Daily Daodejing, Part 3

Philosophy Forums Religion and Spirituality
1

For information of what this thread is about, see the parent thread

Do not exalt the worthy [xian], and so keep the common folk from contention. Do not value goods hard to get, and so stop the common folk from becoming thieves. Do not let them see desirable things, and so spare the hearts/minds of the common folk from disorder.

“The worthy” [xian] is like saying “the resourceful” [neng]. “Exalt” is a name by which we recognize excellence, and “value” is a term for assigning high worth. If only the resourceful were given office, what would be the point of exalting them? If things were used only because they were useful, what would be the point of valuing them? However, because we exalt the worthy and make their names illustrious, giving more honor than their offices deserve, people act as if they are always in shooting contests, trying to determine who is the more able, and, because we put more value on goods than their use warrants, those who covet such things compete to rush after them, even digging through or climbing over walls to ransack chests, risking their lives in thievery. Therefore, if desirable things are not seen, hearts/minds will not be subject to such disorder.

This opening passage reminds me of III.16 from the Analects of Confucius:

The notion if, of course, where one’s emphasis is. In archery, the aim is more important than strength, just as in statecraft it is better to tend to the basic welfare of the populace instead of focusing on extravagance. However, I think that the Daodejing goes a little too far in this censure, as the rest of this passage will show, and begins to advocate virtue by removal of temptation rather than genuine virtue which, though it may be exposed to temptation, will not yield.

Therefore the way the sage governs is to keep their hearts/minds empty and their bellies full.

The heart/mind cherish knowledge and the belly cherishes food, so he keeps that which has capacity for knowledge empty and that which lacks the capacity for knowing filled.

Here we begin to see the dangerous, Legalistic edge to Daoism. However, let’s not be too harsh here. Initially, all this passage seems to invoke is the sort of noblesse oblige that we expect from politicians of all stripes – if you keep the population well-fed, the chances of them rising up in rebellion is incredibly small. It is essentially the same idea as modern pork-barrel spending, whereby politicians buy their continued existence by keeping their constituents fat and content. Would the French Revolution have occurred were it not for the bread riots? I think not!

He keeps their wills weak and their bones strong.

Their bones, lacking the capacity for knowing, provide the means for them to stand trunklike; their wills, prone to stir things up, are the agents of disorder.

Once the people are well fed, the next trick is to put them to work! The intelligencia are always grumbling about something-or-other, but the blue-collar working class are too busy making a living to take action and change the status quo. That is why Lenin felt the Vanguard was so important, and the Daodejing takes steps to prevent that sort of opposition from arising.

Traditionally, there is an added line in the commentary from a later commentator (Lu Deming, for those interested), which reads: If the heart/mind is empty, the will is weak. I think this more-or-less sums up the idea of this entire passage.

He always keeps the common folk free from the capacity for knowing and feeling desire.

He preserves their authenticity [zhen].

Again, here we see the stress on creating virtue by removing temptation. The authentic person, in this case, is one who knows his place (as I discussed in part 2) and doesn’t challenge the status-quo but rather conforms to it.

And prevents the knowledgeable from ever daring to act.

The knowledgeable [zhi] refers to those who know how to act.

This drives home the idea of preventing the rise of a vanguard-like group trying to force change in society. Those who are educated have had their authenticity destroyed and begin to question, question, question. Such questions disrupt the flow of society.

Because he acts without conscious effort, nothing remains ungoverned.

Again, this hearkens back to my commentary on the second passage of the DDJ. The Daoist sage delegates authority to trustful ministers and sees to it that everyone knows there place. This passage then goes on to describe how to best keep people in their place.

2

Chapter 3 is rather straightforward in its statement of governance . It is the “less is more” concept being emphasized. It has been interpreted in such a way that those in power should keep people in ignorance, but I find this to be a skewed point of view. The concept isn’t to create virtue by keeping people simple in thought and practice, but to not do those things that would lead people from their natural virtue. This is entirely in keeping with way-making in that deferential allowing of all constituents in any experience to ‘work out’ their relationships is best practice. In short, left to their own devices, people will discover the most beneficial ways to satisfy their communal needs. It is only when those given power create the distractions of prestige of position, the collection and display of wealth, and allowing those who purport to know what is best for others free rein that people become confused and led from the simple process of working through their various needs and solutions. All of chapter three is pointing toward the anarchic overview of Taoist thought, that the best governance is none or as little as possible. This is echoed in a number of chapters both in Dao and De.

“He keeps the common folk free from the capacity for knowing and feeling desire”

This is the seminal statement. The sage does nothing to honor “knowing” or create trinkets and baubles to distract people from their daily interactions. The sage doesn’t throw rocks under peoples feet, indeed, he consciously avoids doing anything that keeps people from their natural virtue.

“Because he acts without conscious effort, nothing remains ungoverned.”

Because he does not interfere with daily life, people govern themselves, and this is the authenticity of both the people and way-making.

3

Once I have held someone aloft,
Others desire the same honour
And fight amongst themselves
To gain it.

Displaying those things that are rare
And telling others how valuable they are
Is a sure way to guarantee
That someone else will want to possess them.
Isn’t it the aim of displaying wealth
To make people envious
And to keep them in that state
So that I feel superior?

The sage, on the other hand,
When ruling men
Avoids making people resentful
Or jealous and rather
He feeds them
And strengthens them.

He avoids filling them with desire
For things out of reach
And he tries to occupy those who know desire
With whatever is wholesome.
Being able to do without
Is a universal virtue.

Shalom

4

While I agree that the DDJ does suggest ruling with a lighter hand, I am unsure that ‘anarchic’ would be the correct description. After all, we have records of Daoists petitioning governments to adopt their programs from the Warring States period and the most likely intended audience for the DDJ would be the upper class, since they not only would have been literate, but they also would have been able to implement it.

The parable of the King Who Loved Fencing in the Zhuangzi is a good example of the type of influence the Daoists hoped to achieve – they wanted to appeal to the highest authority possible. Indeed, it is my understanding that while most Daoists came from the Shi-class (the equivalent of a European Knight under Feudalism – the lowest of the classes that ‘matter’), the hope wasn’t to build some movement limited to that class but rather to spread that influence outwards. The activities of Daoist scholars at the Jixia Academy would seem to support this notion.

So then, given that audience, is it better to take the DDJ at face value and say that it endorses an anarchic system, or that it is actually designed to curb the greatest excesses of the ruling classes at the expense of the minority classes?

This becomes especially important in light of Shen Dao’s synthesis of Daoism and Legalism. For the moment, let’s take the Daoist starting point that we know what works (processally), works because it is in accord with the Dao and what doesn’t work fails to because it is not in accord with the Dao. So, a river flows because that is the authentic nature of a river and a river will continue to flow unabated unless it encounters some form of artifice like a dam. But, as any engineer will tell you, over time the dam wears down and fades because it is not in accordance with the Way, so over time the Way manages to reassert itself over artifice (unless that artifice is painstakingly maintained by further artifice).

Now, from an ancient Chinese perspective, the hierarchical nature of society would have been taken as a given. This is largely because that hierarchy was nothing more than an extension of the clan-relationship, which is just the family writ large. Parents above children, husband above wife, elder above younger are all very natural conditions in an early agricultural, bronze-age society. Unlike our modern perspective, these would all be taken as givens in the same way that cats eating mice is taken as a natural given. So, rather than leading down the road of equivocation, the distinctions between human beings would be seen as a valid, natural expression of that sliding scale that we discussed in the second part. Just as male and female remain distinct yet interdependent, so to are the classes in such a society.

In that case, the speaker is appealing to the (natural) ruler appealing for a lack of ostentation to prevent gross class divisions from becoming obvious (many different societies have adopted similar rules. The dress codes of Medieval European cities are particular amusing) while ensuring material benefit of the governed without providing them material nor intellectual freedom.

5

While I would agree that chapter three is pointed toward those in a position to govern, I think we need to be careful about how we view the DDJ being used by various individuals and groups, particularly during the Warring States period. Rather, I try to focus on the message relevant to all individuals regardless position or class. If one understands the message, it is relevant within the nuclear family radiating out to any position or class. The ’hundred schools’ generated many different perspectives, all connected to the Way, We find the Mohists, the Legalists, and yes, even the Confucians, all claiming different aspects and emphasis of Way, and every flavor in between.

If one is a student of Chinese history, and one must at least have a cursory knowledge of the history and culture, then how the various understandings of DDJ were used by individuals and the multiples of different groups or schools can enlighten or obscure the DDJ itself. How the Way was used is very interesting, but understanding it on its own merit seems more important to me. Not being Chinese, I look for the relevance as it applies to an American redneck specifically, and to all people generally. Chapter three speaks to me. The perspective is repeated many times through the whole of Dao and De. While born in Chinese culture, the message is adoptable any place in the world.

6

While I agree with what you are saying, I do think we need to keep the intent of the author in mind when trying to understand a historical document and then see how we can apply that intent as well as the literal message to our modern lifestyle.

Is the parable about falling off a cart in the Zhuangzi an endorsement for wanton drunkenness? I certainly think that such an explanation is useful in my life, since it would justify my own love of the drink . . . but, within the larger context not only of the Zhuangzi but also of that parable itself, that clearly isn’t the message.

Now, I agree that there is a strong paleoconservative thread that runs through the DDJ, with its basic idea of government being rather close to: The government that governs least, governs best. However, I think that if we place the DDJ within the context of the time when it was created and compiled (So, during the Zhou and Warring States Period as well as any changes that crept in during the Han reconstruction) we see that it isn’t endorsing anarchy but rather it is trying to correct the excess of certain nobles.

I think that the warning against excess is something that we, as individuals, could very much learn from and benefit from.

But I will say that during the tumultuous times of the Warring States and Hundred Schools period, the anti-intellectual bent of the DDJ makes sense from a rulers point of view as well. After all, these itinerant scholars wandering around taking up posts all-over were routinely setting up systems in an attempt to out-do their neighbors and either restore the Zhou to prominence or make their lords into a sort of new Zhou.

From a Daoist perspective, that sort of competition is counter-productive. So, from that a desire to crush those movements, because that competition fuels all sorts of social problems. It encourages uppity lords, who want to rule more than they have as well as uppity shi who think more of themselves than their station warrants. Pretty soon, that trickles down to uppity peasants and that is only a stone’s throw away from rebellion. Far better, then, to keep the people stupid and well fed and thereby manageable.

It is that part of it that I think is less useful in the modern day, especially for those of us who are not part of the ruling elite. But we have to recognize those elements and extract them in order to flesh out a system. At least, that is how I think.

7

Well, there certainly were a lot of “systems” being proposed and acted upon during this period, but I guess I see the emphasis being, let the ‘system’ generate itself among the people. It isn’t keeping people stupid, but allowing natural interaction be their living. It is a statement of ziran and is repeated many times in DDJ.

8

Wow! I had a very different interpretation of this passage. I thought it was subversive Jesus-like wisdom. Now I see it as Machiavellian. Thanks for the disenchantment Xunzian.

9

I agree it is an expression of ziran (self-so-ness or natural. . . for lack of a better translation); however, I think that what is ‘natural’ in this case is the existing social order and that uppity people need to be put down. Those who threaten the natural order (such as the educated who act above their station) are to be discouraged whereas those who know their place within the natural order should be encouraged by providing them with enough while keeping them too busy (and thereby weak-willed) to allow any artifice from forming.

I think that the interpretation that Felix said he originally held is more in line with your thinking, right Tent? I think that is fair, but let’s put that in the context of passage 2 that we already discussed. Bob asked, “Where do ugliness and the want of skill come from? They come from knowing what beauty and skill is. If we did not know what beauty and skill were, would we still have ugliness and the want of skill?” And I think that a similar question is being asked here with regard to one’s station in life.

And I don’t think that is necessarily a bad thing at all. We have to know where we are so that we can make peace with it. The cripple in the Zhuangzi accepts his position in life and finds contentment, even advantage in that. The uppity people this passage both warns against and provides a means for quelling have become dissatisfied with their position – after all, they wouldn’t be uppity if they were content in their place. So, think back to the cripple and how miserable he would be if he longed to be like a regular person. If he thought of others as whole and himself as somehow . . . incomplete. Down that road lies depression and defeat.

So instead the cripple accepts himself and, as we know, even finds that his “disability” is actually an advantage when recruiters come and drag the ably bodied men off to war and death. The sage in this passage is merely trying to help enable people to become content with their position in this manner.

10

I find nothing to argue with. The best government would be to insure that the people can find ways to live and then get the hell out of the way and let them sort themselves out. Lets see… the cripple made his living sharpening needles and gleaning rice as I recall. It is the same story as the magnificent tree that was too gnarled and twisted to be useful to the carpenter and therefore lived a long life. Being useless is sometimes very useful… I’ve done my level best to convince my wife that this is why I’m the way I am. :wink: