Challenges to Confucianism: Daoism

Mencius

 * In Chinese "Meng Ke"
 * He never met Confucius -> Just knew his teachings
 * Also failed to find political employment
 * Lived at the height of the Warring States Period

Major Thought

 * We are all born good
 * Story of the Child -> Any person seeing a small child about to fall down a well would try to save the child
 * Thus we all have a foundation of goodness in us
 * But they must be encouraged to grow

Laozi and Early Daoist Thought

 * Wrote book "The Way and Its Power" (Daode Jing)
 * Lots of legends surrounding him -> Such as his mothers decade long pregnancy
 * Scholars analysis has revealed that his text is actually probably comprised of several author's work
 * Wrote right in the middle of the Warring States period

The Way, Dao

 * For Confucius: Dao was a moral force, a way to goodness
 * For Daoists: Natural Way
 * Neither good nor bad
 * Indifferent to human history

"The Way that can be spoken of    Is not the constant way;     The name that can be named     Is not the constant name."


 * MEANING: The Way is not definable
 * Any description of it is just a single example of it.
 * It is everything, and it is a unity of opposites

"Only as they manifest themselves do they receive different names"

"The whole word recognizes the good as the good   Yet this is only the bad.     Thus Something and Nothing produce each    other;     The Difficult and the Easy compliment each     other."


 * Every thing is interconnected, and co-produced
 * Good is only good in that it is not bad -> The development of the bad develops also the good
 * CRITIQUE OF CONFUCIANISM -> There is no absolute, universal good that is not also bad
 * Where Confucius would trust in the presence of a truth, a way, a goodness that is to be followed (and indeed, can be)


 * Laozi thinks that Heaven and Earth are not morally weighted things -> without meaning that is not projected upon them.

Survival

 * Brokaw interprets Laozi as a text on the need for survival
 * Submission is a position stressed in this text as a survival mechanism
 * Rocks are stronger than water
 * But water "wins" over the rocks in the long term

Uncarved Block

 * Image of the way
 * Once carved, it is given just one identity (no longer the way, just a permutation of the way)
 * When it could be anything at the moment it is uncarved

Newborn Baby

 * Another image used for the way
 * Potentiality is endless
 * The way is all things not any thing specifically

Wu Wei ("Non-Action")

 * The sage ruler should not act
 * Can also be translated as non-deliberative action

Zhuangzi

 * Pronounced "zwang za"
 * Famous for the Butterfly dream, where he conflates his consciousness with that of a dreamed experience of a butterfly
 * We think we know things, but we don't
 * We might be Zhuangzi, or we might be the butterfly


 * "Go with the flow"
 * Follow your guesses/impulses


 * Cook Ding > Famous Cook
 * Offered as an example of The Way