“Taoism: A Form of Religious B”
1. Introduction
In this paper I argue that there is a deep existential commonality between Taoists – of a certain sort – and Kierkegaard’s conception of Christianity, what he calls Religiousness B. I argue that although Kierkegaard refers to the Absolute as God and Taoists as the Tao, Kierkegaard and Taoists maintain that persons who are fully engaged and immersed in the Absolute are genuine subjects (i.e., selves) and as such are rightly related to the Absolute. I distinguish Religiousness A and B and specify the essential features of Religiousness B. In subsequent sections I show how Taoism has the same essential features as Religiousness B. Accordingly, since Taoism and Religiousness B have the same essential features, it follows that Taoism is a legitimate form of Religiousness B.
2. Distinguishing Religiousness A and B
It is crucial first to discuss how Kierkegaard distinguishes Religiousness A and B. For Kierkegaard, humans are not born genuine selves but become selves, or individuals, when by progressing through stages, or spheres, of existence. By ‘self’ Kierkegaard does not mean a substance, but rather what it is that makes one a person in the existential or lived sense – a unified, cohesive, center of personality. Spheres of existence can be understood as distinct orientations or ways of being in the world. One starts out the journey to selfhood in the aesthetic sphere, which is characterized by living a life the goal of which is sensual pleasure. Eventually, for one whose life goal is pleasure, pleasure ceases to satisfy one’s deeper longings, one discovers there are other values than pleasure, and, eventually, becomes sensitive to, and moved, by ethical concerns, and so is thus propelled into the ethical sphere of existence. In the ethical sphere, one realizes that one has duties to oneself and to others. Having accepted these moral duties, one then realizes that one is unable to act in accord with one’s duties as one ought. One becomes aware of one’s lack and so is thus propelled into a yet higher sphere of existence, the religious sphere. In the religious sphere, one finds a deeper mode of existence that includes not simply self and others, but the Eternal, the Absolute. Only through proper relation to the Eternal in existential truth can a human both satisfy and also transcend the demands of the moral sphere, whereby one finally becomes a genuine self in subjective inwardness. There is more to be said on just what these spheres are, the subdivisions of each sphere, and just how one is propelled from one sphere to another, but since the focus of my paper concerns the Religious sphere of existence, I do not have space to discuss such matters here.
There are in fact two distinct spheres of religiousness. Religiousness A is “within the domain of immanence” while Religiousness B is “within the domain of transcendence.”[1] Religiousness A is “the religion of pathos and immanence” while Religiousness B is the religion of the “dialectical transcendence.”[2] Religiousness B essentially involves paradox: the Absolute is Eternal and yet enters into a relation with existing selves in time.[3] To try to comprehend this “is to want to discover something that thought itself cannot think.”[4] Nevertheless, trying to think about the Absolute is essential to the development of inwardness and subjectivity. While one in Religiousness A has some measure of inwardness and subjectivity, for one in Religiousness B, the Absolute is encountered existentially in a rich and ever deepening inwardness, which culminates in an Absolute-centered pathos (as we shall see below). And so Religious B is paradoxically dialectical.[5]
One in the sphere of Religiousness B is on a path of ever deepening inwardness and subjective upbuilding of self. One can’t develop inwardness and subjectivity in misrelation to the Absolute; rather, the Absolute provides the condition for that makes it possible for one to relate rightly to it as an existing subject. In Religiousness A, however, one is supposed to be able to properly relate to the Absolute of one’s own accord. Thus, Religiousness B is theodidactic whereas Religiousness A is autodidactic.[6] Further, in Religiousness B, one is focused not on understanding or knowledge or objective certainty, but on subjective truth and existential religious thinking.[7] Of crucial important is not what is believed but how it is believed. Subjective truth is “an objective uncertainty, held fast through appropriation with the most passionate inwardness” and is the “highest truth there is for an existing person.”[8] Religiousness B does not rule out objective truth but maintains that what is essential to religious faith and practice is subjective truth so defined.
In Religiousness B one’s “pathos-filled relation to an eternal happiness increases.” This leads to the individual’s “existential immersion” in the Eternal that reaches its crescendo when the Eternal alone provides one with comfort.[9] What drives one onward from Religiousness A to Religiousness B is the absence of such comfort – “resignation, suffering, and the totality of guilt consciousness”, the realization that one is finite before the Absolute and full of faults. As one deepens in inwardness one discovers that one can overcome despair and that one needn’t be resigned to a life of finitude and fault, misrelating to oneself, to others, and to the Absolute. This overcoming is achieved only when the Eternal breaks through the categories of immanence in Religiousness A and provides the condition necessary to overcome the breaches. Consequently, an Eternal or Absolute-centered pathos is inculcated in one through one’s having become immersed in an existential relation to the Absolute, not through “reading books or by world-historical surveys.”[10] Now that we have a sufficiently clear idea what Religiousness B is, I can now show in what way Taoism is a form of Religiousness B.
3.1 Taoism is Theodidactic
The Tao is sufficiently similar to the Absolute in Kierkegaard in that the Tao, itself transcendent, can be said to reveal itself to humans on the level of immanence in subjective experience. Wei-Hsun Fu writes that the Tao reveals or manifests itself in terms of being and non-being, as the forces of yin and yang, and in other various ways. The Tao only manifests itself to us as transcendent; it is not ontologically divided as such. The Tao in itself is nameless and ineffable yet each guise or appearance really is of the Tao. The Tao as Absolute is the highest guise of the Tao of which humans have some grasp. By reflecting on the Tao as Absolute humans can formulate a conception of the Tao as Origin, the ontological ground of all things. Noticing the different guises of the Tao accounts for how humans are able to talk about the Tao in an existentially meaningful way and provides the ground for Taoist practice.
The Tao as Origin appears often in the Tao Te Ching, most notably chapter 42:
Tao produces [sheng] One; One produces Two; Two produces Three; Three produces all things. All things carry them and embrace the yang. And attain their harmony through the proper blending of ch’i [Ether] [11]
Wei-Hsun Fu argues that ‘sheng’ is better understood to mean something like “the ontological or metaphysical ground of,” and thus that we should ‘philosophically re-order’ the passage thus: “Tao (metaphysically) comes before One …”, and so on.[12] Following Wei-Hsun Fu’s translation, we find a point of contact between Kierkegaard’s Christian conception of the Absolute and the Taoist’s conception of the Tao - both are the metaphysical ground of everything else. Insofar as Taoists and Christians share this common ground one can say that both believe in the Absolute. Thus, though Taoists speak of the Absolute as the unnamable Tao and Kierkegaard speaks of the Absolute as God (more specifically, the Christian understanding of God), it is my view that it is reasonable to suppose that they have the same object in mind. That this is so will become clearer as we go.
It is my view that Taoism is theodidactic in Kierkegaard’s sense. Wen-Hsun Fu maintains that each thing or ‘creature’ has its own tao, or 'specific nature.' If something acts in accord with its tao, it acts in accord with the Tao naturally and spontaneously. Birds, horses, insects, trees, and the like, all act harmoniously and in complete accord with the Tao. But humans are in existential misrelation with the Tao and so no longer relate to themselves, to each other, or to the Tao properly. But the Tao makes it possible for humans to properly express their tao. This ability to express one's nature properly is possible only for those in proper relation to the Tao, and thus the Tao gives people the ability to act in accord with their own tao. The experiential awareness that one is not following the Tao, and the resultant unhappiness, drives one to follow the Tao. This awareness requires sufficient personal growth and character, and a certain amount of time and practice. And so we see that following the Tao is a dialectical process of development, one that is made possible when one learns, more and more, how to follow the Tao. Accordingly, we see another way in which Taoism is theodidactic in the relevant sense.[13]
3.2 Taoism is Transcendent
Recall that the Tao can be conceptualized in language under guises. Two more guises under which the Tao is revealed or manifested to us conceptually and existentially now become relevant: Tao as Principle and Tao as Function. Wei-Hsun writes:
Tao as Principle expresses the manifestation of Tao more objectively; the invariable principle of reversion is simply and naturally there; and we cannot but accept its truth. Tao as Function expresses the manifestation of Tao more subjectively … [and] reflects the inseparability of objective truth (the principle of reversion) and subjective truth (wisdom of spontaneous action).[14]
Reflecting on the Tao as principle provides some idea of how it is possible for humans to connect with the Tao in subjective experience and inward deepening. The Tao as Principle enables humans to discover the Tao as Function; the Tao as Function is experienced subjectively and existentially in subjective truth.
With Wei-Shun’s interpretation of ‘sheng’ in play, other Taoist thinkers can help to complete my argument. Wing Pi maintains that the Tao is original non-being; the Tao is pure being, original substance, and transcends all distinctions and descriptions, and so is nameless and beyond words in itself.[15] Kuo Hsiang affirmed that everything exists in accord with its own principle or nature and the Tao is simply the way in which everything acts together, each in accord with its own tao.[16] Both Wing Pi and Kuo Hsiang offer particular ways of understanding how it is that the Tao as Principle manifests itself objectively such that humans have some intellectual grasp or hold of it as subjective individuals. In this sense, the Tao is transcendent.[17]
3.3 Taoism is Paradoxically Dialectic
That Taoism is paradoxical is obvious. However, it must be paradoxical in the relevant way. Taoist texts embrace paradoxes in an effort to get across what is all important but what cannot be communicated in language – how it is that one becomes existentially related to the Tao. Taoist philosophers use words and poetic images as a way of gesturing towards the Tao that can only be encountered existentially in lived experience. One’s conceptions of the Tao are not erroneous if one’s discourse points to or inculcates a direct, experiential awareness of the Tao (as a finger pointing to the moon). What matters is our subjective orientation towards the Tao. By talking poetically about the Tao one can get some idea what it is like to follow the Tao from one’s subjective point of view. Thus, talking about the Tao is not supposed to reveal the nature of the Tao but is supposed to occasion an experiential awareness of the Tao. Hence, interpretations of what is said in Taoist texts, although not unimportant, are secondary to the manner in which and how it is that the texts say what they do. Understanding this takes some time, and so one progresses in understanding as one learns to follow the Tao. The paradox shared by Religiousness B and Taoism here is that while the Absolute is encountered existentially in the sphere of lived experience it remains transcendent. This is paradoxical in the same sense that the eternal, timeless God manifests in the incarnation of Christ and yet remains outside of time and is essentially changeless. The arguments in this section, together with the arguments in section 3.1, provide sufficient reason for thinking that the paradoxes of Taoism have a dialectical function. Thus, we have good reason to conclude that Taoism is paradoxical in the relevant way.
3.4 Taoism Concerns Subjectivity and the Existential Immersion of Self in Inwardness
The Taoists maintain that we discover the Tao when we become still, quiet, and attentive to the Tao’s operation in the world. We do this by learning to ‘hear’ the Tao, and we do that by creating silence, by being passive.[18] Kierkegaard advocates much the same thing. He tells that that in order to enter into the sphere of Religiousness B, “the first thing, the unconditional condition for anything to be done, consequently the very first thing that must be done is to create silence, bring about silence.”[19] He also writes, “The man has so much to do, has so much, far too much, to do with the noisy world – if you do not see to it that everything is in order, that silence is there, then silence will never enter your house.”[20] In the silence of inwardness one encounters the Absolute. When one becomes silent and passive, obstacles that inhibit the cultivation of inwardness are removed and one is in a position to uncover the Absolute. Similarly, Taoists advocate withdrawal from uselessly speculative and ‘objective’ thinking in order to focus intently on the Tao. This involves letting go of false conceptions, embracing simplicity and plainness, and ‘getting back to one’s original nature’ by making one’s desires few.[21] One eschews merely human conventions, traditions, and conceptual constructions in order that one might encounter the Tao (“that silence might enter one’s house”). The idea here we find ourselves through the moderation of strong desires.[22] On this matter Werner Eichhorn writes:
Because Tao was emptiness, it was also silent, retiring and clear. Therefore, if one wanted to be like Tao one has to become silent, to retire from worldly affairs and empty oneself of all personal desires … Their distinctive belief was that unification with Tao could be brought about by deep thinking and meditation.[23]
There are many stories and poems about Taoist Hermit/Mystic Sages who withdrew from society in the way described above. These stories encourage the reader to emulate the characters in them, and serve to provide motivation or encouragement to the those who want to live in accordance with the Tao in a natural and spontaneous way. It is relevant to consider these stories because they illustrate the wu-wei, “spontaneous non-deliberative action”, which is essential to acting in perfect harmony with the Tao. The characters in these stories are experientially and existentially immersed in the Tao because they have learned the art of wu-wei. This existential immersion in the Tao is occasioned through silence and stillness in precisely the manner Kierkegaard suggests that one becomes rightly related to the Absolute.
3.5 Having Been Transformed into a Genuine Subject, the Taoist Rightly Relates to Oneself, to Others, and to the Tao
For Taoists, to be virtuous is to have the mind of heaven. To have the mind of heaven is to empty oneself of one’s false conceptions about self, and then to realize that one becomes a ‘true self’, or Sage, only by becoming ‘full of heaven.’[24] Humans who are out of step with the Tao ought to “correct their subjective natures” and become “restored to their original natures” so as to become harmonious with the Tao.[25] The way to relate to oneself through the Tao is through subjective experience of Tao as Function. Lao Tzu maintains that we ought to turn away from objectivity and logical argumentation towards the cultivation of subjectivity and inwardness through actions that culminate in one’s properly relating to the Absolute. Chuang Tzu writes:
Looking for tao we see no form; hearing for it we hear no sound. As for those who discuss it, we say they are obscured indeed. When they discuss tao they miss it and misrepresent it.[26]
and
Moreover, extensive knowledge does not necessarily know it; reasoning will not necessarily make people wise in it. The sages are against these means.[27]
The goal is to acquire, “the clear intelligence peculiar to the enlightened and wise men” that is necessary in order to become a Sage.[28] The clear intelligence of the Sage regards his or her knowing how to act in harmony with the tao. Chuang Tzu writes,
The sage comprehends the connections between himself and others, and how they all go to constitute him and of one body with them, and he does not know how it is so; - he naturally does so. … he (simply) follows the direction of Heaven; and it is in consequence of this that men style him (a sage).[29]
The upshot is that humans who fail to relate properly to the Tao are like those who are in Religiousness A – they are unhappy, anxious, and discordant. By contrast, those who follow Tao are happy, joyful, and complete. The Taoist Sage is rightly related to the Tao as Absolute and so spontaneously and naturally acts in accord with his or her nature and thus loves others appropriately and completely without distinction and without partiality. The Sage has true jen, or human heartedness, and embodies the true virtues of “gentleness, peaceful perseverance, and sympathy.”[30] True jen is a gift from the Tao; it is not found by striving of the sort the Confucians advocated but by acting in accord with wu-wei. It is in this spirit that Lao Tzu writes “Those of highest Virtue do not strive for Virtue and so they have it.”[31] In effect, the Taoist Sage advocates agape love and affirms the Greatest Commandment, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
It is well known that Kierkegaard acknowledges that so-called pagans can be closer to the truth than so-called Christians. Although they are literally idolaters, Christlike Pagans pray in truth to the True God with the “passion of infinity.” Conversely, Idolatrous Christians who pray before the True God without subjectivity, without passion or inwardness pray before God as if he were a mere object or idol.[32] Now, one mark of being a true Christian is that one has agape love for one’s neighbor. Hence, that a Christlike Pagan has agape love for one’s neighbor is a sign that he or she is rightly related to the True God. Furthermore, we would expect a Christlike Pagan to explicitly advocate universal love and to maintain that such love is possible only if one is in fact rightly related to the Absolute. I have shown that we find this in Taoism. Accordingly, we have a strong reason to think that genuine Taoists may be considered to be Christlike Pagans and that Taoism is a form of Religiousness B. Another way of putting this is that genuine Christians, in Kierkegaard’s sense, are Taoist-like sages.
4. Conclusion
The arguments in sections 3.1 – 3.5 constitute a strong case for thinking that Taoism is a form of Religiousness B. We have seen that there is a deep existential commonality between the Taoists and Kierkegaard. Both share a notion of the Absolute as the ground of the possibility of becoming a genuine subject. Both maintain that only those who are fully engaged and immersed in the Absolute Tao are genuine subjects and both affirm that it is through the cultivation of subjectivity and inwardness, made possible by the operation of the Absolute Tao, that one becomes a genuine subject. Further, both maintain that a mark of rightly relating to the Absolute is universal love for all persons regardless of distinction. For these reasons I conclude that Taoism is a legitimate manifestation of Religiousness B.
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[1] Merold Westphal, Becoming a Self: A Reading of Kierkegaard’s Concluding Unscientific Postscript, (Purdue: Purdue University Press, 1996) 176.
[2] Westphal, Becoming a Self: A Reading of Kierkegaard’s Concluding Unscientific Postscript, 175.
[3] Soren Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments. Volume I, edited and translated by Howard Hong and Edna Hong. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992) 208 – 209.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments. Volume I, 556.
[6] Westphal, Becoming a Self: A Reading of Kierkegaard’s Concluding Unscientific Postscript, 15 – 18.
[7] But we must be careful. Kierkegaard did not reject objective thinking, or speculative reasoning, completely. He was not a relativist, nor did he reject the view that objective truth is correspondence to reality. His point is that for religion to be reduced to objective truth is to miss the point completely. Truth, in matters of faith, is subjectivity.
[8] Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments, Volume I, 203.
[9] Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments, Volume I, 559 – 560.
[10] Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments, Volume I, 560.
[11] Charles Wei-Hsun Fu “Lao Tzu’s Conception of Tao”, Philosophical Questions East and West, edited by Bina Gupta and J.N. Mohanty (New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2000), 50.
[12] Translating ‘sheng’ this way has its virtues. For one, ‘Westerners’ typically complain that the Tao te Ching makes little or no sense, but primarily, I think this gives us a good reason to accept Wei-Hsun Fu’s suggestion, his philosophical re-ordering of the passage.
[13] One important point of difference between Taoists and Kierkegaard is that Taoists seek a ‘return to the Tao’ based on nature, and consider the ideal relationship to the Tao to be like unto the relation that other animals in nature share with the Tao. This would imply that animals, too, can know the Tao. Kierkegaard doesn’t think that animals are separated from God in an analogous way, nor, therefore, does he think that animals can enter into relationships with the Absolute in the way that humans can. The upshot is that Taoists think that humans are not other than animals, whereas Kierkegaard surely thinks are other than animals in that only humans can relate to God in the way described in Religiousness B. However, Taoists and Kierkegaard believe that human activity has separated humans from the Tao, and that humans need to return to the Absolute in a way that animals do not. Hence, they both affirm that humans are ‘fallen.’
[14] Wei-Hsun Fu “Lao Tzu’s Conception of Tao”, 56.
[15] Chan, Wing-Tsit. A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy. Translated and complied by Wing-Tsit Chan. (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1963), 316 – 317.
[16] Wing-Tsit, A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy, 317.
[17] As an added bonus, we also see more clearly the paradoxical nature of the Tao, and the way that Taoists bend language to poetically gesture at the Tao not so as to explain its essence or nature, but in order to give Taoist practitioners a way to encounter the Tao in the space of lived experience. And so we have another set of reasons to think that Taoism is paradoxically dialectical.
[18] See especially chapters 12, 14, 16, 19, and 63 of the Tao te Ching.
[19] Soren Kierkegaard, For Self-Examination, “What is Required”, edited and translated by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton University Press: New Jersey, 1990), 47.
[20] Kierkegaard, For Self-Examination, “What is Required”, 50.
[21] See chapters 16 and 19 of the Tao te Ching.
[22] Tao Te Ching, 19.
[23] Werner Eichhorn, “Taoism”, Encyclopedia of the World’s Religions, edited by R.C. Zaehner (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1997), 375.
[24] On this matter Chuang Tzu writes “life is not your possession; it is from heaven and earth and its end is harmony. Nature is not your possession; it is from heaven and earth and its end is to be complied with. See Chuang Tzu, The Texts of Taoism Part II: The T’ai Shang Tractate and the Writings of Chuang Tzu, translated by James Legge (Dover: New York, 1962) chapter 22, 4.
[25] Finazzo draws out these points from these and similar passages in his book page 208. Giancarlo Finazzo, The Notion of Tao in Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu, Mei Ya publications Inc: Taipe, Taiwan, 1968.
[26] Chuang Tzu, The Texts of Taoism: The T’ai Shang Tractate: The Writings of Chuang Tzu, translated by James Legge, (Dover: New York, 1962) 67 – 70.
[27] Chuang Tzu, The Writings of Chuang Tzu pages 63 – 66.
[28] Giancarlo Finazzo, The Notion of Tao in Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu, 14.
[29] Chuang Tzu, The Writings of Chuang Tzu XXV, 2, pages 115-116.
[30] Finazzo, The Notion of Tao in Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu, 46.
[31] Finazzo, The Notion of Tao in Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu, 38.
[32] Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments, 201.