Dao
The way — the central concept of Chinese philosophy, used differently by Daoists and Confucians to name the underlying order according to which things should proceed.
Dao (way) is the central concept of Chinese philosophy. The character originally meant a path or road, and the philosophical use ranges from the way of a particular practice or institution to the underlying order of the cosmos itself. Different Chinese schools used the term in different ways, and the disagreements among them can largely be read as disagreements over what the dao is.
For Confucius, the dao is the way of the ancient sage-kings, accessible through ritual propriety, study of the classics, and the cultivation of humanness (ren). For Lao Tzu and Zhuangzi, the dao is something more elusive: prior to all distinctions, wordless, accessible only through wu wei rather than through study or rule. The Daodejing opens with the famous declaration that the dao that can be spoken of is not the eternal dao. Mohist and Legalist thinkers gave the term still other senses, tied to impartial concern or to clear administrative principle. The philosophical history of China is to a significant extent the history of competing accounts of the dao.
The Daoist insistence that the dao cannot be spoken — articulated in the famous opening of the Daodejing — is itself a philosophical claim with significant consequences. If the dao cannot be adequately captured in language, then philosophical discourse about the dao must work indirectly: through paradox, through narrative, through pointing rather than asserting. The literary forms of the Daodejing and the Zhuangzi follow from this commitment.
The Confucian and Daoist accounts of the dao are not, on closer reading, simple opposites. Both treat the dao as the right way of things; both hold that human flourishing requires alignment with it. The disagreement is over how that alignment is achieved — through ritual cultivation within social roles (Confucius) or through unlearning the very distinctions that ritual refines (Lao Tzu and Zhuangzi). The Han dynasty synthesis attempted to reconcile the two; subsequent Chinese philosophy has continued to treat their disagreement as a productive tension rather than as a choice between exclusive alternatives.
How philosophers have framed dao
| Philosopher | Position |
|---|---|
| Lao Tzu | Wordless and prior to all distinctions; accessible through wu wei. |
| Zhuangzi | Dissolves all categorical distinctions; the sage moves easily among them. |
| Confucius | The way of the ancient sage-kings, accessible through ritual and study. |
| Mencius | Cultivated through nurture of the innate moral sprouts present in human nature. |
| Han Feizi | Reframed as the impersonal way of effective administrative technique. |
Representative quotes
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Lao Tzu
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“Those who know do not speak. Those who speak do not know.”
Tao Te Ching, Chapter 56
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Zhuangzi
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“The great bird rises on the wind to a height of a thousand miles. What does it see from on high there in the blue? Is it droves of wild horses galloping? Is it primeval matter whirling in atomic dust? Is it the exhalations that give birth to all things? Is it the blue of the sky itself, or is it only the colour of infinite distance?”
Ch. 1 (tr. Anthony Watson-Gandy and Terence Gordon, from the French of René Grousset, 1952)
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Confucius
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“It is not truth that makes man great, but man that makes truth great.”
As quoted in The Importance of Living (1937) by Lin Yutang , p. v
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Mencius
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“He who exerts his mind to the utmost knows his nature.”
7A:1, as translated by Wing-tsit Chan in A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy (1963), p. 62
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Han Feizi
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“When all within the four seas have been put in their proper places, [the sage] sits in darkness to observe the light. When those to his left and right have taken their places, he opens the gate to face the world. He changes nothing, alters nothing, but acts with the two handles of reward and punishment, acts and never ceases: this is what is called walking the path of principle.”
四海既藏，道陰見陽。左右既立，開門而當。勿變勿易，與二俱行，行之不已，是謂履理也。 | Wielding Power", in Han Feizi: Basic Writings (2003)
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