For Monday: Laozi, The Daodejing

For Monday: Laozi, the Daodejing (pp.780-790)

Answer TWO of the following…

1. What metaphors do the poems employ to explain “the Way”?  How do these metaphors help us see or understand what it might be?  Are they all consistent, or do some of them contradict each other?  Discuss at least one poem in your response. 

2. Though the poems seem to be vaguely spiritual in nature, many of them are explicitly about running an empire, such as XVII (pg.785).  What, according to these poems, makes a good ruler?  What do people need to be ruled?  Does this accord with Western ideas of justice and democracy?  Consider lines such as “Exterminate the sage, discard the wise” in poem XIX (pg.786). 

3. Which poem(s) makes absolutely no sense to you?  Explain why it doesn’t make sense: what metaphors, words, ideas, or references seem to block your understanding?  Briefly consider what they might be (or be pointing to) in your response.  In other words, try to think aloud on paper as you consider why it doesn’t make sense and what it might mean if you had to come up with an answer. 

4. A constant idea that we find in these poems is “a thing is sometimes added to by being diminished and diminished by being added to” (XLII, pg.789).  What do you think this means, and why is it so essential for the philosophy of the Tao te Ching? 

5. Is the Tao te Ching against learning—or teaching?  We see over and over again the idea that “to know is not to know,” so what is the point of knowing?  If good words are not good, and bad words are not bad, what should one learn and teaching according to the work?  Or is there another way to understand this?