What exists out there, independent of humanity and its concepts, is a continuum, an undifferentiated whole. There’d be no need to distinguish “woman” from “person”. There can’t be “up” without “down” or “light” without “dark” if there weren’t any men, we wouldn’t just be a single-sex species-we’d be sexless. But none of these yang words can exist without its yin partner. We use words like “light” and “masculine” and “up” with the sense that they exist in some tangible, separate sense. īy extension, this applies to every concept, to all ten thousand things. The great insight of Taoism is that the division of Tao into yin and yang is not real. The Taoists are deeply skeptical of language and attuned to its inadequacies-it should be no surprise to find this ambivalence reflected in their style of communication.Īnd as the verse above states, the inadequacy of language is particularly severe when it comes to Tao. It’d be a mistake to dismiss Taoism because it doesn’t play by our rules. But Taoist philosophy looks and feels more like poetry or fiction, where double meanings and ambiguity serve rather than detract from the author’s intentions. the Zhuangzi, as translated by Burton Watsonįor Western students of philosophy, this is jarring, even offensive-we expect philosophers to define their terms with rigor, ideally by putting a glossary in the first chapter.
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?
Attaching a single concrete meaning to any word is an easy way to get lost when reading Taoist texts. The philosophers call these goblet words, named after a wine vessel which tips over when full, and stands upright when empty.
This is a common practice in Taoist discourse.
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