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Pragmatism and the Dao: Laozi Versus Zhuangzi

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Pragmatism and the Dao: Laozi Versus Zhuangzi Who is the more Pragmatic Daoist – Laozi or Zhuangzi? In recent years, a philosophical position that was introduced in the late nineteenth century – known as pragmatism – has again become the vogue. In the world of academic philosophy, thinkers such as Richard Bernstein, James Conant, Hilary Putnam and Richard Rorty have brought it back into the mainstream of American thought. In the popular media, the word has been used with increasing frequency, especially in reference to President Barack Obama (albeit in a sense at which many professional philosophers might balk). Simply put, pragmatism has become a buzz word, and this rise in its popularity may help explain yet another increase – viz. in the number of philosophers outside of the United States, and from disparate schools of thought, who are being labeled “pragmatic” in recent scholarship. The area of philosophy which focuses on east-west comparison has seen such an increase, as well. Respected professionals like Roger Ames, Richard Shusterman, and Chad Hansen (among others) have given well researched and reasonable accounts of how various Chinese philosophies resonate with pragmatic themes. Interestingly, much of this work tends to focus on the Confucian tradition more than the school of thought known as Daoism. In what follows, I should like to offer a heuristic for this type of (admittedly anachronistic) consideration within the philosophies of the two most prominent daoist sages – Laozi and Zhuangzi. When applying the term pragmatism to thinkers who, like Laozi and Zhuangzi, are far removed from it in time and space, it is vitally important to make clear what is meant by ‘pragmatism.’ Like any “-ism,” pragmatism has been so overused that it has been rendered nearly vacuous in contemporary discourse. Pragmatism has traversed a 1 rougher road than most, though, as it has been used, on occasion, to identify seemingly contradictory positions.1 Moreover, in public consciousness, pragmatism has taken on a separate, non-technical meaning that is almost completely antithetical to its technical uses. Clearly, pragmatism seems to resist attempts at succinct definition, however, one angle of attack might be a delineation of the features that set pragmatism apart from other schools of thought. Thus, before turning our attention to which Daoist should be considered more pragmatic, some clean-up work is in order. Pragmatism grew up in a tumultuous time in American history, when thinkers were grasping at theoretical straws, hoping to find a way to make sense of the political and intellectual turmoil. It is often referred to as the only school of thought native to American soil. The commonly told story names Cambridge as its birthplace, where a group of young Harvard intellectuals (including C.S. Peirce, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and William James) met to discuss philosophy and science. Peirce is credited with coining the term pragmatism, Holmes with applying it to the law, James with popularizing its philosophical tenets and John Dewey – a student of Peirce and correspondent of James – with correcting many of its initial shortcomings. But, this account is simplistic and somewhat inaccurate, as pragmatism did not arise ex nihilo (springing up out of the ground) but instead brought together aspects of many other schools of thought, many of them just as “American” in origin. Hilary Putnam, for one, has argued that pragmatism can be distinguished by four basic theses: 1) antiskepticism, 2) fallibilism, 3) distrust of the fact/value distinction, and 1 Cf. the uses of pragmatism by contemporary thinkers like Richard Rorty and Susan Haack, or A.O. Lovejoy’s famous polemic of “The Thirteen Pragmatisms” 2 4) an assertion that “practice is primary in philosophy.”2 Yet, it should be noted that pragmatism shares an emphasis on philosophical practicality with one of its precursors, transcendentalism, which came into its own with Emerson’s 1836 essay “Nature.” This fact has sometimes been overlooked in the literature but is significant nonetheless because transcendentalism laid the groundwork for pragmatism in several ways. With the appearance of Emerson’s Phi Beta Kappa Address entitled “The American Scholar,” transcendentalism made the first declaration of American intellectual independence. Many of the transcendentalists – most notably Thoreau and Margaret Fuller – published tracts on social and political issues of the day in addition to their philosophical offerings. Perhaps most importantly, the transcendentalists had a strong influence on the childhood of both Peirce and James, whose fathers were active in the social circles of the transcendentalist movement. Pragmatism also shares its antiskepticism and mistrust of the fact/value distinction with another American movement known as naturalism. While many pragmatists adopted some form of naturalist sentiments, the two lines of thought remain distinguishable. Naturalism, as the term was used during that time, was primarily an ontological view, whereas pragmatism was seen as more of an epistemological position. Historically, there have been self-identified naturalists who were not pragmatists (George Santayana) just as there have been pragmatists who did not subscribe to naturalism (Josiah Royce). Thus, the only one of Putnam’s four theses that might be unique to pragmatism is its fallibilism, and though it certainly is a feature of other philosophies, pragmatism offers perhaps the only systematic treatment of the idea – viz. Peirce’s notion of inquiry, which 2 Putnam, Hilary. “Pragmatism and Moral Objectivity.” In Words and Life. Ed. by J. Conant (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994) pg. 152 3 was later expounded upon by Dewey. In a nutshell, their view drew heavily upon philosophical realizations about the scientific method. As Peirce put it, “In sciences in which men come to agreement, when a theory has been broached it is considered to be on probation until this agreement is reached.”3 Dewey echoed this sentiment, years later, with his instrumentalist view, which called for philosophers to give up their hopeless “quest for certainty.”4 On their view, the search for knowledge was a ceaseless endeavor, and, as such, those who took it up were required to continuously revise and adjust their beliefs. It would seem that while Putnam’s four theses are necessary conditions in calling a particular view pragmatic, a robust fallibilism might be the only one that is sufficient as well. In the very least it seems to be the deciding factor for determining if any particular thinker can properly be called pragmatic. Therefore, using Putnam’s work as a heuristic device, we might better discern which daoist sage offered the more pragmatic vision. I will begin my analysis of pragmatism and the dào with Laozi, who is traditionally believed to be Zhuangzi’s predecessor.5 According to legend, when Laozi was asked to put his ideas on paper by a border official in exchange for passage, he penned the Dàodéjīng [道德經]. A collection of 81 chapters in verse form, the Dàodéjīng (or “Classic of the Way and Virtue”) is considered the most important text in the Daoist canon. The main topics of the text are the metaphysics of dào [道], or “the way,” and how these notions can be applied in moral life to attain “virtue,” i.e. dé [德]. Commentators have disagreed about which of these two components is the main focus of the text. Those 3 Peirce, C.S. “The Rules of Philosophy,” from Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce. ed. by Charles Hartshorne and Paul Weiss. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1934) pgs 156-158 4 cf. Dewey, John. The Quest for Certainty – The Collected Works of John Dewey, 1882-1953. 37 volumes. (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1967-1987) LW 4 5 Although the accuracy of this claim has been called into question more recently, my objective is to analyze the philosophical notions only, and therefore I will follow the canonical account throughout the remainder of this essay. 4 who give primacy to the former, typically interpret the Dàodéjīng as a mystical document, whereas their opponents usually view it as a moral treatise. Evidence of this debate can be found in the various translations of the first line of the text, which reads (in the Hanyu Pinyin romanization) dào kě dào fēi cháng dào6, which is most often translated along the lines of, “The way that can be spoken of is not the constant Way.”7 This may be seen as a declaration of the ineffability of dào, and ipso facto, evidence for a mystical reading. However, another way to read this first line might be, “The path worth following is not an unchanging one.” This would render the text not as an endorsement of ineffability, but rather as advancing a normative principle intended to show that the best course (or dào) of action is one that is open to revision, which would seem to be the epitome of fallibilism. For now, I will leave this issue aside in order to focus on other passages from the text that seem to relate to pragmatist precepts. The most obvious feature that the Dàodéjīng shares in common with pragmatism is the dissolution of the fact/value distinction, i.e. the separation of descriptive from prescriptive claims. Chinese philosophy, in general, tends to be far less dualistic than its Western counterpart, and Daoism is perhaps the most holistic of all the major Chinese schools of thought. The theme permeates the Dàodéjīng. For example, in chapter 42, we are told that living organisms are the embodiment of nature’s generative forces (yīn and yáng) and thus doing violence against them inevitably leads to an unnatural end. However, the passage that is most indicative of Laozi’s aversion to an “is-ought” dichotomy is found in Chapter 51, which reads, “the way is revered and virtue honored 6 Literally: “Way worthy of Way, not unchanging Way.” 7 Laozi, Tao Te Ching.
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