/lit/ - Literature

>In Confucianism, Dao is recognised as the coherence between the cosmological and moral orders; this coherence is called ziran which is often translated as ‘nature’. In modern Chinese the term refers to the environment, to the wild animals, plants, rivers, etc. that are already given; but it also means acting and behaving according to the self without pretention, or letting things be as they are. This self, however is not a tabula rasa, but emerges out of, and is nourished and constrained by a certain cosmic order, namely Dao. In Daoism on the other hand, ‘Ziran is the law of Dao’ was both the slogan and the principle of a philosophy of nature. These two concepts of Dao in Confucianism and Daoism have an interesting relation to one another, since on the one hand, according to conventional readings, they seem to be in tension: Daoism (in the texts of Laozi and Zhuangzi) is very critical of any imposed order, whereas Confucianism seeks to affirm different kinds of order; on the other hand, they seem to supplement each other, as if one asks after the ‘what', the other after the ‘how’. As I will argue below, however, they both embody what I call a ‘moral cosmotechnics’: a relational thinking of the cosmos and human being, where the relation between the two is mediated by technical beings. It is therefore not my intention to read these relations between Dao and beings as a philosophy of nature, but rather to understand them as a possible philosophy of technology in both Confucianism and Daoism. According to this parallel reading, then, in Chinese philosophy Dao stands for the supreme order of beings; and technique must be compatible with Dao in order to attain its highest standard. Accordingly, this highest standard is expressed as the unification of Dao and Qi). As we noted in the Introduction, in its modern sense Qi means ‘tool’, ‘utensil', or more generally, ‘technical object.’

a note here. i’ve read some chinese metaphysics both before and after this book, as i’ve always found them really interesting. the terms ‘qi’, ‘dao’, and ‘li’ are all highly flexible, particluarly the last one. you can read in both daoist and confucian thought references to concepts like the Way or Heaven, but the Way as laozi understands it and as confucius understands it do not necessarily refer to the same things, and yet they don’t refer to completely different things either.

it’s sort of like the term ‘logos’ as used in the west, the Word, which is used by both Heraclitus and by Christian philosophers to refer to a similar thing but which has different implications and meanings over time. and yet by the time you get to today it carries something of the inflection of both, and we really like it - well, some of us, i guess - when it can mean or encompass a higher creative principle that admits of multiple implications without diminishing any of them. it becomes a richer term.