Non-action, the Void, and the Way

Reading “Understanding the Tao” #3

In a previous post, I offered to start reading the book Comprendre le Tao (Understanding the Tao) by the French scholar Isabelle Robinet.

I did not start reading this book without a specific idea in mind. I am currently running a series of collaborative seminars with a specialist in French philosophy and a specialist in phenomenology with a comparative background. In May, the seminar will cover some parts of the Taoist scriptures.

1. In a first post, I exposed Robinet’s general view of Taoism as well as her presentation of Laozi (老子).

2. In a second post, I presented how she considered the Tao Te Ching and its philosophy.

You can read or reread them here: Taoism.

In this new post, I would like to continue my reading.

The Concept of Wu-Wei (Non-action)

In the previous post, I explained Robinet’s emphasis on retreat or withdrawal as a fundamental Taoist attitude. It is at the heart of one of the most famous Taoist concepts: wu-wei (無為).

To act is to choose a course of action. It opens ways, but it also closes others. Moreover, to act is to make some effort. But efforts are transitory. They cannot last and lead to their own disappearance. The concept of wu-wei (non-action), one of the mottos of Taoism, leads to an attitude of stillness and vacancy. Robinet writes:

Stillness and vacancy are the expression of this non-action, which has sometimes been interpreted simply as the absence of worries and passions, but also as meaning: not doing something particular or intentional, not doing anything that is detached from its whole context. (p. 26)

The word “non-action” here is my rendering of the French “non-agir”, which is how she renders the Chinese wu-wei (無為). The French “non-agir” is composed of “non,” a simple negation, and “agir,” which is not a noun like “action” but a verb. The concept of wu-wei does not refer to an object of knowledge or a way of thinking; it is a way of acting or behaving. It is merely an ethical concept.

According to Robinet, this concept of wu-wei refers to the “behavioral strategy” of the “Saint”; a strategy expressed by a nothing— wu (無). This nothing is the affirmation of an impossibility. The Tao is without qualia, a primordial void (vide originel) that is nothing that exists and of which the best we can have is an image without form.

On a behavioral level, she explains:

In terms of behavior, wu is the emblem of the dispossession of the Saint: the virtue of the latter is non-virtue, his action non-action. Thus, not only is any laborious effort towards the good or the better rejected, but also any value judgment. The Saint, like the natural way (Heaven), like the Tao, is indifferent (…). (p. 27)

Quoting various parts of the Tao Te Ching, Robinet describes the Taoist Saint, who does not look like what modern Westerners think a Saint should look like, as omnipotent, without desire — while being the very source of desire and its absence, not even desiring the good, knowledge, or the Tao. The Saint is great and therefore embraces imperfection and lack.

It leads here to go back to a definition of wu (無), as she writes:

Both interstitial and receptive void, wu is synonymous with receptivity; it is what makes a house habitable, a vase usable (…). Extreme void is almost synonymous with tranquillity (Lao 16); it is then a mental and affective void, an absence of prejudices, preferences and desires. Due to the dialectic of opposites, this receptacle-like void attracts the full; it is flexibility and attractive force, symbolized by femininity. (p. 28–29)

The Concept of Tao (Way)

Robinet focuses a whole but short section of his book to the definition of the Tao. She entitled this section: “The Tao, mysterious intimate presence of cosmic dimension.”

She begins by noting that the word tao (道) is a common element in all Chinese schools of thought, Taoist or otherwise. It means “path” or “saying” and refers to a “ way” as a behavioral, practical, ethical, and ideological guide (p. 29). She also explains that Laozi distinguishes two types of Tao:

• Circumstantial ways that are specific to individuals, schools, or specific situations.

• Constant Tao as the unique and unnameable source of circumstantial ways.

The name Tao is a metaphorical compromise, an analogical name that does not strictly designate what it applies to (…). For, because it is amorphous, it contains all possibilities and is the Prime Root of all the productions of all the multiple ways, the inconceivable common core of all the antagonistic and complementary forces. (p. 29–30)

If the word Tao is a common element in all Chinese schools of thought, with the Tao Te Ching it takes on a cosmic meaning that will spread to all other schools. The Tao is considered to be eternal and unknowable, before all things, the source of the world, the door of all miracles, flowing in all living beings, and so on. Not only a source, it is also where everything goes, “infinite and boundless, bottomless abyss” and, paradoxically, “neither is it defined by this negativity, which it transcends by including the opposite pole” (p. 31).

There is certainly poetry in such a description, which comes first from the Tao Te Ching before being rendered by Robinet. She sees the Tao as an intimate experience, not a reflection or a system of thought. More than a “metaphysical entity,” the Tao is a “mystical presence.” Laozi advocates an immediate knowledge and an inner and original experience that cannot be experienced through mental knowledge.

In other words, the very nature of the Tao is radically foreign to that of worldly knowledge and know-how. (p. 32)

The Tao, the mystical presence, is ungraspable and ineffable. It is a place of mystical ignorance in which human beings are immersed. Nevertheless, she concludes that Laozi’s negative path has a positive side in the notion of ziran (自然), the spontaneous, the “as it is,” which refers to the states of things as they are. It is the ever-present force in every moment and in every thing, the dynamic reversal toward an “inexhaustible fertility” (p. 33).

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I will stop this reading here and continue in another post with a reading of Robinet’s presentation of the political dimensions of the Tao Te Ching.