REL 101 Class notes, Week 5, Lectures 2-3, Week 6 Lectures 1-2

550-450 BCE: Laozi, first great Daoist
350-250 BCE: Zhuangzi, second great Daoist

Daoism: Laozi and Zhuangzi

  1. Laozi and Zhuangzi, the founding figures of Daoism

Laozi: The Old Master

  1. The Popularity of the Laozi
  2. The legend of the Book of Laozi, otherwise known as:
  3. The Daodejing (Book of the Way and the Power/Virtue)
  4. The emergence of the myriad things out of the unspoken Dao

 

 

  1. Oneness and Twoness: Yin and Yang Nonduality
    1. Activity and Receptivity; Light and Dark
    2. Differentiation and Oneness; Being and Nonbeing
    3. Peak and Valley; Male Principle and Female Principle
  2. Verse and the Expression of Daoist Philosophy


Zhuangzi: The Village Master

  1. The Book of Zhuangzi
  2. The Character Zhuangzi versus the Author Zhuangzi
  3. The Problem: Mental Static
    1. Too much thinking, wrong-headed thinking
    2. Great Understanding and Little Understanding (p. 32)
  4. Perspectivalism -> Dissolution of Boundaries -> Oneness (pp. 40-41, 44, 38)
  5. Living in the Dao: The Hinge and the Socket (p. 35)
  6. Populating the Dao:
    1. Cook Ding (pp. 45-46)
    2. Crippled Shu and the Madman of Chu (pp. 61-62)
    3. Woodworker Qing (p. 129)
  7. Three Uses of Language
    1. Logical Analysis: Beginning, This & That (pp. 38, 35)
    2. Language of Scale: Myth
      1. The Kun Fish and the Peng Bird (p. 23)
      2. The Quail and the Peng Bird (p. 25)
    3. Paradox (p. 38)
      Additional Notes:
  • Laozi (Lao Tzu) vs Zhuangzi (Chuang Tzu)
  • Retreat from world vs Living in the world but not be of it
  • Laozi: agrarian ideal - return to small farming communities
  • Both emphasize Undoing, rather than Doing, but Zhuangzi is more internal than Laozi