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Chapter II, ==========================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================

[Original]

The world knows that beauty is beauty, and evil is 1; Everyone knows what is good, but what is not good 2. There is no mutual birth 3, difficulty and ease are also combined, the length of the punishment is also 4, the high and low are also 5, the sound of the harmony is also 6, the successive is with each other, and the constant is also. It is a saint who does nothing7, teaches without words, and all things are done and the Buddha begins8, and the Buddha is also 9, and the success is also the Buddha. The husband is the one who lives in the Ephesus, and the one who goes to the Ephesus.

[Translation]

Everyone in the world knows that the reason why beauty is beautiful is because of the existence of ugliness. We all know that the reason why good is good is because there is evil. So there is and there is no transformation of each other, difficulty and ease form each other, long and short appear to each other, high and low complement each other, sound and sound harmonize with each other, and the front and back follow each other – this is eternal. Therefore, the sages treat the world from the viewpoint of non-action, and teach in a way that does not speak: let all things arise naturally without their origins, do something, but do not add their own inclinations, and do not pretend to be accomplished. It is precisely because of the lack of credit that there is no need to lose.

[Notes]

1 Evil: evil, ugly. Already, through the "矣".

2S: This.

3 phases: mutual.

4. Punishment: "form", which refers to the meaning that appears in comparison and comparison.

5 surplus: enrichment, supplementation, dependence.

6 sounds: Zheng Xuan of the Han Dynasty said in his annotation for the Book of Rites and Music that the music produced by the ensemble is called "sound", and the sound produced by a single sound is called "sound".

7 The saint dwells in nothingness: the saint, the highest level of exemplary figure admired by the people of ancient times. Live, take responsibility, serve. Do nothing, conform to nature, do not interfere, do not have to control, let people do it.

8 works: arise, happen, create.

9 Fuzhi: Fu, no. Chi refers to an individual's aspirations, wills, and tendencies.

[Quote]

The content of this chapter is divided into two levels. The first layer clearly embodies Lao Tzu's simple dialectical thought. Through daily social phenomena and natural phenomena, he expounded that all things in the world exist and have a relationship of interdependence, interconnection and interaction, discussed the law of the unity of opposites, and confirmed the eternal and universal law of the unity of opposites.

On the basis of the previous meaning, the second meaning is expanded: how should people deal with the objective world of contradictions and opposites? The old man put forward the idea of "doing nothing". The "non-action" mentioned here is not to do nothing and do what you want, but to guide people's social life with the principles of dialectics and help people find the laws that conform to nature and follow the objective development of things. He used the example of the saints to teach people to make a difference, but not to do it by force. Some in academic circles believe that the first chapter is the general outline of the book; Others believe that the first two chapters are the introduction to the book, and that the purpose of the book is in it.

[Commentary]

No matter how heated the scholarly debate on the attributes of the Tao, scholars agree that Laozi's dialectical thought is a distinctive feature of his philosophy. Lao Tzu realized that everything in the universe is in a state of change and movement, and that things have a beginning and an end from birth to death, and that there is nothing eternal and unchanging in the universe. Lao Tzu pointed out in this chapter that everything has its own opposite, and all of them take the opposite aspect as the premise of their existence, and there is no "nothing" without "being", and there is no "short" without "long"; Vice versa. This is the so-called "opposites complement each other" in classical Chinese philosophy. The phrase "mutually becoming, mutually becoming, forming, complementing, harmonizing, and accommodating" as used in this chapter refers to the existence of each other, the generation of dependence, and the use of different opposing concepts.

In the third sentence, the word "inaction" appears for the first time. Inaction is not to do nothing, but to act in accordance with the law of "inaction" in nature. Lao Tzu attaches great importance to the opposition and transformation of contradictions, and this insight of his happens to be the concrete application of the idea of naïve dialectics. He fantasized that there were so-called "saints" who could resolve contradictions in a non-acting way in accordance with objective laws and promote the transformation of nature and the development of society. Here, Lao Tzu does not exaggerate the passivity of human beings, but advocates giving full play to human creativity and using inaction to achieve promising goals by means of inaction like "sages". Obviously, in Lao Tzu's philosophy, there is a positive and enterprising factor to exert subjective initiative, to contribute one's own strength, and to achieve the cause of the public.

[Interpretation] of the flash of naïve dialectics

The simple dialectic is the most valuable part of Laozi's philosophy. In the history of Chinese philosophy, no one has ever revealed the law of the unity of opposites as profoundly and systematically as he did. Lao Tzu believes that the development and change of things are produced in a state of contradiction and opposition. Opposites are interdependent, interconnected, and can be transformed in opposite directions. And this change, which he regarded as the fundamental nature of nature, "the opposite, the movement of the Tao" (ch. 40). Lao Tzu's dialectic is based on a generalization of nature and society, and its purpose is to find a model of a rational political system of social life. The series of opposites he put forward can be seen everywhere in human social life, such as good and evil, beauty and ugliness, right and wrong, strength and weakness, success and failure, good and evil, etc., all of which contain rich dialectical principles. For example, if people do not recognize and pursue beautiful things, they will not spurn ugly phenomena. While you are still basking in the joy of happiness or success, perhaps a calamity or misfortune is quietly approaching.

A philosopher once said: What people talk about the most is often what they don't know the most, and people's attention to some things and superficial phenomena often ignores the whole hidden in the deepest and most essential things. Su Dongpo, a great poet of the Song Dynasty, wrote in the poem "Title West Forest Wall": "I don't know the true face of Lushan, only because I am in this mountain." This is a philosophical verse. It expresses the comprehension of the relationship between the whole and the part, the macro and the micro, the phenomenon and the essence, etc., which is an enlightening philosophy of life, which is similar to the dialectic of Lao Tzu. If we stand on the high plane of history, we will find that the progress of human civilization is advancing in the struggle between truth and error, beauty and ugliness, progress and backwardness, and so on. The rich connotation of dialectics is contained in the entire history of human civilization.

Lao Tzu's simple dialectic has had a profound impact on Chinese culture. There are many categories in traditional literature and art that embody dialectical thinking, and there is an obvious relationship with them. For example, "existence" and "nothingness" come from Lao Zhuang's philosophy, and "existence and non-existence" embodies the dialectical relationship between the unity of opposites of things, and actually reflects the dialectical relationship of artistic creation. Later generations of writers and artists gradually derived such an idea from Lao Zhuang's philosophy: through the art of "sound" and "color", and enter the deep realm of "silent" and "colorless" art, which is the most beautiful realm. Related to this, the concepts of "virtuality" and "reality" also came into being, and the theory of "coexistence of virtual and real" has also become a unique theory in ancient Chinese art aesthetics.

The two categories of "Qi" and "Zheng" involve the creation and expression methods of neatness and change in artistic creation, which were commonly used by ancient Chinese writers and artists. "Positive" refers to normal, regular, orthodox, neat, and balanced, and "strange" refers to abnormality, weirdness, innovation, unevenness, and change, both of which are one of the specific manifestations of the law of "diversity and unity" in artistic creation. In the eyes of the creators, it means that there is symmetry, balance, and neatness between things and things or form factors, and there are unevenness, contradictions, and changes, which are opposite to each other. If we go to the source, "strange" and "positive" are the opposite philosophical categories, which are first seen in Chapter 58 of "Lao Tzu": "Positive and Complex is Strange". The application of this pair of categories to literary theory began with Liu Xian's "Wenxin Carving Dragon".

It is undeniable that in the history of the development of Chinese philosophical dialectics, Lao Tzu's doctrine and its influence deserve a special mention. 166 Reading Network