Category Archives: Metaphysics

Why Spinoza, Why Now? Essay Two, by Charles Saunders

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Portrait of Baruch de Spinoza (1632-1677), ca. 1665, by an unknown artist

A Reason to Believe
Spinoza’s Explication of the Many Facets of the Divinity
In Ethics Part One – Concerning God

Plus, a Challenge for the Reader – Pascal’s Wager with a 21st Century Twist

(Find Part One here)

Spinoza’s convention of the Triumvirate of Substance/god/Nature as synonymous interchangeable parts will be adhered to throughout this essay.

On our contemporary scene, where arguments for or against the existence of God are quietly receding into the background, the question of why to re-introduce the nearly ancient Pascal’s Wager concerning the existence of God, even with a so-called twenty-first-century twist, might appear as nothing more than a quaint anachronism.

Nevertheless, since it meanwhile appears evident that the significance and import of Spinoza’s designation of Substantia sive Deus sive Natura (Substance or God or Nature) as the cornerstone of his masterwork, and precisely why the Ethics and the subject matter of ‘Part One – Concerning God’ has not received its due as the most accurate depiction of the undeniable existence and nature of the Divinity, it is now the time to re-visit Pascal’s appellation and Spinoza’s assertion.

Pascal’s Wager is an argument in philosophy presented by the seventeenth-century French philosopher, mathematician and physicist Blaise Pascal (1623–62). It posits that humans bet with their lives that God either exists or does not.

Summary of Pascal’s Wager: Believing in God has an infinite expected utility. Not believing in God has a finite gain or negative expected utility. Believing in God has a much higher expected utility than not believing in God. You should do that which has the higher expected utility.

In the vernacular- If one acts as if God exists and God does exist, then that person wins the wager. If one acts as if God does not exist and God does exist then that person loses for eternity. Therefore, we should make our wager that God does exist.

Brief Capsule – Contemporary Science in Support of Substance/God/Nature?

Everything which we have so far learned from the application of the scientific method about the extended universe tends toward supporting Spinoza’s concept of the one substance which constitutes the being of and beyond that which serves as the cause of everything. This assertion of Spinoza is often referred to as Substance Monism. His specific version of this theory is that Substance or God or Nature is the immanent cause of all creation. Nothing exists outside of God. This is very challenging to grasp. Spinoza employed this triumvirate terminology to amplify and make explicit that the three terms enfold and envelope one into the other to form one being: Totius Facies Universi, or The Face of the Universe.

Milky Way, by Unsplash, Creative Commons via Pixabay, cropped

Meanwhile, in the scientific recounting, life as we know it began with the weirdly named Big Bang Theory, which posits that all objects in the known universe emanated from one source. This source originated in an unimaginably huge detonation which exploded from its compressed state and transformed itself into all of the matter and the dark matter which taken together account for all that is visible, invisible, and measurable: galaxies, constellations, solar systems, planets, and people.

Each of these objects, considered individually, is comprised of concatenations of elements in the atomic table. That is, the chemical composition and physical exchanges of energy are all replicated from the outer reaches of the cosmos, down to the deepest depths of the oceans.

The chemical composition of gaseous matter present during the birth of stars and the molecular chemical structure of the cause of life forms on earth stand in direct relation. They can be said to be constituted as one contiguous whole. That is exactly how Spinoza described the Facies totius universi, or Face of the Entire Universe. Spinoza put it this way in Part 2; given time, the similitude will become clear.

PROP. XXVIII. Every individual thing, or everything which is finite and has a conditioned existence, cannot exist or be conditioned to act, unless it be conditioned for existence and action by a cause other than itself, which also is finite, and has a conditioned existence ; and likewise this cause cannot in its turn exist, or be conditioned to act, unless it be conditioned for existence and action by another cause, which also is finite, and has a conditioned existence, and so on to infinity.

Along with similar atomic and molecular elements, all life forms further share the source of their inception: unimaginably potent pressure and energy, fueled by either fission or fusion.

The Big Bang, which for our purposes can be considered at the very least as the proximate cause of the universe, begat the matter which forms virtually each and every elemental structure to include all of the heavenly bodies and all planetary life forms.

Long before it would have been conceived possible, Spinoza intuited one self-caused substance which could not be conceived of as other than existing, and which further must be understood to comprise a state of infinite being. This essentially pairs Spinoza’s contention with what science describes as the makeup of the elements in the universe.

If the enormity of the size of the known universe can be somehow captured and reflected upon by the individual human mind, one thought and understanding emerges and remains inescapable.

This thought is not ephemeral or phantasmagorical; it lies in the formation and presence in the human mind of the concept which takes the form of an adequate idea. That idea is of one eternal substance; essentially this is God. The type of thinking required to entertain these thoughts, which we can term expansive.

What that indicates is that to effectively imagine, before the mind’s-eye, a facsimile of the expanded universe, we need to suspend disbelief and allow our perspective to enlarge. This might sound farfetched, but in a relaxed setting, an individual can expand the range of their thinking.

Spinoza maintained that every adequate idea in the human mind exists only because of its correlate, an existing object in extension. Every idea in our minds effectively exists by mirroring objective reality.

In Spinoza’s description of reality, this reflexive interaction between our thoughts and our experience in the world comprises the source of the self-evident truth. Once we can become comfortable with this method of seeing our minds at work, the possibilities to explore and understand more about the nature of our lives becomes doable.

Spinoza’s bequest to us lends us the ability to realize that human perception is not inherently flawed. It simply needs to be recognized, embraced, honed, and developed to its fullest extent.

Further, the ability of an individual person to encapsulate God’s essence within its individuality in the form of an idea in the mind is the only proof required for the existence of God. If we can understand it adequately, then it [God] exists. This may sound like foolish nonsense, but it is not.

Spinoza said that ‘…the finite demonstrates clearly the existence of the infinite.’ This fundamental understanding is ours for the taking. The time and strenuous mental energy which must be exerted to accomplish this understanding on our parts is a given and a necessity.

At the point in time when God’s essence and existence become clear in our minds, it will hit like the proverbial ton of bricks. But it will feel most welcome indeed.

This is not a religious experience.

Rather, it consists in the recognition of the marvelous interconnection in a world where we reside inside a huge dome of breathable oxygen and walk each day on an orb rotating at thousands of miles per hour while this same orb is hurtling through space at enormous speed. And what do we feel? Nothing whatsoever; in fact, we believe that when we stop moving that we are standing still.

Micro-evolution, in terms of the human mind and its capacity to self-reflect and to contemplate the origins of life itself, began to develop long ago. At some point in human evolution, we discovered within us what evolved into an innate skill to intuitively see through our extended world and to grasp intuitively the essence of substance itself. The concept of substance is not a picture which we can form in our minds, but rather an intuitional grasp.

This innate capability resides in a state of potential in every person born on this planet, regardless of geography, ethnicity, or cultural affinity.

Spinoza called this capability scientia intuitiva, or intuitive understanding. We may simply refer to it as understanding God as we stand in awe at the immensity of life.

More layers of complexity within Substance

It must be readily admitted that substance/God/nature remains indeed a strange concept. Positing something that is the cause of everything else in the universe while at the same time insisting that it is the cause of itself, and further has no observable presence in any object and can only be grasped indirectly through intuition, can certainly be viewed as difficult to comprehend.

The term substance has always been with us throughout the history of ideas, and has been employed as an attempt to capture in a single word something which is difficult to speak about or to clearly comprehend.

Spinoza chose it quite consciously to serve as the bedrock of his entire ontological and metaphysical structure. As such, it is up to each of us to struggle to capture his usage and intended meaning.

How can a person-less, non-judgmental God make any difference in our lives?

If, as Spinoza maintains, there is no persona or purpose in God, some might say that there now remains no need to speak of any type of god or substance whatsoever.

And so, the question must arise: why did Spinoza, a person who wrote only with single-minded purpose, begin his Ethics with a book chapter entitled ‘Concerning God’? If there is no one to pray to or to judge us or to ask for intercession, why bother pushing the point?

The answer must be that Spinoza realized that no other concept can replace this true encapsulation-in-identity of Nature and of God and of Substance displayed in the magnitude and incomparable beauty of the totality of creation. The moniker God, when placed before each human mind, is a concept so lofty that Spinoza consciously employed it to capture our undivided attention and our total respect. After all of the elapsed time since religiosity first became called into question, and once all religious ceremony and even organized religion itself falls away,

God/Substance/Nature remains alive and functioning as a necessary cause in each of us. We can know this and feel it in real time. And yes, we can feel reverent about human life, which we all share, and about this cosmos in which we live.

Artist’s logarithmic scale conception of the observable universe with the Solar System, Creative Commons via Wikimedia Commons

To be capable of grasping this significance and of internalizing its relevance in our lives may be the task of a lifetime, but this twist, as it were on the biblical notion of God, must still deserve our obeisance and love and obedience, even though this God has no persona, no anger, and no judgment, and requires nothing whatsoever from us. The arising of life on earth and our evolution from a salamander, 50,000,000 years ago, into today’s mindful person is a testimony in itself to the mystery and wonder in our universe.

Our next question must then become; what proof is there of this god’s existence, and how must we approach our understanding of the cause of itself to make it relevant in our lives?

The answer to this is strange and more than a bit bewildering at first because, in fact, we humans and our conatus or self-assertive impulse, serves as that demonstration. That is, our striving to sustain ourselves both as individuals and as a community, coupled with our innate cognitive function termed natural light of reason or guided intelligence, are the beginnings of the awareness of and proof of the existence of an intelligence and a self-instigated operability of universal procreation, maintenance, and regeneration.

What Spinoza recognized in his own intelligence and ability to contemplate the nature of God’s essence was that that capability, in and of itself, indicated that our adequate ideas must be sourced in the divine intelligence which brought virtually everything to life.

At some point, Spinoza realized that what he was thinking about the extent of the universe and the cause of the shaping of the world around him were not the products of his imagination. He saw that his thoughts were a mirror of what actually exists out there in space/eternity. What his mind was experiencing was a mirroring effect; a facsimile of everything in God’s creation.

Spinoza insisted that denying the existence and reality of God is tantamount to denying our own existence. Yes, this is difficult to understand, and no, it is not a threat or a put-down. It is an invitation to set our lives on a trajectory which leads to peace of mind and acquiescence to the necessity of what drives our micro-evolution forward.

In other words, because our ideas, when clearly and distinctly understood, must always have as their source an entity from which an image in our minds is formulated, then those ideas can only come from something everlasting and eternal and real. That source or object is and only can be God.

And now we have reached the place where a summary of what has been suggested must be joined with a recognition of our own mortality to formulate a Pascalian Wager with a 21st-Century Twist.

One more piece of information on recent discoveries in cosmology and astrophysics.

Scientists, in their never-ending quest to discover the origin of the universe, have detected a disturbing pattern in the subatomic radio-sonic waves which first emanated from the cosmic dust from the Big Bang. There remains an as-yet-indeterminate in nature yet measurable ‘noise’, an echo amidst the residue of the birth of our system which permeates virtually everywhere yet is not sourced from our cosmos. It has led them to begin to postulate a very real potential for alternative universes, juxtaposed in some form of arrangement with our own.

If this is the case, then this discovery supports Spinoza’s assertion that Substance/God/Nature is self-caused, eternal and truly infinite. Let us then summarize what this means to each one of us and why we should accept the affirmative side of this 21st-century wager.

Assume that there is no life after death, no reincarnation, no heavenly reward. This may indeed indicate that for us, our reward does not come after death. Perhaps our piece of eternity consists solely and completely in our lifetimes. So, the wager involves living our lives as if this day and every other one that we may have is our reward. The ‘Gift of Life’ is what Spinoza’s God has bequeathed to us.

This means that our responsibility lies, not in demeaning our existence or complaining about the poverty and disease and inequality we see, but rather to look for and to discover those most positive elements in life. All of the literally billions of happy people who take comfort in their families and the joys felt by being a part of each another’s community, village, city, and nation. If life is our gift then let your wager fall on the side that demands that you make the most of your time here while cheerfully accepting your responsibility to make a positive contribution during your stay on this marvelous planet.

After all, the choice is up to each one of us: shall we take this wager, with a twist, and believe in and act in obedience to our better nature, that little voice which we all hear and which tells us to do the right thing?

There is no time to waste. Now is the time to remember and honor the virtually millions of people who have come before us throughout the millennia. Those who courageously paved our way forward.

Now it is our turn to do our part to consciously work to further this human evolution!

Semper Sapere Aude! (Always Dare to Know!)

Charles M. Saunders

(The bulk of this essay is abridged from ‘To Discern Divinity’- A Discussion and Interpolation of Spinoza’s Ethics Part One – Concerning God by C. M. Saunders, 2016)
Free Download- charlessaunders5.academia.edu

The Logic Behind Spinoza’s Substance in its Simplicity and Irreducibility

This excerpt is from Baruch Spinoza and Western Democracy
Joseph Dunner (1955, The Philosophical Library,15 East 40th Street, New York, 16, N.Y.), pp. 40-41

“…if we assume, the plurality of self-created, self-sufficient substances, God becomes but one of “first causes”, one of many gods, and all His attributes of omnipotence and infinity fall by the wayside.

Indeed, the very notion of a plurality of substances destroys the whole concept of substance. For if we assume the existence of two substances, as Descartes in his distinction between the mental and physical world did, either both substances are caused by a force outside of them, which is contrary to the definition of substance as caused by itself, or one is caused by the other, which again contradicts the definition and makes of substance a finite thing restricted in space and time. Consequently, there can be only one substance which can be defined as causa sui  [Cause of itself], and nothing can exist independent of this one and only substance. This unique substance Spinoza calls Deus sive Natura, God or Nature, implying that only God possesses infinite attributes and that nothing else can exist distinguishable from God and capable of delimiting and modifying Him. If only the theologians could have freed themselves from all anthropomorphic and anthropocentric fixations, making God a sort of super-man throned in the sky, they might have realized that Spinoza had given world humanity the most rational and most unfailing God concept ever conceived in history.”

These words from Joseph Dunner were positioned last in this essay both to emphasize the brevity and clarity of his depiction of the Nature of Spinoza’s Substance, and to serve as a takeaway for the reader.

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Which is More Fundamental: Processes or Things? by Celso Vieira

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Glass Half Full or Half Empty by Sealle, public domain via Wikimedia Commons

Metaphysics is the attempt to understand how existence works by examining the building blocks of reality, the distinctions between mental and physical entities, and the fundamental questions of being and reality. But metaphysics is not only an arcane branch of philosophy: human beings use metaphysical assumptions to navigate the world. Assumptions about what exists and what is fundamental exert a powerful influence on our lives. Indeed, the less aware we are of our metaphysical assumptions, the more we are subject to them.

Western metaphysics tends to rely on the paradigm of substances. We often see the world as a world of things, composed of atomic molecules, natural kinds, galaxies. Objects are the paradigmatic mode of existence, the basic building blocks of the Universe. What exists exists as an object. That is to say, things are of a certain kind, they have some specific qualities and well-defined spatial and temporal limits. For instance: Fido is my dog, he is grey, and was born one year ago. (It’s worth noting that such a simple statement will give rise to a litany of metaphysical disputes within substance metaphysics: realists believe that universals, such as the natural kind ‘dogs’, exist while nominalists believe them to be only intellectual abstractions.)

Though substance metaphysics seems to undergird Western ‘common sense’, I think it is wrong. To see this, consider the cliché about the glass of water: is it half-empty or half-full? The question assumes a static arrangement of things serving as a basis for either an optimistic or a pessimistic interpretation. One can engage in interminable disputes about the correct description of the physical set-up, or about the legitimacy of the psychological evaluations. But what if the isolated frame ‘a glass of water’ fails to give the relevant information? Anyone would prefer an emptier glass that is getting full to a fuller one getting empty. Any analysis lacking information about change misses the point, which is just what substance metaphysics is missing. Process philosophers, meanwhile, think we should go beyond looking at the world as a set of static unrelated items, and instead examine the processes that make up the world. Processes, not objects, are fundamental.

The pre-Socratic Greek philosopher Heraclitus provides the most famous image of process metaphysics. ‘It is not possible,’ he says, ‘to step twice into the same river’ – because existence depends on change; the river you step into a second time is changed from the river you stepped into originally (and you have changed in the interval, too). And while substance philosophers will tend to search for the smallest constituent objects in order to locate reality’s most fundamental building blocks, process philosophers think this is insufficient. So do modern physicists. Electrons are now understood as bundles of energy in a field, and quantum vacuum fluctuations prove that there are fields without bundles but no bundles without fields. Things seem to be reducible to processes – and not the reverse. (As the philosopher Alfred North Whitehead put it, we should think about ‘occurrences’ instead of ‘things’.)

Change poses a recurring problem for substance metaphysics. Universals have traditionally been a popular way to circumvent it. These static entities are difficult to define precisely, but can be thought of as ‘hyper-things’ that are instantiated in many different particular things. A universal is the thing that particulars have in common, such as types, kinds and relations. Universals are essentially different from particulars: Aristotle, for instance, argued that particulars – such as Fido my dog – are subject to generation and corruption, while species – the universal – are eternal. This particular example provides another instance in which science seems to favour process metaphysics. Thanks to the theory of evolution, the Aristotelian view that species are unchanging and eternal was proven wrong. Species evolve. They change. Dogs, after all, evolved from wolves to constitute a whole different kind. Once again, we’re better off using the paradigm of change rather than substance.

Process metaphysics leads to a re-evaluation of other important philosophical notions. Consider identity. To explain why things change without losing their identity, substance philosophers need to posit some underlying core – an essence –that remains the same throughout change. It is not easy to pin down what this core might be, as the paradox of Theseus’ ship illustrates. A ship goes on a long voyage and requires significant repairs: new planks to replace the old, fresh oars to replace the decayed, and so on, until, by the time the ship returns to port, there is not one single piece that belonged to the ship when it departed. Is this the same ship, even though materially it is completely different? For substance philosophers, this is something of a paradox; for process philosophers, this is a necessary part of identity. Of course it is the same ship. Identity ceases to be a static equivalence of a thing with itself. After all, without the repairs, the ship would have lost its functionality. Instead, as the German philosopher Nicholas Rescher argues in Ideas in Process (2009), identity just is a programmatic development. That is, the identity of a process is the structural identity of its programme. Other things being equal, every puppy will turn out to be a dog. (This programme need not be thought of as deterministic. The interactions between processes, Rescher argues, open room for variations.)

Processes are not the mere intervals between two different states of affairs or two objects, as the paradox of the heap exemplifies: take a heap of sand and remove one grain. It remains a heap; one grain doesn’t make a difference. But if you repeat the subtraction enough times, eventually there will be just one grain. Clearly, this isn’t a heap. Where did it become a non-heap? By looking at the process, and not the end-states of affairs, you’ll realise the impossibility of pinpointing the boundary between heap and non-heap. (Similarly, no individual was the exact turning point between wolves and dogs.) At the very least, this gives us a warning about the unnoticed abstraction operating on our division of natural kinds. Process philosophers such as Henri Bergson stop at this negative conclusion, believing that processes cannot be known but only experienced. Regardless, as the Danish philosopher Johanna Seibt notes, it might just be the case that focusing on the process requires a whole new perspective.

Looking at the world as a manifold of interconnected processes has scientific and philosophical advantages, but there are more prosaic benefits too. Process philosophy invites us to look at longer stretches of time, blurred boundaries and connected relations. Identity as a programmatic – but not deterministic – process welcomes innovation through small, recurring changes. Under these metaphysical assumptions, a meaningful life is less about finding your ‘real’ self than expanding its boundaries. Aeon counter – do not remove

This article was originally published at Aeon and has been republished under Creative Commons.

Celso Vieira has a PhD in philosophy from the Federal University of Minas Gerais in Brazil. He lives in Belo Horizonte where he started the first Brazilian chapter of the effective altruist group The Life You Can Save. (Bio credit: Aeon)

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Pounding on a Tub: A Short Essay on Zhuangzi, Death, and the Logos by Ryan V. Stewart

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Zhuangzi Butterfly Dream by Ike no Taiga, Japan, 1723-1776, Public domain via Wikimedia CommonsTaoism, to my mind, is one of the world’s most intriguing philosophical and religious traditions. Uniquely Chinese, and yet deeply universal in its message, Taoism, perhaps more than any other mystical system, emphasizes simplicity, mystery, awe, tranquility, spontaneity, and naturalness. (Though Zen Buddhism, as well as Stoicism—granted, not a form of mysticism per se—would give it a run for its money.)

In the past few centuries, growing intrigue in this tradition has brought about a slew of inquiries from spiritually-conflicted Westerners and Orientalist anthropologists, as well as mystics and philosophers then-unfamiliar with, and those still curious about, Taoist and Chinese thought. This includes the general barrage of “big questions” that the world’s religions so often provide answers for: Why am I here? What is my purpose? What happens when I die?

It is this last question—What happens when I die?—that I’d like to focus on here, including, for consideration, the perspective of a very famous—and this is unsurprising—Taoist.

Alongside Laozi—said to be the author of the eponymous Laozi, or Tao Te Ching—there is one other great philosopher who shaped the development of Taoist philosophy: This is Chuang-tzu (or Zhuangzi, as his name is also transliterated), regarded by many as the penultimate thinker or sage in the current of philosophical Taoism. Chuang-tzu’s book, often (as with Laozi) titled after his own name, reads as a series of parables and short stories—many humorous—whereas Laozi’s text is more of a work of verse or creative prose, steeped in obscure symbolism. Either way, the Chuangzu, like its earlier counterpart, touches on both metaphysics and ethics, laying out the way in which action—namely action which is virtuous (de) and “effortless” (wu wei)—follows from a deep understanding of the fundamental nature of oneself and the cosmos, both reifying and stemming from an existence marked by tranquility and happiness. To the individual who has realized the nature of things, being at peace, time and change present no problem. And thus death, an aspect of life so many of us are even wary of discussing, is—as with all things appropriate to nature in its own element—nothing perturbing, and merely a transformation.

On that note, Chuang-tzu’s views on death are perhaps best articulated in a parable concerning his wife’s passing:

The parable, set after the death of Chuang-tzu’s wife, tells us that the sage’s friend, Hui Shih, has come to Chuang-tzu to offer his condolences. To his surprise, Hui Shih—expecting to see a man in mourning—finds Chuang-tzu celebrating by singing and pounding on a tub.

Hui Shih, understandably surprised, asks Chuang-tzu about his apparent dispassion towards his wife’s passing, saying, “You lived with her, she brought up your children and grew old. It should be enough simply not to weep at her death. But pounding on a tub and singing—this is going too far, isn’t it?”

Chuang-tzu then replies, “You’re wrong. When she first died, do you think I didn’t grieve like anyone else? But I looked back to her beginning and the time before she was born. Not only the time before she was born, but the time before she had a body. Not only the time before she had a body, but the time before she had a spirit. In the midst of the jumble of wonder and mystery a change took place and she had a spirit. Another change and she had a body. Another change and she was born. Now there’s been another change and she’s dead. It’s just like the progression of the four seasons, spring, summer, fall, winter.

Now she’s going to lie down peacefully in a vast room. If I were to follow after her bawling and sobbing, it would show that I don’t understand anything about fate. So I stopped.” (Zhuangzi, 191-192.)

Chuang-tzu’s reply is consistent with the overall passivity of Taoist thought. In Taoism, emphasis is placed on the acceptance of natural order, and of understanding and living in accordance with the actual nature of things, as opposed to one’s judgments of, or mental impositions upon, the world. (On this note, Chuang-tzu’s “If I were to follow after her bawling and sobbing, it would show that I don’t understand anything about fate,” is sometimes translated as “for me to go about weeping and wailing would be to proclaim myself ignorant of the natural laws.”) Part of this order is the universe’s constant state of flux and, as such, death for Chuang-tzu is more so a transformation than a stopping point—merging, and becoming inseparable from the world, rather than merely dissolving. (The “vast room,” as Chuang-tzu calls it, is sometimes translated as “the great mansion of the universe.”)

Thus we see Chuang-tzu’s exemplification of the Taoist master as an individual who accepts the world on its own terms. The master is also one who, in some manner, observes or experiences the constant principle—the ineffable Tao, or “Way”—which remains behind the mundane state of transience, being its source, essence, and end. Nature (in all its transitions), here represented by the four seasons, performs different operations—albeit indifferently—its cyclical nature a symbol of something greater than mere beginnings and passings away. Hence, aware of the union of the metaphysical and the purely natural, a Taoist sage (zhenren or shengren) is at ease in the world.

Such a perspective seems so simple, and yet pervasive, that one could consider it almost perennial. Another strain of metaphysics in which we observe the wholesale acceptance of change (and a kind of mysterious monism to complement it) is that of the ever-obscure Heraclitus, whose Logos(“Word” or “the Word”) is in certain ways a sort of Western (or Greek) Tao. While Heraclitus in many ways remains as much a legend as, and his sayings even more disorganized than those of, Laozi, the principle of the Logos is the main feature of his philosophy, and provides a parallel to the Tao. To this effect Heraclitus famously states, “This logos holds always but humans always prove unable to understand it, both before hearing it and when they have first heard it. For though all things come to be in accordance with this logos, humans are like the inexperienced… distinguishing each in accordance with its nature and saying how it is.” (Heraclitus, 98.) Chuang-tzu, exemplifying the impartial and natural philosophy of a Taoist sage, shows us how, in understanding the nature of change and death, one follows and lives in accordance with a perennial understanding, not bound by particular traditions, but available through a common reasoning and intuition regarding the operations of the universe. Through such common reasoning, Heraclitus was not far off the mark, if at all.

Heraclitus’s Logos, moreover, implies not only an order to be found in the natural world, but in human action, as well. Humans are, after all, just as much part of the Logos as anything else. (Similarly, in Taoism, a human being is considered a microcosm of the universe, and in Marcus Aurelius’s Stoicism the individual is treated as a subset of “the Whole.”) Thus, on the topic of human conduct, Heraclitus notes, “Speaking with understanding they must hold fast to what is shared by all, as a city holds to its law, and even more firmly. For all human laws are nourished by a divine one. It prevails as it wills and suffices for all and is more than enough.” (Heraclitus, 43.) Heraclitus also delves more deeply, into the constituents of human wellbeing, on which topic he contends that “Thinking well is the greatest excellence: to act and speak what is true, perceiving things according to their nature,” (Heraclitus, 43) and that “Wantonness needs putting out, even more than a house on fire.” Together these passages suggest that wisdom and goodness consist of perceiving things truthfully, as they are, and that one’s acceptance of and contentment with nature leads to real happiness.

Chuang-tzu, as a Taoist, maintains a similar position, though with a twist: The sage’s passivity, part of his deep appreciation for the reality of change—as demonstrated in the parable of his wife’s death—can be understood as an example of the aforementioned wu-wei, or “non-doing.” (Roughly.) Wu-wei implies an action, behavior, or process which is “effortless,” supremely efficient by virtue of avoiding all that is needless. Any obstacle or struggle is rendered a non-concern when one acts in terms of wu-wei—thus in accordance with the Tao. Hence, all the simplest things in life exemplify the principle of wu-wei by virtue of their doing, and doing-with, so little.

As is noted in section 18 of the text of the Zhuangzi, Chuang-tzu says, “I take inaction to be true happiness, but ordinary people think it is a bitter thing. I say: perfect happiness knows no happiness, perfect praise knows no praise. The world can’t decide what is right and what is wrong. And yet inaction can decide this. Perfect happiness, keeping alive—only inaction gets you close to this.

“Let me try putting it this way: The inaction of Heaven is its purity, the inaction of earth is its peace…” (Zhuangzi, 191.)

Note here that wu-wei—“inaction”—is sometimes translated (more accurately) as “actionless action,” and that the first two lines of Chuang-tzu’s poem (after “Let me try putting it this way…”) has more recently been rendered as “Heaven does without through its purity, / Earth does without through its calmness…”

Heaven and earth, primordial elements of the Chinese mythological cosmos, are at ease in their ancient perfection, achieved through nothing and achieving everything without effort. The sage, in seeking to emulate the Tao as it is presented in and by the world, becomes indifferent, as the universe is indifferent, and thus has no trepidations in regards to death. The sage understands that he, and those individuals around him, are merely manifestations of the absolute Way. Thus, what can death be to him who is indifferent toward change, however great or small? Death, for the sage, is merely “the beginning,” and a continuation of the “life” of the cosmos and, indeed, the Tao—the Way.

About the author ~ Ryan V. Stewart is a writer and student from Connecticut. He has been actively writing since 2006, and blogs about everything from mysticism and philosophy to environmental issues, the arts, and personal peeves at The Grand Tangent. He’s interested in the intersection of mysticism, comparative religion, and philosophical analysis (among other things). 

~ Ordinary Philosophy and its Traveling Philosophy / History of Ideas series is a labor of love and is ad-free, entirely supported by patrons and readers like you. Please offer your support today!

Bibliography

  • The Complete Works of Zhuangzi. Trans. Burton Watson. New York, NY: Columbia UP, 1968. Print.
  • The Art and Thought of Heraclitus: An Edition of the Fragments with Translation and Commentary. Trans. Charles H. Kahn. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge UP, 1979. Print.

Welcome to the Podcast Edition of Ordinary Philosophy!

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Hello dear readers, and welcome to the
podcast version of Ordinary Philosophy!

You can listen to the podcast here, on Google Play, or subscribe in iTunes.

Like many of you, I’m a big fan of podcasts, mostly because my life is very busy. One day in the future, I hope to have a lot more time to do each task one at a time, to really be present, as they say, as I wash the dishes, straighten the house, do the laundry, and perform all those other tasks that take up time, but not much thought.

But at this time in my life, between my day jobs, my creative projects, and spending time with friends and family (which I don’t do enough of these days, sadly), I don’t have enough time to keep up the world of ideas as nearly much as I’d like to by sitting down and reading. Instead, I keep myself informed and increase my education by listening to lots of podcasts: discussions with my favorite authors and thinkers, audio renditions of books and essays, debates, recordings of classes on my favorite subjects, and so on. I listen to these podcasts while doing those aforementioned chores, and let me tell you: as one who is not fond at all of household chores like doing the dishes and washing the floor, the podcast is a marvelous invention: they transform boring chore time into great opportunities for learning and exploration. I’m also an avid hiker, and it’s a wonderful thing to be able to immerse myself in some fascinating ideas or discussion as I immerse myself in the beauties of nature.

To begin with, this podcast will simply consist of audio recordings of my Ordinary Philosophy pieces. Over time, I may add commentary and who knows, perhaps interviews and discussions with guests. We’ll see how it goes. In the meantime, here’s Ordinary Philosophy in audio form: I hope you find it interesting and enjoyable!

… And here’s episode 2: Is the Market Really the Most Democratic Way to Determine Wages?
Originally published as an essay Feb 6th, 2014