China by Tongdong Bai

Author:Tongdong Bai
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: eBook ISBN: 9781780320786
Publisher: Zed Books
Published: 2012-10-10T16:00:00+00:00

If the Taoist [Daoist] philosopher could have visited our society, there is no doubt that he would have considered popular education and mass advertising the twin banes of modern life. The one causes the people to fall from their original state of innocent ignorance; the other creates new desires for objects no one would have missed if they had not been invented. (Lau 1963: xxxi)

Thus, the only hope that the teachings of the Lao Zi could be adopted comprehensively and constructively lies in the expectation of some apocalyptic occurrence. That is, perhaps human desires will drive us to the point of total destruction, after which we will be returned to a primitive stage of small states with few people (or even no people), fulfilling the Lao Zi’s universal and descriptive principle of the ‘eternal return’. But it seems doubtful that many people would pin their hopes on this outcome.

With the difficulties of the political proposal in the Lao Zi clarified, we may be able to appreciate the political insight of the Zhuang Zi. The existence of the Daoist philosopher Zhuang Zi 庄子 is far less controversial than Lao Zi. He probably lived during the Warring States period, and is said to have written the book Zhuang Zi. But whether in fact he wrote the entire book is a controversial issue. The common view is that many chapters, especially the so-called ‘outer’ and ‘mixed’ chapters, were written by his followers, or even others, while the inner chapters were written by him. There are passages in the Zhuang Zi whose ideas echo those found in the Yang Zhu chapter in the Lie Zi and in the Lao Zi. There are many amusing and fanciful stories and counter-intuitive insights on life in the Zhuang Zi, which make it a fascinating read. Together with ideas from the Lao Zi, these tales and insights offered comfort to those traditional Chinese intellectuals who failed to realize their political ambitions. After all, it is comforting to learn that, for example, even if one’s political ambitions are realized, such are considered by great nature to be merely a laughing matter – a notion often expressed in the aphorisms in the Lao Zi and in the sardonic and playful stories in the Zhuang Zi. This and other ideas from the Zhuang Zi constitute part of the psyche of traditional Chinese intellectuals, especially the artistic among them. But, other than constituting background culture, the Zhuang Zi does not seem to have a place in political philosophy. However, the strong apolitical attitude found in the Zhuang Zi may have reflected a great political insight. As Schwartz points out, Zhuang Zi understood the difficulties in the teachings of the Lao Zi, and therefore dropped the ‘primitivist’ critique of civilization completely, replacing it with an ‘all-enveloping historical fatalism’ (Schwartz 1985: 188, 229–33). In other words, the Zhuang Zi depoliticizes the Lao Zi, though it is, nonetheless, based upon a political insight. Perhaps for the author(s) of the Zhuang Zi the world was too

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.