Ep. 312: The Dao De Jing on Virtue (Part One)

0:00 Mark: Foreign. You're listening to the Partially Examined Life, a podcast by some guys who are at one point set on doing philosophy for a living, but then thought better of it. Our question for episode 312 is something like, what is virtue? And we're continuing to read the Dao De Jing, traditionally attributed to Lao tzu somewhere between 400 and 600 BCE. For more information, please see partially examinedlife.com this is Mark Linsenmayer doing less and less every day until I'm doing nothing at all.

0:32 Seth: In Madison, Wisconsin, this is Seth Paskin like water.

0:36 Wes: In Austin, Texas, this is Wes Alwan just trying to make my way. In Cambridge, Massachusetts, this is Dylan Casey

0:45 Dylan: developing Along My own lines.

0:47 Theodore: In Madison, Wisconsin, this is Theodore Brooks cooking small fish in Broken Hill, Australia.

0:54 Mark: All right, welcome back, Theo. Welcome back, listeners. We had so much fun doing this for one session. We wanted to do it for a second session. What do you guys think about my characterization? I think we started to get at, in the course of talking about the dao and talking about how to understand the text, got at what virtue amounts to, what the sage, the virtuous person, amounts to. But there's a lot more in this book on that that we did not cover. So that seemed like when I was going through the sections that I had marked off originally, the ones that we had not yet done, the vast majority of them were in one way or another about this topic rather than about how crazy the dao is or about

1:31 Wes: the ideal state or any all dao and no de.

1:35 Mark: Yes, de being the term for virtue here.

1:37 Wes: Hey, dough boy.

1:40 Mark: Is dough a Chinese word?

1:42 Theodore: Yeah, I don't think so.

1:45 Mark: Do we want to start with 38, the beginning of the de chapter, or do we want to start with number seven, which is the earliest one in the text that we haven't covered?

1:54 Theodore: 7 is maybe important because of the hub and wheel, which a lot can be said. Although starting with 37 is not a bad idea because that was in one of the recovered texts, the beginning of the book. So there have been two recovered texts dug up from tombs, one from the early Han and the one from the early Han. The silk text actually starts with the D section and then has the dao section at the end to start with. That would also be good.

2:23 Dylan: Yeah, My Henricks translation calls it the Dao Ching rather than the Dao Te

2:28 Mark: Ching, making a weird Roger Ames translation, making that the first one is too misleading. We should just start with one of the others. So the Lao D.C. lao that I had originally read says Heaven and earth are enduring the reason why heaven and earth can be enduring. They do not give themselves life, hence they're able to be long lived. Therefore, the sage puts his person last and it comes first, treats it as extraneous to himself and it is preserved. Is it not because he is without thought of self that he is able to accomplish his private ends? Is there something about that that you don't like?

3:02 Theodore: You read for the others private ends. I'm just going to look up private ends I have that they are not able to perfect themselves, which is different, also problematic.

3:12 Wes: This is the last line we're talking about.

3:14 Dylan: Yeah.

3:15 Wes: Isn't it simply because they are unselfish that they can satisfy their own needs?

3:19 Dylan: Mine is. Is it not because he has no self interest that he is therefore able to realize his self interest?

3:26 Seth: You want to hear the Le Guin version?

3:27 Wes: Sure.

3:29 Seth: So wise souls leaving self behind, move forward and setting self aside, stay centered. Why let the self go? To keep what the soul needs.

3:37 Wes: And then a big dragon shows up.

3:40 Dylan: What I don't like about that one, and maybe I don't remember, is that it's losing this. Giving up something to get the thing itself. So a key to this whole section seems like is that having no self interest is how you realize self interest. Not trying to succeed is how you succeed. It's that kind of thing.

4:00 Wes: Yeah. Stop trying so hard.

4:02 Dylan: Yeah. And just do.

4:04 Wes: Yeah, just be. Be cool. Man. This is really like the Fonz. I think the Fonz really already perfected most of this, but. Sorry, go ahead. Obviously he lived before Lao Tzu, but

4:15 Theodore: maybe you read him, they then knew each other. But happiness is often kind of used, you know, if you want happiness, don't aim for happiness, aim for the well being of those around you. Is a kind of maybe cliched way of getting there.

4:27 Wes: I was just rereading bits of Kant's Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals for project I'm doing and I. He has a paragraph very similar to this, you know, because he's against eudaimonism, he's against simply making one's goal the pursuit of happiness. And he says something like, it's typically people who are overly focused on that that fail to hit that mark. And so you might as well just do the right thing anyway. You might as well be a deontologist like me. Right. You might as well just act according to duty because then you got all bases covered. So in this case, of course, the concept is not duty, that's not what's being Opposed to eudaimonism. The concept is what, acting according to nature? Something that sounds more stoic or what. What do we want to say is filling that role here?

5:17 Seth: So when I was talking to a friend of a friend who I said, read this every year, he's like a business consultant, you know, like a management consultant kind of guy. He's like, well, you know, you can read it as a handbook on how to lead people, like people who read Sun Tzu to figure out how to run a corporation or something. And of course, my stomach turned when I heard him say that. But it's understandable, seeing this, why people think that way. I think along the lines of what Wes was just saying. This falls into. The people who seek leadership and power, who run province are not the people that you want in those positions.

Right. It's the whole reluctant philosopher king kind of thing where you want the person who doesn't want it precisely because they don't want it, that they'll have the right judgment or they'll exercise the right amount of restraint or what have you. So I don't want to say this is strictly about leadership, but it's about somehow being in charge or somehow being in a position of wielding some sort of authority over others.

6:13 Dylan: I see what you're saying, Seth, but there's the one hand of the way, and there's the thing that we were talking about before that would replace deontology or whatever. The thing that you're aiming for is alignment with the way. Then that's that naturalism piece. The alignment with how things are is the goal from what we were talking about last time. That's the best way to be. And then this one in particular, and I think the other ones that we're going to read from DA Are what you should do to accomplish that. What are the things that you do to align yourself with the way?

And in this case, it's a version of, and I think we'll get this kind of thing repeated over and over again is by not actively trying to do the thing that would be a component of conventional success or conventional desirability, you attain that very thing, because in that way you will align with the way. And being aligned with the way will get you the things that you need and want.

7:11 Wes: And the question is how not to try so hard. Right. Because you might find yourself putting that on your to do list and then also adding it as a calendar appointment. Stop trying so hard putting into your plans. Very paradoxical. How does one do that?

7:25 Seth: What you're just saying Dylan, in the last recording we did, I was holding back from talking about or mentioning harmony or equilibrium or something. There's a strong sense in which some sort of notion of the way is somehow harmony with nature, harmony with the natural order, or something along those lines. It's certainly easy to read it that way. And you could then frame the comment, as you said, in that manner.

7:49 Theodore: It does seem to at some points really put on the balance. On the other hand, it does have a preference for taking the lower position. It says, you know, the way isn't any one thing, but do this or this and this, which seems to be preferences in order to get to the way. So is it just a way to get to the way, or is the way really like the Valley? I think that's a question just on seven. If we take this as this text. Was it originally made for princes? Is one idea. So the daoists would literally be giving these to people of power and saying, oh, you want to keep your power, this is your private ends. You want to give you power? Well, don't hold onto it too tightly. So I don't know how successful a true daoist.

8:29 Mark: I suppose it's a different political system. So the Ames translation says it's on this model that the sages withdraw their persons from contention, yet find themselves out in front. I don't think in the American political system at least the like, oh no, I'm not gonna run. You must run. We'll put you in charge. We'll put self promoting. Who's gonna toot your horn if not you?

8:50 Wes: What about other walks of life? What about ambition in general and prestige in general? Does it work?

8:55 Mark: I mean, don't do any marketing and you'll have the number one podcast. I don't think so.

9:03 Wes: We did some marketing.

9:05 Dylan: And it's also the case, I mean, all deference to the trope that you want somebody as your leader who doesn't want that? I mean, I get the idea there because what you're trying to do, you're saying, well, I don't want somebody so self interested that that's the primary reason that they're leading. I need somebody who is taking the mantle of leading for the sake of doing all the things that a good leader should do. And I want to select for that by somebody who doesn't want to do that. But the fact is, is that at some level, baloney. Because you literally don't want somebody who literally doesn't want to lead.

Because if they don't want to lead, then they're not going to lead the idea that there's some kind of magic formula that, oh, I'm going to call upon you and you're going to stand up to the plate. I mean, have you ever been around an organization or people where they need leadership and no one's leading? It's a complete abysmal failure. Right. So, yes, you want to have people who don't want to lead for the wrong reasons, that is for self interest, which is what the idea is getting for. But it's also categorically not true that you don't want somebody who is actually opposed to or incapable of doing those things.

And this is the same thing with doing without doing. Yes, you want to get so you can play basketball in the flow without really thinking about playing basketball, but you have to play basketball in order to do that for enough time so that you can forget about doing it.

10:29 Seth: So I think what you just did there, Dylan, was you kind of took it back to the question of virtue. It's not that you don't want somebody leading who desires to lead versus somebody who doesn't desire to lead. You want the person leading who has the virtues of a leader, whether they want to or not. Although, you know, having the virtue of a leader would probably include wanting to lead or at least be reluctantly willing to do so if nobody else would.

10:50 Wes: It sounds in a way like it's opposed to goal directedness in general. Right. Be like the heavens and the earth. They do not live for themselves. In a way they are goalless, they are natural. But on the other hand, it sounds like a distinction between exterior and interior goals or ulterior motives and then motives that are more aligned with the activity that one is engaged with. Right. So you could want to lead because, wow, I'm a leader and that's cool when everyone looks up to me. Or you can want to just get something done and want to accomplish bringing a community together.

And then leading is kind of what you have to do. And the same thing with, you could write because you want to be famous and make huge amounts of money for some reason, if you think that's possible. Or you could just love what you're doing. So love is a word that comes to mind and it's a goal that's more internal to the activity. And of course, you do have a greater chance of success when you are focused on those internal as opposed to ulterior motives.

11:47 Theodore: I think we're getting to that. Being without goals is not the ultimate goal. The goal is to have a kind of virtue, the DE come. And so this is a way to get to that DE that allows people to organize around you. So it's not a complete question. I think this is just kind of leading the way and we won't get a full idea until we do get to date and how the Daodejing thinks, what that does and why you think it acquires it by non doing.

12:14 Wes: You know, to take another example, if you were an Aristotelian, you could say, well, I want to be. Happiness is the point, right? That's the goal. And you could say, what's going to make me happy? When the more immediate goal is, you know, what traits and dispositions am I going to cultivate in myself? With the understanding, right, that they would lead to happiness. But it might be magnanimity or it might be selflessness. It might be.

12:35 Mark: Well, let's take a look then. It's exactly transitions to chapter 38 that we were saying the beginning of the DE section, which is kind of making the same point in different words. But let's look at it. I'll actually read the Ames here because I like that it points out that the same word de is used three times, just like in the first one, the same word dao is used three times. It is because the most excellent de do not strive to excel. Also de, that they are of the highest efficacy. Duh. What about just that in itself? To play on those apparently three different notions. Related notions of de. The de don't try to de, but yet they de.

13:13 Wes: They certainly de.

13:14 Mark: And it's because the least excellent do not leave off striving to excel that they have no efficacy. Persons of the highest efficacy, saying efficacy instead of virtue, that just shows that the virtue that they're talking about, this is the interpretive translations, getting stuff done. Effectiveness. Persons of the highest efficacy neither do things coercively nor would they have any motivation for doing so. Persons who are most authoritative, ren do things coercively and yet are not motivated in doing so. Persons who are most appropriate do things coercively and yet have a motive for doing so. Persons who are exemplars of ritual propriety do things coercively. So ritual propriety, li, is another Confucian word, and when no one pays them any heed, they yank up their sleeves and drag others along with them.

13:58 Wes: Yeah, so there's a contrast here to Confucianism and to the drawbacks of that

14:03 Theodore: also a very clear decline. So, you know, not having virtue is best, having lower virtue is better. Having ren is not good. But, you know, it's better than having yi. Righteousness.

14:15 Mark: Yeah. Or appropriateness.

14:17 Theodore: Yi is better than insisting on the rituals.

14:19 Wes: That's the worst.

14:19 Theodore: So there is a gradation as well which ends in violence. State violence. The Confucians are actually arguing that their way avoids state violence. I think they're saying. Well, no, Confucianism may think it avoids state violence, but it leads directly to it.

14:33 Mark: Yeah. The second half is just repeating that hierarchy. Only when we've lost sight of waymaking dao is there excellence. Only when we have lost sight of excellence is there authoritative conduct, ren. Only when we've lost sight of authoritative contract is there appropriateness.

14:46 Dylan: Ye.

14:47 Mark: And only when we've lost sight of appropriateness is there ritual propriety. As for ritual propriety, it is the thinnest veneer of doing one's best and making good on one's word. And it is the first sign of trouble. Foreknowledge is tinsel decorating the way and is the first sign of ignorance. This is complaining about people who are doing astrology or something. Foreknowledge prophecy. Seems there's a little jab in here that has some historical.

15:09 Theodore: Ah, it could be. I took that as just those who make elaborate plans of the future that the Taoist sage adapts, does not deign to predict and yet seems to, but doesn't actually, because that would be to impose something on the future that is still undeterminate. There's still nothing.

15:27 Mark: It is for this reason that persons of consequence set store by the substance rather than the veneer, by the fruit rather than the flower. Hence eschewing one, they take the other. So depth of character rather than following the forms doesn't seem a lot new here, but it's laid out in a kind of a nice manner at least. Does this just seem like an effective dismantling of the Confucian terms? It's merely saying we didn't really talk about. Are there arguments in this text like, does the combination of putting this point several different ways amount to an argument? Or merely. You ever thought that maybe li is actually only the thinnest veneer of virtue and not actually virtue itself? You ever noticed that, li?

16:10 Wes: You had to have been there.

16:11 Seth: Yeah.

16:11 Wes: This is observational humor.

16:14 Theodore: It's like setting up a series of metaphors that are meant to be intuitive. It's a long poem, if you want to think of it like that. So it's setting up a system of the mother and the valley and the dao and the way of heaven and earth. And so. But I don't think we can really call it an argumentative sort of declarative.

16:34 Wes: We'd have to reconstruct these arguments for ourselves and say, what are the pros and cons of having social forms, right. Rules of conduct, some of them which don't even rise to the level of the ethical, some of them which are just quasi ethical matters at the table, things like that. Right. And rituals and all the rest of it. It seems like one might say, well, that's a necessary part of society and social cohesion. And then what is it you're proposing

17:01 Theodore: replace that, you hippies, we might think, instead of virtue. I think very old translations of de had charisma. And it does have this idea that it draws people in. So the term does turn up in the Confucius. In the Analect, sorry, the pole star metaphor of the Confucian ruler. All the stars seem to go around the sage, but it's spontaneous also. So there's, I think in an older text, an example of de is I throw you a peach and you throw me a plum. So there's like a mutual sharing, but there's no conscious valuing of what's going on, no kind of market value.

It's just, I do a good deed to you. And virtue, like in the Confucian sense, is a good deed a good thing. Whereas I think here it's been stripped a lot more back. And I think Ames efficacy is really getting to that. So it's stripping about the goodness of the virtue of de and kind of getting to the spontaneous efficacy of it. It's sometimes constructed with mana, which is the Polynesian idea. So it can be thought of as rulership on, like, the most basic level, is organized around these people who people organize around for some reason, because they have.

18:12 Dylan: It makes me want to turn to, like, the case of the worst thing because of ritual propriety, this thinnest veneer of people going through the motions, sort of like bureaucraticness in the worst way possible. Right. You're doing it for the sake of the activity of bureaucracy or for the activity of ritual rather than for what the ritual is supposed to be. For to me, there's at least as much condemnation of that going on in this one as there is pointing to what you ought to be doing. And I don't know Confucianism really, really well. But I do have this association of a kind of ritualized bureaucraticness with it.

And I don't know if I'm right about that. So but this extent to what it's criticizing that kind of activity, a kind of veneer of social propriety and of effectiveness, where you lose sight of why you're doing it because it's manufactured, according to the Taoist text, it's a manufactured way of being where you get distracted by that manufactured interaction rather than trying to be align yourself with the way. That's why you're always brought back.

19:22 Wes: I was reminded here of our episode on Erasmus, you know, so if you wanted to reconstruct some of these arguments, that's one of the places you could look where the right. One of the things that he despised was the, you know, and he had personal experience in this. And being a monk was people just doing all these rituals to the point where they had lost any content. And the other part of this is, you know, so on the one hand, right folly in the pejorative sense was ultimately about this conceits and people wanting to appear a certain way and being full of themselves, theologians and schoolmasters and all that stuff.

And what he's praising is more about the instinctual and what's lost in that repressive. You know, Theo was talking about the idea of, well, you're talking about state violence, but also we can think of it in terms of state oppression, and we think of it in terms of individual psychological oppression as well. So what does the ritual do? It contains some more natural instinctual energy, and one might argue, well, that's necessary. But on the other hand, you might argue that destroys flow and vitality and ends up defeating the purpose.

20:29 Seth: Again, I'm with Dylan. I don't know anything about Confucianism, but I assume that the form, the structure, the hierarchy is somehow intended to, if not reflect some kind of the same in nature, at least be an expression of it. So when I see this, it feels like Lutherans criticizing the Catholic Church here, right? Like, you can go straight to the text. You can go straight to nature and learn the way. You don't need this government or this hierarchy to explain it to you. It feels at least analogous. I'm not saying, of course, that they're the same thing, but can I suggest

21:02 Mark: we look to 16. Seth's comment about equilibrium made me think of this one. That is one of the ones in the first section, in the first half. But that is about a goal of. It's not talking about virtue specifically, but it's. Here's something, an ideal, a practice that the virtuous person should pursue. Somebody want to read their translation? You want to read your ivanhoe or something.

21:22 Dylan: Theo of 16 sure.

21:24 Theodore: Attain extreme tenuousness, preserve quiet integrity. The myriad creatures are all in motion. I watch as they turn back the teeming multitude of things. Each returns home to its root. And returning to one's root is called stillness. This is known as returning to one's destiny. And returning to one's destiny is known as constancy. To know constancy is called enlightenment. Those who do not know constancy wantonly produce misfortune. To know constancy is to be accommodating. To be accommodating is to work for the good of all. To work for the good of all is to be a true king. To be a true king is to be heavenly. To be heavenly is to be. Is to embody the way. To embody the way is to be long lived and one who will avoid danger to the end of one's days.

22:18 Wes: Very different than the Ames.

22:19 Theodore: Very different.

22:20 Wes: Yeah, yeah.

22:21 Mark: What was that first word? Tenditiousness. What?

22:23 Theodore: Tenuousness?

22:25 Mark: Yeah. All these translations I'm looking at are talking about emptiness, which at least so emptiesness as tenuousness. So the second one you'd said quiet integrity. That's jing. So this is what Ames calls do your best to preserve your equilibrium. Or Lao says, I hold firmly to stillness. That's one thing. And then this emptiness or tenuousness is. That's just something with wu again.

22:48 Theodore: No, it's not wu. Yeah, maybe we'll go with the Ames on this one. Or we'll go with the empty metaphor. I mean, it does kind of.

22:54 Mark: It's a familiar metaphor in Buddhism and in here. I think the article you had just sent to us by Slingerland talked about this theory of. We've been talking about sort of following your nature, but it's. If you empty yourself of all this stuff, so empty yourself of the thoughts. So you do all this wu stuff. And that then is when your true virtue exerts itself.

23:17 Seth: I think in the Ivanhoe it seems like tenuousness is really like detachment.

23:23 Theodore: That makes sense with the Slingerland. I think he sees the Chuang Tzu as there is no true self. Really.

23:30 Seth: What?

23:31 Theodore: The self is like a container. The Daoist exercises to empty the container and allow something else in. So it's not about being true to self.

23:42 Wes: We get a definition of equilibrium here. Right. Which I think would help us figure out emptiness, which is this return to the root or the return to the propensity of things, which I take to be to the natural dispositions. Of things. Right. And other things. You know, which way is the water

23:59 Mark: going to flow, the being spontaneously?

24:02 Wes: So, yeah, in a way. Laws of nature. Right. To apply our contemporary standards to it. I think that gives some. If that's what equilibrium is, then it gives us some idea of what emptiness would mean psychologically, because that's what's supposed to preserve that. So what is it that's supposed to get us back to the propensity of things?

24:21 Theodore: Sort of the image I find most useful in interpreting all this is the placid lake that has no ripples. I think it's used a number of times. It's one. It's a favorite one, Taoist and Buddhist. It's such a. Like a quiet state that any ripple one can grasp, one knows what's going on. It also reflects the heavens perfectly. So that's the image I grasp onto to understand a lot of the other

24:50 Dylan: metaphors Henricks translates word equilibrium here is tranquility, which seems to have. When you mentioned that glassy lake. And maybe equilibrium is in some ways better because it's referring to balance. But tranquility feels like more like the emotional state or the psychological state of unperturbedness.

25:11 Wes: Equilibrium might be trying to suggest that it's not a complete evacuation of desire. It's more like. Like the right amount and counterbalanced. Right. So maybe that's what he's trying to do. I didn't look at the comment, the Ames commentary for this section, but like

25:26 Dylan: the bow under tension.

25:27 Wes: Yeah, exactly. If you were worried about. And I don't know. So what is the connotation here? Is emptiness supposed to be desirelessness? Is that the kind of tranquility we're talking about? Or is it more like moderation? Some quantity of desire?

25:42 Theodore: I think without desire is quite central. So if we're imagining it's clear and one can see heaven, one reflects heaven. It's because one is not creating objects, that's not using words. And one is desireless. But of course, then we have these other things where you have personal ends, but to get to them you actually have to enter this state. So maybe it's a balance between two states or going between, because the first, you remember the first chapter is to have desires, to see the multitude, to see everything, but also to be without desire. So to be with the way.

Do you have some, paradoxically, have both states within you? Is it like what you're perhaps suggesting is that you have both states, paradoxically, with you having desires and don't have desires? Or is it like A movement between these two states that text wants you to do. Or does it just want you to be the placid lake? I don't really have an answer for that.

26:32 Wes: It seems like Ames is worried about quietism in particular. Right?

26:36 Mark: Yeah. He doesn't want stillness and quietude to be the translation. He points at mirroring. So he's quoting another text and saying mirroring is best seen as synergistic and responsive, like virtuoso dancing or charioteering. All the elements are in step and constitute a fluid, interdependent whole.

26:54 Seth: This brings at least me back to something we started with, which is following the way does not mean inaction. It can't. And what's problematic about, you know, stillness or non action. All this suggests that we're trying to achieve a state of monotonous lack of change, which is not the case. Right. The earth and the heavens are not still. There are storms, there are earthquakes, there are avalanches, there are tides. It's about understanding what's appropriate in a particular circumstance to move things to the place that they should be going with the idea that ultimately you're trying to achieve some kind of balance, if not equilibrium.

And that's why I think there's a way in which you could understand this where the appropriate action in a particular circumstance, it can't just be in the present. At least it doesn't feel to me like it can be in the present, strictly speaking, that it may be appropriate in a circumstance to do something that seems out of balance or out of harmony or unvirtuous, but ultimately it will contribute to a broader virtuous outcome. So I think in these terms, like to get back to the Sun Tzu sort of analogy of. Right. The best general is the one who never fights.

It's not like they don't fight because they're not prepared or that they don't take action or they do all these things. It's that, you know, they take it as a last resort and yada, yada. And when they do fight, it's out of balance, but it's done with the purpose of bringing balance back or bringing equilibrium back.

28:25 Wes: You're making me think of our. Maybe this is a little oblique to what you're saying, Seth, but you're making me think of our discussion with Chuang Tzu about the extent to which this constitutes asceticism. Right. And maybe that's where quietism is linked to that. And then what is the place of the ecstatic and the Dionysian in this? You know, is There room for partying and Taoism. How does that fit into life? And Seth, I thought of that because you were talking about moments in which I forget how you put it. But equilibrium, not being an equilibrium, but that's serving some larger virtue or something like that. So equilibrium sounds a lot like we have to be always calm, but what about when we want to be not calm?

29:07 Theodore: This tension has been very much discussed. There was an early piece in the west called what is Taoism? By Creel. And he basically just split them in half. He said there's contemplative daoism, which is the placid, you know, go with the way. It's about getting to a spiritual state you are in the present. And then there's practical daoism, which is more cynical, that has ends, that is concerned with achieving Taoism. And he just said, I can't bring them back together. That these seem to be two aims of the text that just don't seem to. That he wasn't able to kind of reconcile.

29:40 Wes: How does practical daoism work?

29:42 Theodore: It sounds a lot more Confucian to me, where you have ends and then to get to those ends you perfect the way that it becomes second nature, that it becomes a knowing how cutting

29:53 Wes: the ox without hitting anything, you know, just by using. Using the force. Put the shield down over the eyes and have at it.

30:01 Theodore: Cook ding in the Zhuangzi. But there's. So these are the skill stories. But the weird thing about this, except for one which you might say is a natural thing, a swimmer who jumps into the water, into a whirlpool and is unharmed. And he comes out and says, do you have the way made you survive? He said, I have no way. I just went with the water. But everything else is as very actions of civilization. There's a bell stand maker. He's making bell stands for Confucian rituals. But yet he's a daoist. So he's contributing to the wider social good in a daoist way. But the ends he set himself must have been self conscious to begin with. You don't just naturally make a bell stand. You don't just naturally cut up an ox. So, yeah, I think this is a central tension in the text. You know, how practical is this meant to be?

30:47 Mark: I found a practical one that maybe we can talk about. 27. Dylan, do you want to read the Henricks? We haven't heard from him in a while.

30:53 Dylan: For 27, the good traveler leaves no track behind. The good speaker speaks without blemish or flawless. The good counter doesn't use tallies or chips. The good closer of doors does so without bolt or lock, and yet the door cannot be opened. The good tier of knots ties without rope or cord, yet his knots can't be undone. Therefore, the sage is constantly good at saving men and never rejects anyone. And with things he never rejects useful goods. This is called doubly bright. Therefore, the good man is the teacher of the good and the bad man is the raw material for the good. To not value one's teacher and not cherish the raw goods, though one has great knowledge, he would still be greatly confused. This is called the essential of the sublime.

31:40 Wes: So the Ames is as able travelers. This word able, and it almost in context sounds like experts, Right? Expert speakers make no gaffes. I don't know if that's going too far, but you know, expert centers make no use of rope or chords as opposed to beginners. Right.

31:56 Mark: Well, he could have said efficacious. I mean, that just seems like he uses.

31:59 Wes: But it seems to be about experience in a particular art. People who are really, really good at it can abandon some of the tools and crutches that are involved when you're a beginner, like tallies or counting sticks. And, you know, some of the gizzle sealers make no use of bolts or latches. I guess they don't. I guess there's a way to seal without them.

32:20 Dylan: This is where it seems to get explicitly metaphorical. In the last two, the sealers and then the knot tiers. I mean, the other ones, it's a kind of competency and excellence. But when you say the tier of knots ties without rope or cord, yet his knots cannot be. What the heck does that mean? I mean, it can only be metaphorical that I'm going to bind by obligation or something, people without. We're going to bind things together and activities. You know, it can't be excellence in the way in which the other. The first three were excellent, where you're just really, really good at that.

32:59 Wes: Yeah. So maybe, Dylan, we should be taking them all metaphorically. I don't know.

33:02 Mark: But yeah, I mean, I don't know. Like, the sealers, like, I think about, use the power of the vacuum. Like, I don't need to use glue to stick this on. I can just kind of squish them together and like, I know the textures of things well enough. Like, there might be something comparable that he's talking about with knots that I don't understand. But I'm sure that I think you're

33:21 Dylan: reaching on that one. I mean, the ceiling May be surface stuff, but I mean what are you going. When you talk about tying something, what are you going to tie? Unless you mean metaphorically.

33:30 Wes: We're definitely philosophy podcast right now.

33:33 Mark: We're trying to affix something on top of my camel or whatever and I'm using the camel's fur or whatever. You know, I don't know.

33:42 Wes: I actually kind of like that answer.

33:47 Mark: Sorry Theogo.

33:48 Theodore: The last two lines which I have. Those who do not honor their teachers or fail to care for their material, though knowledgeable, ever foundly deluded.

33:55 Dylan: Yeah. They do the paragraphs differently.

33:57 Seth: The Ames says while perhaps wise enough.

34:01 Dylan: Yes. And that's corresponding in the Henricks to. To not value one's teacher, not cherish royal goods. That's the beat.

34:06 Theodore: That's that part There be a textual explanation for what's going on here. The silk manuscripts, some of the lines were moved around. So and I suspect Ames is following the silk manuscripts and not the received manuscript from Wang Bi.

34:22 Dylan: I think Henricks himself was supposedly using those. Those latest. Maybe not the silk ones. I don't know.

34:29 Theodore: You can look at the silk ones because they had a bit of extra grammatical information for whatever reason to inform the Wang Bi. But you didn't have to rearrange the Wangbi to kind of use. Because it's not necessary that this is strictly a more authoritative text. It's an older manuscript, but it doesn't mean it's more authoritative than the Wang Bi received text. This is not enough information to say what was going on.

34:52 Dylan: Is the Wang Bi the text B of the Mawangdui? Is that the received text?

34:57 Theodore: The received text is the text we get from a commentator in the late Han or early three states period. He wrote a commentary. So that's what we had until they started to dig things up in the first in the early 70s and then the early 90s. And then we have a full text was picked up in the early 70s which had the de at the beginning, dao at the end. It was basically complete except with a few things moved around and some grammatical points put in the Guodian. The next the 90s was a bit more complicated in that it was a fractured. It was annoying because it wasn't written on a long piece of silk.

It was written on strips of bamboo. But the things that tied all the bamboo together had rotted. So you just had a pile of bamboo. And it took I think 20 years for them to put into some kind of order that they thought it probably should have been in. But that was even more confusing in the sense it had bits from like the middle of these chapters. Were they excerpts from a work or was this an earlier version that was then compiled with other versions to create the version that we have now?

36:02 Mark: Looking at the Wang Bi that is the source of most of these things, I'm just looking at the Ames here. We've talked about the able people that don't need the tools of the trade. But then this transition is for this reason that the sages, in being really good at turning others to account, have no need to reject anyone. And in dealing with property, you have no need to reject anything. What does that even have to do? Being open minded, open hearted. I mean, it sounds like the people considered traditionally competent are again being considered competent according to narrow Confucianist or some other sort of principled in quotes standards. But the sages, they don't have to reject something just because it's not sort of part of the doctrine or in the. It's not in the manual. You're going off book, it's okay to go off book.

36:44 Wes: They're holding others to account, which I'm not exactly sure what that means, but

36:48 Mark: turning others to account, I don't know what the difference there is.

36:52 Wes: Right. So not rejecting anyone or not rejecting anything, that all lines up with not leaving tracks, you know, the parallel, not leaving tracks, not having to use ropes or cords, not having to use bolts or latches. Yeah, it's hard to make sense of that. But the parallel seems to be between some art of, you know, whether it's traveling, speaking, reckoning, and then whatever the sage is doing and turning others to account. So it may be another leadership thing or teaching thing.

37:21 Theodore: The sage has none of these skills, but what he's good at is using people. It's recognizing what people are good at and ordering them in a way that is most efficacious.

37:31 Wes: I see.

37:32 Theodore: So instead of using them as metaphors,

37:34 Wes: even the weakest link has a place in the whole. If you're putting together a team, right, you could find a place for them and make it all work.

37:42 Mark: The sage can MacGyver that shit.

37:43 Seth: That's true. The sage is a MacGyver. I like that. And I think another thing that we could think about here is the notion, the metaphor. It's not a metaphor. Maybe it is of the relationship of the sage to the common people as teacher. So in the same way that the ideal or the exemplary practitioner of traveling leaves no trace, the exemplary, call it user of people, shaper of people, leader of people, is one who teaches not One who commands, not one who enforces. What's the word I'm looking for? Compels. Not one who cajoles, not one who coerces, seduces.

So the idea that the cultivation of the common people is the role of the sage. And of course, if you take literally those things about leaving no traces and not using these things, then that manner in which the sage does it makes the person unaware that they're actually being taught or shaped or cultivated in those ways. Because there are no ropes to bind them. There are no tracks on the ground, no errors in speech that would cause you to be. What's that about? I'm the sage with speech.

38:50 Theodore: I often feel that the Taoist is very careful in not to be pinned to a particular point of view. You never can really tell if the sage is on one side or the other, because to lock himself into that is to lock himself into a whole system which just removes him further and further from the dao.

39:09 Mark: I guess the last term that's in here is just this. What. What Ames called natural acuity, Ming. They have no need to reject anyone in dealing with property. They have no need to reject anything. This is what is called following their natural acuity or ming. But that's the same word that was names like Wu ming is. Is nameless is natural acuity. Here it's sort of like expressing its essence or something.

39:32 Theodore: Because different ming ming, usually this ming can be like fate, command, something like that.

39:39 Dylan: I feel like there's a story behind there being two different Mings. Like it's not the same. Like you have reed and reed or deer and deer. I mean, there must be different characters associated with these two different Mings.

39:54 Theodore: So different characters. It's just ming. It could have perhaps been spoken the same. I don't know old Chinese well enough to.

40:02 Dylan: Or different intonations such that they're spelled the same in.

40:06 Theodore: In different characters. They're different characters.

40:09 Dylan: Yep.

40:09 Mark: Well, I have a transition then to 37. This had the uncarved block in it actually aims says unworked wood. The dao is really nameless. It's Wu Ming. Were nobles and kings able to respect this, all things would be able to develop along their own lines. Having developed along their own lines, where they desire to depart from this, I would realign them with a nameless scrap of unworked wood, which is. I guess that's more literal. But the uncarved block is such a damn cool phrase. Realigned with this nameless scrap of unworked wood, they would leave off Desiring and not desiring, they would achieve equilibrium and all the world would be properly ordered of its own Accord.

40:46 Dylan: It's 37 is completely different in the Henricks.

40:51 Wes: Let's hear it.

40:51 Dylan: The dao is constantly nameless. Where were marquis and kings able to maintain it? The 10,000 things would transform on their own. Having transformed were their desires to become active, I would subdue them with the nameless simplicity. Having subdued them with the nameless simplicity, I would not disgrace them. By not being disgraced, they will be tranquil and heaven and earth will themselves be correct and right.

41:20 Wes: Oh, the nameless simplicity. Or what is it called, Dylan?

41:24 Dylan: Well, the dao is constantly nameless. And I mean the first line.

41:28 Wes: What's the simplicity? What is the full. Because nameless scrap of unworked wood is what we have. And you have simplicity.

41:34 Dylan: Yeah, I would subdue them with the nameless simplicity.

41:38 Wes: Simplicity, yeah.

41:39 Mark: It's Lao that has the nameless uncarved block that, you know, that was my introduction to this.

41:43 Wes: So, I mean, what is it, Theo? Literally, what is it?

41:47 Theodore: It's a single character, pu, which is unhewn wood.

41:51 Wes: I mean, the idea is that this is potentiality, right? It's undefined and it's something that you use to craft something else that's more definite. So where something is deviating, I guess it's developing along its own lines, or I would say naturally, or according to its own propensities, maybe to link it to some other sections. But the realignment comes not from you think, you correct it, you guide it, you give it some definite way. That's how you realign here. The idea seems to. The counterintuitive idea seems to be that you return it to potentiality. You give it this raw material that it can use to continue to develop along its own lines. Maybe. Maybe that's the way of thinking about it.

42:35 Mark: But it seems like Hendrix and Ames are in the minority. Looking at this list of translations in this nameless part, like Lao says, the way never acts, yet nothing is left undone. Wu says Tao never makes any ado, and yet it does everything Tao never does. Yet through it, all things are done. Six of these eight translations in this comparative one all have something about doing and not naming. So there must be something about that Ming that is ambiguous.

43:02 Dylan: There probably is something about the different texts. So the Henricks is explicitly on the Mawangdui. In fact, it has two versions. This was done in 89. Two versions of these newfound texts and going through them. And it has the side by side Chinese with the translation. And he comments on 37. That parts of it of line 6 was omitted from the standard text, which is in that section.

43:30 Wes: All right, so being realigned with the simplicity or the unworked wood, is there anything more to say about that?

43:37 Dylan: How?

43:39 Theodore: I mean, it's completely unclear what the sage is doing. So people are desiring to act, but he says, no, unhewn wood, simplicity done. Like, what is he doing?

43:49 Mark: I mean, is this a metaphor such that like. Well, really, to get the flavor of it, you have to be the sage. This is something that goes beyond words. But uncarved block, the suggestion of potentiality is just another metaphor here. Like the valley, like the empty vessel, you know, another thing that we're throwing on the pile that be like that,

44:09 Wes: you know, to redirect people's desires. Do you give them another rule? Right? A definite named thing. Do you give them a rule? Or do you give them some kind of possibility that they can new possibility to move into or a new set of possibilities?

44:23 Seth: Maybe, but I've got an interpretation of this. So the essence of it is in the second sentence. So the way does nothing, yet nothing is left undone. If barons and kings, or nobles and kings, whatever, were able to do nothing and yet leave nothing undone, then the world, specifically the common people, would be able to take care of themselves and would develop the way they should. And if there was any departure from that, because we'd be so close to this ideal way, it would be as easy for me to correct that with a piece of unhewn wood. But of course, the issue here is that kings don't act according to the dao. And so things are way out of whack. And you need much more than an unhewn piece of wood to get everything back the same direction. It just pains me that I'm so wise.

45:13 Theodore: I like it. It's good.

45:14 Mark: Yeah, you need a hewn piece of wood with a name. You need the.

45:18 Seth: The Spanky Stick Louisville Slugger. That's right. You have to hew that wood and make something out of it.

45:24 Mark: Well, that seems like a good place to end part one. Come back next week and get part two. Or if you're a partially examined life supporter through partially.com support, you can get it probably right now. It's next thing in your feed. See ya.