Contradiction and tension in the Tao te Ching

Preparatory notes for the question of eternal life.

At the 1968 Symposium of Taoist Studies, a contradiction was raised between the philosophical and the practical in Taoism. Where the latter, the alchemists and adepts, sought eternal life, the former were inclined—and this is plainly apparent from the text—to reconcile oneself to death. This theme can be found throughout, that death is not be overcome by exclusion as through eternal life but rather that life and death are each alike eternal in their role as aspects of the heavenly cycle.

It is said, for instance, that “he who knows how to nourish life … has no place of death” (chapter fifty). This gives rise to the notion ascribed to Taoism by some that there are magical wards, means of preventing death by a violence external or internal. Against this, we may trace life and death in the Tao te Ching as a whole. Following this leads us to a more metaphysically consistent interpretation, at least in this context, in which as elsewhere and otherwise in the Tao te Ching, as with all such polarities, life and death are as aspects ever-turning in that singular face of the nameless Tao. 

There is nothing in the way of permanence within the Tao but for its whirling, in which all polarities are intertwined impossible as an aspect of this dynamic. The dynamic itself, moreover, is that which sustains its own basic dichotomy between static and dynamic: that movement is the only law, that it is the endlessness of this motion which is the eternal rather than any of the ten-thousand things that issue forth from this origin. We might here trace some of the several basic polarities within the Tao te Ching: dynamic and static, life and death, being and non-being, self and selflessness, the Tao itself and the ten-thousand things. All of these are aspects of the whole, images of the imageless.

Taking this final turning, aspects of the whole, we find a further polarity in the relation known by the scholastics (and to some since) as mereology: the relation of the whole to its parts, of the parts to their whole. This is that which stands between, which holds together—as to cleave can be a movement in either direction, together or apart—the Tao and the ten-thousand things. For this we can consider it in terms of the anthropic principle, for lack of a better term to capture this: that were there not the ten-thousand things, then there would not be the Tao te Ching. The text itself, as the human that interprets this, as the world to which this interpretation seems to refer, are of the ten-thousand things. Were it not for these then there would be no need for the Tao te Ching, at which we might ask of the theodicy implied by this text, by this relation between source which seems and the substance of its existents.

We have thus far neglected what may be for many the more immediate polarity of good and evil, and this perhaps for the fact that the Tao te Ching is foremost a work cosmological rather than ethical. The ethical aspect here follows from the cosmological, and further that there is a meta-ethical position which situates the ethical-psychological in contrast to the ethical-cosmological. Early in the Tao te Ching there is the notion that to distinguish between goodness and evil is itself an evil, that there is an unnatural aspect to this act of distinction. Here we may note a further perspective, perhaps tangential, through a consideration of the nature of ontological primitives in the Chinese language.

There is in Chinese syntax as resistance to making objects and containers of the abstract, as against English where this is happily done. A key example here is the treatment of the word for ‘race,’ as in English one might happily refer to someone being in a race (hence, treating it as a container) whereas in Chinese it is more appropriate to deal with this in terms of a verb (hence race as activity or process). This can be taken as indicative of a wider tendency, noted by Rouzer, to avoid the positing of abstract containers in the Chinese language. The particular example for which we are raising this point, however, occurs in the context of translating the Bible into Chinese, particularly the book of Genesis:

to know good and evil (3:5)

分别善恶

fenbie shan e

distinguish good and evil

We find here that this tendency manifests in a distinct difference of meaning, that it is not a matter of knowing good and evil as entities but rather treating of these as relational terms constituted by the act of distinction. From this we can see that our own perspective is even further from that which the Tao te Ching addresses, that our tendency to fragments in ontology only increases our need for the Tao.

The central polarity with which we are here concerned is that of life and death, and further all others to the extent that these are implicated in this basic concern: self and selflessness, being and non-being, and so on. These must be conceived of in terms of this as an act of distinction rather than the objectified notion which is common today, which is not merely an artificial exercise in understanding some distant culture but rather captures our own state more accurately than the delusions of Plato.

It is perhaps inappropriate to blame Plato so directly for this, that another would have served just as well in this world-historical role, in the necessity of this movement, and further that it was not his by chance or fault but rather determined as the role he was to play. This metaphysics, moreover, is not, as in Nietzsche’s treatment in the Twilight of the Idols, so much an error strictly conceived as it was a necessary movement for our being at all. The attitude which I am outlining here is precisely in line with that of the Tao te Ching, where the movement must proceed through its own opposite if it is to arrive at its proper end—and here, returning to theodicy at last, we find that it is the refusal of this this end, namely neglecting to leave the stage at the end of one’s scene, which constitutes a wrong.

The very notion of a wrong here seems further inappropriate in this context, that it is not a wrong in the moral sense, not in the earthly sense, that it is rather a movement against the laws of heaven, and to this extent it may, as friction produces heat, result in suffering thrown off from its contradictory motion. To the Taoist, therefore, this may well be considered a ‘wrong’—but it is so in quite different terms, it is not a wrong in the sense of demanding some action of human authority to right it, rather is simply a disorder in the necessary movement of an earth encompassed by the laws of heaven.

With that quite unsatisfactory view, that it is and is not at once (ultimately avaktavya in the Jain sense of the inexpressibility of simultaneous asserted contradiction), we may then ask: how is this possible? This is truly the question of theodicy, not moral but cosmological, and it is within this context that we must frame any answer. There is within the Tao te Ching certainly a sense for the inevitable heavenly law, that the Sage must (or ought) move with this motion, and yet there is the further possibility of resisting this, that which is regularly cautioned against: “When work is done, the person retires, such is the Tao of heaven” (chapter nine). Similarly, or contrarily, “because he does not contend with any, he commits no wrong” (chapter eight).

There is in this a basic contradiction, and this is the same contradiction as that which animates the broader notion of wu wei or ‘effortless action.’ The question here is which term the emphasis is to be placed upon, either effortless or action, with the meaning of this single concept varying significantly according to the location of this stress. We can observe with Slingerland that this placement, both in the strict from of reference to wu wei and the family of metaphors which surround this basic tension in Chinese ethical thought, has varied with time. He notes that in the Analects, for instance, that while the concept of wu wei is presently strictly only once, there is nevertheless the common notion of effortless moral activity—and yet that this is found simultaneously with and alongside elements of exertion and even violence.

This tension is never resolved within the tradition, at most some final version may be approached within a single text, albeit often in a somewhat forced manner. The situation thus suits the conclusion given by Padmarajiah in quite a different context, namely when it comes to this contradiction between effort and action in moral activity: “Unless the claims of the two brothers are evenly accommodated philosophy becomes a haunted house constantly assailed by the ghost of the maltreated brother.” Of course, to evenly accomodate these aspects seems in itself to be an impossible aim, and here we may return at last to another polarity noted earlier as central to the Tao te Ching: of the static and dynamic.

Before doing so, however, a point arises quite of its own accord, as that neglected ghost, and this perhaps for the neglect implied necessarily by the structure of language, by the attempt here to name the nameless: the various polarities that are addressed here in turn, perhaps not in an orderly way, one vying to press forward against the other and the whole queue shuffling time and again as this and then that come to the fore—that in this there is a falsity of their division, that this would be akin to my describing movement in the world solely within a single dimension at a time. There are rarely, likely never, any movements in actuality which adhere solely to single dimension, hence these are described falsely first by the one movement and then by the latter. This difficulty is itself appreciated in the Tao te Ching, where the Tao alone is that which “unties the tangled” (chapter four); since it is nameless, however, and yet we persist nevertheless in our vain effort, the muddle here will have to make do.

Taking up again the polarity of static and dynamic, here framed with reference to our discussion of effortlessness and action, we find there are two perspectives on this solution: the first is an answer in words, the second is necessarily also but aspires more to the status of a gesture. The former conceives of the solution in terms of either the stress on effortlessness or action, that it thus seeks a rule by which to guide oneself. This may be conceived in the simplest sense as a prescription of either effortlessness or action as the essence and true ‘first term’ of wu wei, but it might as well also imply a whole system of morality arranged as a sort of decision tree where one may trace out the answer entirely. These are alike of the same spirit in that they seek some answer that can be framed in words, and thus which are defined with reference to other words, a self-contained system that attains to static truth. This is the view which conceives of language as somehow separate from the actuality to which it refers, which indeed views the word as somehow superseding or even sustaining this actuality as linguistic reality.

The static view outlined here is that of a closed system, that the structure of language can enclose itself and the world, that there can be certainty framed within these terms. Earlier Plato was blamed for one aspect, and here perhaps we can peel back a layer of the error attributed to him by noting the importance of Euclid’s Elements and geometry in general for the Platonic school—that being plain for the school itself as a physical and historical, even if perhaps partly fictional, entity, but moreover also for the school which followed in the sense of tradition, wherein it is not so much a place or container, to take up again the matter of Chinese syntax, but rather a thing distinguishable solely by the aligned movement of its many fish. The former announced this influence quite plainly: “Let no one ignorant of geometry enter“—whereas the latter has rather been aligned to this influence more or less subtly.

Taking this view, turning our gaze then to geometry, we may first note an interesting difference between the Greek and Chinese schools in terms of their areas of mathematical expertise. The former, the many varied Greeks, were known particularly for their geometric thought; the Chinese for their work in algebra and number theory. This is to say little, but to my eye glints in response to Needham. To continue our more immediate point, the Platonic school explicitly invoked the place of geometry in the learning of philosophy, and yet we do not find it there explicitly so—where then was the essence, the critical role, of this work such that it served to bar any unfamiliar from entering that place?

Taking up Plato’s Meno, the demonstration of anamnesis, from the doctrine that all knowledge is recollection, we find Socrates proving his point by a slave boy on the beach, that there he marks out a series of geometrical exercises on the sand and has the wholly untrained youth answer these in turn. The fact that this boy, without having any prior education in the art, is yet able to do so successfully is taken by Socrates to prove this doctrine of anamnesis: that it is possible for the boy remembers that realm from which he came, that there he was more intimately acquainted with knowledge and all in this realm merely hearkens back to that prior state of absolute knowing. There is in this basic story much with foreshadows the philosophy to follow and, so long at it is turned sideways at angle, plenty also in the way of truth. This is not our immediate concern.

Instead we are concerned with the structure of these geometric forms, the interplay between the material representation of forms in the sand as drawn with limb of man or tree and those which are thereby inculcated in the minds of entrants to the Platonic school. The ideal realm thus sketched in this example is one which is ultimately proved, so to speak, sustained, and structured by the nature of its geometric origin—and it is in this that we find a sort of eternity, a static realm separate from that to which it refers, one in which the whole can be assured by internal relations and applied to the world.

This is not our world, nor is it the world to which the Tao te Ching refers. I do not call this a strict error, nor do I ask for it to be overturned, I suggest only that in modern questions of metaphysics we have perhaps reached its limits. This is then to apply that earlier principle, that a thing must relent in acknowledgement of its own limits, and in this I also demonstrate the dynamic view which we hinted at earlier: that there may be another answer to the contradiction implied by wu wei, effortless action.

We suggest then a static solution, one which pulls from the Tao te Ching its own solution, that frames the whole within familiar terms. There are three parts to this solution, but this is not the tripartite structure of a dialectical process, such would be to risk implying an end to this movement. Instead the parts are these: one, the other, and the tension between. The focus then must not be on either one or the other but the tension between these, and it is this which compels our movement. Of course, there must in this be a further contradiction: when we take this tension as our aim, we must yet believe in the truth of the angle it compels. There can be no halfhearted pursuit of effortlessness or action in this movement, that would be false, would ultimately fall short; rather we must take each and every of these turns to be in itself the answer—and yet all the while to remember this tension.

There is thus a tension which doubles within itself, the tension of effort and action, the tension within each of these frames between truth and its limits; nowhere here can we be allowed to slack. This is, of course, impossible—and yet there is this further tension between the impossibility of this aim and its absolute requirement, that this again is the source of our movement, that it must be felt. It would be a lie to say that this is not impossible, worse yet that we think that this could be achieved, for if it has been achieved, or we think as much, and rest thus upon our laurels, then all is lost.

This same balance of tension is that which must animate our attitudes in all of these polarities, and it is this we can be felt as the true meaning of avaktavya. Such a thing cannot be spoken, can only be felt, and it is in this feeling that we find the source of what must come—not as a tension which stalls us, not as the anxiety which brings us to a stop, rather in that which compels the tightrope walker to constantly place one foot in front of the other in order to remain in existence. The void waits hungry below.

Zarathustra, however, remained standing, and just beside him fell the body, badly injured and disfigured, but not yet dead. After a while, consciousness returned to the shattered man, and he saw Zarathustra kneeling beside him.

“What art thou doing there?” said he at last, “I knew long ago that the devil would trip me up. Now he draggeth me to hell: wilt thou prevent him?”

“On mine honour, my friend,” answered Zarathustra, “there is nothing of all that whereof thou speakest: there is no devil and no hell. Thy soul will be dead even sooner than thy body; fear, therefore, nothing any more!”

The man looked up distrustfully. “If thou speakest the truth,” said he, “I lose nothing when I lose my life. I am not much more than an animal which hath been taught to dance by blows and scanty fare.”

“Not at all,” said Zarathustra, “thou hast made danger thy calling; therein there is nothing contemptible. Now thou perishest by thy calling: therefore will I bury thee with mine own hands.”

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