Ohio State University Dao WuWei and principles of Yin and Yang Discussion Essay topic: What is the Dao and what are the principles of Ying and Yang? How does an understanding of these concepts lead us to live according to the principle of wuwei? What does the ideal Daoist political state look like? What do you find attractive or unattractive about this view?Good papers will likely be 1.5 to 3 pages long. They must be double-spaced, 12-point Times or Times New Roman font, with 1” margins on all four sides.My notes are in the uploaded file. Example: Honesty
• The virtue related to the truth
• Vices:
o Dishonesty: vice of defect, not enough of the truth
o ?: vice of excess, too much of the truth(ex. Children telling sensitive topics)
Virtues are skills
• A capacity that has to be learned by practice
o Can’t be learned directly from others
§ Teachers, books, etc aren’t sufficient
o We must begin as beginners
§ Bad at first
§ Getting better with practice
• Virtues cannot be learned from others
o They must be exercised in order to be learned
o Ideally, this would happen in childhood
§ Adults who haven’t developed the virtues are at a disadvantage
§ Much harder to learn as an adult
• The importance of education
o The longer you have the virtues, the most skill you will have, the better you will be able
to live.
Back to Confucius
• “A man without virtue cannot long abide in adversity, nor can be long abide in happiness; but
the virtuous man is at rest in virtue, and the wise man covets it.” (Analects 4:2)
o Well being/happiness/flourishing are connected to virtue (similar to Aristotle)
• Virtues are connected to vices
o The types of virtues you have will come with their own distinctive weakness,
temptations, vices, etc
o Different from Aristotle’s view of the mean between extremes
§ Still notes a conceptual relationship between virtues and vices
• Nobody is ever truly virtuous
o “I have yet to meet a man who loves virtue as much as he loves sex”
o We can use the idea of virtue as an ideal to strive toward
o But we should recognize that we are always incomplete and susceptible to temptation
§ Need to have some cation and strategy in the pursuit of virtue
Politics
Abortion
Immigration
Climate change
Gun control
Health care
Taxation
Billionaires
LGBTQ issues
Conservatives
Liberals
Against
Against
Don’t believe in it
Hate
Pay or die
Never
Moar
Tough deal with it
For
Love
Freaked out
No guns
All free all the time
All of them
No billionaires
Love is love
•
Political theory of Confucius
o The nation should be ruled by a single supreme figure, the Emperor
o That person will stand in relationship to the population as a father to his sons
o A few particular claims
§ You cannot expect people to behave in a virtuous manner if their basic needs
are unmet
v Only if people have food, shelter, etc will any political structure have
success
v As a leader, this is the primary responsibility
§ “If you governed people by laws, and keep them in order by penalties, they will
avoid the penalties, but lose their sense of shame. If you govern by your moral
excellence, and keep them in order by your dutiful conduct, they will retain
their sense of shame, and also live up to this standard”
v Extrinsic and intrinsic motivation
Ø Extrinsic: coming from the outside
ü The consequences of breaking a law
Ø In intrinsic: built into the nature of a thing, coming from the
inside
ü The right reason to avoid speeding in a school zone is to
avoid harming children
v Lead by example not by laws
Ø This teaches us to do the right thing for the right reason
v Does this mean that there shouldn’t be any law?
Ø In the ideal case, yes
ü Or at least a very small set of laws, perhaps the
establishment of standards would be all that was
necessary
Ø In the actual world we will need laws, but their role should be
minimized whenever possible
v What does it take tot be a good political leader?
Ø Must be virtuous, but that’s not enough
Ø Practical skills are required for government (e.g. public works)
Ø And ideally these would be connected
•
Mencius
o A later, highly influential Confucian thinker
o Moral psychology: a mixture of ethics and psychology
§ Ethics: the study of right/wrong, should/ought, etc (normative)
§ Psychology: the study of actual human behavior, motivations, etc (descriptive)
§ Some questions are both
v “Are people innately good?”
o Mencius thinks that people are innately good
§ What does it mean for people to be good:
v See the discussion that we have already had about Confucius
Ø The virtue of ren and li, etc
§ What does it mean for a feature to be innate?
v Suggestions
Ø Born with it, independent of your life experience afterward
§
Ø Intrinsic, part of who you are
Ø True for the whole species
v Some traits that might be innate?
Ø Socializing
Ø Breathing
Ø Bipedal, walk on two legs
v Some things that are innate in the relevant way
Ø Walking
Ø Language learning
ü We cannot learn to talk without somebody else
ü But even with one other person, we still create a new
language to speak to each other
v Moral goodness is like this
Ø We aren’t born good
Ø But we are born with the capacity to be good
Ø It comes naturally to us in the right circumstances
Ø The flaws we see are become of our environment
Mencius’ argument
•
•
•
Example: a child falling into a well
o Everyone will act benevolently
o Even people who aren’t particularly good
o Even if there is no prose of reward
Puzzle: if everyone is innately good, then why do we see so much bad
behavior
o Benevolence is only one aspect of our nature
o There are others
§ Selfishness, greed, lust, etc
o The environment that we are raised in is crucial for helping us to
develop our natural capacities
§ Implies that education is critical
Benevolence (full-developed): wanting what is good for other
people( attitude, emotion, etc) plus wisdom about what is actually good
for another person (skill)
o Example: King sparing an ox
§ Some acts of apparent benevolence display the tight
kind of emotion, but don’t display the right kind if skill
to actually improve the world
Daoism (Taoism)
• Develop in China
• Grows alongside (and in competition with) confucianism
• Lao Tzu
•
o Contemporary of Confucius
o Questionably real: maybe not historical
§ Name translates as “old man” or “old teacher”
o Traditionally, he met and conversed with Confucius
o More controversially, he trained (or even was) the Buddha
Daodejing
o Series of poems
o No clear structure, chapters are largely independent
o Key chapters
§ Ch 1: the Dao
• Dao: road, way path, “ The way of things,” a bit like laws of
nature, the way the world flows
§ Ch 42: the closes that the Daodejing comes to a statement of belief
• The Dao produces the One (undifferentiated energy, qi)
• The One produce the Two (yin and yang)
o Yin: dark, cloud, cold, rain, female, that which is inside
o Yang : light sunshine, heat, spring, summer, maleness, that
which is outside
o Both crucial parts of the world, which is constantly in flux
§ “ Good” is more like the balance of these things
• Not a static balance
• A shifting, moving balance
• The two produce the Three
• The Three produce the myriad creatures
o Cha2: WuWEi
§ Non-action (not incation):
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