天下皆知美之为美,斯恶已;皆知善之为善,斯不善已。
故有无相生,难易相成,长短相形,高下相倾,音声相和,前後相随。
是以圣人处无为之事,行不言之教,
万物作焉而不辞,生而不有,为而不恃,功成而弗居。夫惟弗居,是以不去。
The Canon of the Tao, chapter 2 (translation by Professor Chang Chung Yuan)
When beauty is universally affirmed as beauty, therein is ugliness. When goodness is universally affirmed as goodness, therein is evil.
Therefore: being and non-being are mutually posited in their emergence. Difficult and easy are mutually posited in their complementariness. Long and short are mutually posited in their positions. High and low are mutually posited in their contradiction. Voice and tone are mutually posited in their unity. Front and back are mutually posited in their succession.
Thus, the wise deals with things through non-interference and teaches through no-words.
All things flourish without interruption. They grow by themselves, and no one possesses them. Work is done but no one depends on it. Achievements are made, but no one claims credit. Because no one claims credit, achievements are always there.
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I have long wondered after the utterances of the Taoist philosophers, and of "eastern" philosophy in general, beginning of course with the wonderfully enlightened teachings of Confucius. How does one begin to approach such a body of thought? Serious philosophers have taken these works seriously, but why? What have the "western" philosophers, Schopenhauer et al, felt were their counterparts' contributions?
With some amateurly reflection I have come to vaguely grasp that the limits of the western classical schools, premised generally on rational thought and epistemological analysis, must, by their own inherent premises, come to a hard end where the absurd, the unfathomable lies. The world of thought, beyond the sensible, material world, the theory of the forms, the things in themselves, the utmost margins where Descartes' cogitations (ergo sum) end, beyond that, what? Why did Kant posit existence in real space and time? What played in Kafka's and Camus' mind? Why did Wittgenstein create a novel, perhaps even now poorly understood, theory of logic? What did Derrida's deconstruction theories consist of, if not the limit of the fathomable? Can nihilist ideas contain some kernel of meaning?
I feel that this chapter 2 posits one of the central tenets of eastern thought:
"being and non-being are mutually posited in their emergence ...
故有无相生 ...".
It is in the acceptance, from the beginning, of the paradox that emerges from these ideas as a characterisation of the unfathomable - and the relationship of the material world with this the formless Tao - it is in this that I think one begins to grasp that which spans the vast divide between what is rationally defensible (i.e. western philosophy) and what might be described as acceptance of premises decided arbitrarily, for instance, by faith in a prophet's writings. The unfathomable, accepted as the antithesis of and somehow also the source of the material world, gives the key to insights possible without formal epistemological structures.
"Thus, the wise deals with things through non-interference and teaches through no-words. All things flourish without interruption.They grow by themselves, and no one possesses them ...
是以圣人处无为之事,行不言之教,
万物作焉而不辞,生而不有,为而不恃 ..."