The commentary will begin after the introductory posts, the first of which is given below:
The Ancient Way
“Hold to the ancient Way to cope [with change] in today’s world”
-DDJ 14
According to the legend preserved in Sima
Qian’s “Biography of Laozi,” when Confucius went to the Zhou imperial court,
then in decline, to ask about the ancient rites, he was rebuffed by Laozi and
told, “As for the things you are talking about—those people along with their
bones have already rotted away! All that remains is their words” (10). The legend
accurately depicts Confucius’ interest in the past. It was there that he found a time when the
Way [dao], by which he meant “the
good system,” (11) of social and political harmony “prevailed in the
world.” (12) In Confucius’s
time the “good system” of the Zhou had fallen into crisis, and he looked back
to the early generations following the Zhou Confederacy’s defeat of the Shang
power cult that had previously dominated them (1122 BCE) for the basic
principles of a society in which he thought the Way prevailed. His hero of this earlier era was the Duke of
Zhou, whom he said appeared to him in his dreams. He taught the cultivation of ren, the ethical ideal of an Exemplary
Person, and the practice of li, a
corpus of ritual observances, ceremonies and appropriate manners. In Confucius’ vision of the Way these two
worked together to “rectify” and harmonize human interaction in society and the
family, and to create stable and humane relations between rulers and the people
ruled.
Much of the Dao De Jing is also a response to the crisis of Zhou culture, but
its teachings look back to a very different tradition in the past, one that is
at odds with Confucius’ celebration of the cultivated ideal of the Exemplary
Person and the body of ritual display and deference that substantiates it. (13) Both the Confucian tradition and the Wisdom
tradition of the Dao De Jing call on
an ancient Way (dao), but the two
ancient Ways are fundamentally different:
the Confucian Way deals exclusively with humanity, while the wisdom
tradition in the Dao De Jing is
holistic in its approach and, as we would say today, ecological in its
practice. For both traditions, however,
it is not a case of returning to the past, but of using an “ancient Way”
practiced in the past as a model for dealing with the present, with the crisis
brought about by the decay of the former loyalties and ritual observances that
stabilized the Zhou Confederacy’s clan-based feudal state. In response to this crisis the Analects of Confucius presents one
vision, the wisdom tradition of the Dao
De Jing presents another. The two
share some common ground, but their differences are irreconcilable. The later Confucian philosopher Xunzi was
quite clear about this: “The tao [Way]
is neither the tao of Heaven nor the tao of earth, but the tao of man.”
(14) The wisdom of the Dao De Jing sees Confucius teachings as
designed to lubricate the hierarchical system of feudal ranks (call it society,
state or empire) while ignoring or minimizing the importance of the larger
natural world of the biosphere that supports the system.
The system Confucius admired, like all
forms of civilization, was not an accidental development. There are various
theories about the origin of civilization, but none of them can dispense with
the use of force. In the process of
establishing “the system” in the ancient world control was gained by conquest
and subordination. Once established,
systematic control enabled the elite among the conquerors to live relatively
cultivated lives of ritual deference. (15)
As an outcome of what Xunzi called “the tao of man” the system had the
order of a purposeful design [which is not to say that all its detailed aspects
were planned out in advance]. The
Chinese word wei has the sense of
designing action, action whose purpose is to realize an aim. Designing action is intelligent, thought-out,
planned and executed as a means to an end.
In the larger scheme of things it includes strategic planning and
tactics for implementing policies that establish, refine and guard “the
system.” The system can be regarded as
the sum of such actions. The Dao De Jing depicts this “Way of man” as
a system that endangers life by its
excessive design activity [wei]. Since the system is vertical in form, with
the power concentrated at the top, the danger to life comes mainly from the
leading decision-makers in the social and political hierarchy of “names and
ranks” (DDJ 32). The biosphere [tian xia] (16) with all its natural
diversity is not the work of humanity.
Within it ecological order arises “of itself,” apart from the Way of
man. (17) According to the Dao De Jing natural order emerges from
the Great Way
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