TAOISM – HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE | Philosophical Guidance

“These peoples are superior to all other Asiatics in antiquity, art, intellect, wisdom, policy, and in their taste for philosophy…” – Diderot¹

Chinese political and intellectual history is both ancient and complex.² An advanced civilization developed in China at least 5000 years ago, although written records date back only to about 1500 B.C.E. Ultimate reality was viewed initially, as in most cultures, as a confusion of superstition, magic, polytheism, and ritual.

Following the fall of the Zhou (Chou) emperor in the 8^th century B.C.E., a period of squabbling feudal lords brought about sustained political instability into which were born China’s two greatest philosophers: the sixth century B.C.E. rough contemporaries – Confucius and Laozi. They offered alternate philosophical approaches to individual endurance and societal resolution of the volatile conditions existing in their time.

The better known, Confucius, was mainly a philosopher of ethics and politics. Adversity and instability could be overcome by means of individual moral behavior and virtuous governance. His humanist teachings were recorded by his students in the classic, Analects of Confucius.³ Later followers, especially Mencius, honed his teachings into a system that endured as government-sanctioned doctrine and policy into the twentieth century. Confucianism remained mostly silent on ultimate reality until it merged with Taoism and Buddhism much later to form NeoConfucianism.

Meanwhile, Laozi (previously Lao Tzu) was primarily a spiritual thinker, who blended a natural metaphysics with mystical experience to inform a kind of wisdom ethics centered on the value of quietism and wu-wei or effortless action. His only written work – and even that of apocryphal origin – is the very short Daodejing (historically called the Tao Te Ching). His greatest follower, Zhuangzi (previously Chuang Tzu), developed Laozi’s obscure teachings into poetic lessons more accessible to the ordinary person. Taoism had a mixed history, sometimes regional and practiced secretly when out of favor and other times state-sponsored by rulers who suppressed Confucianism and Buddhism. With the advent of the NeoConfucian amalgam, many of its metaphysical principles were accepted throughout China.