• Log In

The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast

A Philosophy Podcast and Philosophy Blog

Subscribe on Android Spotify Google Podcasts audible patreon
  • Home
  • Podcast
    • PEL Network Episodes
    • Publicly Available PEL Episodes
    • Paywalled and Ad-Free Episodes
    • PEL Episodes by Topic
    • Nightcap
    • Philosophy vs. Improv
    • Pretty Much Pop
    • Nakedly Examined Music
    • (sub)Text
    • Phi Fic Podcast
    • Combat & Classics
    • Constellary Tales
  • Blog
  • About
    • PEL FAQ
    • Meet PEL
    • About Pretty Much Pop
    • Philosophy vs. Improv
    • Nakedly Examined Music
    • Meet Phi Fic
    • Listener Feedback
    • Links
  • Join
    • Become a Citizen
    • Join Our Mailing List
    • Log In
  • Donate
  • Store
    • Episodes
    • Swag
    • Everything Else
    • Cart
    • Checkout
    • My Account
  • Contact
  • Mailing List

Ep. 311: Understanding the Dao De Jing (Part Two)

February 27, 2023 by Mark Linsenmayer Leave a Comment

https://podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/traffic.libsyn.com/secure/partiallyexaminedlife/PEL_ep_311pt2_1-30-23.mp3

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 43:39 — 40.0MB)

Subscribe to get both parts of this episode ad free.

Continuing from part one with guest Theodore Brooks on the central Daoist text attributed to Laozi. We start with more discussion of practical vs. metaphysical interpretations of the first chapter. In either case, Laozi recommends not being too self-conscious; you want to be fully present in your activities, open to the subtle cues of your environment, without too much self-reflection, nit-picking, agendas, or other types of over-thinking distracting you. Words and analysis are useful in their place, of course, but life is best lived partially examined. See, one can interpret this text to support many agendas!

Sponsors: Check out the Continuing the Conversation web series by St. John's College at sjc.edu. Subscribe to the Brain in a Vat podcast.

One more Chinese term that comes up here and in many places in the text is "wanwu," which is not a wu-form indicating not-something, but just means everything, or it's often translated as "the ten thousand things," or our philosopher translator Ames calls it "everything that is happening" just to hammer home the point that he thinks that the text has a metaphysical picture of a world made of events, not things.

Other chapters covered include:

  • 2, which ambiguously tells us about the relation of things to their opposites: Is it that fixing something (such as virtue) in language (much less codifying it via a Confucian social ethic) falsifies it? Or does the presence of a quality imply that its opposite exists, which could be a psychological claim about something making us inevitably think of its opposite, or perhaps it's a metaphysical claim that by using language to pick out something, we thereby also create its opposite as its necessary partner?
  • 4, which makes various mystical sounding claims about the Dao including its being ever-replenishing, vast, older than (or otherwise prior to) even the ancestral gods. It's maybe like the chaos that preceded creation according to some religious traditions.
  • 11, which is about "wu," which is literally just "not" but which as a philosophical term means emptiness, absence, space. Laozi compares this to an empty pot, the space between the spokes of a wheel, the emptiness of doors and rooms: In all these cases, what is literally nothing is what enables us to accomplish something. So maybe wu is actually better translated as "potency" or "potentiality," in that it is the space in which novel things can appear if we don't preclude their appearance by, for instance, fixed (Confucian) ideas about the "proper" way to think, see, and act.
  • 6, which talks about "the female" (as in the womb) and "the valley," which are, again, forms of emptiness that enable growth and nurturing. These metaphors come up repeatedly in the text. Laozi also refers to the Dao as an "abyss," which might not mean nothingness so much as no-thing-ness, i.e. language hasn't come along to carve individual things out of it yet. Seth compares the Dao to Eros for the Greeks, which is a primal force (a felt lack that an organism tries to fill) that is the necessary spark for making everything work together productively.
  • 12, which talks about how "the five colors blind our eyes" and "the five notes deafen our ears." This adds to the "don't desire too much" ethic to emphasize inner depth over gaudy distractions. This may just be restating the point about being in the flow of existence, resisting the urge to stop and make judgments, especially ones that involve desire and hence control.
  • 38, which introduces the notion of "de," i.e. virtue (contrasting with "ren" for the Confucian, which is a particular kind of social virtue). It's the ones who don't strive for virtue that are actually the most virtuous, according to Louzi.
  • 5, which added the term "straw dogs" to our lexicon, and is very hard to interpret, because it's saying that both the universe ("heaven and earth") and Daoist sages treat people like these straw dogs, which sounds pretty bad. Is it saying that life isn't fair, or that it isn't "fair," meaning it doesn't follow what the Confucians erroneously call ethical behavior (i.e. ren, which is the character used here)? Is "straw dog" (traditionally understood to be a construct sacrificed on a fire during or after a ritual) equivalent to "trash," or is the point to emphasize that everything has its time and purpose? This chapter also cautions against speaking (or learning?) too much.

Next episode, we're going to treat more of these chapters!

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmailby feather

Filed Under: Podcast Episodes Tagged With: ancient Chinese philosophy, daoism, Taoism, wisdom

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

PEL Live Show 2023

Brothers K Live Show

Citizenship has its Benefits

Become a PEL Citizen
Become a PEL Citizen, and get access to all paywalled episodes, early and ad-free, including exclusive Part 2's for episodes starting September 2020; our after-show Nightcap, where the guys respond to listener email and chat more causally; a community of fellow learners, and more.

Rate and Review

Nightcap

Listen to Nightcap
On Nightcap, listen to the guys respond to listener email and chat more casually about their lives, the making of the show, current events and politics, and anything else that happens to come up.

Subscribe to Email Updates

Select list(s):

Check your inbox or spam folder to confirm your subscription.

Support PEL

Buy stuff through Amazon and send a few shekels our way at no extra cost to you.

Tweets by PartiallyExLife

Recent Comments

  • Theo on Ep. 308: Moore’s Proof of Mind-Independent Reality (Part Two)
  • Seth Paskin on PEL Eulogies Nightcap Late March 2023
  • John Heath on PEL Eulogies Nightcap Late March 2023
  • Randy Strader on Ep. 309: Wittgenstein On Certainty (Part Two)
  • Wes Alwan on PEL Nightcap February 2023

About The Partially Examined Life

The Partially Examined Life is a philosophy podcast by some guys who were at one point set on doing philosophy for a living but then thought better of it. Each episode, we pick a text and chat about it with some balance between insight and flippancy. You don’t have to know any philosophy, or even to have read the text we’re talking about to (mostly) follow and (hopefully) enjoy the discussion

Become a PEL Citizen!

As a PEL Citizen, you’ll have access to a private social community of philosophers, thinkers, and other partial examiners where you can join or initiate discussion groups dedicated to particular readings, participate in lively forums, arrange online meet-ups for impromptu seminars, and more. PEL Citizens also have free access to podcast transcripts, guided readings, episode guides, PEL music, and other citizen-exclusive material. Click here to join.

Blog Post Categories

  • (sub)Text
  • Aftershow
  • Announcements
  • Audiobook
  • Book Excerpts
  • Citizen Content
  • Citizen Document
  • Citizen News
  • Close Reading
  • Combat and Classics
  • Constellary Tales
  • Exclude from Newsletter
  • Featured Ad-Free
  • Featured Article
  • General Announcements
  • Interview
  • Letter to the Editor
  • Misc. Philosophical Musings
  • Nakedly Examined Music Podcast
  • Nakedly Self-Examined Music
  • NEM Bonus
  • Not School Recording
  • Not School Report
  • Other (i.e. Lesser) Podcasts
  • PEL Music
  • PEL Nightcap
  • PEL's Notes
  • Personal Philosophies
  • Phi Fic Podcast
  • Philosophy vs. Improv
  • Podcast Episode (Citizen)
  • Podcast Episodes
  • Pretty Much Pop
  • Reviewage
  • Song Self-Exam
  • Supporter Exclusive
  • Things to Watch
  • Vintage Episode (Citizen)
  • Web Detritus

Follow:

Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | Apple Podcasts

Copyright © 2009 - 2023 · The Partially Examined Life, LLC. All rights reserved. Privacy Policy · Terms of Use · Copyright Policy

Copyright © 2023 · Magazine Pro Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in