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Solitude in Ancient Taoism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 April 2024

Philippe J. Koch
Philippe J. Koch*
Affiliation:
University of Prince Edward Island
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In so far as the Tao Te Ching and the Chuang Tzu are life-philosophies, they are philosophies of solitude. My aim in the following pages is to explain and defend this claim, clarifying the distinctive kind of solitude that is taught by Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu.

Type
Research Article
Information
Diogenes , Volume 37 , Issue 148 , December 1989 , pp. 78 - 91
Copyright
Copyright © 1989 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)

References

1 I owe this apothogem to Prof. Zhong Zhaopeng of the Religion Institute, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. I am grateful to him for helpful guidance on some of the points of this essay.

2 I will follow the conventional simplifying pretence that our two works had each one author with these names. The scholarly problems about the true authorship of the texts are well known by all. Again for simplifying purposes, I will limit my quotations from the Chuang Tzu to the first seven chapters (the Nei peng), those believed most likely to have been written by the originator of the work (or by his immediate disciples).

3 At least in the Nei peng. But compare Wolfgang Bauer: "Taoist philosophy in general—and that contained in Chuang Tzu in particular—may be called a philosophy of eremitism; almost every paragraph of the book is interpretable along these lines". ("The hidden hero: creation and disintegration of the ideal of eremitism", p. 164 in Individualism and Holism: Studies in Confucian and Taoist Values, published by the University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, 1985). However Bauer operates with an unconventionally broad definition of "eremitism" (see p. 161, op. cit.), and his illustrations come from the later chapters of Chuang Tzu. Nevertheless his is a learned and insightful study from which I have profited greatly.

4 Witter Bynner (trans.): The Way of Life according to Lao Tzu (New York, Peri gee Books, 1972), Chapter 49. All quotations will be from this translation. For ease of comparison with other versions, I will cite the chapter number in the text. Trans lations of the Tao Te Ching are notoriously different, and any choice is sure to offend some scholars. Bynner's is controversial, using poetic licence liberally in an attempt to capture the poetic spirit of the original. On its behalf, I may note that the renowned sinologist Herlee Creel found, after considering 29 translations of the opening line of the Tao Te Ching, that he was most in agreement with Byn ner's version (see H. Creel, "On The Opening Words of the Lao Tzu", Journal of Chinese Philosophy, Vol. 10, No. 4, 1983, page 315).

5 H. Thoreau, Walden (Cambridge, Mass., The Riverside Press, 1957) p. 94.

6 Professor Tang Yi-jie of Beijing University has pointed out to me the sense of solitude issuing from these very opening lines: not only Existence in general, but my own personal inner reality is "beyond the power of words to define". Prof. Tang reads a similar expression of the inescapability of solitude in the traditional story that Lao Tan, for many years a librarian, finally left the Library and indeed the whole middle kingdom: books—words—are incapable of communicating both Tao and inner self, so Lao Tan was in no deeper solitude wandering in the wilder ness than he was in the court library.

7 Prof. Zhou Gui-dian of Beijing Normal College pointed out to me the far greater concern on Lao Tzu's part with teaching rulers about Tao so that it may guide their governance—a concern with which Chuang Tzu appears to have little patience. Lao Tzu's wu wei has an aim, the proper governance of self and mind which is intrinsi cally valuable. In fact, Chuang Tzu is much more suspicious of the idea of useful ness in general than Lao Tzu: many parables teach that apparent usefulness is not useful and that apparent uselessness is useful!

8 Burton Watson (trans.): The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu (New York, Columbia University Press, 1968), Chapter 2. All references will be to Watson's translation, with the chapter numbers indicated in the text.

9 Compare Tao Te Ching, chapters 67 and 68.

10 The general bent of the Tao Te Ching is in the direction of Master Li's solu tion (see especially chapters 8, 13, 54 and 67). However an advocate of any of the other three solutions could cite passages which support those solutions, at least im plicitly. For example, "There is no need to run outside for better seeing… rather abide at the center of your being" (Ch.47) could be interpreted as underwriting the ways of Nameless Man, Lieh Tzu or T'ien Ken!

11 Compare the story of Shan Ch'uan in chapter 28.

12 Compare the story of "the farmer of Stone Door" in chapter 28.