In response to the passages I cited in an earlier posting (from the Zhuangzi and the Dao de jing) that seem to suggest that dao is a "metaphysical entity" of some kind, Dan Robins wrote,
>Learning a dao involves learning to mark certain distinctions and how to respond appropriately to the categories thus marked out. I must be able, for example, to tell apart noble and base, and to act in certain ways to people counted as noble and people counted as base. Daoists were skeptical both of these categorisations and of the responses. They denied they accorded with some pre-existent natural reality. In modern terms, they argued that the distinctions marked out by daos and the triggered responses that go along with them are socially constructed. It is because of daos that we distinguish "sky" and "ground", and because of daos that we treat ghosts and emperors as spiritual or daemonic (shen). The various limits of time and space are also marked out by daos, but the daos do not thereby count as high, deep, long-lived or old. Daos are social and perhaps largely linguistic. They are not metaphysical absolutes. But they are still extremely weird.
If the "distinctions marked out by daos ... are socially constructed," then humans and their societies must exist prior to the dao. But what the passages from both Zhuangzi chapter 6 and Dao de jing ch. 25 clearly state is that the dao (or "a dao") exists prior to everything in the natural world (i.e., prior to "Heaven and Earth"), and, in fact, creates Heaven and Earth. It looks to me like you are caught in a dilemma: if the dao is something created by humans, then the dao cannot exist prior to the world of which humans are a part; if the dao does exist prior to the world of which humans are a part, then it is not a social construct.
>Then he [Hansen] argues against
>"meaning-change" hypotheses. His conclusion is that a term with a well-established philosophical meaning is not likely to be given a radically different meaning by other philosophers without them pointing out the meaning-change. We would wonder about someone who used a word to refer to a social teaching and also of a pre- social absolute, without explicitly marking a distinction between these uses -- especially if the claim is that one should achieve the absolute through unlearning the teachings.
But there are clear precedents in the history of philosophy for a thinker hypostatizing a term which previously had a concrete meaning. The word EIDOS in Classical Greek originally referred to the visible form or shape of a concrete object. Plato adopts the term to refer to his transcendent entities (the Form of Beauty, of the Good, etc.). Then Aristotle uses the very same term to refer to the immanent form or structure of a particular thing. Now, I am not saying that dao is like either Aristotle or Plato's forms; I'm just pointing out that the kind of "meaning change" which you find so implausible frequently occurs in the history of philosophy.
Furthermore, the "Taoists" do warn us that they are using the term dao in a new way. This is part of the rhetorical force of the paradox the opens the Dao de jing (ch. 1 in the Wang Bi text): "A way that can be spoken of is not a constant way." The text is warning us that it is going to be using old words in new ways.
Best wishes,
Bryan William Van Norden
Date created: 10/28/96 Last modified: 10/28/96 Questions? Contact: Stephen C. Angle