Tag: Daoism
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How the Daoist philosopher lives in a good and beautiful world: A brief overview
This series of reflections begins with the post entitled ‘The World does not Need Saving’ (September 17ff). * Dear Philosophical Friend, In reply to your puzzlement, there’s a larger argument that I’ve been canvassing over the past couple of year, an argument that’s become clearer to me over time. I’ll try to sketch a part of that…
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A Daoist particularist
‘So sometimes things are ahead, and sometimes they are behind; / Sometimes breathing is hard, and sometimes it comes easily; / Sometimes there is strength, and sometimes weakness; / Sometimes one is up, and sometimes down.’ –Laozi, Daodejing 29 * A Daoist does not complain about how things go; he considers the matter at hand in…
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Last day in Appalachia
Last day in Appalachia. Mountain birds, tall grasses, more horses. Sing something, will you? Sing of a feather clinging to a window? Of the nights spent tossing words into the fire? Of the mornings spent meditating in calm? Of two young deer headed, in late spring, up the driveway? Looking young and perplexed, the pair…
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Yen Hui’s progress
We read in The Inner Chapters of Yen Hui’s progress. He had given up ‘doing good and being right,’ but Confucius tells him this is ‘not quite enough.’ He goes away and returns. He had given up ‘ceremony and music,’ which is also good but ‘not quite enough.’ Sometime later, he comes back to Confucius, relating that ‘I…
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‘Knowing enough to stop when one does not know is perfection’
Chuang Tsu observes, ‘Knowing enough to stop when one does not know is perfection.’ I welcome Chuang Tsu’s thoughts, his humor and his lightness. His measure and delight. Kant and Locke wrote of knowing one’s limits, but Kant said nothing of stopping and would have been shocked by Chuang Tsu’s epigrammatic ending: that stopping when…
Andrew Taggart, Ph.D. 