The Ethics of Harmonizing with the Dao

Reading the ancient Chinese philosophers Xunzi and Zhuangzi, I am inspired to articulate an ethics of harmonizing with the dao (the "way"). This ethics doesn't quite map onto any of the three conceptualizations of ethics that are standard in Western philosophy (consequentialism, deontology, and virtue ethics), nor is it exactly a "role ethics" of the sort sometimes attributed to ancient Confucians.

Xunzi

The ancient Confucian Xunzi articulates a vision of the world in which Heaven, Earth, and humanity operate in harmony:

Heaven has its proper seasons,
Earth has its proper resources,
And humankind has its proper order,
-- this is called being able to form a triad
(Ch 17, l. 34-37; Hutton trans. 2014, p. 176).

Heaven (tian, literally the sky, but with strong religious associations) and Earth are jointly responsible for what we might now call the "laws of nature" and all "natural" phenomena -- including, for example, the turning of the seasons, the patterns of wind and rain, the tendency for plants and animals to thrive under certain conditions and wither under other conditions. Also belonging to these natural phenomena are the raw materials with which humans work: not only the raw materials of wood, metal, and fiber, but also the raw material of natural human inclinations: our tendency to enjoy delicious tastes, our tendency to react angrily to provocations, our general preference for kin over strangers.

Xunzi views humanity's task as creating the third corner of a triad with Heaven and Earth by inventing customs and standards of proper behavior that allow us to harmonize with Heaven and Earth, and with each other. For example, through trial and error, our ancestors learned the proper times and methods for sowing and reaping, how to regulate flooding rivers, how to sharpen steel and straighten wood, how to make pots that won't leak, how to make houses that won't fall over, and so on. Our ancestors also -- again through trial and error -- learned the proper rituals and customs and standards of behavior that permit people to coexist harmoniously with each other without chaotic conflict, without excessive or inappropriate emotions, and with an allocation of goods that allow all to flourish according to their status and social role.

Following the dao can be conceptualized for Xunzi, then, as aligning harmoniously into this triad. Abide by the customs and standards of behavior that contribute to the harmonious whole, in which crops are properly planted, towns are properly constructed, the crafts flourish, and humans thrive in an orderly society.

Each of us has a different role, in accord with the proper customs of a well-ordered society: the barley farmer has one role, the soldier another role, the noblewoman yet another, the traveling merchant yet another. It's not unreasonable to view Xunzi's ethics as a kind of role ethics, according to which the fundamental moral principle is that one adheres to one's proper role in society. It's also not unreasonable to think of the customs and standards of proper behavior as a set of rules to which one ought to adhere (those rules applying in different ways according to one's position in society), and thus to view Xunzi's ethics as a kind of deontological (rule-based) ethics. However, there might also be room to interpret harmonious alignment with the dao as the most fundamental feature of ethical behavior. Adherence to one's role and to the proper traditional customs and practices, on this interpretation of Xunzi, would be only derivatively good, because doing so typically constitutes harmonious alignment.

A test case is to imagine, through Xunzi's eyes, whether a morally well-developed sage might be ethically correct sometimes to act contrary to their role and to the best traditional standards of good behavior, if they correctly see that by doing so they contribute better to the overall harmony of Heaven, Earth, and humankind. I'm tempted to think that Xunzi would indeed permit this -- though only very cautiously, since he is pessimistic about the moral wisdom of ordinary people -- and thus that for him harmonious alignment with the dao is more fundamental than roles and rules. However, I'm not sure I can find direct textual support in favor of this interpretation; it's possible I'm being overly "charitable".

[image source]

A Zhuangzian Correction

A Xunzian ethics of this sort is, I think, somewhat attractive. But it is also deeply traditionalist and conformist in a way I find unappealing. It could use a Zhuangzian twist -- and the idea of "harmonizing with the dao" is at least as Zhuangzian (and "Daoist") as it is Confucian.

Zhuangzi imagines a wilder, more wondrous cosmos than Xunzi's neatly ordered triad of Heaven, Earth, and humankind -- symbolized (though it's disputable how literally) by people so enlightened that they can walk without touching the ground; trees that count 8000 years as a single autumn; gracious emperors with no eyes, ears, nose, or mouth; people with skin like frost who live by drinking dew; enormous, useless trees who speak to us in dreams; and more. This is the dao, wild beyond human comprehension, with which Zhuangzi aims to harmonize.

There are, I think, in Zhuangzi's picture -- though he would resist any effort to fully capture it in words -- ways of flowing harmoniously along with this wondrous and incomprehensible dao and ways of straining unproductively against it. One can be easygoing and open-minded, welcome surprise and difference, not insist on jamming everything into preconceived frames and plans; and one can contribute to the delightful weirdness of the world in one's own unique way. This is Zhuangzian harmony. You become a part of a world that is richer and more wondrous because it contains you, while allowing other wonderful things to also naturally unfold.

In a radical reading of Zhuangzi, ethical obligations and social roles fall away completely. There is little talk in Zhuangzi's Inner Chapters, for example, of our obligation to support others. I don't know that we have to read Zhuangzi radically; but regardless of that question of interpretation, I suggest that there's an attractive middle between Xunzi's conventionalism and Zhuangzi's wildness. Each can serve as a corrective to the other.

In the ethical picture that emerges from this compromise, we each contribute uniquely to a semi-ordered cosmos, participating in social harmony, but not rigidly -- also transcending that harmony, breaking rules and traditions for the better, making the world richer and more wondrous, each in our diverse ways, while also supporting others who contribute in their different ways, whether those others are human, animal, plant, or natural phenomena.

Contrasts

This is not a consequentialist ethics: It is not that our actions are evaluated in terms of the good or bad consequences they have (and still less that the actions are evaluated by a summation of the good minus the bad consequences). Instead, harmonizing with the dao is to participate in something grand, without need of a further objective. Like the deontologist, Xunzi and Zhuangzi and my imagined compromise philosopher needn't think that right or harmonious action will always have good long-term results. Nor is it a deontological or role ethics: There is no set of rules one must always follow or some role one must always adhere to. Nor is it a virtue ethics: There is no set of virtues to which we all must aspire or a distinctive pattern of human flourishing that constitutes the highest attainment. We each contribute in different ways -- and if some virtues often prove to be important, they are derivatively important in the same way that rules and roles can be derivatively important. They are important only because, and to the extent, having those virtues enables or constitutes one's contribution to the magnificent web of being.

So although there are resonances with the more pluralistic forms of consequentialism, and virtue ethics, and role ethics, and even deontology (trivially or degenerately, if the rule is just "harmonize with the dao"), the classical Chinese ethical ideal of harmonizing with the dao differs somewhat from all of these familiar (to professional philosophers) Western ethical approaches.

Many of these other approaches also contain an implicit intellectualism or elitism, in which ideal ethical goodness requires intellectual attainment: wisdom, or a sophisticated ability to weigh consequences or evaluate and apply rules -- far beyond, for example, the capacities of someone with severe cognitive disabilities. With enough Zhuangzi in the mix, such elitism evaporates. A severely cognitively disabled person, or a magnificently weird nonhuman animal, might far exceed any ordinary adult philosopher in their capacity to harmonize with the dao and might contribute more to the rich tapestry of the world.

Perhaps an ethics of harmonizing with the dao can resonate with some 21st-century Anglophone readers, despite its origins in ancient China. It is not, I think, as alien as it might seem from its reliance on the concept of dao and its failure to fit into the standard ethical triumvirate of consequentialism, deontology, and virtue ethics. The fundamental idea should be attractive to some: We each contribute by instantiating a unique piece of a magnificent world, a world which would be less magnificent without us.