The Darker Side of Daoist Primitivism

Classical Daoism, Philosophical Daoism, Early Daoism: these terms are increasingly being seen as obsolescent by scholars in the last couple of decades. The general public – those who have heard of Daoism or have read a little bit of it – are largely unaware, despite the fact that for quite awhile writers have admitted that there were no “Daoists” in pre-Han China and that the two most famous “Daoists,” Laozi and Zhuangzi, surely never thought of themselves as Daoists. The more recent interest in what was once called “religious Daoism (Daojiao 道教),” as opposed to “philosophical Daoism (Daojia 道家),” has seen a shift towards using “Daoism” to refer only to the former. In this series of blog posts I am going to explore this matter. First, I will look at the oldest evidence for a “Daoist school” in the Historical Records (Shiji 史記) and the Han Documents (Hanshu 漢書). Next I will look into both the text and the legendary man Laozi 老子, followed by Zhuangzi 莊子. Texts that will be mentioned along the way will include: the Laozi 老子, Zhuangzi 莊子, Hanfeizi 韓非子 (esp. Jie Lao 解老, Yu Lao 喻老), Lüshi Chunqiu 春秋左傳, Mengzi 孟子, Xunzi 荀子, Guanzi 管子 (esp. Neiye 內業), Huainanzi 淮南子, Heguanzi 鶡冠子, and the Huangdi Sijing 黃帝四經. I will also survey various scholars’ views on early Chinese “schools of thought.”

Nearly all philosophical inquiry is rooted in contingency. From ontology and theories of God to politics and ethics, dealing with, explaining, planning for, or even following contingency is a consistent theme. In the background of their recent works, Michael Sandel, Hartmut Rosa, John Gray, and Richard Rorty all see contingency and autonomy in a seesaw relationship: more of one correspondingly results in less of the other. Daoist philosophical reflections provide a different take on contingency. We can still have an experience of "self" and of making choices without positing any notion of autonomy outside of contingency.

Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy

4th part in this series of essays, forming the introduction to a comparison of the Laozi and Zhuangzi.

Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 18/4, 543–45., 2008

Although the Daodejing and the Zhuangzi share much in common, multiple scholars have noted differences in their ontological and epistemological positions—differences that go to the very heart of the relationship between inner truth and outer circumstances. This paper, which was presented at the 12th International Conference on Daoist Studies at Beijing Normal University (June 2018), examines the writings of JeeLoo Liu and Chad Hansen, observing how their respective interpretations provide insights regarding how and why these seminal texts diverge. Following Liu, the Laozian view of reality is likened to metaphysical realism, while the Zhuangzian view is closer to internal realism (i.e., metaphysical realism combined with semantic relativism). This difference, however, is not simply an expansion of Laozian thought, as Liu claims; instead, as Hansen argues, it is more convincingly seen as a response to the arguments of bianshi (辩士) like Hui Shi (惠施). Thus, by going back and forth between Liu’s and Hansen’s interpretations, accounting for their strengths and weaknesses in light of textual and contextual factors, a synthesis can be achieved, shedding more light on the intersection of ontology and epistemology in these seminal Daoist texts.

Religions

Lao-Zhuang thought and the Laozi in particular is frequently interpreted as providing a critique of the dominant social values of its time. In English language literature, this often entails utilizing thinkers from the Western tradition of philosophic critique from Kant onwards, thereby obscuring the critical methods unique to the text itself. Chinese language literature, on the other hand, rarely uses the semantics of philosophic critique which thereby prevents the text from contributing its own unique voice to the discourse of critique. This paper attempts to put the Laozi into discourse with the wider tradition of philosophic critique, broadening the tradition with a unique “Chinese voice”, but allowing it to speak in its own terms according to the text itself, the commentarial tradition, and modern scholarship.