How Do the Dao and God Treat Human Beings?

1) The Dao, “Not Benevolent” vs God, “Benevolent”

The Dao and God treat human beings in fundamentally different ways. In the Daodejing the Dao declares of itself, “I am not benevolent.” God, on the other hand, declares, “I am benevolent.” Why these opposite declarations?

The Dao: Heaven and earth are not benevolent. (Daodejing, chapter 5)

God: Yahweh is good, for his loving kindness endures forever. (Psalm 106:1)

The Dao applies to all human beings, but God works only for those who believe in God. The Dao is a law of nature that all human beings must follow, whether they like it or not. It therefore does not belong to the human judgment we call benevolence. Because the Dao is the source of all things in the cosmos, it cannot be for any particular person or group; it belongs to all. This concept of the Dao is expressed just as it is in the Kabbalistic philosophy of Judaism: “God is not a transcendent being outside the world, but is immanent in the world and present in all things.” So the Dao does not distinguish human beings from other things. But the Dao becomes indispensable by tending and raising all things, human beings included, without discrimination.

The Dao tends and completes all things without discrimination (Daodejing, chapter 41)

God aims to embrace all human beings, but no revealed religion has actually succeeded in this, and God works only for those who believe in God. History shows that he has nothing to do with those who do not know him. To those who acknowledge him, God must be benevolent; to those who do not, God must not be.

In revealed religion, those chosen by a covenant with God are protected. In return they offer sacrifice and prayer. These demands began with Abraham and took concrete form in the course of the Exodus. In Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy, among the Five Books of Moses, these demands are enacted as extremely detailed laws and institutions. God works only for those who believe and carry out the doctrine. Those who oppose him he makes his enemies.

If you do all that I tell you, I will be an enemy to your enemies, and an adversary to your adversaries. (Exodus 23:22)

To those who do not believe in this God, eternal punishment is promised. So in revealed religion God remains a “jealous God.”

For I, Yahweh your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, on the third and on the fourth generation of those who hate me, and showing loving kindness to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments. (Exodus 20:5–6)

The Dao, unlike God, does not interfere directly in human affairs. The question then arises: why should human beings care about a Dao that does not interfere in human affairs? “Not interfering in human affairs” is very different from “not existing.” Not existing means there is nothing there; since it does not exist, we may ignore it. But not interfering means that it always affects human beings, yet does not interfere individually, through something like miracles, in what people do or how they act. Even though the Dao does not interfere in human affairs, human beings must, for their own sake, follow the Dao that always exists. This has a different meaning from having to follow God because, like God, it interferes in human affairs and changes our fate.

God, with his thought of good and evil, rewards or punishes human beings. But the Dao neither rewards those who follow it nor punishes those who do not. Human fortune and misfortune are not decided by God but come from human action. For example, if you work hard to grow grain while it is growing, you will have food even in winter when nothing grows, and fare well. But if you go against what the Dao teaches and do not tend the grain while it grows, you will have nothing to eat in winter and fare badly. Following the Dao brings blessing to human beings, and not following it brings misfortune. Unlike God, the Dao exists equally for all human beings, not through anthropomorphism, miracles or covenants. Xunzi sets out this philosophy concretely:

The movements of heaven follow a constant law. It does not exist for the sake of sage kings like Yao and Shun (堯舜), nor does it vanish because of tyrants like Jie and Zhou (桀紂)… Respond to it and there is good fortune; go against it and there is misfortune, that is all. If a person follows the Dao and does not stray from this law, even heaven cannot bring disaster upon him. (Xunzi 17:1)⁵⁸

When Moses led the people of Israel out of Egypt, God worked ten miracles to make Pharaoh yield. The mightiest of them was the tenth, the killing of every firstborn son and firstborn animal in Egypt. The people of Israel escaped this punishment by smearing blood on their doorposts. Through this act God made Pharaoh yield and brought about the Israelites’ escape from Egypt. In return God demanded sacrifices and rites of the people of Israel and gave detailed instructions for them.⁵⁹ This became the origin of the festival and sacrifice of Pascha (meaning “passing over”). Only those who follow these rites and instructions receive God’s protection.

When your children ask you, ‘What do you mean by this service?’ you shall say, ‘It is the sacrifice of Yahweh’s Passover.’ (Exodus 12:26)

With this, all the conditions of the covenant between God and man are in place, and the two pledge to each other obedience to God and protection for man.

Moses came and told the people all Yahweh’s words, and all the ordinances; and all the people answered with one voice, and said, “All the words which Yahweh has spoken will we do.” (Exodus 24:3)

God conveys the content of the covenant to human beings through the Ten Commandments and the law. The Ten Commandments are God’s law, which must be kept in revealed religion. They became the decisive reason Western civilization values law rather than ethics.

When he finished speaking with him on Mount Sinai, he gave Moses the two tablets of the covenant, stone tablets, written with God’s finger. (Exodus 31:18)

Beginning with the Ten Commandments, promises between God and man follow one after another in revealed religion. In Western religion the core of the relationship between God and man is the “covenant” made between them. It is completed in the form of a “covenant,” and this covenant is still guaranteed to human beings through God’s miracles.

Behold, I make a covenant: before all your people I will do marvels, such as have not been worked in all the earth, nor in any nation. (Exodus 34:10)

This covenant between God and man became, in the early modern period around the Enlightenment, the model for the “social contract theory” that took Western human nature as its model.⁶⁰ The Dao of the East is the beginning of a different way of thinking. God demands sacrifice, offerings and rites in return for protecting human beings, but the Dao stands aloof from all this. The Dao neither protects any particular person or tribe nor asks anything in return. The Dao, as part of nature, gives impartially to all beings, human beings included, like the sun and the rain, and expects nothing in return. Even when its work is done, the Dao asks for nothing.

The Dao is everywhere. It is on the left and on the right. All things depend on the power of the Dao, and it does not refuse them. When the work is done, it asks for nothing. (Daodejing, chapter 34)

In the matter of religious rites especially, the Dao of the East, unlike the God of the West, does not ask human beings for prayers or sacrifices. Because it favors no one in particular, it cannot ask for sacrifices. And even if human beings pray or sacrifice, it is in no position to work miracles to help them.

Already before the Common Era, Xunzi explained that praying during eclipses of the sun or moon and holding rain rituals in times of drought are only ornaments of culture; doing such things does not bring about what one hopes for. He taught that the need for rituals is something human beings have, and has nothing to do with whether what they want actually comes to pass. And he held that it is fine to hold rain rituals as an ornament of culture that human society needs, but that if one truly believes in them when holding them, one may bring disaster on the country:

You hold a rain ritual and it rains. Why? There is no reason. It rains even when no rain ritual is held. Beating drums in the shrines during eclipses of the sun and moon, holding rain rituals in drought, divining before important affairs: these are done not because people believe that what they want will come about, but as ornaments of culture. The leader regards such things as ornaments of culture; the common people think of them as appeals for the working of the spirits. To treat them as ornaments of culture is good fortune for the country; to think that the spirits are at work is misfortune for the country. (Xunzi 17:9)

God becomes an absolute being who protects the chosen, and the chosen must serve God absolutely. But the Dao has nothing to do with such choosing or obedience. In Eastern civilization the Dao approaches human beings as a concept different from God. The Dao is something that always exists, which human beings cannot escape even if they try. In revealed religion, on the other hand, God works only for those chosen by God’s grace. The law of the Dao is an eternal expression not swayed by human feelings. This Eastern view of the cosmos runs in the same vein as the observation that nature and the cosmos cannot be given the kind of expression or purpose human beings imagine.

The Dao does not bestow a discriminating benevolence (仁) on human beings; it is impartial to all. There is only one Dao of the unmanifest, which refuses expression by way of “negation.” There are no divisions or rival interpretations. There cannot be two Daos, and even within the one Dao there cannot be various interpretations. But the manifest God, who uses “affirmative” expression, cannot avoid the existence of other expressions and interpretations. So the negation of the Dao and the affirmation of God differ in how they express absolute truth.

The Dao applies to all human beings, but the results of what human beings do are made by human beings, and the Dao does not intervene in the process. And it shows that human beings, like all beings in nature, will in the end pass away.

Nature is not benevolent. Having used all things, it throws them away like the straw dogs used in sacrifice. The sage is not benevolent. Having used the people, he throws them away like the straw dogs used in sacrifice. (Daodejing, chapter 5)

One of the traits that distinguish the Dao from God is that God emphasizes his goodness. Because God is benevolent, he teaches human beings, who are sinners, the way to tell good from evil.

Good and upright is Yahweh, therefore he will instruct sinners in the way. (Psalm 25:8)

Give thanks to Yahweh, for he is good; for his loving kindness endures forever. (Psalm 136:1)

The expression that the God of the West is benevolent means that God comes to have human feelings. The Dao, on the other hand, is not benevolent, and remains a principle that transcends the world of human feelings.

The Negative Theology (否定神學) of the Dao vs the Anthropomorphism (擬人化) of God

The manifest is “affirmative theology” (cataphatism). It seeks to express the absolute being affirmatively. The Greek root of the word comes from affirmation, or “to speak.” “God is benevolent” is an example: God is expressed affirmatively, as light, justice, truth, life. So God takes a fierce stand against darkness, injustice, falsehood and death. The Dao follows the way of the unmanifest and pursues “negative theology” (apophatic theology, the expression of the absolute being in negatives). “Apo” means to negate: the word comes from the Greek sense of “negation.”

There is deep meaning in the thought that compares East and West as “the Dao is not benevolent, God is benevolent.” Philosophers have explained it with the terms “negative theology” and “anthropomorphism.” Negative theology is set out in the concept of God put forward by Maimonides, who influenced Spinoza.⁶¹ Maimonides argued that “God cannot be described directly in human language, and can be approached only through negation.” Maimonides was a medieval Jewish philosopher, theologian and physician, born in Córdoba, Spain, in 1135, who died in Egypt in 1204. His negative theology is the core of the philosophy of the unmanifest that the Dao emphasizes. The first line of the Daodejing, “dao ke dao fei chang dao” (道可道非常道, the Dao that is expressed is not the eternal Dao), means negative theology. The Daodejing’s expression “the Dao is not benevolent” is a way of indicating absolute truth by negation. It is the exact opposite of the Western affirmative theology’s premise, “God is benevolent.” The statement that God is good raises the fundamental question of where the opposite of good, evil, came from and why it exists. The philosophy of the Dao has no such problem.

The unmanifest is accepted not only in Daoism but in Confucianism as well. Confucius uses the expression that “the Dao will not be realized in the world.” While pursuing the absolute truth called the Dao, he accepts that the endless Dao cannot be realized in this world. So he says: “If I could hear in the morning that the Dao prevails in the world, I would die content in the evening” (Analects 4:8).

The expression that God is benevolent takes shape as God goes through a process of anthropomorphism. Negative theology explains the philosophical thought of the Dao; anthropomorphism explains the philosophical thought of God. The word anthropomorphization (擬人化) combines the Greek anthropos, meaning man, and morphe, meaning form. It means that God, the absolute truth, takes on human form, because only when God becomes like a person can he convey his will to people. Through anthropomorphism God comes to have form and feelings like a person, and approaches human beings in a powerful form. But danger lurks here: the fierce hostility shown to those who oppose the manifestation of absolute truth. An existential hostility of good and evil is created between believers and unbelievers.

The Dao of the East, by contrast, unlike the God of the West, consistently refuses anthropomorphism. The Dao has no human-like appearance to show human beings. It refuses every name. The Dao must not even be seen. This trait is stressed many times in the Daodejing.

The Dao is hidden. It has no name. (Daodejing, chapter 41)

The Dao always exists, but because it does not interfere individually in human affairs, human beings cannot see it or call it. The Dao, the way of nature, can be grasped but not seen.

The Dao is always and everywhere, yet it has no action and no form. The Dao can be passed on but not received; it can be grasped but not seen. (Zhuangzi, Inner Chapters, “The Great and Venerable Teacher,” 大宗師)

The Dao refuses anthropomorphism, but the Bible shows God clinging to anthropomorphism as a process indispensable to his communication with human beings. Through anthropomorphism God takes human form, and with it human feelings: good and evil, justice, jealousy, anger. What happens when God becomes like a human being? By communicating with human beings directly, God gains a powerful and direct force of communication with them. But problems arise too. The anthropomorphized God, by limiting his own character in human terms, raises doubts about his absoluteness.

There are those who think that God has instinct and mind like a person, and feelings; they have strayed very far from the truth and are lost… To imagine God, a being absolutely infinite, with such attributes is utterly foolish. (Spinoza, Ethics, I, Prop. XV)

Through anthropomorphism the manifest gains great power. It is expressed directly to human beings, and its appeal to its followers is great. It has a strength that draws out absolute obedience. At the same time, anthropomorphism carries danger. Inevitably there are people who come to doubt the process of anthropomorphism. To those who do not believe, God and the prophets issue the most fearful warnings they can find and express. The Five Books of Moses foretell hardship for doubters down to the third and fourth generation of their descendants.

The God of the West, unlike the Dao of the East, already has a face and a voice like a man’s, speaks directly with human beings, and even writes with his finger. All of this is used to let God intervene in human affairs. According to Genesis, human beings were made in God’s image.

God said, “Let’s make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the sky, and over the livestock, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” (Genesis 1:26–27)

When God created human beings he had already declared, “Let us make man in our image,” so the direction of God’s anthropomorphism can be said to have been set from the start. Among the Greek philosophers there were some who raised the problem of anthropomorphism. Xenophanes (c. 570–478 BC) was one. He said that “the great God is not at all like human beings, either in form or in thought,” and held that to keep his absoluteness God must not resemble human beings. He held that if God takes human form he comes to interfere directly in human affairs, which leads to an interchangeability between God and man, so that people come to desire to be like God.⁶² At the same time he parodies how human tribes, and animals, would each make gods in their own likeness.

The Ethiopians think their gods have dark skin and flat noses, and the Thracians think their gods have blue eyes and red hair… If horses drew the faces of gods, they would draw them like horses’ faces. Oxen would draw their gods with oxen’s faces… and would draw their bodies, too, after the shape of horses or oxen.⁶³

After Xenophanes, Dionysius (Pseudo-Dionysius, a philosopher of about the fifth century) also opposed the anthropomorphism of God. He warned that if God were represented in human form, it would lead directly to the dangerous act of human beings borrowing God’s authority and trying to act like God.

The process of anthropomorphism is a strange concept to Eastern civilization, because the phenomenon of the Dao becoming like a person never took place in the East. The Daodejing keeps explaining why the Dao must not become like a person: absolute truth, expressed in any form, loses its absoluteness. With the God of the West, by contrast, the process of anthropomorphism, of “taking human form,” becomes clearer and clearer over time. The anthropomorphism of the God of Judaism begins with the meeting of Moses and God. Explaining God’s existence through Moses, God set out, through Moses, all the laws the people of Israel were to follow. The Torah, the Five Books of Moses, means law. Under this law Judaism took an organized and systematic form as a monotheistic religion. Through religion, God comes to rule human affairs.

Moses led the people of Israel out of Egypt and toward Canaan, “the land flowing with milk and honey.” On the way, near Mount Sinai, Moses received the Ten Commandments from God, and these became God’s law, which cannot be defied. According to Exodus in the Old Testament, very interesting dialogues and negotiations took place between Moses and God along the way. The Jews set up a tent outside the camp as a place to meet God, and there Moses began to speak with God. God comes to use human speech:

Yahweh spoke to Moses face to face, as a man speaks to his friend. (Exodus 33:11)

Then, as proof to persuade the Jews, Moses asks God to “show me your glory,” that is, himself (Exodus 33:18). God answers, “You cannot see my face, for man may not see me and live.” And God goes on: “There is a place by me, and you shall stand on the rock. It will happen, while my glory passes by, that I will put you in a cleft of the rock, and will cover you with my hand until I have passed by; then I will take away my hand, and you will see my back; but my face shall not be seen” (Exodus 33:20–23). In this way God shows Moses his appearance, now become like a man’s.

You will see my back. (Exodus 33:23)

Most interestingly, the Daodejing says exactly the opposite of the Five Books of Moses about the back of God and of the Dao. God shows human beings his back, but the Dao declares that in no case can human beings see its back:

Follow the Dao, and you cannot see its back. (Daodejing, chapter 14)

The anthropomorphized God of the West shows Moses his back, in human form. But because the Dao has not gone through anthropomorphism, it has no front or back like a person. So it defines itself as having no front to see, and no back to show even if a person follows behind it.

2) The Source of Human Action: Wuwei (無爲) vs Youwei (有爲)

Within the wuwei the Daodejing argues for lies a philosophy of holding human youwei in check, of finding a balance against youwei through wuwei, because it sees a strong possibility that human youwei will throw the natural Dao into chaos. Human affairs always change, but there is one constant in them that does not: the self-interest that comes from human nature, the root of greed. This means that every human being has a tendency to pursue private rather than public interest. Holding human greed in check is the core of the philosophy of wuwei. Only then are balance in society and harmony in the individual heart achieved.

The thought of wuwei gives Eastern civilization a basic framework that recognizes the need for youwei while aiming at wuwei, the root of youwei, and so warns of the dangers of youwei. The Daodejing does not reject engagement with the world. For example, while the Daoists regard wuwei as more fundamental, they recognize the value of the Confucian thought of engagement with the world. They recognized the need for the effort, centered on ethics, to explore what the ethics of a human society as close as possible to the Dao of nature might be. In this sense the difference between the Daoists and the Confucians is the difference between wuwei and “purposeful practice.” That the Confucians value ethics above law, rather than law itself, is the difference between Confucian purposeful practice and the Western thought of youwei. Purposeful practice is needed in real human society, but because it can easily degenerate into a youwei that does not recognize wuwei, the importance of wuwei over youwei is stressed again and again as a warning.

Confucius, speaking of “governing through wuwei” (無爲而治) with regard to the sage-king Shun (Analects 15:4), recognized the value of a wuwei that goes beyond Confucian purposeful practice. Xunzi, too, saw wuwei as the ideal state of the leader’s conduct. In this sense the Confucians recognized the value of the thought of wuwei in their own philosophy of purposeful action, and prized wuwei highly as a state that follows the principle of heaven rather than human artifice. That the Confucians placed government by virtue and government by rites above government by law explains this.

Literally wuwei means “non-action,” but it means movement in keeping with the moment: wei wuwei (爲無爲), acting without acting. Wuwei ziran (無爲自然). The idea is that if people act in advance, at the germinal stage when the shoots appear, they can foresee the changing situation of the future, and so should act with that in mind. It is the core of the thought of the Dao: to act in keeping with the natural flow of things, without coercion or excessive intervention; to follow nature. It has some likeness to the thought of “laissez-faire,” at the core of Western political and economic thought. The claim is that wuwei, not youwei, is the source of human affairs.

Practice the doing that is not doing; carry out the work that is not working. (Daodejing, chapter 63)

The Western theory of youwei is easy to understand because it has a direct effect on human beings. Following the cosmology in which being, the existence God makes, is the origin of the cosmos, what human beings make, youwei, is the origin of human affairs. It is action taken to do something according to human desires or purposes. Law, which represents Western civilization, is an important example. The idea is that human beings take the lead in handling affairs, and handle human affairs through laws and institutions based on religious law or on the human mind.

Compared with the Western thought of youwei, grounded in the “philosophy of being,” the Eastern theory of wuwei is hard to understand,⁶⁴ because at its core is the “philosophy of change,” which Western thought does not value. Eastern philosophy puts the source of the cosmos in nothing, and treats change between nothing and being as the movement of nature and the cosmos. Because it centers on nothing rather than being, Eastern philosophical thought regards wuwei, the return to nothing, as the source of human affairs.

In Eastern history the thought of wuwei is stressed over youwei among the duties of a leader. The Kangxi Emperor of the Qing dynasty, counted among the greatest leaders in Chinese history, had the characters for wuwei made into a signboard and hung at the entrance of the hall where the emperor presided over his councils.

If a leader governs the country by cleverness (智), it is a curse to the country; if he does not govern it by cleverness, it is a blessing to the country. (Daodejing, chapter 65)

It means that leaders, the emperor and his chief officials, must not torment the people by making policies for their own gain into policies of the state. It was a warning to himself and his ministers not to make laws or decrees rashly. In East and West alike, it often happens that leaders set policies out of their own conviction and their subordinates exploit them. Such people come to break the law, or make new laws, to fill their private interests:

The best way to run a state is to let the people do what they wish… The worst is for the leaders of the state to compete with the people in pursuit of profit. (Records of the Grand Historian 129-1)

Zhuangzi, who represents Daoist thought together with Laozi, explains the background of wuwei in relation to human nature. It rests on the philosophy of change: everything in the cosmos changes and grows, and every shoot and form contains the direction in which it will grow. Ripeness and decay, and the continual change and transformation between them, are all contained in it. Zhuangzi explains that government should not interfere in the life of the people, that is, should keep youwei small and treat them with wuwei:

People have a nature. Everyone makes clothes to wear and tills fields to eat: that is it. It serves everyone. It is natural and leans to no side. So heaven treats it with wuwei and does not interfere. (Zhuangzi, Outer Chapters, “Horses’ Hooves,” 1)

Indian philosophy, too, has important concepts that can be translated as nothing and being, or wuwei and youwei. Wuwei is expressed in Sanskrit as “asamskrta,” meaning “uncreated,” “unformed,” “unconditioned.” Youwei, conversely, is expressed as “samskrta,” meaning “created,” “formed,” “conditioned.” But Indian philosophy, where Buddhism originated, and the Daoism of East Asia differ fundamentally in how they distinguish being from nothing. In Indian philosophy nothing is the source and the essence, so being is given only a passing value. In Buddhism, the core of the philosophy “form is emptiness, emptiness is form” is likewise that the value of form, of being, is passing, and that the weight must be put on emptiness, on nothing. Daoism, on the other hand, has a philosophy in which nothing is the source but the role of being is recognized: “All things under heaven are born of being, and being begins in nothing.” Nothing and being complement each other like yin and yang. That Buddhism, which originated in Indian philosophy, values nothing (無), void (虛) and emptiness (空) far more than Eastern Daoism does comes from this origin.

In human life, too, Buddhism aims at a state beyond all the suffering human life brings, liberation, nirvana, while Daoism stresses the importance of an attitude that can enjoy what food, clothing and shelter, the basics of human life, give us. In an Eastern civilization that values this view of the cosmos and of human affairs, Confucianism, which stresses action, coexists with Daoism, which tells us to return to the source. Easterners often embrace both Confucianism and Daoism, depending on the situation and the position in which they find themselves.

Daoism’s emphasis on wuwei is clear in the Daodejing. Through the thought of wuwei, Daoism established at the foundation of Eastern civilization an ethic that reduces as far as possible the interference of rulers or governments in the lives of individuals.

Thirty spokes come together to make one wheel; the empty space in the middle makes the cart roll. Windows are cut and doors made to form a room; because there is empty space, the room is useful. What benefits being is that wuwei makes use of it. (Daodejing, chapter 11)

The thought of wuwei ziran, stressed especially in the Zhuangzi, has as its core the meaning of wuwei as against youwei: that human beings should not be bound by the ornaments of culture they have made, law, ethics, habits and customs, but should be freed, and find life within nature. In the end this spread in Eastern civilization, more than in any other, a thought centered on the autonomy of the individual free from government interference. And it laid down an economic ethic freed from greed and, in the end, in partnership with Confucianism, a framework for a sound economy that stresses education, diligence, thrift and frugality, and the integrity of leaders.

The West, on the other hand, gives no value to wuwei and gives youwei a positive meaning.

“You are the light of the world… When you light a lamp, its light shines on everything in the room,” it says, stressing the importance of action: Listen! Behold, the farmer went out to sow… Others fell into the good ground, and yielded fruit, growing up and increasing. Some brought forth thirty times, some sixty times, and some one hundred times as much. (Mark 4:3–8)

Along with the encouragement to act as the light of the world and as new shoots, and to win results actively in human affairs, it stresses the role of becoming, like salt, something human affairs need.

You are the salt of the earth, but if the salt has lost its flavor, with what will it be salted?… You are the light of the world… it shines to all. (Matthew, chapter 5)

To strive like salt or light is youwei. As in the example above, making an earthenware vessel or making a room is wuwei. The contrast between the centrality of wuji, the starting point of Eastern civilization expressed in the thought of wuwei, and the centrality of creation, the starting point of Western civilization, may be the most important element underlying each civilization.

In the West, God gives human beings, through prophets, a law they must obey absolutely. Warning that to break the law is to betray God and do evil, it makes people respect the law, and so stresses youwei. But from the standpoint of the Dao, the rule of law, too, is in the end a human act, and ultimately a form of youwei. By going through God, the prophet has the advantage of drawing strength and focus from the mighty power of an absolute God. And a driving force arises that pursues an ideal and opens up the future. But such a driving force does not last. In the end it follows geopolitical conditions and the flow of shi (勢). Historically, the ideals pursued by one God, or one ideology, have never been realized. Philosophically, too, the phenomenon of one God or one ideology ruling the world does not occur.

Western civilization, centered on revealed religion, centers on being between nothing and being, and in action values youwei over wuwei. It goes a step further, separating nothing and being completely and developing a dualism of opposition. In Western civilization, light and darkness, non-being and being, are all in opposition, not harmony. The Dao of the East, on the other hand, centered on natural philosophy, takes a philosophical attitude that embraces light and darkness, non-being and being, together. So the West interprets the relationship of any two things in the cosmos, in nature and in human affairs, as a dualistic structure of opposition. The dualism of opposition and the thought of good and evil interpret the relationships between things as hostile or opposed. The Western dualism of opposition is used mainly to explain scientific or natural phenomena, and in the phenomena of human society, especially in matters of religion, it takes concrete form as the thought of good and evil. Both start from the philosophy of being. The cosmos and human beings were both created by God. And the core of the Western philosophy of being is that the created cosmos exists as it was created and must go on existing, unchanged, just as it was made. It rests on the principle that what God created exists forever.

Dualism is a philosophy that explains natural phenomena or thought by two fundamental principles. Eastern philosophy interprets the cosmos and human life through the thought that nothing exists independently, and that all things are complementary and always changing, because Eastern civilization rests on the philosophy of change. So, as said before, in place of ontology the East developed the philosophies of shi (勢) and shu (術).

The East has no dogma or scientific theory comparable to Western creationism or the theory of evolution. Because the East has a philosophy in which human beings are part of nature and return into nature, no thought connected with the teleology that human beings are the center of the cosmos developed, and so there was no room for a humanism tied to metaphysics to develop. The East has no religious dogma of the creation of nature and humanity, but it does have a creation myth: the creation myth of Pangu (盤古), which supports the philosophy of change. And although it has no elaborate, scientific theory of evolution like Darwin’s, it has a philosophy of change that explains the place and role of nature and humanity in the cosmos. The philosophy of change, the root of Eastern thought, developed into a system in the philosophy of change contained in the Yijing.

The Culture of Ethics of the East vs the Culture of the Rule of Law of the West

In the East, which values wuwei, ethics become more important than law; in the West, which values youwei, the rule of law becomes more important than ethics. This is expressed as the culture of ethics of the East and the culture of the rule of law of the West. Looking at how the relationship between ethics and law was settled in the East helps us understand the difference between the two civilizations. In the East, too, there was a time, as in the Warring States period before the Common Era, when law was valued, played the central role, and was key to ending the Warring States and bringing about a unified state. The law of that time was called bianfa, “changing the law,” because it held the revolutionary content of ending the feudal system by law and running the state through the system of commanderies and counties. In Chinese rule by law, figures such as Shang Yang (390–338 BC), Han Fei (280–233 BC) and Li Si (280–208 BC) played central roles. Shang Yang was active at a time when the long feudal tradition, in which the king’s relatives monopolized power, still held. For the development of the state, Shang Yang argued for a rule of law that stressed equality between the king’s kin and the common people. He vigorously pursued a reform of law that abandoned the old paradigm of special treatment for the aristocracy and carried out a new paradigm, making a law equal for all the foundation of the state.

Struggling for twenty years with the feudal forces, the king’s relatives among them, Shang Yang enforced laws that broke up the landed aristocracy, taxed the rich heavily and distributed land and farming funds to poor peasants. All the people came to hope that as they escaped poverty and the state grew, they would have their share. In the end, with the king’s active help, he made his reform policy succeed. But he earned the hatred of the landed aristocracy, and after the death of the king who had helped him for twenty years (Duke Xiao of Qin), Shang Yang was put to death. Yet the revolutionary paradigm of turning the feudal system into the system of commanderies and counties survived, and Shang Yang’s rule by law made Qin a great power. A century and a half later, as Qin unified the realm, the First Emperor of Qin ended the Warring States period, which had lasted 250 years under hereditary feudalism, and achieved unification under the system of commanderies and counties ruled directly by the central government (221 BC). The First Emperor made Li Si, of the Legalist school, his chancellor. The representative work of the Legalists was written by Han Fei (韓非).

In that the Legalists wholly rejected ethical values, stressed rule by law over personal leadership, and scorned the rites and ideals of the past, they can be said to form an antithesis standing head-on against Confucian thought.⁶⁵ The writings of Han Feizi, among them the chapter “Nan Yan” (難言, “The Difficulty of Speaking”), which begins “Your servant Fei never fears to speak his mind…,” can be compared in form and content with Machiavelli’s “The Prince.” Indeed, the Han Feizi shows, like The Prince, a sharp anatomy and observation of human nature, and the likeness is astonishing.⁶⁶ Han Feizi came almost two thousand years before Machiavelli.

Han Feizi explains the role of the ruler: “An enlightened ruler must bear in mind not to rely on his ministers not betraying him, but to equip himself with the shu (術) that keeps them from betraying him; not to rely on his ministers not deceiving him, but to rely on equipping himself with the shu that keeps them from deceiving him.”⁶⁷ Citing as a minister’s true mind the words of Yang Hu (陽虎), that he “serves a wise ruler with all his heart, and with a foolish ruler merely devises schemes to test him,”⁶⁸ he insists, with an out-and-out Machiavellian statecraft, that even such ministers must be managed by shu (術). Machiavelli counsels the prince to use both the threat of the lion and the cunning of the fox,⁶⁹ and insists on the need to wrap ministers in glory, gold and treasure so that they have no mind to betray.⁷⁰ Han Feizi teaches that a minister serves a wise ruler faithfully, but when there is no need to he tries to use the ruler, so the ruler must know how to drive away flattering, treacherous ministers.⁷¹

This realism, cold and heartless in one respect, may have applied, and been needed to restore order, in a troubled age like the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods. But in the China that followed, which maintained a unified realm for two thousand years, ren (仁) and yi (義) were revered and valued and harmony and the mean were pursued, so the Legalist thought built on opposition and conflict yielded first place in importance to the Confucian thought that values ethics.

In a unified state where the system of commanderies and counties had been realized, securing peace and stability through politics and administration became more important. So law, while an important element of the state’s means of rule, came to work together with the philosophies of Daoism and Confucianism, which include the ethics and wuwei that help the state’s normal politics and administration. This developed in the end into the forms of “Huang-Lao thought” (黃老思想) and “Confucian outside, Legalist inside” (外儒內法). It took the form of putting Daoist wuwei and Confucian ethics on the outside while contributing to the running of the unified state through the rule of law within. Government by virtue (德治), centered on wuwei, and government by rites (禮治), centered on ethics, became more important than government by law.

The Bible commands that even in family relations the worship of God come first, which makes it clear that the worship of God is the first law.

Don’t think that I came to send peace on the earth. I didn’t come to send peace, but a sword. For I came to set a man at odds against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. A man’s foes will be those of his own household. He who loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and he who loves son or daughter more than me isn’t worthy of me. (Matthew, chapter 10)

In the East, in the fourth century BC, Shang Yang’s reform of the law brought law into conflict with ethics. The system of collective punishment, in which law counts for more than family ties, became a particular problem. Collective punishment, which implicated family and even neighbors in a crime, destroyed ethics and spread fear. By the second century BC this important problem had already been settled, when the Han dynasty, which inherited the unified realm from Qin, adopted the system of “Confucian outside, Legalist inside” (外儒內法), in which ethics matter more than law. In Sima Qian’s Records of the Grand Historian (史記), Shang Yang’s reform is described as an innovative system that made Qin a great power, but at the same time as a cold rule by law that overrode human ethics and morality. Stressing the tragedy and resistance it brought along with the institutional achievements of Shang Yang’s rule by law, Sima Qian describes what happens when law overwhelms ethics.

This Eastern thought of “putting ethics forward while making use of law” is well explained by the thought of yin and yang.

The Eastern view of the cosmos centers on the structure of wuji and taiji. Both matter, but the East holds that wuji comes before taiji. The Western view of the cosmos, by contrast, stresses creation out of chaos, and holds that creation overcomes chaos (disorder) and rules over everything. This difference is why East and West came to have civilizations founded on the thought of yin and yang and the thought of good and evil. In the end, East and West each came to have contrasting views of the cosmos at the foundation of their civilizations. The East follows the principles of complementarity and of yin and yang, centered on the change between wuji and taiji, while the West takes as its center the opposing principle of good and evil, between chaos and creation.

The thought of Eastern natural philosophy accepts the principle that “our life has a limit, but knowledge has none.” Respecting the principle of the unmanifest, it never leans toward a single system of thought such as a religion or a metaphysical theory. It does not indulge in staking everything on a truth and waging a struggle of good against evil to spread it. The Western manifest view holds that God can convey to human beings, through prophets, the end of knowledge, absolute truth. Human beings reach the end of knowledge and touch eternal truth. The strength and danger of the manifest, described earlier, in the end set off the thought of good and evil, whose starting point is the doctrine of good and evil that divides believers from unbelievers.

With the Western paradigm ruling the world, we meet far too many examples of Western systems, organizations and customs centered on law. To restore some balance, let us look at a few features of the ethics-centered civilization of the East. In the fourth century BC the state of Qi pursued a policy of making use of culture and learning. At Jixia, west of the Qi capital Linzi, it founded the Jixia Academy, the world’s first state institute of learning. It is regarded as the center of the Hundred Schools of Thought, where thinkers of many schools, Daoists, Confucians, Legalists, Mohists, the School of Names, the Yin-Yang school and the Diplomatists, debated with state support. It produced thinkers such as Xunzi and Shen Dao. There the thinkers developed ethical philosophies such as “all things are equal in measure” (萬物齊度), “keeping one’s nature whole and one’s truth intact” (全性保眞), “keeping desires few and shallow” (情慾寡淺), “seeing insult without feeling disgrace” (見侮不辱) and “forbidding aggression and laying down arms” (禁攻寢兵).⁷² It is a system of ethical philosophy to set beside the law-centered philosophical system of the West.

Within the philosophy that ethics stand above law lies the idea of wuwei warning against youwei. Why does wuwei warn against youwei? The enormous mistakes human beings make when they rely on youwei alone were laid bare in the West’s age of ideology in the twentieth century. They are a phenomenon that appeared as the West immersed itself in the manifest, at odds with the basic philosophy of the Dao, “dao ke dao fei chang dao” (the Dao that is expressed is not the eternal Dao), which holds that human beings cannot grasp absolute truth. In the modern era Western thought maximized the powers of the human mind and came to hold the delusion that human beings can reach absolute truth through the mind. There was a time when people claimed to have grasped absolute truth and, claiming to realize it in history, carried out unspeakable cruelties without hesitation: the ideologies of fascism and communism. They believed that if the absolute truth expressed in their ideology were realized, utopia would be realized in human society. Social Darwinism had a decisive influence. They believed that abandoning ethics could be justified on the road toward utopia. But when the absolute truth they claim turns out to be unreal, in the end only the cruelties they committed remain as the ideology’s identity. This judgment is made, in the end, in the light of human nature.

If human nature were always good, or could be made good, wuwei would not be needed; we could simply follow human nature. But in human nature there is a powerful self-interest that seeks to maximize one’s own gain. It does not change. Human self-interest uses the mind to the full to build up conviction. There is a tendency in human nature to take private interest before public interest. Self-interest easily turns into greed and is always present in human society. In the age of ideology the West came to believe in an evolutionism according to which human nature can be made good. But the Eastern understanding of human nature differs from the Western. The evolutionism of making human nature good was a colossal error possible only in modern Western history. The Eastern theory of human nature concentrates on the change in human character: whether a person becomes a follower (xiaoren, 小人, literally “small person,” the leader’s counterpart) who drives himself on with greed, or a leader who keeps to ethics. That this depends entirely on the individual’s effort is human nature as the East grasped it.

Ethics are not something we are born with. They come from learning and from following the conduct of the sages. (Xunzi 23:5)

Western civilization brings the will and law of God into human affairs. It judges human conduct and youwei as good or evil by the standard of obedience or disobedience to God. In Judaism the definition of youwei is mostly set by one’s attitude to God: serving idols, not keeping the covenant with God, and so on. And because the rules for all human conduct were laid down as law, an extremely severe punishment from God awaits youwei. So in Western civilization words and deeds that follow God’s will are good, and those that go against it are the sin of doing evil, and subject to punishment. This is the “jealous God” of Exodus (20:5–6), quoted earlier. In the end, in the West, human conduct goes beyond the human sphere and becomes a matter of good and evil, sin, punishment and suffering, in which God intervenes: a matter not of ethics but of law.

The importance of law already held a firm place in Greco-Roman civilization. In Western history political leaders are described as “lawgivers.” Solon (638–558 BC), the most famous of the Seven Sages of Greece, is especially well known as a “lawgiver.” In the West, those who make good laws and see them kept become leaders. In Western civilization, naturally, institutions and laws multiply, and so do sanctions against those who break them. The role of lawyers grows. Able lawyers appear in the West from Greek and Roman times: Demosthenes of Greece and Cicero of Rome both began as advocates and became famous statesmen. Cicero received the title “Father of the Fatherland” for suppressing the Catiline conspiracy. Demosthenes, a Greek who opposed the expansion of Macedon, won fame across all of Greece.

The core of the Eastern theory of human nature focuses entirely on cultivating “human character” after birth, within the bounds of the human nature one is given. The most important key in cultivating character is ethics. Not law but ethics stands higher in the cultivation of character. In the East, leaders of society are not called “lawgivers.” To refer to leaders of society, Daoism uses terms such as the sage (聖人) and Confucianism the leader (junzi, 君子).⁷³ The sage and the leader are not experts in law but “leaders with ethical character.” Lawyers appeared in the East only after the nineteenth century. In the East, it is not those who lay down the law but those recognized for their ethics who become leaders.

3) The Standard of Human Action: Yin and Yang (陰陽), of Change, vs Good and Evil (善惡), of Being

The thought of yin and yang and the thought of good and evil serve as the standards of human action in East and West. In the East, from the standpoint that everything changes ceaselessly, action follows a philosophy of change that values flexibility and adaptability. An individual’s action has meaning not so much independently as within relationships and context. It rests on interdependence and connection. Human action is understood as seeking to balance yin (陰) and yang (陽) in nature and society. It aims at balance and harmony.

Human action shows a flow and conforms to the laws of nature. The core of nature as the East sees it lies in ceaseless change.⁷⁴ “All things carry yin on their backs and embrace yang.” “When the sunlight shines on a mountain, brightness (yang) appears. When evening comes and the sunlight is gone, the mountain shows darkness (yin).” In the Daodejing all things in nature are expressed in terms of yin and yang.

All things carry yin on their backs and embrace yang. (Daodejing, chapter 42)

The Dao, the center of all things, is present always, everywhere, for everyone. The Dao is the order of nature and the cosmos. Whatever human beings do, whatever they believe, they cannot but be beings that follow the Dao. God is a choice, but the Dao is a necessity. Human beings cannot escape the Dao. Everyone relies on the Dao and lives within it.

The Dao of heaven benefits all and harms none. (Daodejing 81)

Because the Dao applies to all human beings, it does not intervene in individual human affairs one by one. It is indifferent to human affairs. Human beings decide their own affairs within the bounds of the Dao. Nature does not change its laws for the sake of human beings. Human affairs are expressed not by the thought of good and evil but by the thought of yin and yang. Human beings are responsible for what they do. They work hard in summer to lay in food and rest in winter. Someone who does not work in summer and only plays cannot escape want in winter. The Dao lies beyond good and evil and applies to everyone. The good enjoy the Dao, and those who are not good are protected by it. The Dao has no enemies. There is no room for the thought of good and evil.

The Dao is where all things dwell. The Dao is the treasure of the good and at the same time the protection of those who are not good. (Daodejing, chapter 62)

Western civilization works out human affairs through the thought of good and evil. Nothing (無) is treated as the existence of “evil.” Being (有) carries the “good” meaning of having driven away darkness and disorder to make a bright and ordered world. This is the beginning of the thought of good and evil. The unchanging thought of good and evil is produced by the Western philosophy of being. Created, unchanging beings, entangled in the thought of good and evil, inevitably divide and stand opposed to each other.

The Dao includes both light and darkness, both good and not-good (不善). In doing so it keeps away from expressing absolute truth in the “affirmative.” This is stressed again and again in the Daodejing: the Dao is clear like the water of a valley stream and murky like muddy water (Daodejing 15). The Dao mingles with light and mingles with darkness, and in the Dao they become one (Daodejing 56). This basic concept of the Dao runs deep in Eastern civilization.⁷⁵ The Western approach starts from the philosophy of being and concentrates on analyzing and sorting out the principles of “being.” The Eastern approach concentrates on understanding the principles of nature and human affairs through “change.” Concentrating on change leads inevitably to a dualism of complementarity. Once a civilization holds a philosophy of yin and yang, it is hard to apply concepts of good and evil with absoluteness to human affairs. The yin and yang of wuwei is a concept explaining the principle of change in nature; the good and evil of youwei is a concept explaining human moral judgment. The yin and yang of wuwei is value-neutral; the good and evil of youwei passes judgment on value.

Yin and yang carry a standard that means harmony or complementarity. Yin and yang are in a relationship of ceaseless interaction and transformation. Like day and night, hardness and softness, life and death, all beings find balance within change. Yin and yang are not absolute entities; they are defined by their relationship to each other. In some situations yin can turn into yang and yang into yin. Yin and yang are opposed, yet neither can exist without the other. Neither is an independent entity standing alone; each always needs the other. Harmony is achieved within opposition, and change itself is the principle of order. “Yin and yang achieve harmony (和) through qi (氣)” (Daodejing, chapter 42). Yin and yang mean harmony, that is, complementarity. When the sun’s light shines on a mountain, the mountain changes its appearance into yin and yang. Dark and bright mean the harmony, the complementarity, of light and mountain. Man and woman, ruler and subject, father and son, summer and winter, front and back, high and low: in Eastern thought all of these stand in complementary relationships that achieve harmony like yin and yang.

The Western thought of good and evil divides good from evil within the duality of human relationships. Human beings are divided into “the chosen” and “the rejected.” The division of good and evil inevitably sets the two against each other. One of the cores of revealed religion is the thought of good and evil. The division of good and evil is a concept absent from the philosophy of the Dao, because the Dao sees not good and evil but yin and yang as the essence of human affairs. In the West, concepts such as value neutrality, moral relativism and moral nihilism appear as the opposites of the thought of good and evil. The philosophies of revealed religion, of Plato and of Kant follow this analysis, and it is one of the core ideas of Western civilization. But these Western-centered opposites cannot be applied to Eastern civilization for comparison, because Eastern thought is built around a different view of the cosmos and a different origin and principle of human affairs. Eastern civilization cannot be dismissed as value neutrality, moral relativism or moral nihilism just because it differs from the West. The thought of yin and yang follows the philosophy of change; it is a philosophical framework that explains the change and harmony of beings. In the West, good is always good and evil always evil. Interpretations may vary with the age and the culture, but the essential division does not change. The thought of good and evil is a moral and ethical standard for judging human action and existence from the standpoint of youwei. It is regarded as an absolute value that does not change relatively, as yin and yang do.

Because Western thought divides human affairs within the bounds of good and evil, it finds Eastern thought hard to understand. Only by putting forward the Eastern thought of yin and yang can it be compared with the Western thought of good and evil. As a principle of human affairs, the thought of yin and yang plays a role exactly opposite to that of the thought of good and evil. The two work as principles of human affairs following two different worldviews. The thought of yin and yang centers on the concepts of harmony and mutual complementarity inherent in natural philosophy. The thought of good and evil centers on the concepts of moral judgment and mutual opposition inherent in religion or metaphysical philosophy.

The thought of good and evil, the principle of Western human affairs, is tied to creationism. Creation is the word of God, and creation is a good existence that arises by driving away darkness, which is treated as evil. The importance of creation, tied to the thought of good and evil, is also clear in the stories of the “struggle against Chaos” connected with the creation myths of the West and the Middle East. True “existence,” like light, begins as human beings vanquish evil beings that appear as symbols of chaos, such as sea monsters, dragons and great serpents. The Greek poet Hesiod held a view of the cosmos similar to that of revealed religion. He thought that in the beginning there was chaos, and that from it were born the cosmos, meaning universe and order, and the gods. The premise and process in which good order was created by overcoming evil chaos has in the end led Western civilization to conduct human affairs through the thought of good and evil. In Genesis, what comes right after the creation of human beings is the story of good and evil:

Yahweh God said, “You shall not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; for in the day that you eat of it, you will surely die”… The serpent said to the woman, “You won’t really die, for God knows that in the day you eat it, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” (Genesis 2:17, 3:4)

Then comes the picture of Cain, the first son of Adam and Eve, committing the sin, that is, the evil, of murdering Abel, the second son. Through this God divides good from evil from the very beginning. God stands on the side of good.

Moses said, “Please show me your glory.” He said, “I will make all my goodness (善) pass before you, and will proclaim Yahweh’s name before you.” (Exodus 33:18–19)

This thought of good and evil is still treated as a central question in the Christian Bible.

Jesus said to him, “Why do you call me good? No one is good except one—God.” (Mark 10:18)

God works only for those who believe in God. Religion is mostly inherited from one’s parents before any individual choice. Doctrine describes the choice as God’s grace. Those who believe in God by receiving grace receive God’s mighty protection. God works miracles for them and rules over their affairs. Above all, for those who believe in him, God puts forward the philosophy that whoever they consider an enemy is God’s enemy too. The thought of good and evil comes in.

So in revealed religion the concept that the enemy is absolutely evil, the thought of good and evil, appears. The thought of good and evil is a concept absent from the philosophy of the Dao. The Dao keeps away from it. The Dao is “the treasure of the good and the protection of those who are not good.” The Dao chooses the thought of yin and yang instead of the thought of good and evil. God is “the treasure of the good and the enemy of the wicked.” Because believers are punished if they do not follow God, they must obey God absolutely, so the color of good and evil becomes absolute and rules the whole of human affairs.

I will punish the world for their evil, and the wicked for their iniquity. I will cause the arrogance of the proud to cease, and will humble the arrogance of the terrible. (Isaiah 13:11)

In revealed religion, good and evil become a matter of the law God commanded. God becomes a God of reward and punishment, rewarding the good and punishing the wicked. Because the punishment of good and evil becomes a command of the law, and its rewards and punishments are harsh, people come to fear “God’s thought of good and evil.” The Western thought of good and evil, centered on sin and punishment, works on human beings in the form of punishing those who do evil and rewarding the good. The law that judges sin and punishment then becomes important. Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy, three of the Five Books of Moses, are filled with precise and strict laws and punishments for all. This ruled the world of Western thought through the thousand years of the Middle Ages to the early Renaissance. The thought of good and evil remained at the core of Western civilization even after deism appeared.

The Daodejing, on the other hand, says nothing about distinguishing good and evil or the punishment that goes with it. Human affairs cannot but have good and bad. The Eastern thought of yin and yang expresses human affairs not as good and evil but as fortune and misfortune (吉凶). Fortune and misfortune are not handed down by God; human beings choose them. They are what naturally come to those who follow or go against the Dao, a natural philosophy. Nothing is eternal. Everything is always changing. In life, fortune, the good, always changes, and misfortune, the bad, always changes too. This awareness of life leans, in the course of human affairs, toward the standpoint of yin and yang, grounded in the philosophy of change.

Eastern civilization is familiar with the proverb of the old man of the frontier who lost his horse (塞翁之馬), which says that fortune and misfortune in life cannot be rashly foretold. In the East the view is that one must look at the whole of a life to judge its fortune and misfortune: to look at life through the philosophy of change, not the philosophy of being. So in the East fortune and misfortune are defined by an ethics of change rather than by a law of being. Eastern thought contains much ethical content in the form of advice or recommendation rather than compulsory commands like law: “The leader keeps to the Dao and has good fortune; the follower goes against the Dao and has misfortune” (Zhouyi, Great Commentary, Part One, chapter 3).

The thought of yin and yang starts from the physical, temporal and biological differences of nature and gradually widens to include aesthetic differences such as beauty and ugliness, moral differences such as good and evil, and social and ethical differences such as here and there, others and self.⁷⁶ In yin and yang the two concepts complement each other, and if one element is absent the other cannot exist. In the thought of good and evil, on the other hand, the two concepts are opposed to each other and take on the character of mutual collision.

Because the thought of yin and yang is not used in the West, it has played little part in discussions of world thought or philosophy over the last two hundred years, when the Western paradigm has ruled. But given that human thought is made up of two parts, Western opposition and Eastern complementarity, it can be used in many fields.⁷⁷ Within Eastern civilization, seeing Daoism as yin and Confucianism as yang is a very useful division. And in comparing the civilizations of East and West, seeing Eastern civilization as yin and Western civilization as yang is a very useful and fitting division, one hard to find in any other concept. The Dao and God clearly show the difference of yin and yang. The unmanifest of the Dao and the manifest of God show the difference of yin and yang: the Dao values the receptive, feminine (陰) side, and God the active, masculine (陽) side.

Thanks to the dualism of complementarity at the foundation of the thought of yin and yang, the dualism of opposition, of conflict and struggle, lost its philosophical force in Eastern civilization. The dualism of complementarity and the dualism of opposition play important roles in shaping the philosophical currents of the two civilizations. Indeed, in the unfolding of logic as well, the prevalence of the Eastern explanation by parallel phrasing (對句) and the Western explanation by syllogism stems from the dualism of complementarity and the dualism of opposition.⁷⁸ Eastern yin-yang thought accepts a fundamental duality in the cosmos but stresses the mutually complementary and interdependent relationship between its two elements. As a result, in a culture of complementary dualism and of yin and yang, the political ethics and political economy the East values developed together with the formation of nation-states in the Warring States period before the Common Era. The Western dualism of opposition and thought of good and evil, on the other hand, with the flourishing of revealed religion, came to respect law, and the development of metaphysics became their mainstream.

The East of yin and yang sees nature and human society as both made up of the interaction of yin and yang. Yin and yang are not in absolute opposition; they form a complementary relationship and are a principle that explains change and harmony. Day and night, male and female, hardness and softness are good examples. It emphasizes not value judgment, as good and evil do, but the balance and circulation of existence. Yin and yang show a relational, fused worldview of “two and yet one.” This relational, fused worldview is a worldview on a different plane from the dualism or monism the Western philosophical system argues for.

The West builds a civilization that understands the world of nature and humanity as an opposition of moral values. It asserts absolute and opposed values, which appear in Greek civilization and revealed religion as a thought of good and evil stressing the ethical side. Moral good deeds and sins, God and the devil, heaven and hell are good examples. This establishes in Western civilization a philosophical system in which, with the stress on human free will and responsibility, the choice between good and evil emerges as the central problem of human existence. The thought of yin and yang values relationship and harmony above value judgment; the thought of good and evil values human moral choice and responsibility. So the East came to stress the order and balance of society, and the West the ethical judgment and salvation of the individual.

The Staying Power of Yin-Yang Thinking vs the Strength and Danger of Good-and-Evil Thinking

How do the thought of yin and yang and the thought of good and evil differ? The thought of good and evil wields powerful influence over human beings. The problem is that danger comes with it: hostility between believers and unbelievers, and hostility between people who believe in different gods. Many gods exist on earth at once. Because each god is absolute, gods and the prophets of revealed religions find it hard to coexist in harmony. God foretells the severest punishment for those who believe in other gods, a punishment of good and evil that reaches down to the third and fourth generation. This division of good and evil arises even among sects that believe in the same God. The fierce hostility between sects sometimes appears to overwhelm even the hostility toward other gods. In Christianity the struggle between Catholics and Protestants dominated the history of the early modern West.

The Dao, which keeps away from anthropomorphism, has at first sight no human-like feelings, unlike the anthropomorphized God, and avoids intervening, so its influence on human beings is not direct. But there is no other Dao than the Dao, and no sects within it. All human beings without exception follow the one Dao. It has staying power. In Eastern civilization the cosmos is always changing, and change turns like yin and yang and achieves harmony. At its root there is one thing: the Dao. The Dao does not divide good from evil.

How great is the difference between what is good and what is evil? (Daodejing, chapter 20)

In human affairs the thought of yin and yang uses not an absolute division of good and evil but the standard of liking and disliking (好-不好). It holds that good and evil, in the end, change like liking and disliking. The Daodejing and the Confucian classics solved the problem of good and evil in a different way from the West. They established the thought that good and evil belong to human beings and have nothing to do with nature or the Dao. In the East, by approaching human beings just as nature, the Dao planted in them not a thought of good and evil but the philosophy of change that is in nature. A mountain expresses brightness and darkness as they change with the hour. Brightness and darkness cannot turn into good and evil. Through the thought of yin and yang, the philosophy of change becomes the root of Eastern thought. While the God of the West took the side of good early on, the Dao of the East transcends good and evil and chooses the far shore beyond them. Western civilization takes the thought of good and evil, and Eastern civilization the thought of yin and yang, as the center of its thought.

Important elements of the thought of good and evil are the concepts of sin and punishment. The good receive reward from God, and the wicked, having sinned, receive punishment from God. The East, too, has something like the concepts of sin and punishment, as in expressions such as “to sin against heaven” and “to receive heaven’s punishment.” But the Dao of Daoism lies beyond good and evil, and since good people follow the Dao, the result is that the Dao is with the good. In the same vein, the Dao only benefits; those who are not good, failing to follow the Dao as a result of their own choices and actions, “bring harm upon themselves.” It is not that the Dao hands down punishment.

The philosophy of the Dao does not believe in heaven’s rewards and punishments. Nor does it believe in the theory of resonance between heaven and humanity (天人感應), the basis of mysticism, in which human actions move heaven by touching it.⁷⁹ The saying “heaven helps those who help themselves” means that human beings, not God, must help themselves. It is a philosophy in which heaven does not reward the good and punish those who are not good; heaven is constant, and people merely bring fortune or misfortune on themselves through their own choices and actions. Following this thought, good and evil lie within the human sphere, and the principle of nature, the Dao, lies beyond them.

Are peace and turmoil in the world decided by heaven? The movements of the sun, moon and stars in the sky were the same under the sage king Yu as under the tyrant Jie. With the very same movements of heaven, Yu brought peace and Jie brought turmoil. So peace and turmoil in the world are not decided by heaven. (Xunzi 17:5)

The thought of yin and yang follows the laws of nature; the thought of good and evil follows revealed religion or moral judgment. Freedom, equality, fraternity and justice are good; bondage, discrimination, hatred and injustice are evil. Good and evil follow a structure of opposition in which overcoming evil becomes the moral goal and the realization of social justice. In religion it is tied to salvation and wields an even more powerful force, that of following God’s will. The thought of good and evil can give human beings great strength compared with the thought of yin and yang, but it carries the danger of leaning to one side and being unable to last. The thought of yin and yang, conversely, is less powerful than the thought of good and evil in human action, but sustainable.

With the rise of deism and the progress of science, the number of people in the West who believe that God works miracles or rules human affairs through anthropomorphism is falling. But the importance of revealed religion does not disappear just because the miracles and anthropomorphism it claims are in question. The God of revealed religion goes on playing an important role at the level of the psychological instinct of self-preservation: the sense that an absolute God protects us. Human action is influenced greatly not by the mind but by psychology. Psychologically, human beings have a side that needs the existence of a God who protects them and answers their prayers.

Human beings have a deep psychological instinct to protect themselves. For this, they created the being called God. So they rely on God for their protection and safety, as a child relies on its parents.⁸⁰

Analyzed philosophically, the thought of yin and yang seems more rational and persuasive than the thought of good and evil for living a life, because it has staying power. But in reality the thought of good and evil does not disappear and cannot help being useful in life. It does not last long, but its strength appeals strongly to human nature.

Good and evil are judged by whether they help or hinder the preservation of our being: that is, whether they increase or diminish, promote or remove, our power of action.⁸¹

For in the end human beings are governed not by the mind but by human nature, which joins instinct and mind. The thought of good and evil, with its emphasis on punishing evil, can be put to use for survival. The thought of good and evil, that “the wicked will be punished to the third and fourth generation of their descendants,” is used in reality because, in situations that directly threaten survival, the concept of evil can be used as a powerful tool against enemies for the sake of “self-preservation.”

Sunzi’s Art of War, of Yin and Yang vs Clausewitz, of Good and Evil

The opposing, exclusive, dividing and combative character of Western civilization, and the contrasting harmonizing, receptive, conciliatory character of Eastern civilization, can be found everywhere in the religion, thought and philosophy of East and West, but they show most clearly in the question of war and peace, which decides between struggle and coexistence.⁸² This appears in the two summits of Eastern and Western thinking on war: Sunzi’s The Art of War and Clausewitz’s On War. Sunzi applies Eastern thought and follows the thought of yin and yang; Clausewitz follows the thought of good and evil. Sunzi defines the highest victory as winning without destroying the enemy; Clausewitz defines the complete destruction of the enemy as the highest victory. For the highest victory, Sunzi values the extension of shi, and Clausewitz the pursuit of attack and victory.

Though they deal with the same subject, under the influence of the cultures they lived in Sunzi takes a long view, allowing that by the turn of yin and yang the enemy may become one’s own side, while Clausewitz takes a short view: the enemy is evil, so destroy him completely. Seen this way, The Art of War is strategic and Clausewitz’s On War tactical. The strategic and tactical difference between the writings of Sunzi and Clausewitz shows in the two men’s definitions of war.

Sunzi: The art of war is of vital importance to the state. It is a matter of life and death for the people, a road either to the survival or to the ruin of the state. It must on no account be neglected.⁸³

Clausewitz: War is an act of force to compel our enemy to do our will.⁸⁴

Clausewitz’s On War takes the complete surrender of the enemy as its greatest aim. The Art of War, written in the fifth century BC in the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods, says clearly that the best strategy is to take the enemy intact, and regards winning by destroying the enemy as a means of last resort.

In the practical art of war, the best thing of all is to take the enemy’s country whole and intact; to shatter and destroy it is not so good. So, too, it is best to take the enemy’s army intact and make it submit; to destroy it is not so good.⁸⁵

In this way of thinking, non-violent means, that is, stratagem, are inevitably valued above the naked use of force. As Laozi said, the weapon that does not exist is more important than spear and sword. Clausewitz takes the position that stratagem is not a strategy one can adopt in a serious war. Clausewitz regards the destruction of the enemy as the highest victory.

Sunzi: All warfare is based on deception.⁸⁶

Clausewitz: The destruction of the enemy’s forces is the most effective and the most superior means; compared with it, all other means lose their importance.⁸⁷

Stratagem and planned attack (謀攻), which Sunzi prized as a strategy, Clausewitz treats as a trick and gives no importance. All the diplomacy and statecraft Bismarck used a few decades later to unify Germany would have been highly valued by Sunzi, and treated by Clausewitz as a swindle. For Clausewitz it was enough to win, wherever the outcome of the war might lead, and in this sense he turned the tactics of a field army commander into a whole theory of war.⁸⁸

Because Sunzi was an Easterner, he brought the basic Eastern concept of harmony even into his philosophy of struggle. He saw the enemy not as something to be destroyed but as something to be won over and brought into harmony. Westerners could get no further than the idea that whoever is not on my side is my enemy, or at best that whoever is not my enemy is on my side. But for Sunzi, the essence of Eastern thought, “Mount Tai does not refuse a single handful of earth,” must apply even in war.

In the nuclear age, when the use of nuclear weapons means mutual destruction, Clausewitz’s theory of war cannot but lose its value, because the three stages of complete victory he argued for, “the complete destruction of the enemy’s military force, the occupation of the enemy’s territory, and the breaking of the enemy’s will,” cannot be achieved. The end of war, the disarming of the enemy, the victory Clausewitz means, is the thorough destruction of the enemy: making the enemy incapable of recovery, as the Allies tried to do to Germany in the First and Second World Wars.

When Clausewitz discusses the plan of a war, he speaks of disarming a state. What does that mean? Disarming the enemy must include three important elements: the army, the territory, and the enemy’s will.

First the “military power” must be destroyed… Then the “country” must be conquered, for out of the country a new military force may be formed. But even when both these things are done, the war cannot be considered at an end so long as the “will” of the enemy is not subdued: that is, so long as its government and its allies have not signed a peace, or its people have not submitted; hostile acts and tension continue.⁸⁹

Contrary to Clausewitz’s thinking, in The Art of War breaking the enemy’s intention to make war is the best policy, and if the will alone can be broken, that is enough. The destruction of the enemy’s military force is considered only as an unavoidable last resort. In the case of Clausewitz, who insisted that the destruction of military force is a necessary condition of victory and defined war as necessarily an act of force, his theory of war can only be seen as clearly tactical compared with Sunzi’s strategic theory of war.

Hence to fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy’s resistance without fighting. Thus the highest form of generalship is to balk the enemy’s plans; the next best is to cut off the enemy’s alliances and isolate him; the next in order is to punish the enemy’s army; and the worst policy of all is to besiege walled cities.⁹⁰

This fundamental difference between Sunzi and Clausewitz comes from the fact that Sunzi never loses the concept of strategic harmony, in which the enemy, too, is ultimately on my side and can become my ally against another enemy, while Clausewitz brings into his theory of war, unchanged, the typical basic concept of a divisive and combative Western culture, in which the enemy is always the enemy and must be destroyed completely and thoroughly.

The guarantee of peace through institutions, led by an America whose foreign policy was deeply colored by idealism, has plainly failed, because yesterday’s enemies became today’s friends and yesterday’s friends today’s enemies. Japan and Italy, friends who together conceived and founded the League of Nations, became enemies a decade or so later as the very ones who broke it; the Soviet Union, a friend that joined the United States in founding the United Nations with Japan and Germany as hypothetical enemies, became an enemy a few years later; and Japan and Germany, yesterday’s enemies, became America’s friends. And today, after the Cold War, all this has lost its meaning.

The Western psychological attitude of pursuing victory rather than peaceful coexistence can only be explained, as Spinoza described it, as “the folly of being more pleased at having won and punished the enemy than at thinking what has been achieved through war.”⁹¹ This Western attitude continued for centuries after Spinoza’s time and crystallized in Clausewitz’s On War.

Vietnam has fought three wars: the war with France in 1945–1954, the war with the United States in 1955–1975, and the month-long war with China in early 1979. The first and second Vietnam wars were wars between East and West. The West waged a Clausewitzian war of good and evil and of victory; the East pursued a strategy of yin and yang and of extending shi, in the manner of Sunzi’s Art of War. As the wars dragged on, France and the United States lost sight of their purpose, of “why we must fight this war.” As the wars went on, both colonial expansion and the containment of communist expansion in Southeast Asia faded from memory. Once drawn into the war, they went on fighting a war that did nothing but vow victory, following not political skill or will but the logic of war itself. China, on the other hand, set as its aim a war to teach a “lesson” to Vietnam, which had invaded Cambodia, and explained this to the United States and Japan. It declared that the war would be a military operation limited in time and space. China’s attack on Vietnam began on February 17, and China declared that it would claim none of Vietnam’s territory and that its aim was to press for negotiations on Cambodia and other matters. Vietnam answered China’s attack without yielding anything. China began to withdraw on March 5 and announced on March 16 that the withdrawal was complete. In the third war both China and Vietnam declared victory, but in April Beijing and Hanoi began negotiations. As they prepared for war, China and Vietnam knew how to adjust its scale and length to the size of the stakes. The West led the course of history and tried to change it. Following good-and-evil thinking, in which the countries it meant to colonize and the communist countries became enemies, it sought to win victory over them. Both France and the United States were defeated. The East, however, grasped the course of history and tried to adapt to it. Following yin-yang thinking, Beijing and Hanoi went along with a current in which an enemy easily turns into a friend.

In Sunzi, the importance of grasping the purpose of war is stressed again and again, over victory in war. Sunzi explains repeatedly that the purpose of war is on the surface victory, but ultimately the gaining of the greatest benefit.

In war, even if something is lacking, one must strike swiftly and finish swiftly. There is no instance of a country having benefited from prolonged warfare, however skillfully conducted. So one who does not thoroughly understand the harm of war cannot fully understand its benefit.⁹²

For Clausewitz, victory in war means victory on the battlefield. It is true that with the words “war is the continuation of politics by other means” he makes clear that war is one means of achieving an aim and must be subordinate to political ends.⁹³ But Clausewitz gives no concrete explanation of what the ultimate end of war, the political end, means, as if it, too, meant victory on the battlefield, and interpretations vary.⁹⁴ In fact the proposition that “war is the continuation of politics by other means” was used during the First World War by the German military to seize the initiative from civilian politicians.⁹⁵

Because Clausewitz sees the purpose of war only as victory, he does not care what kind of victory it is. In chapter 2 of The Art of War, “Waging War” (作戰篇), Sunzi says that mobilizing means of war that would ruin and exhaust both sides is not the right way of war, whereas Clausewitz regards such considerations as a petty philanthropic attitude, an unnecessary hindrance to be avoided above all in war.

Now, philanthropists may easily imagine there is a skillful method of disarming and overcoming an enemy without great bloodshed, and that this is the proper tendency of the art of war. However plausible this may appear, still it is an error which must be extirpated; for in such dangerous things as war, the errors which proceed from a spirit of benevolence are the worst. As the use of physical power to the utmost extent by no means excludes the cooperation of the intelligence, it follows that he who uses force unsparingly, without reference to the bloodshed involved, must obtain a superiority if his adversary uses less vigor in its application. The former then dictates the law to the latter, and both proceed to extremities to which the only limitations are those imposed by the amount of counteracting force on each side.⁹⁶

Our time can be seen as the age of The Art of War. In the nuclear age, when the destruction of the enemy means one’s own destruction, Clausewitz’s theory of war becomes useless. Two thousand five hundred years ago, as if foreseeing the twentieth century we live in, Sunzi said the following. The twenty-first-century competition for hegemony between the United States and China will be settled not by Western attack and victory but by the Eastern extension of shi.

Take a roundabout route and lure the enemy as if offering him an advantage (利). In this way you can set out later and arrive first. Only one who can adopt such a strategy knows the difference between direct and indirect strategy.⁹⁷

The difference between direct and indirect strategy lies in how one uses the buildup of shi. The Art of War is useful above all for long-term strategy with the running of the state in mind, rather than for deciding an immediate confrontation or contest, and what finally wins in such a situation is the extension of shi through the use of both direct and indirect strategy.

Baduk, the Extension of Shi (勢) vs Chess, Attack and Victory

As Clausewitz and The Art of War explain, in competition with an opponent the West aims at attack and victory, while the East concentrates on widening its shi. The East has a philosophical system in which final victory is a relative victory: it comes naturally, in the end, to whoever makes his shi greater, not to whoever keeps fighting with victory as his direct aim. This philosophy appears in the Eastern game of baduk. It differs greatly from chess, which aims at victory, and from the Western philosophy or attitude toward an opponent.

In chess the aim is clear: an overwhelming victory. The result of chess is either total victory or defeat. A game of chess proceeds as a series of head-on collisions on the board. Baduk aims at a relative victory; a game of baduk unfolds across the whole board, but the aim is to widen one’s own range of choices and narrow the opponent’s. The aim of baduk is not a single victory but a continuing strategic advantage.⁹⁸

Strategic advantage is decided by the flow of shi. The East stresses the importance of shi in the flow of nature and in human affairs because it holds that without knowing the whole, one cannot grasp a situation from its parts alone. Philosophically, the East follows an inductive thinking that infers an unknowable future situation as things keep changing. The idea is to grasp the power of changing shi and to value its influence on the result. The Western philosophy of being, which values institutions and models, produces a philosophical tendency to grasp the whole by looking at the parts. The Western system of being is tied to a deductive system of thought.

The importance of shi (勢) was stressed by the Chinese thinker Shen Dao (愼到, 395–315 BC). Shen Dao argued that “even a dragon, if it loses its cloud (勢), becomes like an earthworm.” He stressed the importance of shi, the hidden strategic flow in human society that does not show on the surface. For example, Genghis Khan, born in thirteenth-century Mongolia, discovered the hidden shi Mongolia possessed, gathered it, and became a dragon that ruled the world. But had he been born in twenty-first-century Mongolia, whatever he did, he would not have become a world dragon, because the hidden shi of the thirteenth century, the Mongol cavalry and the composite bow, does not exist in the twenty-first.

Shen Dao was a philosopher from the state of Zhao in the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods who was active at the Jixia Academy (稷下學宮) of Qi. Drawing together the thought of the Daoists (道家) and the Legalists (法家), he developed a realist philosophy that valued the shi of power (權勢) and the shi of circumstance (形勢). Because these are the essential forces of human society and politics, he judged that the key is not morality or ethics but external conditions and the flow of power. The shi of power combines authority and force; it is the source of the ruler’s power to control his ministers and people, and he held that only when the ruler has it do laws and institutions work properly. He argued that not moral force or ethics but power itself is the real force that keeps order. The shi of circumstance means the flow of things or situations, the conditions of the age, the arrangement of forces; he saw it as a natural and social force that cannot be resisted. He stressed that morality and ethics, too, are powerless against it, and that only by conforming to it can safety and success be won. His work, the Shenzi (愼子), had forty-two chapters, of which only seven survive, and his thought of shi was taken up by Han Feizi (280–233 BC). Han Feizi valued Shen Dao’s realist thought highly and summed up his own philosophy of government in three ideas: law (法), statecraft (術) and shi (勢).

Recently Western thinkers, too, have shown interest in the Eastern philosophical idea of shi (勢). Among Western words, “potential,” meaning latent power, possibility, hidden force, comes closest. Western words such as “trend” also express a tendency or flow, but they belong to what already exists and is known, not to a hidden force that is yet to appear, as shi does. Former Secretary of State Kissinger, who led the improvement of US-China relations, shows an unusual understanding of China and Eastern civilization. He explains how Chinese leaders differ from the West in reading strategic situations and setting goals, and analyzes how the philosophical thought of the two worlds, the East that follows the shi hidden in change and the West that follows the immediate action born of the philosophy of being, cannot but differ at the root:

Chinese leaders see the strategic landscape as one whole flow: good and evil, near and far, strong and weak, past and present are all continuous. The Western view of history treats the course of history as a process of complete victory over evil or backwardness, but China’s traditional view of history is different…. China seeks the best choice in the flow of history in harmony. Strategy and statecraft are concentrated on achieving a combative coexistence with the other side. The aim is to strengthen one’s own potential shi (勢), or strategic position, while weakening the other side.⁹⁹

The whole of chapter 5 of The Art of War is about hidden strategic shi. Grasp and use shi, and in a hundred battles you will never be in danger. Sunzi explains that in war shi is made up of strategy and tactics: one enters war by setting a good strategy and wins it by using tactics well. “The clever combatant looks to the effect of combined energy and does not require too much from individuals” (The Art of War 5-5). And he explains that strategy and tactics depend on and influence each other, and that shi is formed in their combination. Sunzi develops a theory of war as shi, in which the combinations of strategy and tactics are inexhaustible and no one can grasp them completely:

Move like the sun and moon: they seem to vanish, but begin anew.

Move like the four seasons: they seem to die, but begin anew. (The Art of War 5-2)

The West values the role of being (有) according to the philosophy of being, that is, action. The East follows the new situation that change creates, the movement of shi (勢). The movement of shi has as its origin not being but nothing. Western action pursues laws, institutions and models; the East concentrates not on pursuing immediate action but on the superiority of the shi hidden in change. East and West take different paths to achieving the efficacy human beings seek. The French sinologist François Jullien explains it this way:

When the Greeks and the Chinese try to achieve efficacy, they follow different philosophies. The Greeks follow action, the Chinese follow change. We can see the relationship between the two reversed. The Greeks think of natural change as following the model of human action; the Chinese think of human efficacy as following natural change. In war a general seeks to adjust strategy to his own advantage, like the process of a plant growing or a river flowing… The Chinese believe in the immanence of change rather than the transcendence of action.¹⁰⁰

The Western habit of respecting laws, institutions and models has continued from Greek and Roman times to the present. It comes from the Western habit of observing nature and humanity with a teleology in which the nature and humanity God created always have a purpose. So always and everywhere the West seeks to set things down in law, create models and institutions, and spread them to others.

Because Western teleology presupposes that human thought rests on truth, it does not value doubts about a purpose once set, or the probability of other methods. So the West would like to see the theories it has developed, and the practice that follows from them, as fitting every situation in the world. Eastern civilization, on the other hand, because it rests on the philosophy of change, is open to pursuing other options or to change. There is no compulsion. In the end, Eastern human affairs pursue the efficacy of law, shi and shu while accepting coexistence.

Once a purpose is grasped, attention turns on deriving institutions. Westerners see institutions as unchanging beings that raise efficiency in achieving the purpose latent in them. Easterners, on the other hand, rely on the shi of change. They think about the relationships between things, and think that without grasping the whole they cannot understand the parts.¹⁰¹

So Westerners think that the institutions and models they have made can apply to everyone, even people of the world’s other cultures. Because human beings were made by God, universality for all is guaranteed; and institutions and models made under God’s guidance are, for the same reason, guaranteed to be universal. History shows that this universal utility has worked as a mixture of an imperialist intention to secure their own interests and a religious good will to make everyone live well.

The US-China Competition for Hegemony: China’s Shi (勢) vs America’s Offensive

The philosophical systems of East and West appear just as they are in the differences of strategy and tactics that the United States and China show in their twenty-first-century competition for hegemony: the difference between pursuing victory through attack and securing shi. The United States has settled on China as the greatest threat to its hegemony in the twenty-first century and is mobilizing every possible means to obstruct China’s rise. Through stronger alliances and economic pressure on China, it takes the offensive and shows a stance of having to keep winning. China regards the competition for hegemony with the United States as unavoidable, but rather than immediate victory it concentrates on strengthening its economic power and internal cohesion, and on strengthening its shi, its strategic position. America’s strategy is a short-term, visible offensive strategy of youwei (有爲). China’s is a long-term, invisible strategy of shi, of wuwei (無爲).

From now on, as international relations shift in paradigm “from war to trade,” they will take the form of “cooperation, competition, conflict” occurring on many fronts at once. At the same time, because of the balance of nuclear forces between the United States and China, the possibility of a war that could bring mutual destruction is considered very low. In nuclear strategy, too, the United States and China differ fundamentally. The United States pursues a strategy of mutually assured destruction (MAD): a nuclear strategy in which, even if an adversary strikes first, the remaining nuclear weapons must be enough to destroy and neutralize the enemy with certainty. It was the strategy both the United States and the Soviet Union followed in the Cold War. The United States currently has more than 5,000 nuclear weapons. China does not agree with the MAD strategy. Its strategy is that even if an adversary strikes first, and even if the remaining weapons do not destroy the enemy completely, making the adversary pay “a sufficient price” is enough to deter a first strike. China currently holds some 600 nuclear weapons. America’s MAD is a Western strategy.

More important still, we must bear in mind that the United States and China have different cultural, historical and philosophical patterns in handling international relations. The US-China competition for hegemony that unfolds under these conditions leads to China’s extension of shi and America’s offensive for victory. While the United States concentrates on strengthening alliances and on checking China’s economy and trade, China concentrates on extending the shi it needs to expand its economic power: intensive education of research talent and greater investment in future industries.¹⁰² China, in the end, concentrates on strengthening its strategic position on many fronts. China’s strategy for hegemony, unlike America’s, is that as all these work together, the winner will in the end be decided “of itself,” without any clash of military forces.

Military power matters. But whereas in past contests for hegemony military power played an offensive role, it now takes on a defensive character. The US-China competition will not be decided by a direct “confrontation” between an established power and a rising one, such as has happened many times in Western history. Western scholars are familiar with thousands of years of historical clashes between two powers, from Sparta and Athens to Britain and Germany. But the “Thucydides trap” they argue for, which takes such clashes for granted, does not explain US-China relations. The US-China competition will look not like a game of chess, with the destruction of the enemy, but like a game of baduk, with the extension of shi over a long time and the result decided of itself.¹⁰³

Under a policy of coexistence with the United States, China is trying to make its shi greater by various means. The United States aggressively shows hostility toward China. The United States tends to spread its own values to the world, China included, with religious conviction. Kissinger describes these diplomatic visions of the United States and China:

America’s exceptionalism is missionary about its values. America feels an obligation to spread its values to every corner of the world. China’s exceptionalism, by contrast, is cultural. China does not seek to convert other countries to be like itself. China does not think its institutions apply outside China.¹⁰⁴

Because of this cultural background, the United States and China deal with their allies by intervention and non-intervention respectively. These methods show just as they are in how the two deal with South and North Korea on the Korean Peninsula. South Korea, with American support and intervention, built a strong economy and a democracy, and at the same time is under strong American control on missiles and nuclear questions. North Korea remains China’s friend and receives its support, but China does not interfere at all in North Korea’s economic system or domestic politics.

China’s foreign policy, different from America’s, is also described in the reports of Matteo Ricci. Matteo Ricci (1552–1610), a Jesuit priest who came to the East along the sea route Vasco da Gama had opened and lived there for many years, stressed exactly this point in the reports he sent to the West:

In China neither the emperor nor his subjects plan wars to invade or conquer their neighbors. They are quite content with what they have, and so show no desire to conquer neighboring countries. In this the Chinese are very different from the people of Europe.¹⁰⁵

The West has pursued imperialism since Greek and Roman times and on through the early modern age of discovery. It came to force its laws, institutions and models on its allies, and its relations with neighbors that were not allies could only be hostile. China, however, took the voluntary position that others could take what they needed, but should then acknowledge its suzerainty. It tried to keep friendly rather than hostile relations with its neighbors.

China thought of itself as a special being, but rather than trying to spread its values to other countries, it took the attitude that they could come and take them if they needed them. The stance toward neighboring countries was that they should come into contact with China, learn its civilization and go, and for this the neighboring countries had to acknowledge China’s suzerainty.¹⁰⁶

Eastern-style international relations accept difference and diversity and seek peaceful coexistence with neighbors. They prefer change that happens of itself, gradually, by default, through the use of shi. The West asserts the universality of its laws, institutions and models and strives to propagate its values in order to spread the Western way.

The Chinese emperor did not see any need to have hostile relations with neighboring countries. On the contrary, he made efforts to avoid them. China, like America, thought it had a special role to play. But unlike America it had no intention of claiming universality for its values by spreading them to the world.¹⁰⁷

Through the philosophy of change and the philosophy of being, the concepts of the Dao and God gave international relations the Eastern way of non-intervention and the Western way of intervention. Non-intervention is static: conflict diminishes, but so do dynamic stimulus and the possibility of evolution. Intervention is dynamic: the possibility of conflict grows, but so do stimulus and the possibility of evolution.

The strategic difference between victory and shi is deeply rooted in the civilizations of East and West. The East, which pursues shi, does not simply copy the other side’s culture; it transforms it to suit itself in the light of its own culture. From the nineteenth century, for the first time in history, East and West began to change through active exchange between their cultures. Because the Western paradigm ruled the world, the East came under great cultural influence from the West.

Over the last half century East Asia has modernized, drawing on the experience of Europe and especially the West. But the modernization of East Asian countries has not simply copied the West; it has taken very different forms. Influenced by their own history and culture, they went on to create their own institutions, customs, values and ideologies.¹⁰⁸

As the laws, institutions and models of the West were brought to the East, the East did not accept them as they were but adopted transformed versions. However good an institution may be, it does not spread unchanged to just anywhere, because institutions depend on culture.¹⁰⁹ In importing the institutions and experience of the West, the East is adopting them in a transformed way, adjusting them to itself according to the Eastern system of thought: not an ideological adoption rooted in the philosophy of being, meaning victory or defeat, but a way of change and transformation that takes shi into account.

4) If God Is Good, Where Did Evil Come From?

God is loving and benevolent. At the same time God is a God of punishment, who punishes to the third and fourth generation of one’s descendants. These attributes of God are illustrated concretely in the Five Books of Moses. Revealed religion stresses the importance of a soul that survives death, and holds the doctrine of original sin, that we are born with sin. So human beings become beings who fear God and repent. In the Dao the Daodejing describes there is not a single passage in which it punishes human beings. What matters in life is to put at ease the mind and body that make up a human being, and it does not stress the importance of the soul. It recommends that in life people welcome and enjoy what the Dao gives. The life we live only once is what matters.

People who hold God in awe come to see human affairs in terms of good and evil. People of other religions, or atheists, are treated only from the standpoint of good and evil: they are to be converted, or treated as evil beings. In revealed religion, human beings receive blessings and curses from God according to the strict doctrine the religion has laid down. In Christianity above all, with the belief in heaven and hell, that life does not end with death and there is eternal life, the thought of good and evil exerts still greater influence. The form of eternal life after death is decided by whether one lived well or wickedly in this world. In Western philosophy good and evil belong to the philosophy of being and do not change. Evil becomes something that must be eliminated.

The danger contained in the thought of good and evil, which inevitably comes with revealed religion, is the question of why evil exists: in a world ruled by an all-knowing, all-powerful God, many unjust and evil things happen. The problem of good and evil is already hinted at in the story of the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil recorded in Genesis. At the serpent’s urging, human beings disobey God’s command and eat the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil in order to become like God. Though human beings cannot become like God, they fall for the serpent’s temptation that they can, and eat the fruit. Because of the fruit, misfortune befalls humanity.

The serpent said to the woman, “You won’t really die, for God knows that in the day you eat it, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” (Genesis 3:4–5)

This story hints at the problems that arise when human beings deal directly with good and evil, the realm of God, and at how grave the consequences are. According to the thought of good and evil, human beings can easily become evil, and their evil deeds go on. So already in Genesis God comes to regret having created human beings:

Yahweh saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of man’s heart was continually only evil… Yahweh said, “I will destroy man whom I have created from the surface of the ground—man, along with animals, creeping things, and birds of the sky—for I am sorry that I have made them.” (Genesis 6:5–7)

To prevent this, God provides moral commands about good and evil and leaves a mighty law. That disobeying God’s commands brings God’s punishment is one of the core doctrines of revealed religion. Serving other gods, above all, becomes the most evil act. On human beings who commit this evil, God brings severe punishment. The West defines God as a good and benevolent being, and warns those who are not good. The thought of good and evil lies at the core.

Yahweh examines the righteous, but his soul hates the wicked and him who loves violence. (Psalm 11:5)

Then, in the Western concept of God, in which God is good, the question arises: “If God is good, where did evil come from?” Did God create evil too?

You are righteous, Yahweh, when I contend with you; yet I would like to plead a case with you: Why does the way of the wicked prosper? Why are they all at ease who deal very treacherously? (Jeremiah 12:1)

From Greek times the conundrum “If God is good, where did evil come from?” has been raised. Within the Western philosophical system the problem of good and evil remains unsolved. If God created all things, did God create evil too? Then why did God create evil? Western theologians and metaphysicians have agonized over this for a long time, offered a variety of answers that are hard to understand, and are still trying to find one. It is a problem that not only Judaism and Christianity but the Greek philosophers, too, wrestled with long ago. Solon (638–558 BC), the leader of Athens counted first among the sages of the West, left a poem lamenting that “there are rich men among the wicked, and poor men among the good.”

Hesiod, the Greek poet who lived in the eighth and seventh centuries BC, a contemporary of Homer, also wrestled with the problem of good and evil: how just and almighty gods could allow unjust men to prosper in the world.¹¹⁰ Then, explaining how human beings lost paradise, Hesiod laments, asking why the good and just gods let evil and injustice run rampant in the world:

In life those who keep their promises and do what is good and just receive no reward. Instead those who do evil and commit violence are praised. Violence wins and virtue disappears. The wicked torment the good… In the end human beings suffer cruel afflictions, and no one will save them from evil.¹¹¹

This agony was one of the important problems on the mind of Epicurus (341–270 BC). It is well set out in the “Epicurean paradox,” or “the riddle of Epicurus,” about evil, handed down from Greek times. There is no record of the Epicurean paradox in Epicurus’s own surviving writings; it is contained in a record left by the early Christian writer Lactantius (250–325):

Concerning God, Epicurus said this: God either wishes to take away evils and is unable;

or he is able and unwilling; or he is neither willing nor able; or he is both willing and able. If he is willing and unable, he is feeble, which is not in accordance with the character of God; if he is able and unwilling, he is envious, which is equally at variance with God; if he is neither willing nor able, he is both envious and feeble, and therefore not God; if he is both willing and able, which alone is suitable to God, from what source then are evils? Or why does he not remove them?¹¹²

Almost two thousand years later, the British philosopher Hume summed up Epicurus’s conundrum of good and evil this way:

Epicurus’s old questions are yet unanswered. Is he willing to prevent evil, but not able? then is he impotent. Is he able, but not willing? then is he malevolent. Is he both able and willing? whence then is evil?¹¹³

The problem of good and evil has left Westerners, for whom it is familiar, a task human beings cannot solve. From Greek times to the present, Western philosophy has gone on agonizing over it, because it tries to solve the problem of good and evil on the basis of the manifest and the philosophy of being. Because good is forever good and evil forever evil, evil becomes something that must be destroyed. The thought of good and evil gives human beings a powerful driving force, and when joined to revealed religion that force reaches a state beyond life and death.

The Eastern thought of yin and yang lacks the powerful driving force the thought of good and evil provides, but at the same time it does not agonize over the hard question the thought of good and evil brings: why is there evil in human beings? The Eastern thought of yin and yang treats human affairs on the basis of the philosophy of change. Concepts of good and evil change like yin and yang within the bounds of human activity, which human beings made. As fortune and misfortune change with the passing of time, yin turns into yang and yang into yin.

The Dao, a Life Lived Only Once vs God, the World After Death

The thought of good and evil implies that human beings are born carrying misfortune: the beginning of the doctrine of original sin. By eating the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil, human beings disobeyed God’s command and became beings who had committed a primordial wrong. They became beings who always fear God. They were driven out of the paradise of the Garden of Eden. Cursed by God, they are born bearing hardship and live out their lives.

To the woman he said, “I will greatly multiply your pain in childbirth. You will bear children in pain. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.” To Adam he said, “Because you have listened to your wife’s voice, and have eaten from the tree, about which I commanded you, saying, ‘You shall not eat of it,’ the ground is cursed for your sake. You will eat from it with much labor all the days of your life.” (Genesis 3:16–17)

In the West the thought of good and evil became the explanation of why human beings must toil all their lives. Such stories exist not only in Western religion but in Greek myth. In his book Works and Days, Hesiod tells the story of Pandora’s box. It depicts a situation like the punishment for sin that human beings suffer after eating the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil in Genesis. The “Pandora’s box” Zeus made is given to Pandora, wife of Epimetheus, to punish Prometheus, who made human beings and brought them fire. Prometheus had warned his brother Epimetheus not to accept any gift from Zeus. But Pandora, full of curiosity, opens the box. The moment she opens it, all the bad things hidden inside leap out and begin to torment humanity. Startled, Pandora hurriedly closes the box, and only hope remains inside.

According to the stories of Eve and Pandora, human beings are the source of the problem. As human beings come to have a mind and curiosity, they enter the path of judging good and evil. This human mistake brings human beings unavoidable suffering, and they come to have “a repentant heart.” Following this tendency inherent in human nature, human beings are punished all their lives as the price of sin, and repent. In Hesiod’s words, human beings become those who “never rest from labour and sorrow by day.”¹¹⁴

In the Western world, which believes in God, people picture the world after death because this present world is full of suffering: they picture a heaven in the world beyond. At the same time the thinkers of the unmanifest, who cannot be sure of God’s existence, pursue in this world a happiness like the heaven after death.

Western thinkers who pursue happiness deny the existence of evil. Why must human beings fear God? Against the background of the thought of good and evil, Epicurus defines the position human beings should take toward God. He held that a good and just God and the existence of evil cannot coexist, and so explains that human beings have no need to fear God. Being freed from the needless worry of fearing God is the heart of “ataraxia” (tranquility of mind), the theory of happiness Epicurus argued for.

Do not fear God. God is an eternal and blessed being… But many people define God as they wish. People say that God rewards and punishes, because they want a God who rewards those who go their way and punishes those who oppose them. To oppose such views is not to lose one’s piety. To force such views on others is to abandon piety.¹¹⁵

But this philosophy of Epicurus, though much talked of in his own time, the third and fourth centuries BC, came in the end to be treated as part of the unmanifest and lost its force in the West, because after the late fourth century, when Christianity became the state religion of the Roman Empire, everyone in the West was buried in the manifest. In the thousand years of the Middle Ages, the age of the religious state, thinkers of the unmanifest were all treated as atheists and became targets of condemnation and persecution. Heaven after death became people’s goal in life. This changed through the Renaissance and the Enlightenment.

Eastern civilization’s pursuit of the meaning of life starts from an interpretation of life utterly different from the West’s. Unlike God, the Dao declares that it helps all human beings without exception. Human beings do not fear the Dao; they welcome it as a companion in life. They become people who seek the joys of life together with others within the bounds of the Dao. Life is lived only once. Thoughts of the other world are not important in Eastern thought. The Daodejing recommends that people seek the joys of life while keeping to the Dao. Near its end, the Daodejing speaks of the pleasures of life.

Enjoy the work you do. Enjoy what you eat. Enjoy the clothes you wear. Enjoy the home where you can sleep. Find what there is to delight in in life. (Daodejing 80)

This Daoist enjoyment means an attitude of enjoying what nature gives in life: finding joy in the relationship between humanity and nature. The wuwei ziran (無爲自然) Daoism argues for means that humanity and nature should live in harmony; it speaks of an attitude to life in which human beings do not go against the laws of nature but live as one with it. Confucianism, too, expresses “the attitude of enjoying life,” among all the human feelings, as the most important value in life.

Those who know it are not as good as those who love it, and those who love it are not as good as those who delight in it. (Analects 6:18)

The Confucian view that a person who enjoys life matters more than knowledge has something in common with Epicurus in the West. That Epicurean hedonism seeks not bodily pleasure but a state of calm free from anxiety and fear, and holds that death, the dissolution of soul and body, need not be feared, is also like Confucian philosophy. But the important difference is that in Confucianism joy comes from relationalism, while Epicurean pleasure is founded on individualism. The Analects begins with its first sentence recommending that we find the joy of life “in friends and learning.” In the East, the joy of life is not something an individual enjoys alone; it is founded on the relationalism of being together.

Is it not a pleasure to learn and to practice what one has learned from time to time? Is it not a joy to have friends come from afar? (Analects 1:1)

The East is free of the religious problem of good and evil and of a consciousness of original sin, because it sees good and evil as ultimately a matter of liking and disliking that human beings, not God, create. Nowhere in the Eastern classics is there an explanation or philosophy that clings to good and evil. Eastern civilization does not agree that human beings should themselves divide good from evil and apply that division to human society. Eastern thought assumes that human beings are born from nature and return to nature.

In Eastern thought, the importance of thoughts about God or death is incomparably smaller than in the West. The Daodejing concentrates every situation on the nature human beings encounter, and sets human beings as living within nature. This thought is expressed still more practically in Confucianism, which declares that there is no need to take an interest in the world after death, in spirits (鬼神) or in death.

When a disciple asked how to serve the spirits, Confucius answered: “If you cannot yet deal with the affairs of human beings, how can you think about the affairs of spirits?” When a disciple asked about death, Confucius answered: “Not yet knowing life, how can you think about death?” (Analects 11:11)

The thought about death that the East set out before the Common Era found expression in the West in the early Enlightenment. Two thousand years later, Spinoza expressed a very similar thought in the West.

A free man thinks of nothing less than of death, and his wisdom is a meditation not of death but of life.¹¹⁶

In meditating not on death but on life, Western civilization is leaning from the fear of God toward a theory of happiness. With the fear of God and of the metaphysical gone, a resemblance has arisen between the thought of the Dao in the East and Western thought. In the East, the number of people seeking happiness as a goal, as in the West, is growing. But the individualistic theory of happiness of the West still differs from the relational theory of meaning of the East. In the East, the relationalism that finds the meaning of life in nature, learning and friends continues.

The existence of a God who rules human affairs always brings human beings fear. Christianity in particular put forward the doctrine of resurrection and the doctrine that life in this world is preparation for eternal life in the world beyond. So belief in the world beyond became important, and doctrinal descriptions of that world, and the distinctions between heaven, hell, good and evil, became more important still. This process strengthened the power of the Christian church, which even came to practice the sale of indulgences. Life in this world was studded with penance and repentance.

The philosophy of “the repentant human being” was challenged by the deism of the Enlightenment. Because God does not intervene in human affairs, human beings are not born as “beings who fear God.” Rousseau’s view that human nature is good is the representative counterevidence. After deism, Western philosophy began to approach anew the question of why human beings live. With this, the West began to approach “theories of happiness” again. The utilitarianism of Bentham and Mill, the greatest happiness of the greatest number, rose to become the purpose of the lives of society and the individual. This meant the rebirth of Epicurean philosophy. As we saw earlier, Epicurus’s happiness is not bodily pleasure but tranquility of mind, freed from pain, anxiety and the fear of death. He held that a community like that of friends helps them have tranquility of mind.

But happiness is momentary and individual. The feeling of happiness disappears easily. When it does, where do people who clung to happiness go? But Eastern civilization rests not on individualism but on relationalism.¹¹⁷ In a relational civilization, being “happy” alone cannot be the purpose of life. In a life lived once, the purpose becomes finding the “meaning” of life together with others: in nature, learning, friends.