaped by the ''prophetic'' strain in the Judeo- Christian tradition. 15 This has been coupled in modern times by a structural and populist utopianism. Structural utopianism is an important element in what is now called ''modernism'': the confidence that rational political science could discover for us a set of structural reforms and political institutions that would remedy all injustices. By ''populist utopianism'' I mean a confidence in ''the will of the people'' as the agent that will actually bring about a just society.
In class discussions, I try to raise questions about the validity of these assumptions and about the practical effects of acting on them.
As to structural utopianism: Does anyone know of a specific set of political and social institutions that will produce a society fundamentally more just than our own? Do we have good reasons to think that, in the near future, someone will discover such a revolutionary new system that we could implement? Of course, one cannot rule this out, but is it wise to predicate our behavior on the assumption that this will actually happen? The system we have is a combina- tion of a free market economy, electoral politics, the rule of law, an expansion of areas of individual freedom, and at the same time a counterbalancing expan- sion of a managerial government called on to remedy many undesirable effects of the free market and the free choices of individuals pursuing their own interests. I argue that, in the absence of any radically different practical alter- natives on the horizon, the best we can hope for, in the near future at least, are adjustments in this basic system. Such adjustments could result in major improvements in the system areas, such as wider and more equal availability of
188 recent scholarship and teaching the daode jing
health care and education, more genuine equality of opportunity, and so on. But each of these adjustments comes with a cost, generally an expansion of government with an attendant limitation of individual freedoms, increased taxation, increased power for politicians and government bureaucrats, and so on. And I don't see that any amount of adjustment promises to produce a fundamentally more just and less alienating society.
Populist utopianism seems likewise predicated on assumptions at odds with reality. The idea that there exists an actual large group whose desires if listened to would revolutionize the social order for the better--such an idea has a great initial appeal. Anyone who questions it is immediately suspect of being an elitist, siding with some elite group and putting down the people. But this should not prevent us from considering how closely this idea matches actual conditions today. The idea of ''the will of the people'' seems predicated on the further idea that people suffering from domination and injustice will feel sol- idarity with other victims and will struggle for the common liberation of all. But what we seem to see instead is various interest groups each advancing its own interests that conflict with the interests of other groups. What group of voters feels that their voting should be guided, not by their own interests, but by some consideration of the common good? Some political theorists express confidence that competition among interest groups will itself bring about the common good, but it seems more often just to result in stalemate, or in political com- promises that give the word ''politics'' an exceedingly negative connotation in modern democracies. ''Democratic'' electoral politics thus becomes a major cause of alienation rather than a solution.
Some might argue that we should keep alive utopian hopes even if they are unrealistic, because this is the most effective way of preventing wholesale and devastating moral compromise, in which people accept the legitimacy of the present order just because of its actual power. I think there is some validity to this, but one must also consider the actual effect of the attitudes and behavior that it leads to. What strikes me most in this respect is the way protest against the system, and especially against the government, has become characteristic of right-wing groups, those least concerned about the plight of the poor and the powerless in society. And indeed, for the most part, weakening the power of the government in favor of ''the people'' does not actually result in bettering the conditions of the poor and powerless, but in a more Darwinian society favoring the interests of those who are already wealthy and powerful. As bad as it is, the government is the only agency from which we can hope for any reduction in the injustices caused by free market economic forces, free competition for jobs, education, medical services, and so on. The fact that alienation from the system tends to keep the best, brightest, most idealistic individuals out of government
hermeneutics and pedagogy: old-time historicism 189
service actually works to the detriment of the system itself, in which we all have to live.
In light of these considerations, the alternative reactions to alienation expressed in the Daode jing have more to recommend them than one might initially suppose.
Laoists were also obviously alienated from their society. This is expressed, for example, in their love for paradox, praising qualities looked down on in their society and criticizing those qualities most admired. But their reaction to alienation followed a Chinese pattern (shared with their Confucian rivals) that is more bifurcated than the typical Western pattern. It is bifurcated in that it offers a personal program different from the social and political program it also offers. Their personal solution was self-cultivation. Self-cultivation means freeing oneself on a personal level from the influence of the false values that dominate public life in conventional society, and cultivating intensely in one- self those values one thinks are true values. Internalizing these qualities to a very high degree ''saves'' a person from meaninglessness even in the midst of a corrupt society. It enables him to unite with a reality, Dao that transcends the social world. (The fact that Dao needs to fulfill this function makes it important that Dao not be a vague and indeterminate reality or concept devoid of any real content having specific pragmatic implications. ) Laoists wanted to offer this personal solution to all individuals whom they could interest in taking it up. But they did not envision a society in which all individuals would actually engage in this self-cultivation. It was a rather perfectionist project which had to be vol- untarily taken up by individuals willing to invest considerable time and energy on it. It was not envisioned as something already innate in the masses of the people, just waiting to be released by weakening the influence of bad leaders.
But offering this personal, ''individualist'' solution to alienation indepen- dent of any social change did not lead to abandoning any interest in social reform on behalf of the people. Laoists were interested in making society a better place for the masses of the people outside ruling circles. But this did not lead them to identify themselves with ''the people'' in opposition to rulers and managers, nor did it lead them to any plans for a radical restructuring of their society. On the contrary, they accepted the hierarchical structure of society and its accompanying paternalistic approach to governing. Their program for social reform was focused on attempts to infuse social leadership with Laoist values, both by elevating good Laoists to influential middle-level administrative posi- tions, and by acting as counselors to higher level princes and kings (who at the time were either the remnants of hereditary nobility or warlords newly come to power). This leadership would not directly teach Laoist values to the people, nor enshrine them in laws to be obeyed by all. Leaders would, rather, personally
190 recent scholarship and teaching the daode jing
embody Daoist qualities, qualities that would be felt in their personal presence (De) and their style of social interaction, and so would result in a more powerful government, assumed to be necessary for a harmonious and prosperous society.
I ask students, in the light of all this, to reconsider their instinctive an- tipathy to any advice encouraging any ambition to become a representative of the system and to improve and strengthen it, which seems to them to imply rejection of their preferred stance of identification with ''ordinary people'' in opposition to the system. I point out that, willy nilly, most of them will probably at some time become functionaries in some large organization, private or state-run, with responsibilities that place them in control of other people who are either employees or clients of this organization. Their ten- dency is to look on this as an unfortunate economic necessity. Laoists would have them look on this as an opportunity to make the world a better place, at least that corner of the world that they are in charge of.
These are all matters to think about. I want students to suspend their own views long enough to take a sympathetic look at different Laoist attitudes, but then to engage in serious critical thought as to the pros and cons of each way of dealing with these issues. If Laoist views on these subjects are applicable today it is not because they are timeless truths possessing some intrinsic and timeless authority, but by coincidence--because current circumstances bring certain issues and problems to the fore today, and Laoism has a better way of dealing with these issues than the responses that most readily come to minds shaped by the Western cultural tradition. This is a good example of the ad- vantages of a historicist approach over a free reading focused most often on finding ''universal truths. '' Historical reconstructions focusing on particulari- ties of views from the past and other cultures give us something challenging to chew on. ''Universal truths'' tend to get their universality by being vague; lacking specific content and specific implications, they offer us nothing chal- lenging to struggle with.
notes
1. I've outlined this theory in Language and Gnosis: Form and Meaning in the Acts of Thomas (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1985), chap. 1; ''Socio-historical Research and the Contextualization of Biblical Theology,'' in The Social World of Formative Chris- tianity and Judaism: Essays in Honor of Howard Clark Kee, ed. P. Borger, J. S. Frerichs, R. Horsley, and J. Neusner (Philadelphia: Fortress Press 1988), 3-16; ''Are Texts Determinate? Derrida, Barth, and the Role of the Biblical Scholar,'' Harvard Theolo- gical Review 81, no. 3 (1988): 341-357; Tao and Method: A Reasoned Approach to the Tao- te-ching (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994), 5-43) and Michael
hermeneutics and pedagogy: old-time historicism 191
Lafargue ''Recovering the Tao-te-Ching's Original Meaning: Some Remarks on His- torical Hermeneutics,'' in Lao-tzu and the Tao-te-ching, ed. Livia Kohn and Michael LaFargue (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998), 255-276. I owe a great deal both in hermeneutics and in pedagogy to the mentoring of Dieter Georgi,
and partly through him to his teacher Rudolf Bultmann.
2. My resulting interpretation of the first two chapters of the Acts of Thomas was
published as Language and Gnosis.
3. See Michael Ermarth, Wilhelm Dilthey: The Critique of Historical Reason (Chi-
cago: University of Chicago Press, 1981). For my critique of Gadamer, see LaFargue, Tao and Method, 7-12; for Derrida, see LaFargue, ''Are Texts Determinate? ''
4. I've found most helpful Ted Kaptchuk's The Web That Has No Weaver (Chi- cago: Congdon & Weed, 1983) on Chinese medical theory, and B. Frantzis, Opening the Energy Gates of Your Body (Berkeley: North Atlantic Books, 1993).
5. I've adopted A. C. Graham's term ''Laoism'' as a convenient designation of the specific teaching of the Daode jing, to distinguish this from other teachings associated with the term ''Daoism. '' See A. C. Graham, Studies in Chinese Philosophy and Philoso- phical Literature (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990), 118, 124. This enables me to avoid engaging in struggles over what properly deserves the prestige name ''Daoism. '' For students concerned about this question, I recommend Nathan Sivin's very informative article, ''On the Word 'Taoist' as a Source of Perplexity, with Special Reference to the Relations of Science and Religion in Traditional China,'' History of Religions 17 (1978): 303-330, for the situation in China, and Julia Hardy's ''Influential Western Interpretations of the Tao-te-ching,'' and The Tao of Pooh, ed. Benjamin M. Hoff (New York: Penguin Books, 1983), for a history of ''Western Daoism. ''
6. See LaFargue, The Tao of the Tao Te Ching, A Translation and Commentary (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992), 219-253. I assign the essays under the following topics: Organic, Natural, Appearances, Self-Promotion, Con- tending, Confucianism, Empty, Nothing, Uncarved Block, Agitation, Desire, Still, Naming, Understanding, Impressive, Strict, Hurting, Forcing, Low, Softness, Im- provements, Working, Dao, and De. These give an overview of my attempts to re- construct the original historical meaning of the Daode jing. I sometimes also assign the longer and more systematic essay on ''Organic Harmony'' in LaFargue, Tao and Method, 160-172. I think organic harmony as there defined is the core value in Laoism.
7. More complete explanation of my theory about how proverbs mean is given in LaFargue, Tao and Method, chaps. 6-7. See also my ''Understanding the Aphorisms in the Tao-te-ching,'' Journal of Chinese Religions, no. 18 (fall 1990): 25-43.
8. LaFargue, Tao and Method.
9. Ibid. , 104-112, 181-195. My attention was first drawn to parallels between the Daode jing and the Nei Ye by the work of Hal Roth; see ''Psychology and Self-Culti- vation in Early Taoistic Thought,'' Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 51 (December 1991): 599-650.
10. A. C. Graham, Disputers of the Tao: Philosophical Argument in Ancient China (LaSalle, Ill. : Open Court Press, 1989), 243.
192 recent scholarship and teaching the daode jing
11. Many of these ideas are implied in passages using the key recurrent term ''turn back. '' For example chapter 16 speaks of ''turning back to the root,'' which it says is equivalent to achieving a mental stillness (jing) that is the opposite of activity (zuo); this implies that stillness is a kind of primary or ''root'' state, compared to which activity is secondary and derivative. The common tendency is to flee this ''root'' and involve oneself in outward-directed activity. Laoist advice to ''turn back'' is advice to reverse this outward flow and turn back to this neglected root. Similarly, chapter 64 says one should ''desire [to be] desire-less, learn [to be] un-learned . . . turn back to the place all others have gone on from''; chapter 28 speaks of ''turning back to an infant [-like state], turning back to [being] uncarved''; chapter 52 speaks of ''turning back
to the [internal] Mother,'' in contrast to occupying oneself with phenomena in the world, the Mother's ''children''; chapter 32 says that the ''naming'' involved in legalistic rule making is a result of ''cutting up'' an initially ''uncarved'' Dao. I think the end of chapter 1 also pictures conceptual naming as something that arises out of a prior ''merged'' state of mind, that is, a state of mind prior to the emergence of well-defined concepts. If my understanding is correct, this aspect of Laoist thought is probably summed up in the rather cryptic passage in chapter 25: ''One can call it [Dao] 'Great. ' Great means going forth, going forth means going far away, going far away means turning back. '' ' The social world we see is the result of a ''going forth'' from Dao, a movement that initially alienates this world from Dao. Overcoming this alienation is the object of Laoist self-cultivation, which is a reversal (''turning back'') of this cosmic movement away from Dao.
12. LaFargue, Tao and Method, 172-174.
13. Some elements in this list are the result of my attempts to situate the Daode jing in its social setting in ancient China, spelled out in LaFargue, Tao and Method, chaps. 3-5. Many of these assumptions are not specifically Laoist, but were elements of a political culture that Laoists shared with other thinkers of the time, including their Confucian rivals. The tendency among Western scholars is to try to assimilate divisions between different Chinese schools to modern divisions we are familiar with (right vs. left, religious vs. secular, etc. ).
I think n historical reading should focus instead on the way that the shared political culture of ancient Chinese thinkers differs from the shared political culture that shapes modern thought.
14. See the remarks by A. C. Graham on what he calls ''hierarchical anarchism'': the utopias of even the most ''primitivist,'' anticivilization thinkers in ancient China were presided over by a sage emperor. Disputers of the Tao, 299-311.
15. This attitude is well represented, I believe, in the Gospel of Mark, another of my favorites among religious classics, though its message is in many ways directly opposed to the Daode jing. See my ''The Authority of the Excluded: Mark's Challenge to a Rational Hermeneutics,'' in Religious Propaganda and Missionary Competition in the New Testament World: Essays Honoring Dieter Georgi, supplement to Novum Tes- tamentum, no. 74, ed. Lukas Borman, Kelly DelTredici, and Angela Standhartinger (Leiden: Brill, 1994), 229-255.
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184 recent scholarship and teaching the daode jing
''But this doesn't apply to me. I'm one of the people, not one of the rulers. '' I try to emphasize that a historical approach to the Daode jing is not an alternative to one that considers its potential relevance to people today. The message of the Daode jing is one that can be generalized and applied to many situations other than the specific ones envisioned by the original authors. I often have students break down into small groups to discuss specific chapters of the Daode jing and encourage them in these discussions to consider what it might mean if a person wanted to apply these passages to her own life today. One of the biggest obstacles to this in many students' minds is the fact that so much of the Daode jing consists in advice about how to rule a country. I try to point out that much of this advice can be generalized and applied, for example, as advice to parents about how to deal with their children. Still, students typically find this aspect of the Daode jing at best irrelevant to their lives, and at worst objectionably elitist. Advice is relevant only if it ''applies to the lives of ordinary people like us. '' There seems to be something objec- tionable in itself about writing a book advising people in authority on the best
way of maintaining and using that authority.
This is an excellent opportunity for illustrating what I mean by ''confron-
tational hermeneutics. '' That is, the student reactions just mentioned reflect a set of assumptions implicitly taken for granted in much Western thought. Our general tendency is to take these assumptions as a normative framework within which to understand and evaluate works like the Daode jing. Whatever we can, we interpret in a way that accords with these basic assumptions. Whatever does not accord with these assumptions we reject as fundamentally mistaken. (This is the way that I myself read the Daode jing when I first became attracted to it in my hippie days in the 1970s'. ) When this is done, our own basic assumptions are protected from any kind of questioning. There is never a confrontation between them and the different assumptions the text's authors may have held. What I think needs to be done instead is to make our own assumptions explicit and hold them at arm's length, temporarily suspending our commitment to them, in order to seriously consider a set of assumptions differing from ours on a very basic level.
In the present case, I try to articulate as a basis for discussion some assumptions prevalent in the United States today, first asking students if my list accurately articulates their sense of things. My list is something like the following:
All important truths are universal truths, equally applicable to the lives of all. The very idea that some people should have authority over others is of
questionable legitimacy.
hermeneutics and pedagogy: old-time historicism 185
''The people'' are in general good. They usually have complaints and want to reverse various decisions made by those in power. Our sympathies should generally lie with the people protesting against the establish- ment.
The proper way to react to the abuse of authority is to limit the power of authorities and give more power to the people. This applies especially to ''bureaucrats,'' who, being appointed rather than elected, are not directly responsible to the people.
If an idealistic individual finds herself living in a society whose norms she cannot respect, the proper responses are (1) withdrawal, (2) publicly dramatizing one's dissent, or (3) working to undermine the present order and bring about fundamental, revolutionary change. Revolu- tionaries inevitably represent themselves as working on behalf of the people.
Politics is ideally the struggle for the victory of what is right, and also the struggle for the victory of the people over the powers that be. These are for the most part identical.
One should generally assume that people who aspire to positions of power do so out of egotistic desire to assert that they are ''better than other people,'' one of the worst sins in modern egalitarian democratic societies. Identifying oneself with the people is a basic precondition for moral respectability in this kind of society.
Side by side with this list, we can list a set of assumptions taught or taken for granted by the authors of the Daode jing:13
What the people most need is an orderly and harmonious social order, an environment conducive to peace and moderate prosperity. Such social order depends on the ability of the government to unify the people under its leadership and on its paternalistic work for the common good, in contrast to individuals striving on behalf of personal and private interests. The government is able to do this only by gaining the willing allegiance and cooperation of the people. So the prime concern of political thought is, first, how to gain this willing allegiance and cooperation and, second, how to wield the power thus gained in a way that will produce a social environment most conducive to human flourishing.
If an idealistic individual finds herself living in a society whose norms she cannot respect, the proper response has two aspects, one personal and one social. First, on a personal level, one must internally free oneself from the distorting influences of social pressure so as to cultivate a
186
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more organically harmonious way of being. And one must develop a relation to some reality beyond and superior to the norms of society-- thus the importance of developing a relation to a ''transcendent'' Dao. Second, on the social side, one should devote oneself to making society a better place for others. One can be most effective in doing this by gaining positions of responsibility and influence within the present sociopolitical structure or by winning the ear of those who have the most power and influence. The crucial thing is that people in such positions must use those means of gaining allegiance and cooperation and carry out those public policies that are most conducive to harmony and prosperity in society.
These two endeavors are governed by different ideals, described in differ- ent aspects of Laoist teaching. Teachings related to self-cultivation are not universal truths applicable to the lives of all, but are intended for idealistic individuals who voluntarily take on the project of self-transformation. This group is open to all, but the general assumption is that not everyone in the society will have this ambition. So this teaching about the mental qualities or states of mind to be cultivated is not the basis for a proposed transformation of the entire society, nor a curriculum to be taught to all the people. (The Daode jing shows no interest in the internal state of ''the people'' [min], and never speaks about them as anything other than the objects of rule. ) One does not teach the people Daoist values and self-cultivation, but concentrates on fos- tering unity, harmony, and moderate prosperity in the society. Thus politics is not the struggle for the public victory of those values one believes in most passionately and cultivates in one's personal life. It is the practical attempt to provide an environment conducive to a relatively good life for people not like oneself.
Tendencies commonly found in rulers--exploitation, self-aggrandizement, meddlesomeness, arbitrary imposition of rules, willing resort to armed violence--are regarded as some of the main obstacles in the way of achieving a unified and organically harmonious society, since such a ruler acts as a foreign presence stirring up people's resentment rather than gaining their willing cooperation. But the solution is not to limit the power of rulers and give more power to the people. Instead, the solution is to convert rulers to a style of lead- ership that will make them both worthy of respect and effective in gaining it. 14
Setting these two sets of assumptions side by side invites a comparative evaluation of the strengths and weaknesses of each. To stimulate discussion, I try to present a case for integrating some of these ancient Chinese ideas into
hermeneutics and pedagogy: old-time historicism 187
our own attitudes--not as a substitute for the democratic ethos and institu- tions, but as a counterbalance correcting some of its weaknesses.
We can start with the problem of alienation. Alienation occurs when the influences that dominate the public realm--influences that determine who receives recognition, status, prestige, wealth, and power--are not correlated with what people regard as true values. Alienation in this sense is widespread today, at both ends of the political spectrum. I think that it is justified: people with good moral sensitivities should be alienated. The development of good moral sensitivities requires that one strongly resist the tendency to assume that most successful people in our society deserve their success, that the views and values of the most powerful and influential people in our society actually de- serve our respect, that there is some close correlation between yielding to social pressure and actually being a good person.
There is an assumption in modern Western culture that the proper re- sponse to alienation is denunciation and opposition. If one feels that the system is corrupt, not publicly taking a stand against it also feels like moral compro- mise. This I think is ultimately shaped by the ''prophetic'' strain in the Judeo- Christian tradition. 15 This has been coupled in modern times by a structural and populist utopianism. Structural utopianism is an important element in what is now called ''modernism'': the confidence that rational political science could discover for us a set of structural reforms and political institutions that would remedy all injustices. By ''populist utopianism'' I mean a confidence in ''the will of the people'' as the agent that will actually bring about a just society.
In class discussions, I try to raise questions about the validity of these assumptions and about the practical effects of acting on them.
As to structural utopianism: Does anyone know of a specific set of political and social institutions that will produce a society fundamentally more just than our own? Do we have good reasons to think that, in the near future, someone will discover such a revolutionary new system that we could implement? Of course, one cannot rule this out, but is it wise to predicate our behavior on the assumption that this will actually happen? The system we have is a combina- tion of a free market economy, electoral politics, the rule of law, an expansion of areas of individual freedom, and at the same time a counterbalancing expan- sion of a managerial government called on to remedy many undesirable effects of the free market and the free choices of individuals pursuing their own interests. I argue that, in the absence of any radically different practical alter- natives on the horizon, the best we can hope for, in the near future at least, are adjustments in this basic system. Such adjustments could result in major improvements in the system areas, such as wider and more equal availability of
188 recent scholarship and teaching the daode jing
health care and education, more genuine equality of opportunity, and so on. But each of these adjustments comes with a cost, generally an expansion of government with an attendant limitation of individual freedoms, increased taxation, increased power for politicians and government bureaucrats, and so on. And I don't see that any amount of adjustment promises to produce a fundamentally more just and less alienating society.
Populist utopianism seems likewise predicated on assumptions at odds with reality. The idea that there exists an actual large group whose desires if listened to would revolutionize the social order for the better--such an idea has a great initial appeal. Anyone who questions it is immediately suspect of being an elitist, siding with some elite group and putting down the people. But this should not prevent us from considering how closely this idea matches actual conditions today. The idea of ''the will of the people'' seems predicated on the further idea that people suffering from domination and injustice will feel sol- idarity with other victims and will struggle for the common liberation of all. But what we seem to see instead is various interest groups each advancing its own interests that conflict with the interests of other groups. What group of voters feels that their voting should be guided, not by their own interests, but by some consideration of the common good? Some political theorists express confidence that competition among interest groups will itself bring about the common good, but it seems more often just to result in stalemate, or in political com- promises that give the word ''politics'' an exceedingly negative connotation in modern democracies. ''Democratic'' electoral politics thus becomes a major cause of alienation rather than a solution.
Some might argue that we should keep alive utopian hopes even if they are unrealistic, because this is the most effective way of preventing wholesale and devastating moral compromise, in which people accept the legitimacy of the present order just because of its actual power. I think there is some validity to this, but one must also consider the actual effect of the attitudes and behavior that it leads to. What strikes me most in this respect is the way protest against the system, and especially against the government, has become characteristic of right-wing groups, those least concerned about the plight of the poor and the powerless in society. And indeed, for the most part, weakening the power of the government in favor of ''the people'' does not actually result in bettering the conditions of the poor and powerless, but in a more Darwinian society favoring the interests of those who are already wealthy and powerful. As bad as it is, the government is the only agency from which we can hope for any reduction in the injustices caused by free market economic forces, free competition for jobs, education, medical services, and so on. The fact that alienation from the system tends to keep the best, brightest, most idealistic individuals out of government
hermeneutics and pedagogy: old-time historicism 189
service actually works to the detriment of the system itself, in which we all have to live.
In light of these considerations, the alternative reactions to alienation expressed in the Daode jing have more to recommend them than one might initially suppose.
Laoists were also obviously alienated from their society. This is expressed, for example, in their love for paradox, praising qualities looked down on in their society and criticizing those qualities most admired. But their reaction to alienation followed a Chinese pattern (shared with their Confucian rivals) that is more bifurcated than the typical Western pattern. It is bifurcated in that it offers a personal program different from the social and political program it also offers. Their personal solution was self-cultivation. Self-cultivation means freeing oneself on a personal level from the influence of the false values that dominate public life in conventional society, and cultivating intensely in one- self those values one thinks are true values. Internalizing these qualities to a very high degree ''saves'' a person from meaninglessness even in the midst of a corrupt society. It enables him to unite with a reality, Dao that transcends the social world. (The fact that Dao needs to fulfill this function makes it important that Dao not be a vague and indeterminate reality or concept devoid of any real content having specific pragmatic implications. ) Laoists wanted to offer this personal solution to all individuals whom they could interest in taking it up. But they did not envision a society in which all individuals would actually engage in this self-cultivation. It was a rather perfectionist project which had to be vol- untarily taken up by individuals willing to invest considerable time and energy on it. It was not envisioned as something already innate in the masses of the people, just waiting to be released by weakening the influence of bad leaders.
But offering this personal, ''individualist'' solution to alienation indepen- dent of any social change did not lead to abandoning any interest in social reform on behalf of the people. Laoists were interested in making society a better place for the masses of the people outside ruling circles. But this did not lead them to identify themselves with ''the people'' in opposition to rulers and managers, nor did it lead them to any plans for a radical restructuring of their society. On the contrary, they accepted the hierarchical structure of society and its accompanying paternalistic approach to governing. Their program for social reform was focused on attempts to infuse social leadership with Laoist values, both by elevating good Laoists to influential middle-level administrative posi- tions, and by acting as counselors to higher level princes and kings (who at the time were either the remnants of hereditary nobility or warlords newly come to power). This leadership would not directly teach Laoist values to the people, nor enshrine them in laws to be obeyed by all. Leaders would, rather, personally
190 recent scholarship and teaching the daode jing
embody Daoist qualities, qualities that would be felt in their personal presence (De) and their style of social interaction, and so would result in a more powerful government, assumed to be necessary for a harmonious and prosperous society.
I ask students, in the light of all this, to reconsider their instinctive an- tipathy to any advice encouraging any ambition to become a representative of the system and to improve and strengthen it, which seems to them to imply rejection of their preferred stance of identification with ''ordinary people'' in opposition to the system. I point out that, willy nilly, most of them will probably at some time become functionaries in some large organization, private or state-run, with responsibilities that place them in control of other people who are either employees or clients of this organization. Their ten- dency is to look on this as an unfortunate economic necessity. Laoists would have them look on this as an opportunity to make the world a better place, at least that corner of the world that they are in charge of.
These are all matters to think about. I want students to suspend their own views long enough to take a sympathetic look at different Laoist attitudes, but then to engage in serious critical thought as to the pros and cons of each way of dealing with these issues. If Laoist views on these subjects are applicable today it is not because they are timeless truths possessing some intrinsic and timeless authority, but by coincidence--because current circumstances bring certain issues and problems to the fore today, and Laoism has a better way of dealing with these issues than the responses that most readily come to minds shaped by the Western cultural tradition. This is a good example of the ad- vantages of a historicist approach over a free reading focused most often on finding ''universal truths. '' Historical reconstructions focusing on particulari- ties of views from the past and other cultures give us something challenging to chew on. ''Universal truths'' tend to get their universality by being vague; lacking specific content and specific implications, they offer us nothing chal- lenging to struggle with.
notes
1. I've outlined this theory in Language and Gnosis: Form and Meaning in the Acts of Thomas (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1985), chap. 1; ''Socio-historical Research and the Contextualization of Biblical Theology,'' in The Social World of Formative Chris- tianity and Judaism: Essays in Honor of Howard Clark Kee, ed. P. Borger, J. S. Frerichs, R. Horsley, and J. Neusner (Philadelphia: Fortress Press 1988), 3-16; ''Are Texts Determinate? Derrida, Barth, and the Role of the Biblical Scholar,'' Harvard Theolo- gical Review 81, no. 3 (1988): 341-357; Tao and Method: A Reasoned Approach to the Tao- te-ching (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994), 5-43) and Michael
hermeneutics and pedagogy: old-time historicism 191
Lafargue ''Recovering the Tao-te-Ching's Original Meaning: Some Remarks on His- torical Hermeneutics,'' in Lao-tzu and the Tao-te-ching, ed. Livia Kohn and Michael LaFargue (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998), 255-276. I owe a great deal both in hermeneutics and in pedagogy to the mentoring of Dieter Georgi,
and partly through him to his teacher Rudolf Bultmann.
2. My resulting interpretation of the first two chapters of the Acts of Thomas was
published as Language and Gnosis.
3. See Michael Ermarth, Wilhelm Dilthey: The Critique of Historical Reason (Chi-
cago: University of Chicago Press, 1981). For my critique of Gadamer, see LaFargue, Tao and Method, 7-12; for Derrida, see LaFargue, ''Are Texts Determinate? ''
4. I've found most helpful Ted Kaptchuk's The Web That Has No Weaver (Chi- cago: Congdon & Weed, 1983) on Chinese medical theory, and B. Frantzis, Opening the Energy Gates of Your Body (Berkeley: North Atlantic Books, 1993).
5. I've adopted A. C. Graham's term ''Laoism'' as a convenient designation of the specific teaching of the Daode jing, to distinguish this from other teachings associated with the term ''Daoism. '' See A. C. Graham, Studies in Chinese Philosophy and Philoso- phical Literature (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990), 118, 124. This enables me to avoid engaging in struggles over what properly deserves the prestige name ''Daoism. '' For students concerned about this question, I recommend Nathan Sivin's very informative article, ''On the Word 'Taoist' as a Source of Perplexity, with Special Reference to the Relations of Science and Religion in Traditional China,'' History of Religions 17 (1978): 303-330, for the situation in China, and Julia Hardy's ''Influential Western Interpretations of the Tao-te-ching,'' and The Tao of Pooh, ed. Benjamin M. Hoff (New York: Penguin Books, 1983), for a history of ''Western Daoism. ''
6. See LaFargue, The Tao of the Tao Te Ching, A Translation and Commentary (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992), 219-253. I assign the essays under the following topics: Organic, Natural, Appearances, Self-Promotion, Con- tending, Confucianism, Empty, Nothing, Uncarved Block, Agitation, Desire, Still, Naming, Understanding, Impressive, Strict, Hurting, Forcing, Low, Softness, Im- provements, Working, Dao, and De. These give an overview of my attempts to re- construct the original historical meaning of the Daode jing. I sometimes also assign the longer and more systematic essay on ''Organic Harmony'' in LaFargue, Tao and Method, 160-172. I think organic harmony as there defined is the core value in Laoism.
7. More complete explanation of my theory about how proverbs mean is given in LaFargue, Tao and Method, chaps. 6-7. See also my ''Understanding the Aphorisms in the Tao-te-ching,'' Journal of Chinese Religions, no. 18 (fall 1990): 25-43.
8. LaFargue, Tao and Method.
9. Ibid. , 104-112, 181-195. My attention was first drawn to parallels between the Daode jing and the Nei Ye by the work of Hal Roth; see ''Psychology and Self-Culti- vation in Early Taoistic Thought,'' Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 51 (December 1991): 599-650.
10. A. C. Graham, Disputers of the Tao: Philosophical Argument in Ancient China (LaSalle, Ill. : Open Court Press, 1989), 243.
192 recent scholarship and teaching the daode jing
11. Many of these ideas are implied in passages using the key recurrent term ''turn back. '' For example chapter 16 speaks of ''turning back to the root,'' which it says is equivalent to achieving a mental stillness (jing) that is the opposite of activity (zuo); this implies that stillness is a kind of primary or ''root'' state, compared to which activity is secondary and derivative. The common tendency is to flee this ''root'' and involve oneself in outward-directed activity. Laoist advice to ''turn back'' is advice to reverse this outward flow and turn back to this neglected root. Similarly, chapter 64 says one should ''desire [to be] desire-less, learn [to be] un-learned . . . turn back to the place all others have gone on from''; chapter 28 speaks of ''turning back to an infant [-like state], turning back to [being] uncarved''; chapter 52 speaks of ''turning back
to the [internal] Mother,'' in contrast to occupying oneself with phenomena in the world, the Mother's ''children''; chapter 32 says that the ''naming'' involved in legalistic rule making is a result of ''cutting up'' an initially ''uncarved'' Dao. I think the end of chapter 1 also pictures conceptual naming as something that arises out of a prior ''merged'' state of mind, that is, a state of mind prior to the emergence of well-defined concepts. If my understanding is correct, this aspect of Laoist thought is probably summed up in the rather cryptic passage in chapter 25: ''One can call it [Dao] 'Great. ' Great means going forth, going forth means going far away, going far away means turning back. '' ' The social world we see is the result of a ''going forth'' from Dao, a movement that initially alienates this world from Dao. Overcoming this alienation is the object of Laoist self-cultivation, which is a reversal (''turning back'') of this cosmic movement away from Dao.
12. LaFargue, Tao and Method, 172-174.
13. Some elements in this list are the result of my attempts to situate the Daode jing in its social setting in ancient China, spelled out in LaFargue, Tao and Method, chaps. 3-5. Many of these assumptions are not specifically Laoist, but were elements of a political culture that Laoists shared with other thinkers of the time, including their Confucian rivals. The tendency among Western scholars is to try to assimilate divisions between different Chinese schools to modern divisions we are familiar with (right vs. left, religious vs. secular, etc. ).
I think n historical reading should focus instead on the way that the shared political culture of ancient Chinese thinkers differs from the shared political culture that shapes modern thought.
14. See the remarks by A. C. Graham on what he calls ''hierarchical anarchism'': the utopias of even the most ''primitivist,'' anticivilization thinkers in ancient China were presided over by a sage emperor. Disputers of the Tao, 299-311.
15. This attitude is well represented, I believe, in the Gospel of Mark, another of my favorites among religious classics, though its message is in many ways directly opposed to the Daode jing. See my ''The Authority of the Excluded: Mark's Challenge to a Rational Hermeneutics,'' in Religious Propaganda and Missionary Competition in the New Testament World: Essays Honoring Dieter Georgi, supplement to Novum Tes- tamentum, no. 74, ed. Lukas Borman, Kelly DelTredici, and Angela Standhartinger (Leiden: Brill, 1994), 229-255.
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