Georg Hegel (1770-1831) had two major ideas that became very influential for later thinkers. The first is historical explanation or explanation by process. Hegel argues that things are not simply what they are at once, but evolve through stages to become what they are, and the process by which they evolve show us how the things essentially work. Things are also not simply what they are in themselves but are what they are in a situation with other things in which they become what they are (very like the Buddhist concept of co-dependent arising). After Hegel, Marx, Darwin, Freud, Weber and Feuerbach were major thinkers who overturned old theories of static order with new theories of process to explain the workings of the mind and society. Consider that Newton thought God made the earth at the very beginning in an instant, while most believe today that there was a process by which our planet, the solar system and the galaxy formed. Consider the controversy about evolution and Darwin.
Hegel’s second major idea, the mechanism or motion of evolution over time, is dialectic. Dialectic is a Greek term for arguing back and forth, for and against a position, to come to greater understanding. Plato believed dialectic was the superior method of acquiring knowledge, and his dialogue plays show Socrates arguing against others and himself in this way. Hegel argues that all things are made of oppositions or contradictions (contra-diction means “arguing against”, like arguing both sides, the pros and cons, of a particular thing). This is not only similar to Laozi’s wheel (made of both solid and empty together), but Newton’s idea that for every force there is an equal but opposite force.
Hegel’s dialectic works in a three stage pattern of positive, negative and synthesis. Hegel often presents our ideas (which live in the world as politics and our shared expectations) as starting out positive, flipping and becoming negative, and then reaching a resolution of positive and negative as a joined whole. Remember Laozi’s wheel leads us through this three stage process (solid at first, then empty, then both), as does the famous Zen quote that first a rock is a rock, then a rock isn’t a rock (it is in the mind, as a concept) and then a rock is a rock (real rock and concept together as the rock).
Hegel argues that by looking at things as evolving over time in a situation, not immediate and isolated, and looking at things as two sided and in opposition to themselves and others, rather than categorical and without tension, we can come to understand how things actually are, which is a union (while an opposition) of how they are in the mind and how they are in the world.
In his first major work, The Phenomenology of Mind/Spirit (1806), Hegel gives us his social history of society and philosophy evolving by stages to the present day. In his second major work, The Science of Logic (1816), Hegel gives us his psychology. We will look at the overall structure and some key ideas of each, spending more time on the Logic which has become one of my favorites. Americans have only begun studying Hegel, because Hegel had a student named Marx who took Hegel’s concept of dialectic and used it to father communism. Communists like Hegel’s Logic very much, and so American and British universities did not teach much Hegel and when they do they often teach the Phenomenology but not the Logic. This is unfortunate, because while Hegel’s ideas about history in the Phenomenology are quite antiquated today I have great hope that there is more to be discovered by looking at the Logic in the light of the discoveries of modern psychology, especially the work of Piaget the child psychologist.
After writing the Phenomenology, Hegel came to realize that he had not described the inner workings of the dialectical process of history to his liking. Hegel believed the world consisted of ideas, so he leaves history behind and turns to the workings of ideas in the mind. To show the inner psychology at work in every stage of historical development, he wrote his Logic which like the Phenomenology unfolds in three stages as positive, negative and synthesis, but instead of Orientals, Greeks and Germans, the three stages of the Logic are Being, Essence, and Concept.
Thought has to gather everything up such that all categories become modes or branches of the same thing. It does this with Understanding which holds things fast in sameness and Reason which divides things against each other and against themselves, opposing the Understanding. Understanding wants to keep ideas as they are and separate from each other, while Reason wants to change ideas and unite them all together as a whole. The mind craves unity, objectivity as the all-view, which pulls it in two directions. First, it wants to hold on to the unities of the understanding and keep them away from reason tearing them apart. However, reason wants to dissolve everything and return it all to the Absolute, or the undivided One. Thus, the motions rock back and forth in stages. It would thus be correct to say that, the way Hegel describes it, conservatives would rather understand than reason and liberals would rather reason than understand.
At each stage, the Understanding comes to change its shape and provide the ground for the back and forth positions of reason which share the same understanding(s). Philosophies, political positions and scientific theories reason against each other even as they share the common understandings of the time and place. Thus, Hegel says there really is only one philosophy which is ‘thought’ itself, and the philosophies are views, perspectives within the one dialectical course of things which is thought.
Why is it opposed to itself? Where did this come from? Interestingly, Hegel writes that we need to start with ‘legend’ of the fall of man, of Adam falling out of the Garden of Eden. Hegel says the inner meaning is what is important (a similar reading to Deists of his time in Europe, who see the bible as true psychologically but not literal). When Adam, or consciousness, falls into the world out of unity with all, it falls into oppositions and tensions, polarities that present one side and hide the other. Today, we can describe the fall from unity either in physics as the Big Bang or in psychology as the infant mind learning to discern itself and others in the world (Piaget).
Hegel calls judgment ‘the one-sided acid’. Categories are thus gathered, assumed, by the Understanding: (Being)(Is), (You)(Are), (This)(Is). However, these are inadequate. First, they are one sided, and so dogmatic, stuck. They are divided from each other and the All, so reason is not satisfied and tries to figure out how all of these separate categories are one in reality, or the big One or All. Second, they are almost entirely empty of content, making them almost no different from empty. This is exactly how Hegel is critical of Kant’s categories and the gap he leaves between mind and world.
(68) “That true and positive meaning of the antinomies is this: that every actual thing involves a coexistence of opposed elements. Consequently to know, or, in other words, to comprehend an object is equivalent to being conscious of it as a concrete unity of opposed determinations. The old metaphysic, as we have already seen, when it studied the objects of which it sought a metaphysical knowledge, went to work by applying categories abstractly and to the exclusion of their opposites.”
(118) “However reluctant Understanding may be to admit the action of Dialectic, we must not suppose that the recognition of its existence is peculiarly confined to the philosopher. It would be truer to say that Dialectic gives expression to a law which is felt in all other grades of consciousness, and in general experience. Everything that surrounds us may be viewed as an instance of Dialectic.”
Hegel writes that the feeling of being alive is to feel contradiction within oneself, at rest in itself but at the same time moving itself beyond itself. It both wants to stay and go at once, and does. Similarly, the Soviet literary critic and thinker Bakhtin said that when we think we are in dialogue with ourselves, are opposed to ourselves on opposite sides.
In the Phenomenology, Hegel argues that Heraclitus realized the unity of Being and Non-Being as ceaseless Becoming, as the flux of the cosmic fire. Hegel says that some say no one is capable of understanding contradiction, but Hegel points to Heraclitus and argues that to come to the next level in your understanding your reason has to see both sides and unite them in the cement of the understanding. Hegel says that if we imagine any transformation or change or motion, we are seeing being and non-being as one like Heraclitus. It is merely recognizing it that is the hard part. Hegel says that this is the hurdle that prevents the common person from being a philosopher, and the reason that the great thinkers and revolutions in thought are rare. In fact, often it takes decades after the thinker’s death for their ideas to become accepted, further proof that the great thinker must unite the old with the opposite direction of the new and this is the barrier between the new idea and the common understanding of the people.
Once thought realizes becoming as the unity of the being of things and their non-being (their temporary being in time and their not being other things), thought still does not have enough to understand each and every thing or how they fit into the All as one. Thought tries to understand the individual beings of the world and the world itself as constant becoming, like Heraclitus, but this does not show us how things are interrelated. This is exactly how Kant was frustrated with Hume, because everything being an assumption does not tell us what things are specifically.
Thought must explore two opposite directions to try to find the meaning of individual things. First, it tries to understand things by their qualities (such as green, square, closed), but this moves away from the things themselves towards abstract ideas. Second, thought tries to understand things by their quantities, with each thing being a one itself and being a quantity of many parts and being in a group of many members. Unfortunately, this leaves each being as merely a thing, and tells us nothing about the specific differences between types of things. Notice that quality and quantity are the two opposite sides to our abstractions of things, the two ways we isolate and abstract, through thought, the parts and ways of things. Consider that your hand is not explainable simply by its shape, or color, or texture, any more than its being one hand with five fingers, though all of this together tells me much about my hand. To understand your hand, you have to see it in context, in the world used with other things, as well as understand the qualities and quantities of the hand.
Thought now tries to understand things in terms of essences, and these essences in terms of their qualities and quantities. Hegel in his Phenomenology saw Plato as the union of Heraclitus and Parmenides, that Plato thought things have ideal essences in the stars that cause them to be what they are, and that Platonism was the major school of thought in middle-age Europe to which Hegel acknowledges he owes many insights.
Because thought could not understand things in their qualities and quantities, it tries to understand things by putting them in groups and then understanding the qualities and quantities of these groups. It puts these as essences outside the world as Plato put them up in the stars, in another more modern way “in” things and their groups as their “nature”. The problem with this stage is that this still puts things as isolated and does not understand them in a situation as mutually interdependent. It seeks the meaning of the thing in the group where it could not find it in the individual, but this still isolates things even as it puts them in groups. Hegel is very aware that modern science is often in this mode, isolating things and finding new truths about their exclusive natures. For Hegel, Plato’s forms, Kant’s categories and scientific theories are good but they are not complete because they do not understand how things cannot be separate from each other if we want our knowledge to be like the world, in which everything fits together.
Just as qualities are non-beings within beings, essences are also non-beings within beings, but a core is sought beyond and opposed to outer qualities or bunches of quantities. Thought has turned on itself yet preserved itself, trying to understand the real as merely the idea. It would be like saying that the hand is really the ideal hand, rather than a hand in the real world which we idealize. Thought is struggling to grasp the unity of the mind and the world, of our ideas of things and the real things themselves. Just as beings were opposed to themselves and others, Hegel says that essences, if they remain many and are not gathered into a trunk of the All still have contradictions in themselves and against each-other and so they are opposed to unity.
The idea and the thing are realized as one in the Concept, which includes the thought and thing. When we see that the world is in our minds and in itself together as one, that things are our ideas about them and themselves for us as one that is also many, this is for Hegel Actuality, the final stage. It is grasped by the mind, but in extension is the view of the real world and all that it is or could be. Interesting for Chaos Theory and Quantum Theory, the most recent developments of mathematics and science, Hegel writes that seeing the unity of necessity and freedom is the final hurdle. To see that no part of reality is absolutely necessary, but no part is absolutely free, and the two hang together as opposites always like light and darkness, this is the final stage that lets us see things as they are. This would be the final and total grasp of the wheel as solid and empty, or the rock as thing and perception/assumption. Now, Hegel believes, reason goes forth as true science and simply Nature itself, with a ground to continue to investigate and understand things with all the branching of the Idea by which we could ever understand them to be. All becomes a single Idea, that is one with the world.
FALLACIES
Fallacies are common errors or problems in reasoning, like those we studied in the Indian Nyaya Sutra. There is no set list of fallacies, nor is there a complete understanding of how they relate to logical or correct reasoning. The more dogmatic believe that truth and false are exclusively separated, while the more skeptical believe that the reasonable and the unreasonable, the rational and the irrational, are interrelated. Myself, being skeptically inclined, believe that fallacies occur when reason and rationality do not fit or overshoot their particular situation. The rationality of an argument and its component pieces depends on how it is used or abused in context, not abstractly with regard to its form. We are going to talk about some of the common fallacies that logic texts discuss, even though there is not one set list of these fallacies nor a system of their structures. I found three different but overlapping lists in the three texts I reviewed for the class.
Appeal to Emotion
There are many types of appeals that cater to positive emotions we wish to sustain such as happiness and status, and negative emotions we wish to avoid such as pain, fear, pity, and ignorance. Advertising, of course, appeals to both desires and insecurities frequently. The recent khaki pants ad that says, “Wear the pants”, is appealing to male desires for dominance and status as a strong and respected man.
An Appeal to Authority is repeating something said while citing its source, either an individual, an institution or a culture, to support an argument by appealing to a sense of security and trust. For example, “The chief of police said crime is up”, “9 out of 10 scientists (that we hand picked) say you should brush your teeth with Happy Time Toothpaste”, or “Native American Shamans used tobacco to cure diseases”. Notice that an appeal to authority is a fallacy if it is misleading, and whether or not it is misleading or informative is debatable. For example, if the chief of police is untrustworthy or there is good evidence that she wants to increase her budget this year, we may argue that the first example is a fallacy, an improper appeal to authority, but if we trust her then her testimony could be valid and it is not a fallacy but a proper and justified appeal to authority.
An Appeal to Force is threatening that if a position is not supported there will be harmful and dangerous consequences. For example, “If you don’t believe me and build a giant wall, Islamic extremists will eat your baby”, or “If I am wrong about this, may God help us all”. Notice that an appeal to force is a fallacy if the threat is unjustified, but perfectly reasonable if the threat is justified, and that this is often debatable.
An Appeal to Pity is like an appeal to force, but emphasizing sadness and pain inflicted on the poor, unfortunate and defenseless. For example, “If we don’t do it like I say, small children will cry”, or “This particular country has been poor for hundreds of years, so we should totally sell them a bunch of weapons to make them feel better about themselves”. Like other appeals, it can be debatable whether or not an opponents position will hurt the unfortunate, as well as whether or not the harm is an unfortunate but necessary consequence.
An Appeal to Ignorance is a special kind of ‘sharing the fault’, one of the fallacies of the Nyaya school of India. When we argue, “There are things about X we don’t know, so my opponent can’t be sure”, we are saying something that is true about every human position, including our own. For example, during Bush Jr.’s presidency the head of the American Academy of Sciences said, “Global warming is just a theory”, which is true but does not say anything about how justified a theory it is compared to any other alternative. For the skeptically inclined like myself and the Jains, all human truth is “just a theory”, so it is improper to use this against an opponent in argument to try to particularly associate their position with ignorance.
Straw Man
The ‘straw man’ refers to setting up a scarecrow as a fake person. In debate, we say, “That is a straw man” when our opponent presents our own position in an oversimplified way to make it easy to argue against, like setting up a straw dummy to knock down. This is one of the most common fallacies that people accuse each other of doing: “My opponent is misrepresenting my position on the issues”. Wittgenstein says that this is what both sides of the objective truth versus subjective truth do too often to each other. For example, if I am arguing against a war, and I say that my opponent always loves each and every war and blood thirsty people are untrustworthy, I can be accused of setting up a straw man. My opponent need only site one example when they disapproved of a war to show that I have oversimplified their position. In debate, we are often arguing to convince not our radical opponents but moderates who are on the fence. While it is useful to simplify an opponent’s position to highlight its faults, it carries the risk of being accused of oversimplification.
Slippery Slope
The slippery slope is a particular kind of overly simple straw man which involves a domino effect over time, taking a consequence of the opponent’s position and blowing it out of proportion over the course of several steps. For example, “If we legalize marijuana, more people will try it, then more drugs will be legalized, and then everyone will be shooting heroin and civilization will collapse”. It is most likely true that if marijuana were legalized, then more people would do it, but it is doubtful that the majority of the population would end up heroin addicts as a consequence regardless of whether marijuana should be legalized or not. This person took the consequence of some new users and it slides all the way down the slippery slope of over-simplifying judgment to everyone becoming an addict. Another example: “If we to legalize homosexual marriage, then people will want to marry their family members, and then marry animals and clock radios”. Because my examples are quite progressively biased, we can give another: “If we let people own concealable hand guns, people will develop a taste for heavy artillery and begin stock piling their own personal arsenals”.
Red Herring
To say, “That’s a red herring” is to say that an opponent has missed the point by focusing too much on an insignificant detail. There are two competing explanations of the origin of this expression. The first is that hunting dogs were trained by dragging a fish behind a horse to see if they would be easily thrown off the true prey’s trail. The second is that a food scare occurred in the 1920s just after the Russian Revolution when a company spraying red dye into sardine cans to make them look fresh sometimes made one sardine dark red, starting rumors that Communists were secretly poisoning Americans. I found a good example of red herrings in an article about fallacies that examined child custody court transcripts. A parent would often accuse the other of being irresponsible in general, and then site a particular example (such as a time when they were too busy to pick up a child). The parents would then argue about the single event and lose sight of the overall issue of irresponsibility. If there are examples and counter examples for many things, sometimes we argue particular examples are marginal and other times that they are critical. If the example is marginal and insignificant, focusing on it could bring the charge of misleading oneself and others with a red herring.
Personal Attack
One particular type of red herring, certainly the most popular, is the personal attack, when one attacks the opponent and not the opponent’s argument. In a way, it is the opposite of an appeal to authority. For example, “You cannot believe a word my opponent says, because she is a communist, Mormon, atheist, aquatic bird, etc”, or “His scientific theory is questionable, because he is a gambler”. Like with any red herring, it can be debatable whether or not a person’s character has any relationship to their argument, but a genuine and fallacious personal attack occurs when there is an unjustifiable appeal to fear based on the distrust of the group a person belongs to or a particular trait of the person.
Fallacy of Composition & Fallacy of Division
The fallacy of composition is wrongly attributing the property of a part to a greater whole. For example, “If water is wet, and humans are three fifths water, then humans are wet”, or “If San Francisco is progressive, then all of California is progressive”. Notice that this fits with Wittgenstein’s analogy of the oven and how it is always ignorant of the complex situation to simplify things into a single component or essence.
The fallacy of division is wrongly attributing the property of the greater whole to a particular part, the fallacy of composition in reverse. For example, “If water is wet, and water has two hydrogen molecules, then hydrogen is wet”, or “If San Francisco is progressive, then my conservative uncle who lives there must be progressive”.
Notice that bigotry and prejudice are types of fallacious composition and division. If I say, “He is a Hindu, and he is a jerk, so all Hindus are jerks”, I have committed the fallacy of composition. Likewise, if I say, “All atheists are immoral, she is an atheist, so she is immoral”, I have committed the fallacy of division.
Wednesday, November 30, 2011
Tuesday, November 29, 2011
Asian Philosophy: Daoism - Laozi, Zhuangzi & Liezi
This week, we will be studying the three most central texts of Chinese Daoism: the Dao De Jing of Laozi, the book of the ‘second patriarch’, Zhuangzi, and the book of Liezi. Daoism has always been dear to my heart, as I have an old printing of the Dao (on the book, the ‘Tao Te Ching’, now typically and more accurately written ‘Dao De Jing’) which I loved when I was a kid with black and white photos of beaches and sea gulls in fog accompanying the text. It was only later in my studies that I was able to have a real love of the text, which at first seemed simply mysterious poetry.
Daoism is often opposed to Confucianism as a skeptical and mystical school of thought vs. Confucianism which is a more traditionalist and dogmatic school. Indeed, Daoism is one of the most powerful skeptical schools of thought in history, and during the later years of the Han dynasty peasants and scholars turned from Confucianism to Daoism in support of innovation and revolution (such as the famous Yellow turban rebellions of 184 and 187 CE). Daoist sages are often ordinary men and women. However it is also clear that Confucius was critical of tradition, politics, knowledge and judgement, and Daoism became an orthodox religious system that was used by the Han and later dynasties to control and pacify the people.
While Confucianism advocates city life, study, and the structure of the family and state, Daoism advocates returning to nature and the natural (ziran), simplicity, meditation, and questioning all human understanding. Confucianism argues that we should cultivate and civilize ourselves through education and tradition, Daoism argues that we should return to our natural state and let nature run its course, thus reaching a state of completion. Rather than study harder to understand more distinctions between things, Daoism argues we should work hard to forget the understandings and distinctions we have stored up in ourselves already. Daoists would agree with Confucius that “a noble person is not a pot”, but rather than add and stir they would have us empty it out.
Many are familiar with the Daoist image of the Yin and Yang intertwining female earth energy of darkness and male sky energy of light, however only few know that the symbol originally comes from the Yin Yang school, one of the hundred schools of thought from the warring states and hundred schools period of Chinese philosophy. The Daoists got the symbol from this school, and followed similar ideas about things being constituted by opposing forces. The symbol has also been identified as a solar calendar that charts daylight hours over the course of a year, important for farmers who were supporters and sources of both the Yin Yang and Daoist schools of thought. When the Han unified China, they patronized Confucianism and Daoism but not the Yin Yang school and others that disappeared without their support.
The most important concept for Daoism (and, interestingly, the mystics of most religions) is the Great One, the All. Like Confucius and Confucianism, Daoism followed the Zhou Dynasty before the Han in speaking about the Way (Dao) of heaven and the mandate of heaven but less about the ‘Lord of Heaven’, showing us the same abstraction and evolution from polytheism to monotheism to philosophical monism we found in ancient Egypt, India and Greece. Like in ancient Egypt and India, but unlike ancient Greece after the spread of Christianity, ancient China kept traditional polytheism as their philosophers moved toward monism. In Daoism, you can find many gods and the Dao, the Way, being praised and venerated beyond all particular beings.
Daoism argues that one should remove one-sided judgments and desires from the mind such that harmony with the whole, with the One, is achieved. This is similar in many ways to the Indian Jain idea of anekantavada, ‘non-one-sidedness’. My favorite quote from the Zhuang Zi, which can serve as a great slogan for skepticism and relativism is, “A sage too has a this and a that, but his that has a this, and his this has a that”. We also find in the Zhuangzi accusations that other schools are one-sided in their theories and thus not clear on the whole.
With regard to the Confucians and the Moists, what one calls right the other calls wrong, but if we want to right their wrongs and wrong their rights, the best thing to use is clarity.
A key concept for Daoism is wu-wei, ‘non-action’. The idea is to get what you want by being patient and doing less, not more, to see results. This increases one’s ability to perceive changing circumstances and opportunities in the situation that one would miss if hurried or over-exerting. The idea is to act less but still act, not to simply not act at all. Acting with moderation and simplicity in mind conserves energy and prevents mistakes that can be avoided. Patience and awareness are valued over speed and focus.
There is a medieval Japanese story that illustrates wu-wei well. A local lord has three sons, and must decide who should inherit his position. He tests them by placing a pillow on the sliding door to his room and calling them one at a time. The eldest son enters and annihilates the pillow in a frenzy of skilled sword strikes. The middle son draws his sword but sees the pillow in midair and catches it. The youngest son sees the pillow on the door, tucks it under his arm and enters the room to the joy of his father. Those familiar with Aikido, the Japanese martial art, will recognize the concept of wu-wei as it is physically used: one defeats one’s opponent by moving out of their way and allowing the situation to take its course, not by directly striking them.
It is traditionally held that Laozi, whose name simply means ‘Old Master’, lived sometime around 600 BCE, and Zhuangzi, the second patriarch of Daoism, lived from 370-290 BCE. Not much is known about either patriarch. Zhuangzi’s life and dates are better known. He worked as a overseer of a lacquer warehouse, a place for mass-producing bento boxes, vases and plates with glazes. According to his text, written by his students and followers, he was a friend of many philosophers including the Logicians Hui Shi and Gongsun Long. Laozi was traditionally said to have been an archivist of the Imperial library who Confucius wanted to study under but was rejected. Modern scholarship considers Laozi to be a combination of at least three old masters whose life stories were mixed together as the tradition settled.
The Dao De Jing of Lao Zi
Laozi is said to have given up on life in politically turbulent China and rode a water buffalo west to live as a hermit. As he was about to leave the state, he was recognized by the border guard Yin Xi who pleaded with him to leave his teachings for the people before leaving society. Laozi consented and in the dirt road wrote the 81 passages of the Dao De Jing (a sacred number, 9 times 9, each of which is 3 times 3) before disappearing forever. Because no one witnessed his death, he is considered an immortal like other Daoist sages.
The first chapter, opening verse, of the Dao De Jing, famously reads:
The Dao can be talked about, but not the Eternal Dao. Names can be named, but not the Eternal Name. As the origin of heaven and earth, it is nameless.
The All, or the One, includes everything. Thus, there is no proper or particular name. The All does not need a particular name, because there is nothing in particular that one can judge about it. It is the source of all things, so it could be called ‘green’, ‘not green’, ‘life’, ‘death’,‘both’ or ‘neither’, with equal but equally incomplete meaning. The same, of course, goes for any adjective. Just as any particular thing has its opposite (hot and cold, good and evil), the One is the source of all opposites, and thus is neither and both of each particular thing. Notice the duality of heaven and earth, of open sky and closed ground. Sometimes we think being solid and limited is good, other times we feel that being open and free is good. In fact, the All is all solidity (order) and freedom (chaos), so it is the source of all closure and openness. In the first three lines, we have much of Daoist thought already.
In chapter 8 of the Dao, we learn that the Dao is like water. This is a common metaphor that Daoism employs to describe how the way and nature of things is fluid, like water, getting down into the lowest and tightest cracks and divisions. The Dao has no status or pride, and so like the Daoist sage the Way is down amongst the poor and the common, together as one with the things people avoid and despise as well as the things people exalt and desire.
Chapter 9 of the Dao is a classic example of Daoist reasoning by contradiction. All things have contradictory properties, but this is hard for our one sided judgments and views to see. Thus, we are told that if we continue to sharpen a sword it goes dull, and if we store up enough valuables they will surely attract thieves, and so no one can fully protect a palace of gold and diamonds. “When you have done your work, retire” means to do just enough for the present situation, but not build up merit or riches, for they will bring you trouble.
Chapter 10 asks if we can make our strength united with softness like a little child. It says that growing while refraining from dominating is the secret to life.
Chapter 11 of the Dao is my favorite. I find it very important for understanding the duality of positive and negative, the solid and empty we saw in heaven-and-earth of chapter 1. We are told that a wheel is only useful because of the emptiness at the center. When you first look at a wheel, you see it as a simply solid thing. Then, if you look again, you will see that the emptiness, not just the substance, is important too. Imagine if a house was not mostly empty, but was solid through and through. You would not be able to get inside it! May as well build the house in outer space. Solid and empty get their meanings, their uses, from a mutual relationship, not from one being the only thing and the other merely false. I love this verse, as it is very close to Hegel’s idea of positive, negative, and synthesis. The synthesis here would be seeing not just the solid wheel, nor simply the emptiness, but both working together.
Human truth is quite relative. At first, one believes particular things are absolute. After negative experiences, it is easy to be discouraged and only see the limitations and emptiness of beliefs. This would be like focusing on first the solidity and then the emptiness of the wheel exclusively. The point is not to stop at the emptiness however, but to see that both sides work together to make the wheel, all things, and life itself, what it is. There is a Zen Buddhist Koan which says something very similar: “First practicing (Zen), I saw a rock as a rock…then, I saw it as not a rock…finally, I saw it as truly a rock.”
In Chapter 22, we read that the sage does not boast, and is thus admired by everyone, that he does not want to shine, and is thus will be enlightened, that he does not seek excellence, and is thus exalted, that because he does not argue, no one can argue with him. Most people assume that they know what is simply good, and what is simply bad, and they are not afraid to tell you so. Only the sage, the wise person, knows not to boast about anything but to enjoy and appreciate things just as they are, and thus the sage is far less annoying than the average person. This takes practice and patience, something the average person does not have the patience for before making a quick and certain judgment leading to action. If you desire nothing, “everything will flock to you”, and you have whatever you need right at hand in any situation. This is opposite the common understanding, which says that you must want something and relentlessly seek it in order to have it. Patient action is often more fruitful then strenuous action.
In Chapter 25, we read that there is only one thing that is complete and turns in a perfect circle without endangering itself, the “Mother of All”. The texts says, “I call the Dao...Painfully giving it a name, I call it great”.
Chapter 33 reads, “Whoever knows others is clever. Whoever knows himself is wise. Whoever conquers others has force. Whoever conquers themselves is truly strong.”
Chapter 36 reads, “What you want to weaken you must first allow to grow strong. What you want to destroy, you must first allow to flourish. From whomever you want to take away, to him you must first give.
In Chapter 42 we read, “The strong do not die a natural death”, or “The violent die a violent death”. This is quite similar to Jesus saying, ‘those who live by the sword die by the sword’. Try to gain for yourself, and the great balance of all things will cut you down, doing to you what you do to others. In the Zhuangzi, twice there appears the example of a gnarled old tree which outlives other trees because it does not grow powerful and strong and is thus not cut down and used to build other things by woodcutters and carpenters.
In Chapter 43, we read, “The softest thing on earth overtakes the hardest thing...From this one recognizes the value of non-action (wu-wei).” This calls to mind a seashore, with the waves of soft fluid water battering the hard rock cliffs to make sand where the water and land meet.
Chapter 46 reads, “When the Dao rules on earth, racehorses are used to pull dung carts. When the Dao has been lost on earth, warhorses are raised on green fields. There is no greater defect than many desires. There is no greater evil than to not know sufficiency...Therefore, the sufficiency of sufficiency is lasting sufficiency.”
Chapter 56 reads, “Those who know do not speak. Those who speak do not know.”
Chapter 60 reads, “A great nation must be led the way one fries a small fish. If one administers the world according to the Dao, then the ancestors do not swarm about as spirits. Not that the ancestors are not spirits, but their spirits do not harm humanity.”
Chapter 63 reads, “Whoever practices non-action occupies themselves with not being occupied, finds taste in what is tasteless, sees the great in the small and the much in the little...Plan what is difficult while it is still easy. Do the hard thing while it is still small. Everything heavy on earth begins as something light. Everything on earth begins as something small.”
Chapter 64 reads, “The tallest tree trunk grows from a sprout as thin as a hair. A tower nine stories high is built from a small pile of earth. A journey of a thousand miles starts with a single footstep in front of your feet.”
Chapter 67 reads, “I have three treasures that I treasure an guard. The first is called ‘love’. The second is called ‘sufficiency’. The third is called ‘not daring to lead the world’.
Chapter 68 reads, “Whoever knows how to lead well is not warlike. Whoever knows how to fight well is not angry. Whoever knows how to conquer enemies does not fight them. Whoever knows how to use men well keeps themselves low.”
Chapter 71 reads “To realize that our knowledge is ignorance, this is a noble insight. To regard our ignorance as knowledge, this is mental sickness”. Knowledge is always focusing on one thing. When you focus on one thing, you ignore everything else. This is crucial to seeing how our knowledge is always human perspective, and how it can always be improved and extended.
Chapter 76 reads, “When we enter life we are soft and weak. When we die we are hard and strong. Plants when they enter life are soft and tender. When they die they are dry and stiff. Therefore the hard and strong are companions of death, and the soft and weak are companions of life. Therefore, when weapons are strong they are not victorious. When trees are strong they are cut down.”
The last Chapter, 81, reads, “True words are not beautiful. Beautiful words are not true...The more the sages do for others, the more they possess. The more they give to others, the more they have.”
The Book of Zhuang Zi
While Laozi’s Dao De Jing is concerned with how to properly live as a community and sounds like political advice to rulers and officials in many places, Zhuangzi’s text, known under his name as ‘The Zhuangzi’, is concerned with the individual mind, with human judgements and attitude. It argues that individuals should seek freedom and happiness through simplicity and open-mindedness. Zhuangzi may have been from the Sung region of ancient China, a place torn apart by political conflicts from within and conquered repeatedly by neighboring regions. Zhuangzi repeatedly suggests that if one takes the long view over many lifetimes, the bad comes with the good and it is all part of one process and whole. While other Chinese masters suggested various ways one could structure the state, as Laozi does in places, Zhuangzi is entirely concerned with liberating the individual mind in a chaotic and close-minded world.
Zhuangzi does speak of Laozi in several places in the text, as he does of many other sages and masters drawing from their teachings as well as being critical of some. In one passage, he tells us that Nan-jung Chu went to see Laozi for advice, who asked him as he entered, “Why have you brought this crowd of people with you?”. Nan-jung spun around, to find no one behind him, as Laozi was referring to the attachments and memories Nan-jung carried with him. Many assumed along with the Daoist tradition that Zhuangzi was familiar with Laozi’s Dao De Jing because both are considered the patriarchs of Daoism and Zhuangzi seems to quote the Dao De Jing in places, however modern scholarship does not know whether Zhuangzi had ever read Laozi’s work or whether both texts are drawing from the same sources. Both patriarch’s books were likely added to by other authors, and it was only by the time of the Han dynasty around 200 BCE that the two texts were set as they remain today.
The Zhuangzi was a major influence on Zen Buddhism, which unlike other Buddhist schools was a native Chinese tradition that was cross-pollinated with Daoism from its beginning. Many Zen koan stories contain lines that are similar if not identical to the Zhuangzi. Joshu, my favorite Zen master who lived about 700 CE, quotes the Zhuangzi to a monk in training, “Ships can not sail where the water is too shallow”. Like Joshu and Zen, Zhuangzi enjoyed using humor (as did Heraclitus) much more than other philosophers, using it to shock and free people from their judgements, understandings and limitations.
In several places of the Zhuangzi, we see the idea of perspective presented the same way as we saw in Heraclitus. We are told that Mao Quiang and Lady Li were legendary beautiful women, but minnows were frightened of them when they gazed into a stream, and birds and deer were frightened by them when they walked through the forest. Heraclitus said that all human beauty and achievement is nothing but apes to the gods. Who knows what is beautiful, humans, birds, fish, or deer? Zhuangzi asks which of them knows what tastes good.
Often, the heroes of Zhuangzi are common people, woodcutters, fishermen, butchers, carpenters, ex-cons, and others of low status. In two places, Zhuangzi seems to exalt while mock Confucius who praises two sages who have had their legs cut off for committing crimes but have flocks of followers. Confucius is made to say that his own teachings are the lowly ways of humans, but these sages know the way of heaven, the Dao, and he would become their student if he only had the time. Confucius says to Wang Dai, who asks about one of the legless sages, “If you look at them from the point of view of their differences, then there is liver and gall (two organs in the body), Ch’u and Yueh (two warring kingdoms in China), but if you look at them from the point of view of their sameness, then the ten thousand things are all one.”
We are told that the emperor learns how to rule his kingdom by listening to Cook Ting, who tells the emperor that he has learned over a lifetime how to cut up oxen with his knife that never dulls because he knows instinctively where the spaces are. We hear about the woodcutter scolding his apprentice for saying that an old gnarled tree is useless, replying that what is useless in some ways is useful in others, such as a tree no one will cut down providing a shady spot for centuries.
When Zhuangzi is asked by Dung Kuo where the way of heaven is, Zhuangzi says it is everywhere. Dung Kuo asks him to be more specific, so Zhuangzi says it is in the ant, in grass, in tile shards, in piss and in shit, horrifying Dung Kuo progressively. Like the Laozi text, the Zhuangzi continuously suggests that we see the lowest things as beautiful, and avoid striving for and hoarding the things people desire to be happy and free.
In the first passage of the Zhuangzi, the mythical Peng bird is mocked by the dove and the cicada (a large grasshopper-like insect) for flying high and far in the sky. They have no frame of reference to understand such an act, as they die every winter and do not survive by migrating south. Several times Zhuangzi is told by other sages that his wisdom is foolish and useless, but Zhuangzi replies, much like the Dao text, that there are no things which are not foolish or useless, but this does not stop them from also being serious and useful.
In another passage, Chien Wu tells Lien Shu that he has heard talk of a holy sage living on a mountain top who is gentle and shy like a young girl, does not eat anything but drinks dew, rides a dragon through they sky and can protect people and animals from illness. Chien Wu says this is clearly insane and he refuses to believe it. Lien Shu replies:
We can’t expect a blind man to appreciate beautiful patterns or a deaf man to listen to bells and drums, and blindness and deafness are not confined to the body alone. The understanding has them too, as your words have just now shown. This man, with his virtue, is about to embrace the ten thousand things and roll them all into one.
The philosopher and logician Huizi tells Zhuangzi that a king gave him seeds of a huge gourd, but when he planted the seeds and grew huge gourds they were so large that he could not use them as containers so he smashed them. Zhuangzi tells him he should have used them as boats, and “Obviously you still have a lot of underbrush in your head!” Huizi tells Zhuangzi that he has a large gnarled tree, which is as useless as Zhuangzi’s reasoning. Zhuangzi replies that if no ax will cut it down, it makes a great shaded place for taking a nap.
Tzu Ch’i tells Tzu Yu that when the wind blows you can hear many sounds made by many things, including the whistling of trees and the wailing of hollow logs, but there is only one wind. He then says:
Words are not just wind. Words have something to say, but if what they have to say is not fixed, then do they really say something, or do they say nothing? People suppose that words are different from the peeps of baby birds, but is there any difference, or isn’t there? What does the Way rely upon, such that we have true and false? What do words rely upon, such that we have right and wrong?...When the Way relies on little accomplishments and words rely on vain show, then we have the rights and wrongs of the Confucians and the Moists. What one calls right the other calls wrong, and what one calls wrong the other calls right, but if we want to right their wrongs and wrong their rights, then the best thing to use is clarity. Everything has its ‘that’, and everything has its ‘this’. From the point of view of ‘that’, you cannot see it, but through understanding you can know it, so I say, ‘that’ comes out of ‘this’ and ‘this’ depends on ‘that’, which is to say ‘this’ and ‘that’ give birth to each other...Therefore the sage does not proceed in such a way, but illuminates all in the light of heaven. A sage too has a ‘this’ and a ‘that’, but a sage’s ‘that’ has a ‘this’, and a sage’s ‘this’ has a ‘that’. A sage’s ‘that’ has both a right and a wrong in it, and a sage’s ‘this’ too has both a right and a wrong in it, so does a sage still have a ‘this’ and ‘that’? A state in which ‘this’ and ‘that’ no longer find their opposites is called the hinge of the Way. When the hinge is fitted into the socket, it can respond endlessly. Its right then is a single endlessness and its wrong too is a single endlessness, so I say the best thing to use is clarity...
To wear out your brain trying to make things into one without realizing that they are all the same is called “three in the morning”. What do I mean by “three in the morning”? When the monkey trainer was handing out acorns, he said, “You get three in the morning and four at night.” This made all the monkeys furious. “Well then,” he said, “you get four in the morning and three at night.” The monkeys were all delighted. There was no change in the reality behind the words, and yet the monkeys responded with joy and anger. Let them, if they want to. The sage harmonizes with both right and wrong and rests in heaven, the equalizer.
Because right and wrong appeared, the Way was injured, and because the Way was injured, love became complete, but do such things as completion and injury really exist, or do they not?
Those who divide fail to divide. Those who discriminate fail to discriminate. What does this mean, you ask? The sage embraces things. Ordinary people discriminate among things and parade their discriminations in front of others. So I say, those who discriminate fail to see.
Nieh Ch’ueh asks Wang Ni about something everyone can agree to. Wang Ni replies:
If someone sleeps in a damp place, their back aches and he ends up half paralyzed, but is this true of a carp? If someone lives in a tree, they are terrified and shake with fright, but is this true of a monkey? Of these three creatures, which knows the proper place to live? We eat the flesh of grass-fed and grain-fed animals, deer eat grass, centipedes find snakes tasty, and hawks and falcons love mice. Of these four, who knows how food ought to taste? Monkeys pair with monkeys, deer go out with deer, and fish play around with fish. men claim that Mao-Ch’iang and Lady Li were beautiful, but if fish saw them they would dive to the bottom of the stream, if birds saw them they would fly away, and if deer saw them they would break into a run. Of these four, which knows the standard of beauty for the world?
Chuchuehzi said to Changwuzi, “I have heard Confucius say that the sage does not work at anything, does not pursue profit, does not dodge harm, does not enjoy being sought after, does not follow the Way, says nothing yet says something, says something yet says nothing, and wanders beyond the dust and grime. Confucius himself regarded these as wild and flippant words, though I believe they describe the working of the mysterious Way. What do you think of them?” Changwuzi said, “Even the Yellow Emperor would be confused if he heard such words, so how could you expect Confucius to understand them? Whats more, you’re too hasty in your own appraisal. You see an egg and demand a crowing rooster, see a crossbow pellet and demand a roast dove. I’m going to try speaking some reckless words and I want you to listen to them recklessly. How will that be? The sage leans on the sun and the moon, tucks the universe under his arm, merges himself with things, leaves the confusion and muddle as it is, and looks on slaves as exalted. Ordinary people strain and struggle. The sage is stupid and blockish. The sage takes part in ten thousand ages and achieves simplicity in oneness...Confucius and you are both dreaming, and when I say you are dreaming, I am dreaming too. Words like these will be labeled the Supreme Swindle.
In the most famous passage of the book, Zhuangzi dreamt that he was a butterfly and forgot that he was Zhuangzi. When he woke, he no longer knew whether he was Zhuangzi who had dreamt he was a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming he is Zhuangzi.
Another famous metaphor used is that of the praying mantis that waved its arms angrily in front of an approaching carriage, unaware that it is incapable of stopping it. It suggests that we move in response to life rather than hold our ground taking pride in our own abilities.
We read in one passage about the True Man, who sounds quite similar to Nietzsche’s Super Man (Ubermensch) who understands the world and himself to be beyond good and evil:
What do I mean by a True Man? The True Man of ancient times did not rebel against want, did not grow proud in plenty, and did not plan his affairs. A man like this could commit and error and not regret it, could meet with success and not make a show. A man like this could climb the high places and not be frightened...He didn’t forget where he began. He didn’t try to find out where he would end. He received something and took pleasure in it. he forgot about it and handed it back again. This is what I call not using the mind to repel the Way, not using man to help out Heaven.
You hide your boat in the ravine and your fish net in the swamp and tell yourself that they will be safe, but in the middle of the night a strong man shoulders them and carries them off, and in your stupidity you don’t know why it happened. You think you do right to hide little things in big ones, and yet they get away from you, but if you were to hide the world in the world, so that nothing could get away, this would be the final reality of the constancy of things.
That which kills life does not die. That which gives life does not live. This is the kind of thing it is. There’s nothing it doesn’t send off, nothing it doesn’t welcome, nothing it doesn’t destroy, nothing it doesn’t complete.
Jo of the North Sea said, “You can’t discuss the ocean with a well frog. He’s limited by the space he lives in. You can’t discuss ice with a summer insect. He’s bound to a single season. You can’t discuss the Way with a cramped scholar. He’s shackled by his doctrines. Now you have come out beyond your banks and borders and have seen the great sea, so you realize your own insignificance. From now on it will be possible to talk to you about the Great Principle.
Jo of the North Sea said, “From the point of view of the Way, things have no nobility or meanness. From the point of view of things themselves, each regards itself as noble and other things as mean. From the point of view of common opinion, nobility and meanness are not determined by the individual himself. From the point of view of differences, if we regard a thing as big because there is a certain bigness to it, then among all the ten thousand things there are none that are not big. If we regard a thing as small because there is a certain smallness to it, then among the ten thousand things there are none that are not small. If we know that heaven and earth are tiny grains and the tip of a hair is a range of mountains, then we have perceived the law of difference. From the point of view of function, if we regard a thing as useful because there s a certain usefulness to it, then among all the ten thousand things there are none that are not useful. If we regard a thing as useless because there is a certain uselessness to it, then among the ten thousand things none that are not useless. If we know that east and west are mutually opposed but that one cannot do without the other, then we can estimate degree of use.
If someone can swim underwater, they may never have seen a boat before and still they’ll know how to handle it. That’s because they see the water as so much dry land, and regards the capsizing of a boat as they would the overturning of a cart. The ten thousand things may all be capsizing and turning over at the same time right in from of them and it can’t get at them and affect what’s inside, so where could they go and not be at ease? When you’re betting for tiles in an archery contest, you shoot with skill. When you’re betting for fancy belt buckles, you worry about your aim, and when you’re betting for real gold, you’re a nervous wreck. Your skill is the same in all three cases, but because one prize means more to you than another, you let outside considerations weigh on your mind. They who look too hard on the outside get clumsy on the inside.
This passage reminds me of a metaphor used by the psychotherapist Milton Erickson. If you put a board on the ground, everyone can walk across it with confidence. If you put the same board three hundred feet up in the air, most people would be terrified, even though walking across the board is the same set of physical motions. Erickson is thinking of clients petrified by fear, such as codependents who can’t leave their abusive partner by taking several steps to the door and then several more out it.
Huizi said to Zhuangzi, “Your words are useless!” Zhuangzi replied, “A man has to understand the useless before you can talk to him about the useful. The earth is certainly vast and broad, though a man uses no more of it than the area he puts his feet on. If, however, you were to dig away all the earth from around his feet until you reach the Yellow Springs, then would the man still be able to make use of it?” “No, it would be useless,” said Huizi. “It is obvious, then,” said Zhuangzi, that the useless has its use.”
The fish trap exists because of the fish. Once you’ve gotten the fish, you can forget the trap. The rabbit snare exists because of the rabbit. Once you’ve gotten the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words exist because of meaning. Once you’ve gotten the meaning, you can forget the words. Where can I find a man who has forgotten words so that I can have a word with him?
The Book of Liezi
Liezi is the third patriarch of Daoism, and his text, known by his name just like the Zhuangzi, is the third classic of the Daoist tradition. In the Zhuangzi, Liezi is mentioned as a powerful sage who could travel by riding the wind. Liezi likely lived around 400 BCE, putting him between Laozi and Zhuangzi. While Zhuangzi mentions Liezi in the Zhuangzi text, establishing that there was a Master Lie who was active earlier than the Zhuangzi was written and compiled, it has long been known to Chinese scholars that much of the Liezi text was written far later than the Dao De Jing and Zhuangzi, likely some time between 200 and 300 CE. Because it was written much later, the Liezi may very well be the only one of the three Daoist classics written by an author or authors who identified with an official Daoist tradition. Some of the Liezi text may indeed be from the earlier period when Liezi and Zhuangzi were alive, and many passages are identical to some and likely borrowed from the Zhuangzi, but it is still disputed and unknown as to which sections were written when. There are some scholars who argue a Buddhist influence on some passages certainly pushes these back to a later date when Buddhism was flourishing, competing and mixing with Daoism.
In suggesting simplicity and nature as the way to properly live, some have called Laozi and other Daoists early Chinese anarchists. The Liezi cautiously suggests that when things are properly working, there is no need for the distinction of ruler and subject and each individual can pursue what they want for themselves without harming or crossing anyone else. In addition, while Daoism later became a religion transfixed on the idea of immortality, and in the Liezi there are references to immortals in the heavens, the text argues several times that to accept death is to accept the fullness of life, as one must accept both sides of oppositions to be in balance with the way of things that is never entirely one-sided. Liezi says, “to wish to live forever, and have no more of ending, is to be deluded about our lot”.
Liezi teaches that all things are interdependent with their opposites, like Yin and Yang working with each other while opposing one another. From this, “Consequently, there are ways in which earth excels heaven, and ways in which each thing is more intelligent than the sage” (p. 19). Heaven shapes but can not support. When the sage is kind, other things must be strong, and when the sage is just, other things must be passive.
Let us examine several passages of the Liezi.
The Yellow Emperor is said to have spent fifteen years pleasing only himself, and the next fifteen years trying to please everyone in the empire, but both wore him out and his health deteriorated. After meditating for three years, he fell asleep and in a dreamed of a land where there were no rulers or subjects, where everything naturally followed its course and did not try for anything else. After he wakes, he calls his ministers and tells them that he has found the way, but he can not tell them about it.
Liang Yang, a slave and royal tamer of wild beasts, says that to tame a tiger you must neither please it with a live rabbit nor anger it by withholding food, but rather feed it bits at a time so it neither gets overly excited nor wrathful. Because he neither gives them what they want nor withholds what they want, they regard him as one of their own.
Yin of Chou is a rich man who works his servants hard, including an old slave who every night falls deep asleep and dreams he is a rich king without a care in the world. When asked if his life is hard, he says he can’t complain. Yin of Chou, however, constantly worries about losing his fortune, and every night dreams he is a slave. When he asks a friend about this, the friend tells him he has too much more than others, and Yin decides to demand far less of his servants. This is an interesting variant on Zhuangzi dreaming about being a butterfly.
Huazi completely loses his long term memory in middle age, forgetting everything at night by morning and everything in the morning by nightfall. His family hires many to cure him, and all fail except a Confucian who locks himself in a room with Huazi for seven days. When he wakes up, Huazi chases the Confucian off with a spear. When asked why by his family, he says that he now remembers his past.
Pang of Qin had a son who saw white as black, tasted sweet as bitter and smelled the fragrant as foul. Seeking a doctor for a cure, Pang happens upon Laozi and asks him what he should do. Laozi replies that the world and all its inhabitants are just as deluded, that he himself does not know whether these words he speaks are meaningful or nonsense, and that Pang should keep his money.
Liezi had many students who he argued with day and night, but lived next to Nan Guozi, whom he never spoke with. His students asked him if he was an enemy, to which Liezi replies that there is simply no speaking with him. Liezi suggests they all go to see what he is about. When they enter, Nan Guozi is like a statue with no recognition of Liezi, but then suddenly he points at the last student in the back of the crowd and begins heckling him, “like a bigot who is always determined to be in the right”. They return to Liezi’s house perplexed, but Liezi tells them that this is a man who truly knows how to say nothing. This story is much like a Zen koan encounter, and predates these.
After Liezi had studied with Old Shang (Liezi’s original master) for three years, he ceased to think of right and wrong and Shang gave him a passing glance for the first time. After five years, Liezi began thinking of right and wrong, benefit and harm, and Shang smiled at him. After seven years, Liezi thought without distinction, and Shang had Liezi sit with him on the same mat. This story is much like the Zen story of ‘rock is a rock’, ‘not a rock’, ‘is a rock’, but it begins in the negative.
Prince Mou is an enthusiastic follower of Gongsun Long, and he is ridiculed for this by Ziyu. The two go back and forth with Ziyu stating the paradoxes and Prince Mou explaining the answers. Included is ‘A white horse is not a horse’. Ziyu ridicules Gongsun Long for saying, “An orphan calf never had a mother”, to which Prince Mou replies, “When it had a mother, it was not an orphan calf”. In the end Ziyu says if Gongsun Long blew it all out another hole the Prince would still believe all this nonsense, and the Prince goes silent, saying he will speak of this another day. This is in some way a recognition, and in another a condemnation of Gongsun Long. The Prince seems beaten in the end, even though he gives what seem to be the answers to each riddle. Like the Zhuangzi, the Liezi seems to acknowledge Gongsun Long’s skill but suggest that there is an understanding beyond it that is not mere play with opposites.
An old man wishes to move a seven thousand foot tall set of mountains, and begins digging with his sons. His wife ridicules him, saying that he will clearly die before he puts a small dent in even one of them. He replies that this is true, but his sons will have sons, and they will have sons, and the mountain isn’t getting any bigger.
The Duke of Qi was looking down from Ox Mountain on his capital city, when he began to weep, wondering why if his land was so beautiful he must one day leave it in death. His servants began to cry, replying that they had far less than the duke but they also feared death. Yenzi alone was smiling, and the duke asked him why. Yenzi replied that if we could hold on to life by merit, then the duke’s great ancestors would be immortal, they would still be sitting on the throne, and the duke would be wading in a rice paddy with a bamboo hat on. The duke was ashamed of himself.
A man lost his ax, and suspected a boy who lived next door of stealing it. Everything about the boy’s behavior, the way he talked, his expressions, betrayed that he had stolen the ax. Then the man found the ax buried in his cellar. When he saw the boy again, nothing in his behavior suggested that he would ever steal an ax.
A man wanted gold more than anything else. One morning, he walked to the market, found a gold dealer, grabbed much of his gold and fled. When the police caught him, they asked him why he had stolen in front of so many people. He replied that at the time he had not seen the people, only the gold.
Daoist Religious Practice
In addition to its philosophy, Daoism is practiced as a religion which worships Laozi and other patriarchs as sages who acquired the immortality of gods through wisdom and discipline. The religious tradition was founded by Zhang Daoling in 142 CE, 750 years after Laozi was to have lived and 500 years after Zhuangzi and Liezi. This was right around the time when Buddhism was settling into China, and just before the Yellow Turban rebellion and other popular rebellions that were mobilized by growing Daoist temples and communities.
Zhang Daoling, who is pictured riding a tiger much like Laozi is pictured riding a water buffalo, was a local magistrate near the end of the Han dynasty. Although he studied Confucianism to obtain his position, he is said to have studied the Dao De Jing from a very young age and later wrote a twenty four volume commentary on the work after founding the first Daoist community. According to tradition, Laozi appeared to Zhang Daoling in 142 CE, telling him that the Han dynasty would come to an end but a Daoist community must be founded to help human beings through the crisis and to immortality beyond this world. Zhang Daoling became one of the four celestial masters in the tradition, ascending from a mountaintop to immortality at the age of 123 (a nice auspicious number). The Daoist community rapidly expanded through the leadership of Zhang Daoling’s son and grandson.
Daoism is often opposed to Confucianism as a skeptical and mystical school of thought vs. Confucianism which is a more traditionalist and dogmatic school. Indeed, Daoism is one of the most powerful skeptical schools of thought in history, and during the later years of the Han dynasty peasants and scholars turned from Confucianism to Daoism in support of innovation and revolution (such as the famous Yellow turban rebellions of 184 and 187 CE). Daoist sages are often ordinary men and women. However it is also clear that Confucius was critical of tradition, politics, knowledge and judgement, and Daoism became an orthodox religious system that was used by the Han and later dynasties to control and pacify the people.
While Confucianism advocates city life, study, and the structure of the family and state, Daoism advocates returning to nature and the natural (ziran), simplicity, meditation, and questioning all human understanding. Confucianism argues that we should cultivate and civilize ourselves through education and tradition, Daoism argues that we should return to our natural state and let nature run its course, thus reaching a state of completion. Rather than study harder to understand more distinctions between things, Daoism argues we should work hard to forget the understandings and distinctions we have stored up in ourselves already. Daoists would agree with Confucius that “a noble person is not a pot”, but rather than add and stir they would have us empty it out.
Many are familiar with the Daoist image of the Yin and Yang intertwining female earth energy of darkness and male sky energy of light, however only few know that the symbol originally comes from the Yin Yang school, one of the hundred schools of thought from the warring states and hundred schools period of Chinese philosophy. The Daoists got the symbol from this school, and followed similar ideas about things being constituted by opposing forces. The symbol has also been identified as a solar calendar that charts daylight hours over the course of a year, important for farmers who were supporters and sources of both the Yin Yang and Daoist schools of thought. When the Han unified China, they patronized Confucianism and Daoism but not the Yin Yang school and others that disappeared without their support.
The most important concept for Daoism (and, interestingly, the mystics of most religions) is the Great One, the All. Like Confucius and Confucianism, Daoism followed the Zhou Dynasty before the Han in speaking about the Way (Dao) of heaven and the mandate of heaven but less about the ‘Lord of Heaven’, showing us the same abstraction and evolution from polytheism to monotheism to philosophical monism we found in ancient Egypt, India and Greece. Like in ancient Egypt and India, but unlike ancient Greece after the spread of Christianity, ancient China kept traditional polytheism as their philosophers moved toward monism. In Daoism, you can find many gods and the Dao, the Way, being praised and venerated beyond all particular beings.
Daoism argues that one should remove one-sided judgments and desires from the mind such that harmony with the whole, with the One, is achieved. This is similar in many ways to the Indian Jain idea of anekantavada, ‘non-one-sidedness’. My favorite quote from the Zhuang Zi, which can serve as a great slogan for skepticism and relativism is, “A sage too has a this and a that, but his that has a this, and his this has a that”. We also find in the Zhuangzi accusations that other schools are one-sided in their theories and thus not clear on the whole.
With regard to the Confucians and the Moists, what one calls right the other calls wrong, but if we want to right their wrongs and wrong their rights, the best thing to use is clarity.
A key concept for Daoism is wu-wei, ‘non-action’. The idea is to get what you want by being patient and doing less, not more, to see results. This increases one’s ability to perceive changing circumstances and opportunities in the situation that one would miss if hurried or over-exerting. The idea is to act less but still act, not to simply not act at all. Acting with moderation and simplicity in mind conserves energy and prevents mistakes that can be avoided. Patience and awareness are valued over speed and focus.
There is a medieval Japanese story that illustrates wu-wei well. A local lord has three sons, and must decide who should inherit his position. He tests them by placing a pillow on the sliding door to his room and calling them one at a time. The eldest son enters and annihilates the pillow in a frenzy of skilled sword strikes. The middle son draws his sword but sees the pillow in midair and catches it. The youngest son sees the pillow on the door, tucks it under his arm and enters the room to the joy of his father. Those familiar with Aikido, the Japanese martial art, will recognize the concept of wu-wei as it is physically used: one defeats one’s opponent by moving out of their way and allowing the situation to take its course, not by directly striking them.
It is traditionally held that Laozi, whose name simply means ‘Old Master’, lived sometime around 600 BCE, and Zhuangzi, the second patriarch of Daoism, lived from 370-290 BCE. Not much is known about either patriarch. Zhuangzi’s life and dates are better known. He worked as a overseer of a lacquer warehouse, a place for mass-producing bento boxes, vases and plates with glazes. According to his text, written by his students and followers, he was a friend of many philosophers including the Logicians Hui Shi and Gongsun Long. Laozi was traditionally said to have been an archivist of the Imperial library who Confucius wanted to study under but was rejected. Modern scholarship considers Laozi to be a combination of at least three old masters whose life stories were mixed together as the tradition settled.
The Dao De Jing of Lao Zi
Laozi is said to have given up on life in politically turbulent China and rode a water buffalo west to live as a hermit. As he was about to leave the state, he was recognized by the border guard Yin Xi who pleaded with him to leave his teachings for the people before leaving society. Laozi consented and in the dirt road wrote the 81 passages of the Dao De Jing (a sacred number, 9 times 9, each of which is 3 times 3) before disappearing forever. Because no one witnessed his death, he is considered an immortal like other Daoist sages.
The first chapter, opening verse, of the Dao De Jing, famously reads:
The Dao can be talked about, but not the Eternal Dao. Names can be named, but not the Eternal Name. As the origin of heaven and earth, it is nameless.
The All, or the One, includes everything. Thus, there is no proper or particular name. The All does not need a particular name, because there is nothing in particular that one can judge about it. It is the source of all things, so it could be called ‘green’, ‘not green’, ‘life’, ‘death’,‘both’ or ‘neither’, with equal but equally incomplete meaning. The same, of course, goes for any adjective. Just as any particular thing has its opposite (hot and cold, good and evil), the One is the source of all opposites, and thus is neither and both of each particular thing. Notice the duality of heaven and earth, of open sky and closed ground. Sometimes we think being solid and limited is good, other times we feel that being open and free is good. In fact, the All is all solidity (order) and freedom (chaos), so it is the source of all closure and openness. In the first three lines, we have much of Daoist thought already.
In chapter 8 of the Dao, we learn that the Dao is like water. This is a common metaphor that Daoism employs to describe how the way and nature of things is fluid, like water, getting down into the lowest and tightest cracks and divisions. The Dao has no status or pride, and so like the Daoist sage the Way is down amongst the poor and the common, together as one with the things people avoid and despise as well as the things people exalt and desire.
Chapter 9 of the Dao is a classic example of Daoist reasoning by contradiction. All things have contradictory properties, but this is hard for our one sided judgments and views to see. Thus, we are told that if we continue to sharpen a sword it goes dull, and if we store up enough valuables they will surely attract thieves, and so no one can fully protect a palace of gold and diamonds. “When you have done your work, retire” means to do just enough for the present situation, but not build up merit or riches, for they will bring you trouble.
Chapter 10 asks if we can make our strength united with softness like a little child. It says that growing while refraining from dominating is the secret to life.
Chapter 11 of the Dao is my favorite. I find it very important for understanding the duality of positive and negative, the solid and empty we saw in heaven-and-earth of chapter 1. We are told that a wheel is only useful because of the emptiness at the center. When you first look at a wheel, you see it as a simply solid thing. Then, if you look again, you will see that the emptiness, not just the substance, is important too. Imagine if a house was not mostly empty, but was solid through and through. You would not be able to get inside it! May as well build the house in outer space. Solid and empty get their meanings, their uses, from a mutual relationship, not from one being the only thing and the other merely false. I love this verse, as it is very close to Hegel’s idea of positive, negative, and synthesis. The synthesis here would be seeing not just the solid wheel, nor simply the emptiness, but both working together.
Human truth is quite relative. At first, one believes particular things are absolute. After negative experiences, it is easy to be discouraged and only see the limitations and emptiness of beliefs. This would be like focusing on first the solidity and then the emptiness of the wheel exclusively. The point is not to stop at the emptiness however, but to see that both sides work together to make the wheel, all things, and life itself, what it is. There is a Zen Buddhist Koan which says something very similar: “First practicing (Zen), I saw a rock as a rock…then, I saw it as not a rock…finally, I saw it as truly a rock.”
In Chapter 22, we read that the sage does not boast, and is thus admired by everyone, that he does not want to shine, and is thus will be enlightened, that he does not seek excellence, and is thus exalted, that because he does not argue, no one can argue with him. Most people assume that they know what is simply good, and what is simply bad, and they are not afraid to tell you so. Only the sage, the wise person, knows not to boast about anything but to enjoy and appreciate things just as they are, and thus the sage is far less annoying than the average person. This takes practice and patience, something the average person does not have the patience for before making a quick and certain judgment leading to action. If you desire nothing, “everything will flock to you”, and you have whatever you need right at hand in any situation. This is opposite the common understanding, which says that you must want something and relentlessly seek it in order to have it. Patient action is often more fruitful then strenuous action.
In Chapter 25, we read that there is only one thing that is complete and turns in a perfect circle without endangering itself, the “Mother of All”. The texts says, “I call the Dao...Painfully giving it a name, I call it great”.
Chapter 33 reads, “Whoever knows others is clever. Whoever knows himself is wise. Whoever conquers others has force. Whoever conquers themselves is truly strong.”
Chapter 36 reads, “What you want to weaken you must first allow to grow strong. What you want to destroy, you must first allow to flourish. From whomever you want to take away, to him you must first give.
In Chapter 42 we read, “The strong do not die a natural death”, or “The violent die a violent death”. This is quite similar to Jesus saying, ‘those who live by the sword die by the sword’. Try to gain for yourself, and the great balance of all things will cut you down, doing to you what you do to others. In the Zhuangzi, twice there appears the example of a gnarled old tree which outlives other trees because it does not grow powerful and strong and is thus not cut down and used to build other things by woodcutters and carpenters.
In Chapter 43, we read, “The softest thing on earth overtakes the hardest thing...From this one recognizes the value of non-action (wu-wei).” This calls to mind a seashore, with the waves of soft fluid water battering the hard rock cliffs to make sand where the water and land meet.
Chapter 46 reads, “When the Dao rules on earth, racehorses are used to pull dung carts. When the Dao has been lost on earth, warhorses are raised on green fields. There is no greater defect than many desires. There is no greater evil than to not know sufficiency...Therefore, the sufficiency of sufficiency is lasting sufficiency.”
Chapter 56 reads, “Those who know do not speak. Those who speak do not know.”
Chapter 60 reads, “A great nation must be led the way one fries a small fish. If one administers the world according to the Dao, then the ancestors do not swarm about as spirits. Not that the ancestors are not spirits, but their spirits do not harm humanity.”
Chapter 63 reads, “Whoever practices non-action occupies themselves with not being occupied, finds taste in what is tasteless, sees the great in the small and the much in the little...Plan what is difficult while it is still easy. Do the hard thing while it is still small. Everything heavy on earth begins as something light. Everything on earth begins as something small.”
Chapter 64 reads, “The tallest tree trunk grows from a sprout as thin as a hair. A tower nine stories high is built from a small pile of earth. A journey of a thousand miles starts with a single footstep in front of your feet.”
Chapter 67 reads, “I have three treasures that I treasure an guard. The first is called ‘love’. The second is called ‘sufficiency’. The third is called ‘not daring to lead the world’.
Chapter 68 reads, “Whoever knows how to lead well is not warlike. Whoever knows how to fight well is not angry. Whoever knows how to conquer enemies does not fight them. Whoever knows how to use men well keeps themselves low.”
Chapter 71 reads “To realize that our knowledge is ignorance, this is a noble insight. To regard our ignorance as knowledge, this is mental sickness”. Knowledge is always focusing on one thing. When you focus on one thing, you ignore everything else. This is crucial to seeing how our knowledge is always human perspective, and how it can always be improved and extended.
Chapter 76 reads, “When we enter life we are soft and weak. When we die we are hard and strong. Plants when they enter life are soft and tender. When they die they are dry and stiff. Therefore the hard and strong are companions of death, and the soft and weak are companions of life. Therefore, when weapons are strong they are not victorious. When trees are strong they are cut down.”
The last Chapter, 81, reads, “True words are not beautiful. Beautiful words are not true...The more the sages do for others, the more they possess. The more they give to others, the more they have.”
The Book of Zhuang Zi
While Laozi’s Dao De Jing is concerned with how to properly live as a community and sounds like political advice to rulers and officials in many places, Zhuangzi’s text, known under his name as ‘The Zhuangzi’, is concerned with the individual mind, with human judgements and attitude. It argues that individuals should seek freedom and happiness through simplicity and open-mindedness. Zhuangzi may have been from the Sung region of ancient China, a place torn apart by political conflicts from within and conquered repeatedly by neighboring regions. Zhuangzi repeatedly suggests that if one takes the long view over many lifetimes, the bad comes with the good and it is all part of one process and whole. While other Chinese masters suggested various ways one could structure the state, as Laozi does in places, Zhuangzi is entirely concerned with liberating the individual mind in a chaotic and close-minded world.
Zhuangzi does speak of Laozi in several places in the text, as he does of many other sages and masters drawing from their teachings as well as being critical of some. In one passage, he tells us that Nan-jung Chu went to see Laozi for advice, who asked him as he entered, “Why have you brought this crowd of people with you?”. Nan-jung spun around, to find no one behind him, as Laozi was referring to the attachments and memories Nan-jung carried with him. Many assumed along with the Daoist tradition that Zhuangzi was familiar with Laozi’s Dao De Jing because both are considered the patriarchs of Daoism and Zhuangzi seems to quote the Dao De Jing in places, however modern scholarship does not know whether Zhuangzi had ever read Laozi’s work or whether both texts are drawing from the same sources. Both patriarch’s books were likely added to by other authors, and it was only by the time of the Han dynasty around 200 BCE that the two texts were set as they remain today.
The Zhuangzi was a major influence on Zen Buddhism, which unlike other Buddhist schools was a native Chinese tradition that was cross-pollinated with Daoism from its beginning. Many Zen koan stories contain lines that are similar if not identical to the Zhuangzi. Joshu, my favorite Zen master who lived about 700 CE, quotes the Zhuangzi to a monk in training, “Ships can not sail where the water is too shallow”. Like Joshu and Zen, Zhuangzi enjoyed using humor (as did Heraclitus) much more than other philosophers, using it to shock and free people from their judgements, understandings and limitations.
In several places of the Zhuangzi, we see the idea of perspective presented the same way as we saw in Heraclitus. We are told that Mao Quiang and Lady Li were legendary beautiful women, but minnows were frightened of them when they gazed into a stream, and birds and deer were frightened by them when they walked through the forest. Heraclitus said that all human beauty and achievement is nothing but apes to the gods. Who knows what is beautiful, humans, birds, fish, or deer? Zhuangzi asks which of them knows what tastes good.
Often, the heroes of Zhuangzi are common people, woodcutters, fishermen, butchers, carpenters, ex-cons, and others of low status. In two places, Zhuangzi seems to exalt while mock Confucius who praises two sages who have had their legs cut off for committing crimes but have flocks of followers. Confucius is made to say that his own teachings are the lowly ways of humans, but these sages know the way of heaven, the Dao, and he would become their student if he only had the time. Confucius says to Wang Dai, who asks about one of the legless sages, “If you look at them from the point of view of their differences, then there is liver and gall (two organs in the body), Ch’u and Yueh (two warring kingdoms in China), but if you look at them from the point of view of their sameness, then the ten thousand things are all one.”
We are told that the emperor learns how to rule his kingdom by listening to Cook Ting, who tells the emperor that he has learned over a lifetime how to cut up oxen with his knife that never dulls because he knows instinctively where the spaces are. We hear about the woodcutter scolding his apprentice for saying that an old gnarled tree is useless, replying that what is useless in some ways is useful in others, such as a tree no one will cut down providing a shady spot for centuries.
When Zhuangzi is asked by Dung Kuo where the way of heaven is, Zhuangzi says it is everywhere. Dung Kuo asks him to be more specific, so Zhuangzi says it is in the ant, in grass, in tile shards, in piss and in shit, horrifying Dung Kuo progressively. Like the Laozi text, the Zhuangzi continuously suggests that we see the lowest things as beautiful, and avoid striving for and hoarding the things people desire to be happy and free.
In the first passage of the Zhuangzi, the mythical Peng bird is mocked by the dove and the cicada (a large grasshopper-like insect) for flying high and far in the sky. They have no frame of reference to understand such an act, as they die every winter and do not survive by migrating south. Several times Zhuangzi is told by other sages that his wisdom is foolish and useless, but Zhuangzi replies, much like the Dao text, that there are no things which are not foolish or useless, but this does not stop them from also being serious and useful.
In another passage, Chien Wu tells Lien Shu that he has heard talk of a holy sage living on a mountain top who is gentle and shy like a young girl, does not eat anything but drinks dew, rides a dragon through they sky and can protect people and animals from illness. Chien Wu says this is clearly insane and he refuses to believe it. Lien Shu replies:
We can’t expect a blind man to appreciate beautiful patterns or a deaf man to listen to bells and drums, and blindness and deafness are not confined to the body alone. The understanding has them too, as your words have just now shown. This man, with his virtue, is about to embrace the ten thousand things and roll them all into one.
The philosopher and logician Huizi tells Zhuangzi that a king gave him seeds of a huge gourd, but when he planted the seeds and grew huge gourds they were so large that he could not use them as containers so he smashed them. Zhuangzi tells him he should have used them as boats, and “Obviously you still have a lot of underbrush in your head!” Huizi tells Zhuangzi that he has a large gnarled tree, which is as useless as Zhuangzi’s reasoning. Zhuangzi replies that if no ax will cut it down, it makes a great shaded place for taking a nap.
Tzu Ch’i tells Tzu Yu that when the wind blows you can hear many sounds made by many things, including the whistling of trees and the wailing of hollow logs, but there is only one wind. He then says:
Words are not just wind. Words have something to say, but if what they have to say is not fixed, then do they really say something, or do they say nothing? People suppose that words are different from the peeps of baby birds, but is there any difference, or isn’t there? What does the Way rely upon, such that we have true and false? What do words rely upon, such that we have right and wrong?...When the Way relies on little accomplishments and words rely on vain show, then we have the rights and wrongs of the Confucians and the Moists. What one calls right the other calls wrong, and what one calls wrong the other calls right, but if we want to right their wrongs and wrong their rights, then the best thing to use is clarity. Everything has its ‘that’, and everything has its ‘this’. From the point of view of ‘that’, you cannot see it, but through understanding you can know it, so I say, ‘that’ comes out of ‘this’ and ‘this’ depends on ‘that’, which is to say ‘this’ and ‘that’ give birth to each other...Therefore the sage does not proceed in such a way, but illuminates all in the light of heaven. A sage too has a ‘this’ and a ‘that’, but a sage’s ‘that’ has a ‘this’, and a sage’s ‘this’ has a ‘that’. A sage’s ‘that’ has both a right and a wrong in it, and a sage’s ‘this’ too has both a right and a wrong in it, so does a sage still have a ‘this’ and ‘that’? A state in which ‘this’ and ‘that’ no longer find their opposites is called the hinge of the Way. When the hinge is fitted into the socket, it can respond endlessly. Its right then is a single endlessness and its wrong too is a single endlessness, so I say the best thing to use is clarity...
To wear out your brain trying to make things into one without realizing that they are all the same is called “three in the morning”. What do I mean by “three in the morning”? When the monkey trainer was handing out acorns, he said, “You get three in the morning and four at night.” This made all the monkeys furious. “Well then,” he said, “you get four in the morning and three at night.” The monkeys were all delighted. There was no change in the reality behind the words, and yet the monkeys responded with joy and anger. Let them, if they want to. The sage harmonizes with both right and wrong and rests in heaven, the equalizer.
Because right and wrong appeared, the Way was injured, and because the Way was injured, love became complete, but do such things as completion and injury really exist, or do they not?
Those who divide fail to divide. Those who discriminate fail to discriminate. What does this mean, you ask? The sage embraces things. Ordinary people discriminate among things and parade their discriminations in front of others. So I say, those who discriminate fail to see.
Nieh Ch’ueh asks Wang Ni about something everyone can agree to. Wang Ni replies:
If someone sleeps in a damp place, their back aches and he ends up half paralyzed, but is this true of a carp? If someone lives in a tree, they are terrified and shake with fright, but is this true of a monkey? Of these three creatures, which knows the proper place to live? We eat the flesh of grass-fed and grain-fed animals, deer eat grass, centipedes find snakes tasty, and hawks and falcons love mice. Of these four, who knows how food ought to taste? Monkeys pair with monkeys, deer go out with deer, and fish play around with fish. men claim that Mao-Ch’iang and Lady Li were beautiful, but if fish saw them they would dive to the bottom of the stream, if birds saw them they would fly away, and if deer saw them they would break into a run. Of these four, which knows the standard of beauty for the world?
Chuchuehzi said to Changwuzi, “I have heard Confucius say that the sage does not work at anything, does not pursue profit, does not dodge harm, does not enjoy being sought after, does not follow the Way, says nothing yet says something, says something yet says nothing, and wanders beyond the dust and grime. Confucius himself regarded these as wild and flippant words, though I believe they describe the working of the mysterious Way. What do you think of them?” Changwuzi said, “Even the Yellow Emperor would be confused if he heard such words, so how could you expect Confucius to understand them? Whats more, you’re too hasty in your own appraisal. You see an egg and demand a crowing rooster, see a crossbow pellet and demand a roast dove. I’m going to try speaking some reckless words and I want you to listen to them recklessly. How will that be? The sage leans on the sun and the moon, tucks the universe under his arm, merges himself with things, leaves the confusion and muddle as it is, and looks on slaves as exalted. Ordinary people strain and struggle. The sage is stupid and blockish. The sage takes part in ten thousand ages and achieves simplicity in oneness...Confucius and you are both dreaming, and when I say you are dreaming, I am dreaming too. Words like these will be labeled the Supreme Swindle.
In the most famous passage of the book, Zhuangzi dreamt that he was a butterfly and forgot that he was Zhuangzi. When he woke, he no longer knew whether he was Zhuangzi who had dreamt he was a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming he is Zhuangzi.
Another famous metaphor used is that of the praying mantis that waved its arms angrily in front of an approaching carriage, unaware that it is incapable of stopping it. It suggests that we move in response to life rather than hold our ground taking pride in our own abilities.
We read in one passage about the True Man, who sounds quite similar to Nietzsche’s Super Man (Ubermensch) who understands the world and himself to be beyond good and evil:
What do I mean by a True Man? The True Man of ancient times did not rebel against want, did not grow proud in plenty, and did not plan his affairs. A man like this could commit and error and not regret it, could meet with success and not make a show. A man like this could climb the high places and not be frightened...He didn’t forget where he began. He didn’t try to find out where he would end. He received something and took pleasure in it. he forgot about it and handed it back again. This is what I call not using the mind to repel the Way, not using man to help out Heaven.
You hide your boat in the ravine and your fish net in the swamp and tell yourself that they will be safe, but in the middle of the night a strong man shoulders them and carries them off, and in your stupidity you don’t know why it happened. You think you do right to hide little things in big ones, and yet they get away from you, but if you were to hide the world in the world, so that nothing could get away, this would be the final reality of the constancy of things.
That which kills life does not die. That which gives life does not live. This is the kind of thing it is. There’s nothing it doesn’t send off, nothing it doesn’t welcome, nothing it doesn’t destroy, nothing it doesn’t complete.
Jo of the North Sea said, “You can’t discuss the ocean with a well frog. He’s limited by the space he lives in. You can’t discuss ice with a summer insect. He’s bound to a single season. You can’t discuss the Way with a cramped scholar. He’s shackled by his doctrines. Now you have come out beyond your banks and borders and have seen the great sea, so you realize your own insignificance. From now on it will be possible to talk to you about the Great Principle.
Jo of the North Sea said, “From the point of view of the Way, things have no nobility or meanness. From the point of view of things themselves, each regards itself as noble and other things as mean. From the point of view of common opinion, nobility and meanness are not determined by the individual himself. From the point of view of differences, if we regard a thing as big because there is a certain bigness to it, then among all the ten thousand things there are none that are not big. If we regard a thing as small because there is a certain smallness to it, then among the ten thousand things there are none that are not small. If we know that heaven and earth are tiny grains and the tip of a hair is a range of mountains, then we have perceived the law of difference. From the point of view of function, if we regard a thing as useful because there s a certain usefulness to it, then among all the ten thousand things there are none that are not useful. If we regard a thing as useless because there is a certain uselessness to it, then among the ten thousand things none that are not useless. If we know that east and west are mutually opposed but that one cannot do without the other, then we can estimate degree of use.
If someone can swim underwater, they may never have seen a boat before and still they’ll know how to handle it. That’s because they see the water as so much dry land, and regards the capsizing of a boat as they would the overturning of a cart. The ten thousand things may all be capsizing and turning over at the same time right in from of them and it can’t get at them and affect what’s inside, so where could they go and not be at ease? When you’re betting for tiles in an archery contest, you shoot with skill. When you’re betting for fancy belt buckles, you worry about your aim, and when you’re betting for real gold, you’re a nervous wreck. Your skill is the same in all three cases, but because one prize means more to you than another, you let outside considerations weigh on your mind. They who look too hard on the outside get clumsy on the inside.
This passage reminds me of a metaphor used by the psychotherapist Milton Erickson. If you put a board on the ground, everyone can walk across it with confidence. If you put the same board three hundred feet up in the air, most people would be terrified, even though walking across the board is the same set of physical motions. Erickson is thinking of clients petrified by fear, such as codependents who can’t leave their abusive partner by taking several steps to the door and then several more out it.
Huizi said to Zhuangzi, “Your words are useless!” Zhuangzi replied, “A man has to understand the useless before you can talk to him about the useful. The earth is certainly vast and broad, though a man uses no more of it than the area he puts his feet on. If, however, you were to dig away all the earth from around his feet until you reach the Yellow Springs, then would the man still be able to make use of it?” “No, it would be useless,” said Huizi. “It is obvious, then,” said Zhuangzi, that the useless has its use.”
The fish trap exists because of the fish. Once you’ve gotten the fish, you can forget the trap. The rabbit snare exists because of the rabbit. Once you’ve gotten the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words exist because of meaning. Once you’ve gotten the meaning, you can forget the words. Where can I find a man who has forgotten words so that I can have a word with him?
The Book of Liezi
Liezi is the third patriarch of Daoism, and his text, known by his name just like the Zhuangzi, is the third classic of the Daoist tradition. In the Zhuangzi, Liezi is mentioned as a powerful sage who could travel by riding the wind. Liezi likely lived around 400 BCE, putting him between Laozi and Zhuangzi. While Zhuangzi mentions Liezi in the Zhuangzi text, establishing that there was a Master Lie who was active earlier than the Zhuangzi was written and compiled, it has long been known to Chinese scholars that much of the Liezi text was written far later than the Dao De Jing and Zhuangzi, likely some time between 200 and 300 CE. Because it was written much later, the Liezi may very well be the only one of the three Daoist classics written by an author or authors who identified with an official Daoist tradition. Some of the Liezi text may indeed be from the earlier period when Liezi and Zhuangzi were alive, and many passages are identical to some and likely borrowed from the Zhuangzi, but it is still disputed and unknown as to which sections were written when. There are some scholars who argue a Buddhist influence on some passages certainly pushes these back to a later date when Buddhism was flourishing, competing and mixing with Daoism.
In suggesting simplicity and nature as the way to properly live, some have called Laozi and other Daoists early Chinese anarchists. The Liezi cautiously suggests that when things are properly working, there is no need for the distinction of ruler and subject and each individual can pursue what they want for themselves without harming or crossing anyone else. In addition, while Daoism later became a religion transfixed on the idea of immortality, and in the Liezi there are references to immortals in the heavens, the text argues several times that to accept death is to accept the fullness of life, as one must accept both sides of oppositions to be in balance with the way of things that is never entirely one-sided. Liezi says, “to wish to live forever, and have no more of ending, is to be deluded about our lot”.
Liezi teaches that all things are interdependent with their opposites, like Yin and Yang working with each other while opposing one another. From this, “Consequently, there are ways in which earth excels heaven, and ways in which each thing is more intelligent than the sage” (p. 19). Heaven shapes but can not support. When the sage is kind, other things must be strong, and when the sage is just, other things must be passive.
Let us examine several passages of the Liezi.
The Yellow Emperor is said to have spent fifteen years pleasing only himself, and the next fifteen years trying to please everyone in the empire, but both wore him out and his health deteriorated. After meditating for three years, he fell asleep and in a dreamed of a land where there were no rulers or subjects, where everything naturally followed its course and did not try for anything else. After he wakes, he calls his ministers and tells them that he has found the way, but he can not tell them about it.
Liang Yang, a slave and royal tamer of wild beasts, says that to tame a tiger you must neither please it with a live rabbit nor anger it by withholding food, but rather feed it bits at a time so it neither gets overly excited nor wrathful. Because he neither gives them what they want nor withholds what they want, they regard him as one of their own.
Yin of Chou is a rich man who works his servants hard, including an old slave who every night falls deep asleep and dreams he is a rich king without a care in the world. When asked if his life is hard, he says he can’t complain. Yin of Chou, however, constantly worries about losing his fortune, and every night dreams he is a slave. When he asks a friend about this, the friend tells him he has too much more than others, and Yin decides to demand far less of his servants. This is an interesting variant on Zhuangzi dreaming about being a butterfly.
Huazi completely loses his long term memory in middle age, forgetting everything at night by morning and everything in the morning by nightfall. His family hires many to cure him, and all fail except a Confucian who locks himself in a room with Huazi for seven days. When he wakes up, Huazi chases the Confucian off with a spear. When asked why by his family, he says that he now remembers his past.
Pang of Qin had a son who saw white as black, tasted sweet as bitter and smelled the fragrant as foul. Seeking a doctor for a cure, Pang happens upon Laozi and asks him what he should do. Laozi replies that the world and all its inhabitants are just as deluded, that he himself does not know whether these words he speaks are meaningful or nonsense, and that Pang should keep his money.
Liezi had many students who he argued with day and night, but lived next to Nan Guozi, whom he never spoke with. His students asked him if he was an enemy, to which Liezi replies that there is simply no speaking with him. Liezi suggests they all go to see what he is about. When they enter, Nan Guozi is like a statue with no recognition of Liezi, but then suddenly he points at the last student in the back of the crowd and begins heckling him, “like a bigot who is always determined to be in the right”. They return to Liezi’s house perplexed, but Liezi tells them that this is a man who truly knows how to say nothing. This story is much like a Zen koan encounter, and predates these.
After Liezi had studied with Old Shang (Liezi’s original master) for three years, he ceased to think of right and wrong and Shang gave him a passing glance for the first time. After five years, Liezi began thinking of right and wrong, benefit and harm, and Shang smiled at him. After seven years, Liezi thought without distinction, and Shang had Liezi sit with him on the same mat. This story is much like the Zen story of ‘rock is a rock’, ‘not a rock’, ‘is a rock’, but it begins in the negative.
Prince Mou is an enthusiastic follower of Gongsun Long, and he is ridiculed for this by Ziyu. The two go back and forth with Ziyu stating the paradoxes and Prince Mou explaining the answers. Included is ‘A white horse is not a horse’. Ziyu ridicules Gongsun Long for saying, “An orphan calf never had a mother”, to which Prince Mou replies, “When it had a mother, it was not an orphan calf”. In the end Ziyu says if Gongsun Long blew it all out another hole the Prince would still believe all this nonsense, and the Prince goes silent, saying he will speak of this another day. This is in some way a recognition, and in another a condemnation of Gongsun Long. The Prince seems beaten in the end, even though he gives what seem to be the answers to each riddle. Like the Zhuangzi, the Liezi seems to acknowledge Gongsun Long’s skill but suggest that there is an understanding beyond it that is not mere play with opposites.
An old man wishes to move a seven thousand foot tall set of mountains, and begins digging with his sons. His wife ridicules him, saying that he will clearly die before he puts a small dent in even one of them. He replies that this is true, but his sons will have sons, and they will have sons, and the mountain isn’t getting any bigger.
The Duke of Qi was looking down from Ox Mountain on his capital city, when he began to weep, wondering why if his land was so beautiful he must one day leave it in death. His servants began to cry, replying that they had far less than the duke but they also feared death. Yenzi alone was smiling, and the duke asked him why. Yenzi replied that if we could hold on to life by merit, then the duke’s great ancestors would be immortal, they would still be sitting on the throne, and the duke would be wading in a rice paddy with a bamboo hat on. The duke was ashamed of himself.
A man lost his ax, and suspected a boy who lived next door of stealing it. Everything about the boy’s behavior, the way he talked, his expressions, betrayed that he had stolen the ax. Then the man found the ax buried in his cellar. When he saw the boy again, nothing in his behavior suggested that he would ever steal an ax.
A man wanted gold more than anything else. One morning, he walked to the market, found a gold dealer, grabbed much of his gold and fled. When the police caught him, they asked him why he had stolen in front of so many people. He replied that at the time he had not seen the people, only the gold.
Daoist Religious Practice
In addition to its philosophy, Daoism is practiced as a religion which worships Laozi and other patriarchs as sages who acquired the immortality of gods through wisdom and discipline. The religious tradition was founded by Zhang Daoling in 142 CE, 750 years after Laozi was to have lived and 500 years after Zhuangzi and Liezi. This was right around the time when Buddhism was settling into China, and just before the Yellow Turban rebellion and other popular rebellions that were mobilized by growing Daoist temples and communities.
Zhang Daoling, who is pictured riding a tiger much like Laozi is pictured riding a water buffalo, was a local magistrate near the end of the Han dynasty. Although he studied Confucianism to obtain his position, he is said to have studied the Dao De Jing from a very young age and later wrote a twenty four volume commentary on the work after founding the first Daoist community. According to tradition, Laozi appeared to Zhang Daoling in 142 CE, telling him that the Han dynasty would come to an end but a Daoist community must be founded to help human beings through the crisis and to immortality beyond this world. Zhang Daoling became one of the four celestial masters in the tradition, ascending from a mountaintop to immortality at the age of 123 (a nice auspicious number). The Daoist community rapidly expanded through the leadership of Zhang Daoling’s son and grandson.
Tuesday, November 22, 2011
Intro Philosophy: Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) is one of the most important thinkers in academics today. His early book, the Tractatus, and his later book, the Philosophical Investigations, are considered two of the most important influences for the American and British Analytic school of philosophy, the dominant school of philosophy in America. In an end of the century poll in 2000, philosophy professors from America and Canada were asked to list the five most important books that influenced their own work. When all of the results were tallied up, the Philosophical Investigations was #1, and the Tractatus was #4. The Philosophical Investigations was cited far more frequently than any other book, was listed first on far more ballots, and crossed over more into many different disciplines and areas of study.
Wittgenstein’s thought can be divided into his early, middle and later work. His early work is the book the Tractatus, the book which gave the world truth table logic. This tool, as Wittgenstein later came to see it, remains the mathematical system taught as logic today. Just as Wittgenstein became famous for his truth tables, he switched positions in his thinking and came to reject his earlier work. He wrote in notebooks that were only published after his death, and the Philosophical Investigations is the most celebrated of these.
Wittgenstein’s Father was the Austrian Carnegie, making a fortune in Steel. Though his father was Protestant, and his mother Jewish, Ludwig was baptized Catholic because of antisemitism at the time. In his early years, Ludwig was a proud atheist but by the time he was working on his Tractatus he had a mystical transcendental outlook which he kept for the rest of his life. Though never religious, and though he had to bribe Nazis later to smuggle his “Jewish” family from Austria, he was buried as a Catholic.
The Wittgenstein family was known for intense criticism, musical talent, depression, and suicide. Three of Wittgenstein’s four brothers committed suicide, and he himself considered suicide for awhile before launching into his late period. Unfortunately, suicide was considered romantic for Austrian elites at the time.
Wittgenstein was in Hitler’s elementary school, 2 days younger, but because he was put forward a grade and Hitler was held back a grade he was 2 years ahead. Both he and Hitler hated the school and the lessons.
He began studying at university in Berlin to become an engineer with an interest in flight (the Wright Brothers had recently invented the motorized glider, but flew it in France and Germany until 1907 as the US Army did not believe them). After failing in his attempt to build a better propeller, he began studying mathematical theory and philosophy of mathematics, becoming entranced with two thinkers who are along with Wittgenstein foundational for Analytical philosophy and logic: Russell from Britain, and Frege from Germany. Wittgenstein went to see Frege, who did not fully understand his questions and advised him to go see Russell, which he did in 1911.
He showed up unannounced to Russell’s room at Trinity College, impressed him with his intense and brilliant arguments. Russell became convinced that the young Austrian was going to carry his work forward and be his successor, solving the remaining problems of logic that Russell’s work on the foundations of mathematics had left open. As mentioned last lecture, Russell had shown there were contradictions unresolved in Frege’s work with set theory, but Russell had become frustrated trying to solve these contradiction with his theory of types.
Wittgenstein, an eccentric and difficult personality, was never fully comfortable at Cambridge, and often got into disagreements with Russell and threatened to leave many times before fleeing to Norway where he believed he could finish his work on Logic. While some still disagree, it is generally accepted that Wittgenstein was gay, developed a relationship with Pinsent, a young graduate student, and some believe that Russell encouraged the relationship if he did not introduce the two with the purpose of keeping the emotional and unstable genius with him at Cambridge.
When WWI broke out, he served for Austria, at the same time as he was developing the material for the Tractatus. Learning of Pinsent’s death in the war in Italy, he became suicidal, moved in with his uncle and finished the Tractatus which he dedicated to his ‘friend’ Pinsent. He tried to get it published, but no one would take it. Remember: this book went on to be the #4 influence in the US and Canada according to the poll, the book that gave modern logic truth tables, the method that replaced Aristotle’s syllogisms.
Russell intervened back in Cambridge, and had it published and wrote and introduction for it. This was the start of the end. Though Russell saw the work as genius, he did not completely understand much of it and his introduction reflected this. Wittgenstein read the introduction and realized Russell had great misunderstandings of his work. Believing that his Tractatus had solved all the problems of philosophy, Wittgenstein left Russell and Cambridge again and went to be a school teacher in Austria. He gave away his portion of the family fortune, anonymously to writers but also to his family. Since his family was already wealthy, he wrote in a letter, “they won’t be corrupted by it”. He left the school after a short while (not a good fit, and parents thought he was crazy). He became a gardener’s assistant, and then his sister had him design her a house.
While finishing the house, he was contacted by members of the Vienna Circle, positivists using Hegel’s logic and Wittgenstein’s Tractatus to give a solid foundation for science and mathematics. This was what Russell had hoped for, minus the Hegel who Russell hated. While Wittgenstein had been away, the Tractatus had become famous, and central to many already inspired by Frege and Russell. Many came to visit and discus and progressively Witt became disgusted. He began to realize that there were fundamental problems with his Tractatus and truth tables, and got into intense arguments with the Vienna Circle members, at one point turning his back on his guests and reading Tagore, an Indian transcendental poet out loud. For the rest of his life, Wittgenstein thought logical positivism (the analytic school of philosophy) misunderstood his Tractatus.
In his early period, Wittgenstein believed he had fully solved the problems of a complete system of logic. He saw it like Schopenhauer, a big early influence: logic is a perfect crystal tool of analysis, life is a messy chaotic ocean, and so logic is perfect but unfortunately never fits perfectly with life. This is like having the perfect tool for an impossible and continuous job. In conversations with positivists he started to change his thinking around and continued to write until he died. These writings were published after his death as the Philosophical Investigations and other books. In his later thought, Wittgenstein saw logic not as a perfect crystal castle in the sky but as rules and games that are imperfectly lived in the real world imperfectly and without complete definition. He no longer believed that logic could provide a foundation for mathematics, science or philosophy. He denied that contradictions are necessarily false, or disprove a mathematical-logical system.
In 1929, he decided to return to Cambridge to correct his thinking and teach. To his horror, when he arrived at the train station he was greeted by a vast crowd of intellectuals as the new hero, the author of the Tractatus, the work he now thought was exactly wrong.
The famous economist Keynes wrote to his wife: ‘Well, God has arrived. I met him on the 5:15 train’. Wittgenstein continued to lecture at Cambridge, developing his ideas.
In 1934, he defected to Soviet Russia, wanting to be a plumber or work with his hands. When he was told that according to the Soviet system he would be put to work as a philosophy professor in Moscow, he defected back to Britain.
In 1937, Hitler annexed Austria. Wittgenstein had to bribe Nazis to get his Jewish family passage out and spend the equivalent today of $50 million in gold and foreign currency. Since he had given away his own portion of the family fortune, he had to get much of this from his colleagues at Cambridge and other admirers of his work.
THE TRACTATUS
In his early thought, expressed in the pages of the Tractatus, reality consists of atomic facts, states of affairs that are true. Thought, expressed grammatically in language, ‘pictures’ the world with these atomic facts. The world does not perfectly fit this atomic language, but because it is the way the head makes sense of the world we cannot understand things otherwise. Wittgenstein said that it is the part of the book that is unwritten that is important, the part where life itself goes beyond this logic and makes the world what it is. Of the world beyond logic, he wrote “Of what one cannot speak, one must remain silent”, which is in fact a quote from Confucius. Our logic and the world are two things that do not fit, yet mysteriously (and mystically) the two are one.
If we boil logic with truth tables down to its tautologies, the necessary and basic workings, and leave the rest open as the world which always is beyond our thoughts, we can have the perfect system of logic and grammar that we use to understand things spelled out even if it cannot perfectly predict the world or tell us how the world works. Think of logic as a set of reading glasses, and the world as something one looks at through the glasses. Wittgenstein believed that with the Tractatus he had spelled out the perfect crystal form of the glasses, and beyond this nothing can be said for certain.
When it comes to facts in the world, however, everything is contingent on something else and is neither simply necessary or simply impossible. Logic is the necessary and impossible book-ends with which we interpret the world and its facts, but the world is always between the necessary and the impossible, is always somewhat necessary and somewhat impossible, which creates a gulf between our pure and necessary logic and the unpredictable world. For Wittgenstein, only logic and math can be sets of necessary truths, and this is because (as Avicenna and Mill believe) they are concepts and are ideal, unlike situations of real things in the world. Once we nail down the perfect tool of logic, we can use it to examine the world and all of its messy situations. Our examinations will never be perfect because of the gap between logic and the world, but at least the logic will be necessary and perfect.
The reason’s Wittgenstein’s truth tables were such a success is that they proved, for the first time, that many of the axioms logicians had discovered were necessarily true (tautologies) in a way that is simple to do and easy to see.
THE MIDDLE AND LATER THOUGHT OF WITTGENSTEIN
At first Wittgenstein thought that he had solved all the problems of philosophy with the Tractatus truth table system (we do still use it today to teach formal logic), so he left philosophy and Cambridge behind, went to war, had many experiences, and then later decided that his earlier thinking contained horrible problems. He no longer believed that logic could be crystallized in the head as a truth table matrix, but rather it existed as a complex out in the world, as arrangements of people, thoughts, symbols, and objects. He continued to work on notebooks, progressing in his thought until his death, after which his notebooks were published.
There is an excellent passage from Lectures and Conversations that illustrates the turn nicely. This work was taken not from Wittgenstein’s notebooks but from the notes of his seminar students in the years leading up to his work on the notebooks which would be published after his death as the Philosophical Investigations. At this time Freud’s ideas had stormed onto the academic scene, infuriating Wittgenstein who now had come to hate the idea that things in the world, even logical operators and systems, can be boiled down to a single essential element or factor like sex, power or truth. It is this skepticism, which can be called the “problem of essences”, which marks the turn from his earlier thinking to his more influential later thought.
Wittgenstein attacked Freud’s psychoanalysis and dream interpretation for boiling everything down to sex. In the Lectures and Conversations (20-21), Wittgenstein proposes a thought experiment for consideration. If we cook a human being down to carbon ash in an oven, are we left with the essence of the human being? A human being is a “carbon-based” life form, so carbon is a dominant element. Consider that we could cook a human down to water in the same oven, and claim that because humans are 3/5ths water we have the essence of the person.
Would it be correct to say that humans are essentially ashy, or essentially wet? Why not? We would not say that a human is essentially carbon or water, nor would we say ashy or wet, because the human being is a complex situation that is not reducible to a single element. The properties of carbon or water do not in themselves explain how humans behave or what they mean to us. If we cooked people down to ashes or water, we have destroyed the situation and can no longer investigate how they work. In the same way, a person is not merely their DNA. While carbon, water and DNA have very important, even necessary roles to play in any person, they are not exclusively the essence or meaning of the complex that is a human individual.
In the same way, Wittgenstein had come to believe that neither facts in the world nor logic in the head can be reduced to a single element or necessary structure. Facts and logic are not true in themselves, but true in real situations of the world which are irreducibly complex. Wittgenstein says in the Lectures and Conversations that we have to avoid the “lure of the secret cellar”, the urge to boil situations down to a single element like Freud tried to boil human relations, meaning and the mind down to sex or Wittgenstein himself had tried to boil logic down to its simple structure.
The task of philosophy, logic and science is not to fully or completely explain anything, but to investigate things. Thought never fully defines things but rather describes and re-describes things. If science is thinking about the world, then science has endless work to do describing and re-describing things. Consider whether we fully understand apples, or whether we ever need to entirely understand them in order to continue to understand them and use them a great deal. Likewise, if philosophy and logic are ‘thinking about thinking’, and if thinking is merely a possible description of things, philosophy and logic have endless work to do describing our descriptions, describing and re-describing the ways that we describe things. Much insight can be gained even if no subject is entirely explained or exhausted.
One good way to approach this is to describe how cultures of thought, perspectives, facts and models are gathered together and lived in institutions. Thought ceases to be completely abstract, but is rather a culture and situation in the real world that involves people, buildings and money. The cryptanalysis of algebra worked so well as a modeling language that we came to believe that the mathematics was not in our practices and text books but rather sewn into the fabric of the world itself. As we look over the history of thought in the wake of Wittgenstein’s later work, it becomes evident that mathematics and logic are tools and lenses, not the hidden structures of things operating at secret levels out of our immediate sight. In scholarship today, particularly the history of religion, philosophy and science, it has become popular to consider a system of thought as a real lived situation rather than an abstract set of beliefs and ideas. A religion or science is in fact a situation of human beings who never have to have entirely the same set of beliefs as long as they can generally and relatively cohere as a culture.
THE PHILOSOPHICAL INVESTIGATIONS
In this monumental work, one of my favorites of modern European thought, Wittgenstein argues for a middle way between two extreme positions, between the position of scientific positivism (objective truth is facts in the world) and the position of psychological skepticism (subjective truth is meanings in the mind). He presents each position in quotes again and again, and then argues against both in a three stage process. First he states a position (either that there are facts given in the world or meaning is all in the head), then shows situations in which the position works, then shows situations in which the position does not work. He shows us that taking either position to extremes would be understandable given particular ways we think and act, but neither position explains all the ways in which we think and act. We live in complex ways that depend both on there being a coherent world and there being human perspectives. Wittgenstein argues that we can take both positions rather than determine one to be the actual and the other to be the illusion.
In his earlier thought, the world and the head are separated by a Kantian gulf between objectivity and subjectivity. In his later thinking, the world and our heads work together seamlessly as a complex situation. One cannot remove either the head or the world to get the bedrock or anchor of meaning and truth without resulting in absurdities. The clean and ideal side of logic, math and grammar mislead us into thinking that meaning must be anchored entirely on one side, either exclusively in the head or exclusively in the world, but we gain much more ability to think and describe our heads and our world if we stop looking for meaning and truth to be entirely in one place rather than the other. In the same way, rather than determine which facts are absolute truths to the exclusion of their opposites, or refuse to identify coherence of belief as it is all ‘mere theory’, we can better understand the facts and theories we can share by recognizing that they are one and the same viewed from opposite sides. If we can continue to determine relative fact from relative fiction, there is no need to entirely separate the two. To use the tool analogy, as long as we have decent tools we do not need perfect or eternal ones.
Games and rules gather people together, but individuals can also variously interpret rules and meanings. ‘Rules can always be variously interpreted’ is a central idea of the Philosophical Investigations. This is not to say that they always are or they should be, but the window remains open (Wittgenstein writes, “It is like locking a man in a room but leaving the window open”). Both are only what they are together as a form of life. Notice that this thinking has much in common with Laozi’s thinking on the wheel as both empty and solid at the same time, and much like the Zen koans of a rock being not a rock and a rock and the sound of one hand clapping.
Consider the ‘child at the blackboard’ metaphor used in the text. It is always possible for a child to misunderstand rules and demonstrate this misunderstanding by making mistakes, even after you show the child and explain. Let us say that you then write a new ‘inner’ set of rules to further explain the rules when the child fails. What if the child does not understand those? Is there a bedrock set of rules that the child can not possibly misunderstand? If the child can misunderstand rules, then no set of rules within rules within rules is ever perfectly airtight. We have an infinite regress unless we can find a set of rules that can never be misinterpreted.
Just like Wittgenstein had been seeking the fundamental inner workings of logic and mathematics, as Frege and Russell had tried to do before him, if people do math decently there need not be any inner rules aside from the explanation and demonstration that, if repeated, children can often follow. Notice we are considering mathematics as a culture, learned by children and taught by adults, not as an abstract set of necessary or immutable rules. It turns out that there are no inner workings to mathematics. Mathematics works as it does openly, on the board in front of one’s face, without the need of a ‘secret cellar’. If mathematics on a board is not entirely secure, then no inner set of rules could or must be either for it to function.
When we try to explain anything, it is not being simplified, being stripped down to its core, at all. It is the opposite: we are making it more complex as we try to simplify and explain it. The rules are not being discovered in the thing, but being added to the thing. When we explain things, we are not whittling away the unnecessary but adding our descriptions to it. In the same way, when we do science to explain apples or human beings, we are adding our descriptions and the situations of our descriptions, not uncovering the simple truth of the thing. The simple truth of a thing is the simple thing itself. The simplest truth of an apple is the single apple. An explanation of where apples come from is very useful, but it puts the apple in a complex with many other things (such as trees, farms, stores, trucks). An apple is not merely its DNA, but is in a infinitely complex situation with its DNA and ourselves attempting to isolate components with the tools and technology we bring into the situation.
We are always essentializing (like when we say, ‘We are always essentializing’). Meaning, grammar and logic do separate things into parts. They are useful for doing so. However, Wittgenstein is arguing something quite revealing: There are no final explanations, only complex descriptions. Any explanation is a partial human description, which can then itself be described and explained. The task of philosophy, science and mathematics is not to reduce things to simple truth, but to generate more meaning and situations.
Let us turn to the text. In the preface to the Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein says that he now sees grave mistakes in his Tractatus. He says that this new book is not to spare thinking, but to stimulate thinking. Notice that the Tractatus had the opposite goal: to put an end to the problems of logic and philosophy. Now Wittgenstein does not believe that anything can or need be fully solved or closed, but should rather be opened up and made complex.
In section 7, Wittgenstein says that language games are actions and language interwoven as forms of life. He considers that words such as ‘this’ and ‘there’ are learned interwoven with gestures such as pointing. ‘This’, ‘now’, and other simple words get their meaning from their use by gesturing human beings. They can not be described fully in language alone, nor do they represent specific objects consistently. Rather, they are demonstrated to children and translated into other languages of cultures that share similar gestures. We know from neuroscience that in the brain the centers of language and control of the hands are next to each other, likely because language developed in apes along with gestures. There are also similarities in the basic gestures of humanity, including extending the arm to indicate the direction of sight and attention. Infants only months old will read eye direction to try to see what others are seeing, and if they can not see what is being looked at they will check the eyes again. The arm, whether a culture uses the index finger or not, provides an extension of the line of sight so that it can be easily recognized and followed by others. Notice that ‘this’ is as simple as it gets in itself, and to further explain it we need to bring arms and neuroscience into the picture.
In section 11, he says language is like toolbox, a complex set of tools that have no absolute necessity but are useful as a set. Consider that a hammer, a screwdriver and glue are a decent set of tools. Are they absolutely right or necessary tools? We could invent others, but they work decently well for putting things together and taking things apart. We do not need an absolute screwdriver any more than we need to completely understand the relationship between the hammer and screwdriver. We need only use them. In the same way, we do not need to understand the word ‘and’ such that it is always used exactly the same way, nor do we need to completely understand its relationship to ‘or’. When we use them relatively, not exclusively, they are interchangeable. At a buffet, I could equally say, “You can have eggs or salad or steak” or “You can have eggs and salad and steak”. The two can sometimes be used differently and sometimes similarly, as long as we are decently consistent in all of our interconnected uses. Indeed, the words, like tools such as hammers and screwdrivers, are more useful being often but not always used in particular and exclusive ways (ex: one can use a screwdriver to open paint cans). ‘And’ and ‘or’ are more useful when we can use them oppositely, but also identically. In his earlier thinking, with the truth tables, Wittgenstein was trying to secure them merely opposite and different meanings, which does not give us their full usage and meaning.
In section 12, Wittgenstein uses the metaphor of a locomotive cabin to further illustrate the same point. There are many levers and switches that function in various ways. Words and language function in various ways that form a complex with their environment. We could always redesign the train cabin, but it works well enough as it is.
In section 15, he uses another simple tool-oriented metaphor to make language and meaning physical rather than ideal: naming is compared to attaching a label (or sticker, with “Hello My Name Is”). The association of a word with a particular thing is like attaching a label for ease of use and identification.
In section 17, he says that we can classify words as we do things, but our classifications will depend on our situation and purposes. He uses the metaphor of chess pieces. If you want to move a great distance, you would classify chess pieces one way, but if you want to break through or jump over the enemy lines (with a knight or a bishop) you would classify them another way. The pieces, like words and other things, do not have classifications and meanings in themselves, but in how they can be used in concrete situations. This is again much like Mill.
In section 18, he says that a language is like an old city, with side streets and squares. It is interesting to compare San Francisco to Salt Lake City here. San Francisco can be a nightmare to drive, while Salt Lake City is almost entirely a perfect grid surrounding the Mormon Temple. In San Francisco, you never know which way a street might turn due to hills or other intersecting streets. European cities are similarly often much older than the automobile, and do not lend themselves to outsiders’ easy navigation. A language, like an old city or old growth forest, is the result of a long process of many layers of evolution and development. We can understand meanings just as we can navigate streets, but things are not always clear cut as Salt Lake City.
In section 57 and 58, he asks about where ‘red’ exists. He suggests that ‘red’ as a color does not exist in itself, but as an association of many red things having been experienced, the word ‘red’ being said by others and oneself associated with these things, as well as the imagination/projection of the color red in the mind. None of these things needs to be exclusively present for there to be red. We could even say the word without any red things or thinking of red, and it still means the color in our language and culture. We could likewise see a red thing, and it is red without using the word or seeing red in the imagination. Thus, the color red is not essentially any red thing, or the word, or the color in the mind, but the complex of all these. The color red is not simply a subjective concept, nor it is an objective fact, but it is a conception and association of many things and words, both in the head and the world together.
In section 65, Wittgenstein argues that there is no form common to language games or forms of life, such as the color red or the use of a tool. The common element is merely form, or association. In the same way that Hegel argues that Being itself can not be qualified (green, good, necessary) or quantified (much, fourteen, half), Wittgenstein argues that there is no common form to meaning. It is a complex association that can take any possible form. This is similar to the organic forms of fractal geometry: No two trees are identical, but they share what Wittgenstein calls a ‘family resemblance’. In the next section (66), he uses the example of games. There is no rule common to all games, but they resemble each other as a family.
In the next section (67), he uses the metaphor of a thread (one could also use a rope). The thread is strong not because there is one underlying strand that runs through its entire length, but because many stands overlap each other. Mathematics and the meaning/use of a word do not need a single inner rule to make them entirely consistent. Rather they are complex networks that are continuously reinforced by our re-inscription as we use them daily. Derrida, the French deconstructionist, argues that there is no language set in stone. Old English, like Old French, drift slowly like tectonic plates. When we use language, we are not using something already set. Rather, we are resetting it, re-associating it, re-gluing it together with the only glue it was ever fashioned from, each and every time we speak or write. Likewise, mathematics such as algebra is not true in itself. We continue to use it consistently, and this rebinds its consistent use. When dividing by zero creates problems, we add additional rules and then continue to lash them together with the system.
In section 83, Wittgenstein gives another metaphor to describe the emergence (a chaos-theory, fractal geometry term) of forms of life. Imagine people in a field, playing with a ball. The ball is tossed about, another person joins and kicks it back to another, who chases it, then pegs the kicker with the ball, and then it is tossed about again. A game has arisen, but it does yet does not seem to have consistent rules. It is being made up as it goes along. Human beings are rule making, association generating beings, who know how to follow and bend rules as they see fit. This means that the only complete consistency is both consistency and inconsistency, the only consistent rule is there are yet there are not consistent rules.
In section 85, he gives another metaphor to back up this conception. A rule is like a signpost, such as a sign that points to the right and reads, ‘San Jose’. Does the sign force you to go to San Jose? No. If you go to the right, will you surely reach San Jose without getting lost or running out of gas? No. We can even imagine that if you go to the left, because you are afraid of San Jose, you could get turned around and end up there anyway. In spite of these loose ends, we find signs quite useful.
In section 99, he comes to the previously mentioned ‘locking a man in a room but leaving the window open’ metaphor. You can not lock someone in a room such that they can never get out. There are no simply solid substances. There are no things without cracks of any kind. Similarly we can not secure meanings such that they will always stay exactly the same, but we can secure them by locking them down repeatedly through use and association. To give an entire account of how a meaning is secured would be like “repairing a torn spider’s web with one’s fingers” (106). Just like an old city, we can use things without ever being able to fully describe them.
Wittgenstein writes, “We must do away with all explanation, and description alone must take its place” (109)...”What we do is to bring words back from their metaphysical to their everyday use” (116)...”What we are destroying is nothing but houses of cards and we are clearing up the ground of language on which they stand” (118).
Do we base our own behavior, let alone the culture of mathematics, on simple rules? He gives the example of being certain that a table will resist one’s finger, that a fire will hurt one’s hand. It is not that there is a simple rule set in an atomic language that reads, ‘Table is solid’ or ‘Fire hurts hands’. Rather, “a hundred reasons present themselves, each drowning out the voice of the others” (478). Like the thread woven of many strands, our belief and certainty that objects are solid and flame hurts us are woven out of many experiences that are then woven together with the table and flame before us.
Wittgenstein writes, “To say, ‘This combination of words makes no sense’ excludes it from the sphere of language and thereby bounds the domain of language. But when one draws a boundary it may be for various kinds of reason. If I surround an area with a fence or a line or otherwise, the purpose may be to prevent someone from getting in or out, but it may also be part of a game and the players be supposed, say, to jump over the boundary” (499). Wittgenstein seems to be thinking specifically of humor and comedy, though it could also apply to modern and conceptual art, forms of culture that break rules on purpose. Comedy and modern art are games where the rule is to break the rules without breaking anyone’s neck. Wittgenstein had an appreciation both for the Alice books of Lewis Carroll as well as American slap-stick comedy which he preferred to opera. At the end of the course, we will study the Alice books, humor and modern art in light of the later work of Wittgenstein.
The last image to examine, near the end of the book, is Jastrow’s duck-rabbit, often called Wittgenstein’s duck-rabbit because the psychologist Jastrow is far less famous. One can look at the figure from the left, and it is a duck, and one can look at the figure from the right, and it is a rabbit. Which is the single correct face? Wittgenstein says we may have seen only the rabbit face our entire life, and that does not prevent us or others from seeing the duck when it is pointed out. This is much like the duel between objectivism (truth is in the world) and subjectivism (meaning is in the head).
Wittgenstein’s thought can be divided into his early, middle and later work. His early work is the book the Tractatus, the book which gave the world truth table logic. This tool, as Wittgenstein later came to see it, remains the mathematical system taught as logic today. Just as Wittgenstein became famous for his truth tables, he switched positions in his thinking and came to reject his earlier work. He wrote in notebooks that were only published after his death, and the Philosophical Investigations is the most celebrated of these.
Wittgenstein’s Father was the Austrian Carnegie, making a fortune in Steel. Though his father was Protestant, and his mother Jewish, Ludwig was baptized Catholic because of antisemitism at the time. In his early years, Ludwig was a proud atheist but by the time he was working on his Tractatus he had a mystical transcendental outlook which he kept for the rest of his life. Though never religious, and though he had to bribe Nazis later to smuggle his “Jewish” family from Austria, he was buried as a Catholic.
The Wittgenstein family was known for intense criticism, musical talent, depression, and suicide. Three of Wittgenstein’s four brothers committed suicide, and he himself considered suicide for awhile before launching into his late period. Unfortunately, suicide was considered romantic for Austrian elites at the time.
Wittgenstein was in Hitler’s elementary school, 2 days younger, but because he was put forward a grade and Hitler was held back a grade he was 2 years ahead. Both he and Hitler hated the school and the lessons.
He began studying at university in Berlin to become an engineer with an interest in flight (the Wright Brothers had recently invented the motorized glider, but flew it in France and Germany until 1907 as the US Army did not believe them). After failing in his attempt to build a better propeller, he began studying mathematical theory and philosophy of mathematics, becoming entranced with two thinkers who are along with Wittgenstein foundational for Analytical philosophy and logic: Russell from Britain, and Frege from Germany. Wittgenstein went to see Frege, who did not fully understand his questions and advised him to go see Russell, which he did in 1911.
He showed up unannounced to Russell’s room at Trinity College, impressed him with his intense and brilliant arguments. Russell became convinced that the young Austrian was going to carry his work forward and be his successor, solving the remaining problems of logic that Russell’s work on the foundations of mathematics had left open. As mentioned last lecture, Russell had shown there were contradictions unresolved in Frege’s work with set theory, but Russell had become frustrated trying to solve these contradiction with his theory of types.
Wittgenstein, an eccentric and difficult personality, was never fully comfortable at Cambridge, and often got into disagreements with Russell and threatened to leave many times before fleeing to Norway where he believed he could finish his work on Logic. While some still disagree, it is generally accepted that Wittgenstein was gay, developed a relationship with Pinsent, a young graduate student, and some believe that Russell encouraged the relationship if he did not introduce the two with the purpose of keeping the emotional and unstable genius with him at Cambridge.
When WWI broke out, he served for Austria, at the same time as he was developing the material for the Tractatus. Learning of Pinsent’s death in the war in Italy, he became suicidal, moved in with his uncle and finished the Tractatus which he dedicated to his ‘friend’ Pinsent. He tried to get it published, but no one would take it. Remember: this book went on to be the #4 influence in the US and Canada according to the poll, the book that gave modern logic truth tables, the method that replaced Aristotle’s syllogisms.
Russell intervened back in Cambridge, and had it published and wrote and introduction for it. This was the start of the end. Though Russell saw the work as genius, he did not completely understand much of it and his introduction reflected this. Wittgenstein read the introduction and realized Russell had great misunderstandings of his work. Believing that his Tractatus had solved all the problems of philosophy, Wittgenstein left Russell and Cambridge again and went to be a school teacher in Austria. He gave away his portion of the family fortune, anonymously to writers but also to his family. Since his family was already wealthy, he wrote in a letter, “they won’t be corrupted by it”. He left the school after a short while (not a good fit, and parents thought he was crazy). He became a gardener’s assistant, and then his sister had him design her a house.
While finishing the house, he was contacted by members of the Vienna Circle, positivists using Hegel’s logic and Wittgenstein’s Tractatus to give a solid foundation for science and mathematics. This was what Russell had hoped for, minus the Hegel who Russell hated. While Wittgenstein had been away, the Tractatus had become famous, and central to many already inspired by Frege and Russell. Many came to visit and discus and progressively Witt became disgusted. He began to realize that there were fundamental problems with his Tractatus and truth tables, and got into intense arguments with the Vienna Circle members, at one point turning his back on his guests and reading Tagore, an Indian transcendental poet out loud. For the rest of his life, Wittgenstein thought logical positivism (the analytic school of philosophy) misunderstood his Tractatus.
In his early period, Wittgenstein believed he had fully solved the problems of a complete system of logic. He saw it like Schopenhauer, a big early influence: logic is a perfect crystal tool of analysis, life is a messy chaotic ocean, and so logic is perfect but unfortunately never fits perfectly with life. This is like having the perfect tool for an impossible and continuous job. In conversations with positivists he started to change his thinking around and continued to write until he died. These writings were published after his death as the Philosophical Investigations and other books. In his later thought, Wittgenstein saw logic not as a perfect crystal castle in the sky but as rules and games that are imperfectly lived in the real world imperfectly and without complete definition. He no longer believed that logic could provide a foundation for mathematics, science or philosophy. He denied that contradictions are necessarily false, or disprove a mathematical-logical system.
In 1929, he decided to return to Cambridge to correct his thinking and teach. To his horror, when he arrived at the train station he was greeted by a vast crowd of intellectuals as the new hero, the author of the Tractatus, the work he now thought was exactly wrong.
The famous economist Keynes wrote to his wife: ‘Well, God has arrived. I met him on the 5:15 train’. Wittgenstein continued to lecture at Cambridge, developing his ideas.
In 1934, he defected to Soviet Russia, wanting to be a plumber or work with his hands. When he was told that according to the Soviet system he would be put to work as a philosophy professor in Moscow, he defected back to Britain.
In 1937, Hitler annexed Austria. Wittgenstein had to bribe Nazis to get his Jewish family passage out and spend the equivalent today of $50 million in gold and foreign currency. Since he had given away his own portion of the family fortune, he had to get much of this from his colleagues at Cambridge and other admirers of his work.
THE TRACTATUS
In his early thought, expressed in the pages of the Tractatus, reality consists of atomic facts, states of affairs that are true. Thought, expressed grammatically in language, ‘pictures’ the world with these atomic facts. The world does not perfectly fit this atomic language, but because it is the way the head makes sense of the world we cannot understand things otherwise. Wittgenstein said that it is the part of the book that is unwritten that is important, the part where life itself goes beyond this logic and makes the world what it is. Of the world beyond logic, he wrote “Of what one cannot speak, one must remain silent”, which is in fact a quote from Confucius. Our logic and the world are two things that do not fit, yet mysteriously (and mystically) the two are one.
If we boil logic with truth tables down to its tautologies, the necessary and basic workings, and leave the rest open as the world which always is beyond our thoughts, we can have the perfect system of logic and grammar that we use to understand things spelled out even if it cannot perfectly predict the world or tell us how the world works. Think of logic as a set of reading glasses, and the world as something one looks at through the glasses. Wittgenstein believed that with the Tractatus he had spelled out the perfect crystal form of the glasses, and beyond this nothing can be said for certain.
When it comes to facts in the world, however, everything is contingent on something else and is neither simply necessary or simply impossible. Logic is the necessary and impossible book-ends with which we interpret the world and its facts, but the world is always between the necessary and the impossible, is always somewhat necessary and somewhat impossible, which creates a gulf between our pure and necessary logic and the unpredictable world. For Wittgenstein, only logic and math can be sets of necessary truths, and this is because (as Avicenna and Mill believe) they are concepts and are ideal, unlike situations of real things in the world. Once we nail down the perfect tool of logic, we can use it to examine the world and all of its messy situations. Our examinations will never be perfect because of the gap between logic and the world, but at least the logic will be necessary and perfect.
The reason’s Wittgenstein’s truth tables were such a success is that they proved, for the first time, that many of the axioms logicians had discovered were necessarily true (tautologies) in a way that is simple to do and easy to see.
THE MIDDLE AND LATER THOUGHT OF WITTGENSTEIN
At first Wittgenstein thought that he had solved all the problems of philosophy with the Tractatus truth table system (we do still use it today to teach formal logic), so he left philosophy and Cambridge behind, went to war, had many experiences, and then later decided that his earlier thinking contained horrible problems. He no longer believed that logic could be crystallized in the head as a truth table matrix, but rather it existed as a complex out in the world, as arrangements of people, thoughts, symbols, and objects. He continued to work on notebooks, progressing in his thought until his death, after which his notebooks were published.
There is an excellent passage from Lectures and Conversations that illustrates the turn nicely. This work was taken not from Wittgenstein’s notebooks but from the notes of his seminar students in the years leading up to his work on the notebooks which would be published after his death as the Philosophical Investigations. At this time Freud’s ideas had stormed onto the academic scene, infuriating Wittgenstein who now had come to hate the idea that things in the world, even logical operators and systems, can be boiled down to a single essential element or factor like sex, power or truth. It is this skepticism, which can be called the “problem of essences”, which marks the turn from his earlier thinking to his more influential later thought.
Wittgenstein attacked Freud’s psychoanalysis and dream interpretation for boiling everything down to sex. In the Lectures and Conversations (20-21), Wittgenstein proposes a thought experiment for consideration. If we cook a human being down to carbon ash in an oven, are we left with the essence of the human being? A human being is a “carbon-based” life form, so carbon is a dominant element. Consider that we could cook a human down to water in the same oven, and claim that because humans are 3/5ths water we have the essence of the person.
Would it be correct to say that humans are essentially ashy, or essentially wet? Why not? We would not say that a human is essentially carbon or water, nor would we say ashy or wet, because the human being is a complex situation that is not reducible to a single element. The properties of carbon or water do not in themselves explain how humans behave or what they mean to us. If we cooked people down to ashes or water, we have destroyed the situation and can no longer investigate how they work. In the same way, a person is not merely their DNA. While carbon, water and DNA have very important, even necessary roles to play in any person, they are not exclusively the essence or meaning of the complex that is a human individual.
In the same way, Wittgenstein had come to believe that neither facts in the world nor logic in the head can be reduced to a single element or necessary structure. Facts and logic are not true in themselves, but true in real situations of the world which are irreducibly complex. Wittgenstein says in the Lectures and Conversations that we have to avoid the “lure of the secret cellar”, the urge to boil situations down to a single element like Freud tried to boil human relations, meaning and the mind down to sex or Wittgenstein himself had tried to boil logic down to its simple structure.
The task of philosophy, logic and science is not to fully or completely explain anything, but to investigate things. Thought never fully defines things but rather describes and re-describes things. If science is thinking about the world, then science has endless work to do describing and re-describing things. Consider whether we fully understand apples, or whether we ever need to entirely understand them in order to continue to understand them and use them a great deal. Likewise, if philosophy and logic are ‘thinking about thinking’, and if thinking is merely a possible description of things, philosophy and logic have endless work to do describing our descriptions, describing and re-describing the ways that we describe things. Much insight can be gained even if no subject is entirely explained or exhausted.
One good way to approach this is to describe how cultures of thought, perspectives, facts and models are gathered together and lived in institutions. Thought ceases to be completely abstract, but is rather a culture and situation in the real world that involves people, buildings and money. The cryptanalysis of algebra worked so well as a modeling language that we came to believe that the mathematics was not in our practices and text books but rather sewn into the fabric of the world itself. As we look over the history of thought in the wake of Wittgenstein’s later work, it becomes evident that mathematics and logic are tools and lenses, not the hidden structures of things operating at secret levels out of our immediate sight. In scholarship today, particularly the history of religion, philosophy and science, it has become popular to consider a system of thought as a real lived situation rather than an abstract set of beliefs and ideas. A religion or science is in fact a situation of human beings who never have to have entirely the same set of beliefs as long as they can generally and relatively cohere as a culture.
THE PHILOSOPHICAL INVESTIGATIONS
In this monumental work, one of my favorites of modern European thought, Wittgenstein argues for a middle way between two extreme positions, between the position of scientific positivism (objective truth is facts in the world) and the position of psychological skepticism (subjective truth is meanings in the mind). He presents each position in quotes again and again, and then argues against both in a three stage process. First he states a position (either that there are facts given in the world or meaning is all in the head), then shows situations in which the position works, then shows situations in which the position does not work. He shows us that taking either position to extremes would be understandable given particular ways we think and act, but neither position explains all the ways in which we think and act. We live in complex ways that depend both on there being a coherent world and there being human perspectives. Wittgenstein argues that we can take both positions rather than determine one to be the actual and the other to be the illusion.
In his earlier thought, the world and the head are separated by a Kantian gulf between objectivity and subjectivity. In his later thinking, the world and our heads work together seamlessly as a complex situation. One cannot remove either the head or the world to get the bedrock or anchor of meaning and truth without resulting in absurdities. The clean and ideal side of logic, math and grammar mislead us into thinking that meaning must be anchored entirely on one side, either exclusively in the head or exclusively in the world, but we gain much more ability to think and describe our heads and our world if we stop looking for meaning and truth to be entirely in one place rather than the other. In the same way, rather than determine which facts are absolute truths to the exclusion of their opposites, or refuse to identify coherence of belief as it is all ‘mere theory’, we can better understand the facts and theories we can share by recognizing that they are one and the same viewed from opposite sides. If we can continue to determine relative fact from relative fiction, there is no need to entirely separate the two. To use the tool analogy, as long as we have decent tools we do not need perfect or eternal ones.
Games and rules gather people together, but individuals can also variously interpret rules and meanings. ‘Rules can always be variously interpreted’ is a central idea of the Philosophical Investigations. This is not to say that they always are or they should be, but the window remains open (Wittgenstein writes, “It is like locking a man in a room but leaving the window open”). Both are only what they are together as a form of life. Notice that this thinking has much in common with Laozi’s thinking on the wheel as both empty and solid at the same time, and much like the Zen koans of a rock being not a rock and a rock and the sound of one hand clapping.
Consider the ‘child at the blackboard’ metaphor used in the text. It is always possible for a child to misunderstand rules and demonstrate this misunderstanding by making mistakes, even after you show the child and explain. Let us say that you then write a new ‘inner’ set of rules to further explain the rules when the child fails. What if the child does not understand those? Is there a bedrock set of rules that the child can not possibly misunderstand? If the child can misunderstand rules, then no set of rules within rules within rules is ever perfectly airtight. We have an infinite regress unless we can find a set of rules that can never be misinterpreted.
Just like Wittgenstein had been seeking the fundamental inner workings of logic and mathematics, as Frege and Russell had tried to do before him, if people do math decently there need not be any inner rules aside from the explanation and demonstration that, if repeated, children can often follow. Notice we are considering mathematics as a culture, learned by children and taught by adults, not as an abstract set of necessary or immutable rules. It turns out that there are no inner workings to mathematics. Mathematics works as it does openly, on the board in front of one’s face, without the need of a ‘secret cellar’. If mathematics on a board is not entirely secure, then no inner set of rules could or must be either for it to function.
When we try to explain anything, it is not being simplified, being stripped down to its core, at all. It is the opposite: we are making it more complex as we try to simplify and explain it. The rules are not being discovered in the thing, but being added to the thing. When we explain things, we are not whittling away the unnecessary but adding our descriptions to it. In the same way, when we do science to explain apples or human beings, we are adding our descriptions and the situations of our descriptions, not uncovering the simple truth of the thing. The simple truth of a thing is the simple thing itself. The simplest truth of an apple is the single apple. An explanation of where apples come from is very useful, but it puts the apple in a complex with many other things (such as trees, farms, stores, trucks). An apple is not merely its DNA, but is in a infinitely complex situation with its DNA and ourselves attempting to isolate components with the tools and technology we bring into the situation.
We are always essentializing (like when we say, ‘We are always essentializing’). Meaning, grammar and logic do separate things into parts. They are useful for doing so. However, Wittgenstein is arguing something quite revealing: There are no final explanations, only complex descriptions. Any explanation is a partial human description, which can then itself be described and explained. The task of philosophy, science and mathematics is not to reduce things to simple truth, but to generate more meaning and situations.
Let us turn to the text. In the preface to the Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein says that he now sees grave mistakes in his Tractatus. He says that this new book is not to spare thinking, but to stimulate thinking. Notice that the Tractatus had the opposite goal: to put an end to the problems of logic and philosophy. Now Wittgenstein does not believe that anything can or need be fully solved or closed, but should rather be opened up and made complex.
In section 7, Wittgenstein says that language games are actions and language interwoven as forms of life. He considers that words such as ‘this’ and ‘there’ are learned interwoven with gestures such as pointing. ‘This’, ‘now’, and other simple words get their meaning from their use by gesturing human beings. They can not be described fully in language alone, nor do they represent specific objects consistently. Rather, they are demonstrated to children and translated into other languages of cultures that share similar gestures. We know from neuroscience that in the brain the centers of language and control of the hands are next to each other, likely because language developed in apes along with gestures. There are also similarities in the basic gestures of humanity, including extending the arm to indicate the direction of sight and attention. Infants only months old will read eye direction to try to see what others are seeing, and if they can not see what is being looked at they will check the eyes again. The arm, whether a culture uses the index finger or not, provides an extension of the line of sight so that it can be easily recognized and followed by others. Notice that ‘this’ is as simple as it gets in itself, and to further explain it we need to bring arms and neuroscience into the picture.
In section 11, he says language is like toolbox, a complex set of tools that have no absolute necessity but are useful as a set. Consider that a hammer, a screwdriver and glue are a decent set of tools. Are they absolutely right or necessary tools? We could invent others, but they work decently well for putting things together and taking things apart. We do not need an absolute screwdriver any more than we need to completely understand the relationship between the hammer and screwdriver. We need only use them. In the same way, we do not need to understand the word ‘and’ such that it is always used exactly the same way, nor do we need to completely understand its relationship to ‘or’. When we use them relatively, not exclusively, they are interchangeable. At a buffet, I could equally say, “You can have eggs or salad or steak” or “You can have eggs and salad and steak”. The two can sometimes be used differently and sometimes similarly, as long as we are decently consistent in all of our interconnected uses. Indeed, the words, like tools such as hammers and screwdrivers, are more useful being often but not always used in particular and exclusive ways (ex: one can use a screwdriver to open paint cans). ‘And’ and ‘or’ are more useful when we can use them oppositely, but also identically. In his earlier thinking, with the truth tables, Wittgenstein was trying to secure them merely opposite and different meanings, which does not give us their full usage and meaning.
In section 12, Wittgenstein uses the metaphor of a locomotive cabin to further illustrate the same point. There are many levers and switches that function in various ways. Words and language function in various ways that form a complex with their environment. We could always redesign the train cabin, but it works well enough as it is.
In section 15, he uses another simple tool-oriented metaphor to make language and meaning physical rather than ideal: naming is compared to attaching a label (or sticker, with “Hello My Name Is”). The association of a word with a particular thing is like attaching a label for ease of use and identification.
In section 17, he says that we can classify words as we do things, but our classifications will depend on our situation and purposes. He uses the metaphor of chess pieces. If you want to move a great distance, you would classify chess pieces one way, but if you want to break through or jump over the enemy lines (with a knight or a bishop) you would classify them another way. The pieces, like words and other things, do not have classifications and meanings in themselves, but in how they can be used in concrete situations. This is again much like Mill.
In section 18, he says that a language is like an old city, with side streets and squares. It is interesting to compare San Francisco to Salt Lake City here. San Francisco can be a nightmare to drive, while Salt Lake City is almost entirely a perfect grid surrounding the Mormon Temple. In San Francisco, you never know which way a street might turn due to hills or other intersecting streets. European cities are similarly often much older than the automobile, and do not lend themselves to outsiders’ easy navigation. A language, like an old city or old growth forest, is the result of a long process of many layers of evolution and development. We can understand meanings just as we can navigate streets, but things are not always clear cut as Salt Lake City.
In section 57 and 58, he asks about where ‘red’ exists. He suggests that ‘red’ as a color does not exist in itself, but as an association of many red things having been experienced, the word ‘red’ being said by others and oneself associated with these things, as well as the imagination/projection of the color red in the mind. None of these things needs to be exclusively present for there to be red. We could even say the word without any red things or thinking of red, and it still means the color in our language and culture. We could likewise see a red thing, and it is red without using the word or seeing red in the imagination. Thus, the color red is not essentially any red thing, or the word, or the color in the mind, but the complex of all these. The color red is not simply a subjective concept, nor it is an objective fact, but it is a conception and association of many things and words, both in the head and the world together.
In section 65, Wittgenstein argues that there is no form common to language games or forms of life, such as the color red or the use of a tool. The common element is merely form, or association. In the same way that Hegel argues that Being itself can not be qualified (green, good, necessary) or quantified (much, fourteen, half), Wittgenstein argues that there is no common form to meaning. It is a complex association that can take any possible form. This is similar to the organic forms of fractal geometry: No two trees are identical, but they share what Wittgenstein calls a ‘family resemblance’. In the next section (66), he uses the example of games. There is no rule common to all games, but they resemble each other as a family.
In the next section (67), he uses the metaphor of a thread (one could also use a rope). The thread is strong not because there is one underlying strand that runs through its entire length, but because many stands overlap each other. Mathematics and the meaning/use of a word do not need a single inner rule to make them entirely consistent. Rather they are complex networks that are continuously reinforced by our re-inscription as we use them daily. Derrida, the French deconstructionist, argues that there is no language set in stone. Old English, like Old French, drift slowly like tectonic plates. When we use language, we are not using something already set. Rather, we are resetting it, re-associating it, re-gluing it together with the only glue it was ever fashioned from, each and every time we speak or write. Likewise, mathematics such as algebra is not true in itself. We continue to use it consistently, and this rebinds its consistent use. When dividing by zero creates problems, we add additional rules and then continue to lash them together with the system.
In section 83, Wittgenstein gives another metaphor to describe the emergence (a chaos-theory, fractal geometry term) of forms of life. Imagine people in a field, playing with a ball. The ball is tossed about, another person joins and kicks it back to another, who chases it, then pegs the kicker with the ball, and then it is tossed about again. A game has arisen, but it does yet does not seem to have consistent rules. It is being made up as it goes along. Human beings are rule making, association generating beings, who know how to follow and bend rules as they see fit. This means that the only complete consistency is both consistency and inconsistency, the only consistent rule is there are yet there are not consistent rules.
In section 85, he gives another metaphor to back up this conception. A rule is like a signpost, such as a sign that points to the right and reads, ‘San Jose’. Does the sign force you to go to San Jose? No. If you go to the right, will you surely reach San Jose without getting lost or running out of gas? No. We can even imagine that if you go to the left, because you are afraid of San Jose, you could get turned around and end up there anyway. In spite of these loose ends, we find signs quite useful.
In section 99, he comes to the previously mentioned ‘locking a man in a room but leaving the window open’ metaphor. You can not lock someone in a room such that they can never get out. There are no simply solid substances. There are no things without cracks of any kind. Similarly we can not secure meanings such that they will always stay exactly the same, but we can secure them by locking them down repeatedly through use and association. To give an entire account of how a meaning is secured would be like “repairing a torn spider’s web with one’s fingers” (106). Just like an old city, we can use things without ever being able to fully describe them.
Wittgenstein writes, “We must do away with all explanation, and description alone must take its place” (109)...”What we do is to bring words back from their metaphysical to their everyday use” (116)...”What we are destroying is nothing but houses of cards and we are clearing up the ground of language on which they stand” (118).
Do we base our own behavior, let alone the culture of mathematics, on simple rules? He gives the example of being certain that a table will resist one’s finger, that a fire will hurt one’s hand. It is not that there is a simple rule set in an atomic language that reads, ‘Table is solid’ or ‘Fire hurts hands’. Rather, “a hundred reasons present themselves, each drowning out the voice of the others” (478). Like the thread woven of many strands, our belief and certainty that objects are solid and flame hurts us are woven out of many experiences that are then woven together with the table and flame before us.
Wittgenstein writes, “To say, ‘This combination of words makes no sense’ excludes it from the sphere of language and thereby bounds the domain of language. But when one draws a boundary it may be for various kinds of reason. If I surround an area with a fence or a line or otherwise, the purpose may be to prevent someone from getting in or out, but it may also be part of a game and the players be supposed, say, to jump over the boundary” (499). Wittgenstein seems to be thinking specifically of humor and comedy, though it could also apply to modern and conceptual art, forms of culture that break rules on purpose. Comedy and modern art are games where the rule is to break the rules without breaking anyone’s neck. Wittgenstein had an appreciation both for the Alice books of Lewis Carroll as well as American slap-stick comedy which he preferred to opera. At the end of the course, we will study the Alice books, humor and modern art in light of the later work of Wittgenstein.
The last image to examine, near the end of the book, is Jastrow’s duck-rabbit, often called Wittgenstein’s duck-rabbit because the psychologist Jastrow is far less famous. One can look at the figure from the left, and it is a duck, and one can look at the figure from the right, and it is a rabbit. Which is the single correct face? Wittgenstein says we may have seen only the rabbit face our entire life, and that does not prevent us or others from seeing the duck when it is pointed out. This is much like the duel between objectivism (truth is in the world) and subjectivism (meaning is in the head).
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