From Oracle Bones to Computers. Baotong Gu
by people. Yet, their philosophy has been as influential as Confucianism to the Chinese culture, if not more so. Some Western researchers have even traced a part of the Western philosophical tradition to Taoism.
To understand Taoism, we must first of all know what Tao (or Dao) is. Unfortunately, since Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu never really defined Tao in clear-cut terms, any attempt to do so might do it an injustice. Nevertheless, this should not deter our efforts to understand its essence. Essentially, Tao refers to the “Way,” the way of things. It makes possible what is impossible: “Tao gives birth to one, one to two, two to three, and three to everything else” (Lao Tzu, 1963, Ch. 42). It identifies itself with inferior and negative terms such as the weak, the low, etc. It is characterized by its identity as nonbeing (wu), no-name (wu-ming), no-form (wu-xing), not-having (wu-you), not-striving (wu-wei), not-knowing (wu-zhi), etc. It could be interpreted as the mysterious almighty creator, the basic element in the cosmos, an equivalent to the Western logos, the totality of all things or the ultimate reality, natural laws or the order of nature, the Great One, elusiveness, something undefined yet complete, chaos, or non-being. Or, none of the above.
Such an elusive nature renders Tao as something formless, inaudible, invisible, intangible, distant, and vague. Yet it is this very elusive nature that has intrigued people, that has drawn people to study or follow its principles. Viewed from a different perspective, this elusiveness can also be seen as flexibility, and it is this seemingly infinite flexibility that enables people to explain so many of the mysteries and the seemingly unexplainable phenomena in this world. Tao is the state of non-opposites that strike the balance between things; Tao is a transformational tool that nurtures interchangeability and, consequently, relativism. Tao aims at arriving at dialectic relations between dichotomies, yielding to and helping strengthen a rising power in order to hasten the moment of its decline; ultimately, it strives to achieve a whole and complete entity, an ultimate or essential realm, by means of a certain mystical or Taoist transcendence beyond the whole problem.
Taoism is engaged in the reversal or inversion of the metaphysical tradition. However, such a reversal or inversion is only the initial stage rather than the end of the deconstructive process. They do not aim at privileging the “other” term, but rather problematizing the reification, uncovering the interplay, and opening up the closure of binary oppositions in metaphysical thinking. In this sense, Taoism shares many principles with Derrida’s theory of deconstruction, which is why it is all the more important to understand Taoist precepts, as they readily apply to many contemporary social phenomena. What is distinctive about Taoism is that it goes one step further than Derridean deconstruction in that it aims at unifying the differences so that one can ultimately be immersed into nature.
Taoism points out that once the world is differentiated in terms of dichotomies such as right/wrong, good/bad, life/death, beautiful/ugly, success/failure, gain/loss, more/less, long/short, big/small, etc., man’s use of such terms will inevitably carry with it an immediate value judgment on experience, which then, to a great extent, affects his attitude and action. Taoism posits that all values are relative, perspective-bound, and arbitrary because they are not the intrinsic nature of things. The dualistic conceptualization prevents us from seeing the internal structure of a thing, which is to be understood in terms of differences. If from this internal point of view these dualistic terms become reversible and interchangeable, then there is no more opposition between them. The opposite terms become interdependent and complementary at a deeper level: without “that,” there is no “this’: without “this,” “that” has nothing to hold onto. According to Taoism, terms are mutually defined. One does not have any value without the other:
There is a beginning. There is a not-yet-beginning. There is a not-yet-beginning-to-be-a-not-yet-beginning to be a beginning. There is being. There is nonbeing. There is a not-yet-beginning to be nonbeing. There is a not-yet-beginning-to-be-a-not-yet-beginning to be nonbeing. Suddenly there is being and nonbeing. But between this being and nonbeing. I don’t really know which is being and which is nonbeing. (Chuang Tzu, 1965 Ch. 2)
This famous quote is probably the best summary and representation of the Taoist perspective of relativism. What Chuang Tzu is saying here is that things, including those that are posited as opposites in dichotomies, are dependent upon one another to have an existence of any meaning or significance. Viewed this way, nothing is really more significant than the other, which then allows no necessity for the privileging of one thing over another. The following story from Chuang Tzu best illustrates the principle of relativity in Taoism:
When Zhuangzi’s [Chuang Tzu] wife died and Hui Shi came to convey his condolences, he found Zhuangzi squatting with his knees out, drumming on a pan and singing. “You lived with her, she raised your children, and you grew old together,” Hui Shi said. “Not weeping when she died would have been bad enough. Aren’t you going too far by drumming on a pan and singing?”
“No,” Zhuangzi said, “when she first died, how could I have escaped feeling the loss? Then I looked back to the beginning before she had life. Not only before she had life, but before she had form. Not only before she had form, but before she had vital energy. In this confused amorphous realm, something changed and vital energy appeared; when the vital energy was changed, form appeared; with changes in form, life began. Now there is another change bringing death. This is like the progression of the four seasons of spring and fall, winter and summer. Here she was lying down to sleep in a huge room, and I followed her, sobbing and wailing. When I realized my actions showed I hadn’t understood destiny, I stopped.” (Ebrey, 1993, p. 31)
Let me try to summarize Taoism without doing it too much injustice. Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu’s Tao can be understood as the way of life or the laws of nature. Tao ultimately leads to everything. Everything is made up of two opposites, which can transform into one another. The formation and transformation of everything represent the unity of being and non-being. Being and non-being depend on each other, but the non-being is more fundamental. Everything results from being, which, however, results from non-being.
Perhaps it makes more sense if we compare Taoism with Confucianism. While Confucianism emphasizes rational understanding, Taoism depends on feeling and intuition. Confucianism sees truth and knowledge as being out there whereas Taoism regards the nature of truth as uncertain and conceived knowledge and truth as products more of perception. Confucianism values clarity in speaking and was against sophistries and vagueness; in contrast Taoism sees perceived vagueness as a virtue and considers argumentation to be futile.
In brief, while Confucianism represents the orthodox of the Chinese culture with its traditions and the master narratives, Taoism seems to reflect the more unorthodox traditions in the Chinese culture and to account in a better way for the unaccountable. What Taoism tries to do is to reconcile the orthodox with the unorthodox, the unaccountable, the marginal, and bring them to unity. The way of doing this is through the unity of our way of life with the laws of nature. What is significant about Taoism is its emphasis on the equal importance of both the orthodox and the unorthodox, thus granting space to the marginalized. This is what attracts people who subscribe to Taoism, and many people find Taoist principles especially applicable today when chaos and the unaccountable seem more than rare occurrences.
Rhetorically speaking, the Taoist view of language is characterized by a more radical “historicism or situatedness” ( H. Wang, 1993, p. 54). Taoist use of language, argues H. Wang, “relies on human spontaneity, which is guided by human reasoning” (p. 54). This spontaneous nature of language use results from the fact that, while things in nature are constantly changing, man’s limited perception of them reflects only the present:
Since the linguistic systems are actually conceptual frameworks that organize and articulate our experiences with the world, to the extent that these frameworks spontaneously sort out only fluid boundaries and relations among momentary differences according to the circumstances, it is helpful; the effort to fix these boundaries as people often do in argumentation, however, is not helpful. (H. Wang, p. 57)
Understood this way, Taoism situates discourse in concrete social and historical contexts, and Taoist rhetoric is essentially “dynamic, creative, and individualistic” in nature (H. Wang, p. 58).
Buddhism
The main reason that Buddhism,