Tao Te Ching (Lao Tzu)

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RamistThomist

Puritanboard Clerk
This is more of a snapshot than a philosophical review. Obviously, at the end of the day Taoism is off limits for Christians. Nonetheless, I want to suggest that it is no worse than the Greek philosophy often embraced by the church. If Christian thinkers can allow themselves to be influenced by Neo-Platonism, which is essentially Egyptian ritual magic, then understanding Taoism should be unproblematic. If medieval Christians can say two opposites produce a divine person (i.e., a person is a relation of opposition, which is a very bad view), then reading Lao Tzu shouldn't be a problem.

This is both an easy and difficult read. The principle of passivity and opposites makes sense in some areas but not immediately in others--and Lao Tzu (I will assume his authorship) doesn’t always give examples.

As best I can tell, the way points towards a universal harmony (25.57.58) between heaven and earth with the king in the middle of it. This is particularly interesting in that it posits the king as an icon of heaven (a universal symbol even until modern times with Tsarist Russia).

It appears “the way” functions as prima materia did for Aristotle: an undifferentiated substratum. “The way is to the world as rivers are to streams and rivulets” (32.73). Is this “undifferentiated substratum” a “nothing” or a “void?” Maybe. Tzu writes, “The myriad creatures in the world are born from something, and something from nothing” (40.89). This is not entirely far off from the so-called “Perennial tradition” found in Greece, Egypt, and Babylon and India.

Tzu invites us to imagine the spokes on a wheel. The center of the hub is empty space, yet from this empty space the whole wheel is moved.

“The way is like a bow. The high it presses down, the low it lifts up; the excessive it takes from, the deficient it gives to” (77.184).
 
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