Expert: Maciej St. Ziêba - 10/24/2009

Question
G'day. Firstly let me say thankyou for your time and patience. My question is what, if any, are the similarites between existentialism and Taoism? I am researching for a paper and using existentialism as a means by which to help interpret some of the philosophy of Tao. I entered into google "existentialism and Tao" to which I got your response http://en.allexperts.com/q/Philosophy-1361/Existentialism-Eastern-philosophy.htm I have read through your answer and followed some of the leads that you have given here but I cannot help but feel that I am falling into the trap of understanding the semantics of different philosophies that use similar terms. I am reminded of the opening line of the Tao De Ching 'the tao that can be taoed is not the true tao'.

Answer
Dear Steve

Sorry for the delay in answering you. The original request did not arrive to me, it's only today that I have received a "reminder" from the AllExperts system and could seee your request.

Now to your question. I agree that there is a danger of misunderstanding "the semantics of different philosophies that use similar terms" but once you want to enter into a comparative pattern you are bound to understand one philosophy in the terms of the other one, or vice versa (or else you try to find a third ophilosophy that will give you the tool to understand botyh the previous ones, but that's only moving the problem described one step further). The contary approach will lead you either to elaborating your private semantics and private terms which will be intelligible only to yourself, or else you have to accept an idea that there is no way to understand a philosophy from another civilisation.
I personally reject both the contrary solutions. And I find the approach that "the tao that can be taoed is not the true tao" completely fruitless, maybe it is good for practising Taoism but certainly not for writing any papers thereupon, especially the comparative ones.

Personally I do not value Taoism high. Due to such statements as the one you are quoting, it is a self-nullyfying philosophy, like the absolute agnosticism ("nothing can be known as true or claimed to be true").

For me Taoims is a philosophy for immature men, for those who avoid responsibility for their word, who avoid reflection, who do not want to make a point of their living in the society. On the contrary, Neo-Confucianism (that of Zhu Xi and his followers) is for me a philosophy for mature men. As I am not especially interested in Existentialism, either.

Sorry for one remark more. I think that if someone is asking me questions in such a general way as you are, I cannot help him beyond what I have written in my previous post. If you have any specific question, you are welcome to ask them.

Best regards

Maciej

NB. You should either write "Tao te ching" or "Dao de jing" (or "Daodejing"), but you certainly shouldn't mix these two orthographies.