Questions tagged [tao]

6 questions
11
votes
6 answers

Is the Dao a thing or an action?

Studying the Dao as a Westerner, I am constantly perplexed by the ineffability of the Dao. It always strikes me as though I should be able to attach properties to a noun, even if that property is merely "ineffable." Looking at the words people use…
Cort Ammon
  • 17,336
  • 23
  • 59
6
votes
4 answers

If we stick to "The Way" in Taoism, won't it be sinful?

The short question is: if we stick to The Way in Tao Te Ching, won't that be sinful? That's because, The Way seems to be the "most natural way". For example, if we know the manager likes flattering, we flatter her and then once we know she is friend…
Stefanie Gauss
  • 383
  • 1
  • 10
2
votes
1 answer

Pu, or the uncarved block, in the book of Tao

I recall, that when I read the book of Tao as a teen, there was one verse/chapter which really stuck with me. It went something like this: If you have an ucarved block and you carve it into a spoon, then you have a spoon. But that spoon is worth…
timthelion
  • 169
  • 6
1
vote
1 answer

Could the Tao be understood as the haecceity of the world?

The Tao-te Ching begins by saying that: The Tao that can be trodden is not the enduring and unchanging Tao. The name that can be named is not the eternal and unchanging name. Yet this ineffable origin of all things has much that is said of it,…
Kristian Berry
  • 9,561
  • 1
  • 12
  • 33
1
vote
2 answers

Did Heraclitus say this?

In Hyperion, Holderlin has his protagonist say: "The great, saying, the one differentiated in itself, of Heraclitus, could only be found by a Greek, for it is the very thing of Beauty and before that there was no philosophy" Did Heraclitus say…
Mozibur Ullah
  • 1
  • 14
  • 88
  • 234
-1
votes
1 answer

Plato, the Tao, and the "first number"

My understanding of Benacerraf's identification problem breaks this problem into two subquestions. There is the format issue (the one that leads to the possible "junk theorems") and then there is the "first number" issue, i.e. whether to start from…
Kristian Berry
  • 9,561
  • 1
  • 12
  • 33