Concept pairs

The unmanifest is the heart of natural philosophy, as the manifest is of revealed religion. Because it grants that truth exists, the unmanifest is not Western agnosticism.

Part 1, ch. 1 · Why, When and How Did the Concepts of the Dao and God Take Shape?

Unlike revealed religion, which accepts miracles, the Dao that rules the East is a natural philosophy that describes nature. That is why supernatural religion never arose in the East.

Part 1, ch. 2 · The Dao and God: Where Do Nature and the Cosmos Come From, and How Do They Move?

The Daodejing and the Five Books of Moses first settle which came first, the Dao or God, and then explain the origin and principles of the cosmos.

Part 1, ch. 2 · The Dao and God: Where Do Nature and the Cosmos Come From, and How Do They Move?

Change between nothing and being became the East’s principle of the cosmos; being alone, the West’s.

Part 1, ch. 2 · The Dao and God: Where Do Nature and the Cosmos Come From, and How Do They Move?

For thousands of years both were consulted about the future at decisive moments. But the Yijing’s philosophy of change lives on in Eastern thought through Daoism and Confucianism.

Part 1, ch. 2 · The Dao and God: Where Do Nature and the Cosmos Come From, and How Do They Move?

The unmanifest Dao speaks of the absolute in negatives; the manifest God appears in a likeness of man.

Part 1, ch. 3 · How Do the Dao and God Treat Human Beings?

The sources of human action. Wuwei appears in the Daodejing as the source of the Dao’s action; youwei, in the revealed religions, as the law of God.

Part 1, ch. 3 · How Do the Dao and God Treat Human Beings?

In the East, which values wuwei, ethics come first; in the West, which values youwei, the rule of law.

Part 1, ch. 3 · How Do the Dao and God Treat Human Beings?

The measures of human action. Yin-yang thinking follows the philosophy of change; good-and-evil thinking starts from the philosophy of being.

Part 1, ch. 3 · How Do the Dao and God Treat Human Beings?

In competition the West aims at attack and victory, while the East concentrates on extending its shi. Baduk aims at a relative victory.

Part 1, ch. 3 · How Do the Dao and God Treat Human Beings?

Daoism, Confucianism and Buddhism all reject collectivism and argue for relationalism, which does not give up the independence of the individual.

Part 1, ch. 4 · The Dao and God: The Axes of Eastern and Western Civilisation

Complementarity, which replaced opposition in modern physics, has taken hold in science but is still only slowly seeping into the humanities.

Part 1, ch. 4 · The Dao and God: The Axes of Eastern and Western Civilisation

A dialogue between the Dao and God in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries: thinkers of the Western Enlightenment reached the same place as the natural philosophy of the East.

Part 1, ch. 4 · The Dao and God: The Axes of Eastern and Western Civilisation

Is the mind more important than instinct? Within the Eastern view of the unity of mind and body, the question does not arise.

Part 2, ch. 2 · Is the Mind (精神) More Important Than Instinct (本能)?

The Western theory of the social contract grew out of the covenant between God and man that ruled the West for more than a thousand years. In its place the East puts the cultivation of character.

Part 2, ch. 3 · Theories of Human Nature in East and West: Does Human Nature Change, or Is It Fixed?

Western theories hold that human nature does not change; Eastern theories see a human character that changes within the nature we are born with.

Part 2, ch. 3 · Theories of Human Nature in East and West: Does Human Nature Change, or Is It Fixed?

The author’s image. To see the mind as a source of light, like Locke’s blank slate, risks the error of thinking the mind can be freed from instinct.

Part 2, ch. 3 · Theories of Human Nature in East and West: Does Human Nature Change, or Is It Fixed?

We are born with the condition of “freedom within fate.” Read the Eastern way, the relation of nature and nurture dissolves the problem of determinism and free will.

Part 2, ch. 3 · Theories of Human Nature in East and West: Does Human Nature Change, or Is It Fixed?

Western visions are great and grand, but their root problem is that they are unreal. The East pursues not a vision but harmony in relations.

Part 2, ch. 3 · Theories of Human Nature in East and West: Does Human Nature Change, or Is It Fixed?

The purposes of human nature. Relationalism pursues the meaning of life; individualism, happiness.

Part 2, ch. 3 · Theories of Human Nature in East and West: Does Human Nature Change, or Is It Fixed?

Confucius’s ren is no different from Jesus’s love of neighbour. It is an ethics beyond every doctrine, and the answer to how people can be good without God.

Part 2, ch. 4 · How Can Human Beings Be Good Without God?

The same ethics, grounded in different places. Western naturalists, too, have begun to see ethics not as God’s command but as nature’s counsel.

Part 2, ch. 4 · How Can Human Beings Be Good Without God?

What is altruism? The East sees it as enlightened self-interest.

Part 2, ch. 4 · How Can Human Beings Be Good Without God?

The East formed nation-states almost two thousand years before the West, and a nation-state inevitably gives rise to a politics and economy of minben, government for the people.

Part 3, ch. 2 · The Rise of the Nation-State in East and West, and the Birth of Political Economy

The French physiocrats adapted the Daoist idea of wuwei and spread it in the West as laissez-faire.

Part 3, ch. 2 · The Rise of the Nation-State in East and West, and the Birth of Political Economy

In political economy, self-interest becomes the grabbing hand. Eastern political economy asks how that hand is to be managed.

Part 3, ch. 3 · The Political-Economic Gap Between East and West: The Conflict of Private and Public Interest vs Their Convergence

Where the modern economic thinkers of the West held that private and public interest converge of themselves, the East held that they conflict.

Part 3, ch. 3 · The Political-Economic Gap Between East and West: The Conflict of Private and Public Interest vs Their Convergence

What runs through both the Industrial Revolution and the AI revolution is polarisation, arriving with every rise in productivity. Facing it stands the East’s shuzhi, grounded in the view that private and public interest conflict.

Part 3, ch. 4 · Where Is the AI Revolution Driving Us? Polarisation vs Shuzhi (術治)