“The Tao is good but not moral” is the name of a chapter in The Tao is Silent by Raymond Smullyan. (He’s an interesting guy—a mathematical logician, philosopher, and professional magician, but that’s beside the point.)
Moral is often used as a synonym for ethical. That’s not the sense in which it is used here, in “The Tao is good but not moral.” Here, moral means rule-based.
Thus morality will refer to any codified description of good behavior through laws or ideology, religious or secular. I’ll leave “good behavior” undefined, but I will say that (1) being good necessarily entails being compassionate, and (2) you know damn well what it means to be good.
But if we already know what it means to be good, then what is the point of trying to codify it? Ah, that was what the Taoists thought. In ancient Chinese history, Confucianism tried to systematize every possible aspect of good behavior, while Taoism wanted to throw that all away.
Here is what Smullyan said,
The Taoists, on the other hand, appeared to feel that morality itself—“principles of morality”, that is—was a major cause of suffering, since it only weakened that natural goodness in us which would spontaneously manifest itself if not interfered with or commanded by moral principles or moral law.
From the Tao Te Ching (translated by Ron Hogan),
Get rid of morality.
People will respect each other
and do what’s right.
This kind of shocking contrast with traditional Western views is why I find Eastern philosophy so refreshing. Get rid of morality?
But we already know that any set of moral laws, however carefully constructed, will inevitably become a sock puppet of someone who reads them. Well perhaps not any set of laws—there must be sufficient ambiguity, as is the case for all the major Western religions. And even if we were to accept that a divine being wrote them for us, that does not change the situation one bit. Once they are written down, they can be puppeted—that is, employed for the ends of the puppeteer.
Thus a big problem arises when a society holds up a particular morality as the definition of goodness. For those aiming to do good, it is needless. For those aiming to do harm, it can be employed to do harm under the guise of doing good. And people are easily fooled by it.
In Letter to a Christian Nation Sam Harris writes (noting below that “moral intuitions” means our own sense of goodness, with moral meaning ethical as distinguished above),
We decide what is good in the Good Book. We read the Golden Rule and judge it to be a brilliant distillation of many of our ethical impulses. And then we come across another of God’s teachings on morality: if a man discovers on his wedding night that his bride is not a virgin, he must stone her to death on her father’s doorstep (Deuteronomy 22:13-21). If we are civilized, we will reject this as the vilest lunacy imaginable. Doing so requires that we exercise our own moral intuitions. The belief that the Bible is the word of God is of no help to us whatsoever.
My reaction is: Well duh, the Taoists figured that out well over 2000 years ago. But I’m glad to see it finally catching on in other forms.
(Lately Sam Harris has been talking about morality. I’ll withhold opinion on that until I read his book, due in October.)
Another problem with morality is that it’s always self-serving. We do “good” things because either it makes our egos feel good and/or we hope to be rewarded by society or a deity. Consequently, instead of doing something harmonious simply to ensure that harmony is maintained (looking outward), our ultimate focus is inward at our raging egos.
For me, this idea dovetails nicely with Lao Tzu’s suggestion that we do what needs to be done and then walk away from it without waiting for recognition.
I disagree that there is a “natural goodness in us which would spontaneously manifest itself” or that “people will respect each other and do what’s right”. I think that murder, rape, robbery and other crimes would become rampant without a set of laws. I don’t see how any civil system could work without certain bans on behavior.
I am waiting for October when Sam Harris’ The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values is published.
You’ve gone down a path I did not anticipate, which is to draw a connection between Taoism and anarchy. While the connection is legitimate, when I wrote “religious or secular” I had in mind Confucianism, which is a mix of both.
Confucianism was an extremely elaborate structure in ancient China, broadly stretching from politics to social and religious matters. It was stifling, at least to the Taoists. So that was the context in which Taoism arose and carried on. Even if we assume that some ancient Taoists wanted anarchy, there’s little reason to think they believed it was achievable.
If we asked a Taoist living in 2100 BCE what he thought of our modern governing system of church/state separation, he might say, “Hm, I hadn’t thought of that.” At least today’s Taoists are not especially known for political anarchy, though one could say they are moral anarchists.
“Morality” is used as a tool for judging others in most cases. The Tao view is that if you are already doing the natural, right thing, then morality is irrelevant, and what others do is of no concern to you, since nature will take care of it eventually…
And, as a parent, I know that if you raise your kids to do what is natural and right for them, they will behave, even within being given a set of “moral values”. It’s not that “people will be evil”, it’s that they are badly raised.
@woodka, Alas, a society cannot ensure that all parents will raise their kids well (as opposed to poorly or not at all). And indeed, the standards for “raising well” are quite debatable. Not a few people where I live would hold that children who assert their faith as reason for oppressing others would be very “well raised” indeed.
Hi there. I’m new to this interesting blog.
The Taoist view expressed in the OP seems unclear. Presumably the Taoist is not against parents and teachers encouraging good values in children. But how is that to be done? To some extent it can be done without moral codes, by example and by judging individual actions, e.g. “what you just did was bad”. But do you really want parents and teachers to refrain from giving more generalized guidance, like “stealing is bad”? Yet as soon as they do that they are codifying their moral guidance.
You might accept that moral codes should be handed down explicitly from adults to the children they are responsible for, but think they should not be spread laterally from adults to adults. Those who are concerned for the welfare of wider society are likely to be concerned about what moral codes are being taught to other children, as well as their own. But perhaps you feel it’s better if everyone just minds the morals of the children they are directly responsible for. You might also feel that adult minds are not open to accepting new moral codes anyway, and the attempt to get them to do so only leads to trouble.
On the other hand, the talk of “natural goodness” suggests that perhaps Taoists think no parental guidance is necessary, because people are innately good.
With no law and law enforcing authorities, people will tend to be more fearless and the crimes will rise manifolds.
mike860, your objection looks basically the same as the one from NewEnglandBob. Perhaps you could see my response there?
“With no law and law enforcing authorities, people will tend to be more fearless and the crimes will rise manifolds.”
Hostorically, that happens for a relatively short term, followed almost universally by an oppressive, tyrannical dictatorship that is embraced with open arms by the people who are tired of the lawlessness. In other words, a condition of too few laws seems to lead people to accept too many of them, when otherwise they would not.
Great site. I came over here via Ophelia Benson’s place.
I think Oedipus answers your argument, Kirth. The Taoist aphorism he quotes does not assume NO laws, NO morality, but a “light touch”.
@ Brian — Two different scenarios. Oedipus, and the Tao, speak of the “light touch,” which is indeed the right approach. Mike860 was talking about a condition of no law at all, which is less desireable — but not, in the long run, for the reason he gave.
Indeed, failure to discern the difference between a “light touch” and no touch at all is the major failure of the laissez-faire libertarians as a political/economic movement.
That clarification addresses my concerns, Brian. Thanks.
Richard, I am certainly no authority on either Taoism or children, but I think it’s safe to add the following.
It’s not that rule-making is prohibited in Taoism (indeed that itself would be a rule!). Rules can have a practical use, as long as they are understood for what they are. The Tao Te Ching has a few stanzas saying “A good government is like…” and so fourth, one example being the quote above.
The problem, as the Taoist sees it, comes when following the rules is equated with being good. While it is superficially true that a child is being good by not eating cookies immediately before dinner, we wouldn’t want the child to believe on a deeper level that abstaining from pre-dinner cookie-eating is the path to goodness.
I came here looking for insight into Sam Harris’ thoughts on the Tao and found something much better.
Mr. Harris’ warns of the dangers of conceding the validity of religion while requiring nothing of it other than it is believed. Part of his argument is that we must have learned something in the millennia since the scriptures were written and that this additional knowledge should be used improve our concepts of well-being and morality.
The Tao, however, is even older than Western religions, but has managed to convey principles that are sufficiently universal to defy improvement through our increased knowledge of the physical universe.
I suggest that this is because the Tao does not claim anything but the Tao as truth while only making observations about all other things as they interact with the Tao.