Interpreting the Dao De Jing

1 The Way as "way" bespeaks no common lasting Way, / 2 The name as "name" no common lasting name. / 3 Absent is the name for sky and land's first life, / 4 Present for the mother of all ten thousand things. / 5 Desire ever-absent: / 6 Behold the seed germs in all things; / 7 Desire ever-present: / 8 Behold their very finite course. / 9 Forth together come the two / 10 As one and the same / 11 But differ in name. / 12 As one, a dark recess / 13 That probed recedes / 14 Past that portal whence / 15 The milling seed germs teem.

~ p. 27, Dao De Jing: The Book of the Way by Laozi, trans. by Moss Roberts

The Nature of the Dao

This stanza is likely the most famous one from the Dao De Jing, mostly because of the very first 2-4 lines of the stanza which sets up a conflict between the nature of the Dao (the Way) and its capacity to be described. As a result, the entirety of the rest of the stanza is also read with the purpose of illuminating the nature of the Dao further, hence many interpretations of this stanza focus on the many dualities present in the stanza, as useful to the clarification of the Dao even if not exhaustive of it. With this approach, one can come to the conclusion that, in some way, the Dao unites dualities,⁹ but this very unity is precisely manifest in the way of duality.¹⁰⁻¹¹

Of course, one cannot ignore those lines which also reference plurality and not simply duality.⁴ ⁶ ¹⁵ The role of plurality is seemingly as a sort of last outcome to the Dao. After all, the Dao "as one" recedes as a darkness "past that portal" which originates, causes, etc., the ten thousand things.¹²⁻¹⁵ In this particular stanza at the very least, the Dao does not simply precede the plurality of things but precedes a "portal" which acts as a more immediate cause or is a more immediate origin of that plurality. This portal is likely the dualization of the one, and this dualization then leads to plurality. It is important to characterize this as a dualization, because it allows one to think about duality not as a property of something but as an action which something can engage in. It makes it a bit easier to imagine a "unity" whose unity is in its duality when that unity is described in these terms.

At the same time, this introduces a different difficulty, which is conceiving of something extant such that its action and existence are one and the same (wherein an action is enacted independently of any entity), persisting identically in its product insofar as such enactment continues as constitutive of that product. After all, notice how the plurality of things are characterized as "seed germs" and thereby as generative in their own right.⁶ ¹⁵ One could say that in addition to a vertical causality that is directed from the Dao to the ten thousand things, there is a horizontal causality that is directed across the ten thousand things. Other observers note, after all, that in other stanzas this portal (the dualization) and the Dao are treated as the same thing, and the Dao as this action whose existence is independent of any entity and is purely enacted in-itself may explain this ambivalence in separating the unity in the Dao from its duality. However, this would not explain why in some passages or stanzas a daoist may find it more appropriate to emphasize duality over unity as well as vice versa. This is something to be analyzed later on. For now, one must focus on the given stanza.

Problems with this interpretation

This is a good start to interpreting the stanza. The problem is that reading the stanza as an exposition of metaphysical doctrine is rather reductive, because it renders a lot of the rest of the specific content of the stanza--especially the metaphorical content--unproductive. That is to say, the other associations that the stanza brings to bare in attempting to describe the Dao by means of metaphor are pruned and narrowed to those that are conducive to the most parsimonious metaphysical assumptions consistent with the stanza as a whole. Parsimony is generally a good principle to have, but parsimony is a tool which is always submitted towards a certain purpose. In this case, the purpose is giving a metaphysical reading of the stanza. For this reason, thorough and varied interpretation often rebels against parsimony standards that are largely context-contingent. There are several other themes which run their thread in this stanza, and which define its internal logic, which is not purely metaphysical. However, another problem, which is the one that shall be addressed first, is that the metaphysical interpretation of the stanza is focused on what it seems to imply for the Dao itself. But there is more going on in the stanza than just the Dao.

A Thicker and Richer Interpretation

The Metaphysics of The Ten Thousand Things and Bundle Theory

In particular, the stanza's first two lines are not just making a comment about the nature of the Dao, but making a comment about the ways names and naming functions.¹ ² Clearly, however, naming in this context plays a double-role: it both means concrete determination, thereby signaling an ontological act, and the actual application of language. Clearly because later on in the stanza there is talk of real entities, or extant things, which come together as one but which "differ in name."⁹⁻¹¹ But this difference in name is not merely a difference in name, because there is in fact ten thousand things for which the mother is the name.⁴ This is an ambiguity in the text, but it cannot be treated as a merely accidental one, which requires the reader to prioritize one or the other possible meanings. Rather, perhaps the ambiguity serves to suggest an implicit analogy between the act of naming things, and the act of producing or creating them. The exact extent of that analogy, however, is up to debate. At minimum, the suggestion would seem to be that the sort of logical or computational work that is undertaken in naming things characterize the production and creation of a plurality of things (henceforth to be called "pluriproduction").

Under pluriproduction, there is no capacity to produce any singularity without also producing things necessary to that singularity that nonetheless exceed its capacities for containment of those very things necessary to its existence--these excesses manifest as independent entities unto themselves. Pluriproduction is an outcome of ontological excess. This is clearer if one returns to the two original lines of the stanza, wherein the implications for naming or pluriproduction would then be that the logical/computational work required for them cannot grasp that which negates this type of work. And what negates this type of work according to the stanzas is something which has a "commonness" to it. What is common isn't what is universal. It's what has the tendency to be shared, or held across things, and hence lacks a necessity (or at least unconditional necessity) in this sharing or holding across for the given set of entities.

In either case, this commonness is of specific things, which are nonetheless neither names nor pluriproductions. They are of specific things because the stanza isn't limited to the first line, which presumably tells us something about the relationship between language (or naming) and some absolute referred to as the "way," which seems quite non-specific at first glance due to its additional apparent vagueness. The second line, which importantly has parallel construction, makes it clear that the limits of language do not just apply to the Dao, but that they also apply to names themselves. That is, what is really at issue is the general relationship between words and their referents. The stanza characterizes words as ontologically deceptive in some fundamental sense. This also means that, insofar as this deceptive relationship is concerned, all things, including the Dao, obtain as universal that deceptiveness of the linguistic relation. But the Dao is precisely what is being used to elucidate this universal deceptive relation. On the one hand, the Dao is a specific "thing" (of a special kind, even, such that it's not even a traditional thing, as discussed earlier); on the other hand, the Dao's specificity is precisely in its special relationship to universality: that which is true of the Dao applies to each of the ten thousand things (i.e., singular things) because the Dao has a unilateral relation to every thing. Commonness precedes universality, insofar as unique and specific relationships are necessary for constituting universality. Of course, there may be a translation issue at hand--it may be that "commonness" in the original language really was more equivalent to universal, or even to eternal or infinite. In which case, it is necessary to be conservative in asserting that commonness precedes universality under a daoist worldview.

Even rejecting this, at the very least the Dao does seem to be referred to as both a specific thing and, one could say, as anything insofar as its relations or properties are transferable to other entities. But, only transferable to other variable entities (e.g., a name) vis-á-vis other specific entities (e.g., the name given to a name). Put this way, one can frame the first two stanza lines as making an ontological observation and not just a linguistic one--simultaneously an observation directly about the Dao and indirectly about the diversity of things in the world. Let us not forget that naming and names in this context double in meaning as pluriproducing or pluriproduction. Given what has already been said, ontological excess must be seen as coloring every singularity: on the one hand, there is some concept that the transferability of properties or relations precedes the existence of any particular entities (save for the Dao); on the other hand, reflected is also a concept that the specific instance of a transference is contingent on all other actual transferences (save for the Dao). This means that any singularity is in effect "borrowing" its existence as a self-enclosed, independent and unique entity from its relations and/or from an amalgamation of properties, which themselves hold to their own diverse relations and potential properties. The implication is that any entity must, as part of its necessity, take part in entities which are not fully captured in it. This is what characterizes pluriproduction under daoism. This also explains why the stanza says that there are seed germs in all things.⁶

This sounds like an awfully Humean account of entities in some ways (refer to: bundle theory of properties). The main difference between this and Hume's rejection of Western substance theory, however, is that nonetheless there is a real thing which underlies these relations and amalgamations, insofar as there is a uniqueness which has borrowed its existence from these things. Perhaps it is best to call this a quasi-substance, though it has yet to be well-defined. But this underlying thing is accounted for by these relations and properties, as opposed to accounting for them. In fact, this is what puts the "-production" in "pluriproduction." Another difference is that it is ultimately potentially misleading in addition to limiting to describe pluriproduction in terms of relations and properties, for reasons similar to the reasons a Heideggerian would have in expressing caution about relational ontologies (i.e., that such "ontologies" are actually ontic rather than ontological). In addition, one could speculate that what makes this "borrowing" possible is the Dao, whereas in the bundle theory of properties there is no reliable account for this borrowing. This also means that in a daoist ontology, the Dao is an exception to the rule.

To sum up, what is important to understand about this stanza is that it is implicitly dealing with issues of causality first and foremost, and building its metaphysics on top of causal concerns: How do relations and properties transfer from one entity to another? What determines when a property or relation is transferred and when it isn't? The questions of causality are also tied to questions about logic and computation. Underlying this question are also issues of modality (e.g., necessity & contingency). The concern with naming and names is actually a concern with the production of difference within a system of continual transference which is seen as the basis of universality, or seen as the transcendental condition of universality. If this seems far-fetched, the third and fourth line of the stanza is quite telling: the name or pluriproduction is absent for sky and earth's first life, but present for all ten thousand things.³⁻⁴ That is, naming or pluriproduction are not at work for the origin of conjunctive dualities (like sky and earth). To the contrary, dualities and their conjunction are the portal whence pluriproduction is. Singularity and alterity in their juxtaposition is the portal whence naming.¹²⁻¹⁵

The Axiological/Praxeological Reading of the Stanza: Desire and the Mother's Name

One of the interesting parts of this stanza is the mention of desire.⁵ ⁷ The mention of desire seems to conflict with the purely metaphysical reading of it. But to realize the full role of desire in this stanza, is to reinterpret also those lines in the stanza which do not seem to attempt to lean on the concept whatsoever. Nonetheless, its better to start precisely with those lines which are most explicit. The mention of desire is done within a parallelism, wherein desire is in one instance ever-absent and in another ever-present. One wonders why "ever-" is made to modify these adjectives, as they seem to suggest that the absence or presence of desire is eternal. Putting that aside for just a moment, it would seem that what is explicitly being noted about present versus absent desire is the following: in the absence of desire, therein lies a generative power (whether causal or acausal is ambiguous), while in the presence of desire, therein lies a "finite course."

That is to say, when desire is present, this means that that desire is directed towards a given object and that the consequent path of this direction is finite by virtue of being delimited by its object (an important question to ask is whether paths can ever be infinite, such as when desire is for an infinite object--the stanza does not speak to this). When desire is absent is when generation is present: pluriproduction gets its foothold in the absence of interference by desire. This seems to suggest that the presence of desire is an impediment to pluriproduction. Of course, this would seem to make no sense metaphysically, insofar as desire is itself part of the canopy of pluriproduction. A more charitable interpretation is that desire actually forecloses the full range of potential for the one that desires at the same time that it motivates the actualization of the object of desire, which is to say that desire necessarily occludes or obfuscates pluriproduction for the one that desires. This in turn means that desire actually allows one to not only miss the majority of opportunities (save a narrow selection), but to fail to adapt to and thereby leverage the particular state of affairs one finds oneself in moment-to-moment irrespective of a hypothesized future.

While daoism is not Buddhism, there are inklings of Buddhism in this discussion of desire. But these inklings are related precisely to the fact that desire is being talked about as in-itself an inherent cost, in the same way that it is in Buddhism. Apart from this, daoism and Buddhism are world's apart: whereas for daoism what is intrinsically wrong about desire is its obfuscation or occlusion of pluriproduction, for Buddhism what is intrinsically wrong about desire is its finitude and singularity. Of course, the former is in some way a necessary condition for the latter, but for the daoist the cost of desire is one that must be assumed; hence, what is required is not to forego desire but to practice habits which allow us not to be mislead by desire. This would explain why institutionalized daoism later on emphasized ritual practices which not only balanced qi but focused on sexual health and vitality, which is incomparable to Buddhism's development. This would also explain why this stanza asserts that desire ever-absent and desire ever-present, or their respective effects, come together.⁹⁻¹⁰

The "ever-" characterization of desire's presence or absence is intentional, as desire being sometimes present and sometimes absent presents no contradiction. Desire treated as a contradictory is what makes the idea of their coming together as duality, and beyond duality, so jarring in this stanza.⁹⁻¹¹ This shifting of desire due to the interaction between pluriproduction and singularity is what it means for desire ever-present and desire ever-absent to be "one and the same." But, pluriproduction and singularity could also be treated as "one and the same" in relation to desire, thereby in relation to desire differing only in name.¹⁰ The singular focus of desire and the pluriproduction that forms the backdrop of desiring precisely informs the development of pluriproduction, insofar as pluriproduction has its contingency as a totality in each of the entities which arise in it and which, in the interest of desire, persist or subsist. Desire carries forth pluriproduction, and in doing so directs that pluriproduction as one into a dense and impenetrable singularity--impenetrable and dense because when the singular object of desire is probed, knowledge of its true object "recedes past that portal" of dualization and into the Dao. But this Dao is precisely what is prior to the rational calculation (logic) or computation which exists on the plane of pluriproduction. To refuse to be mislead by desire means precisely to abandon rational calculation and computation in the enactment of desire, as well as to subordinate all specific, finite goals to the intuition of the function of the Dao.

Let us then not forget also, however, that names and naming in this case bring language into relevance when interpreting this stanza of the Dao De Jing. The name is present for the mother of the ten thousand things.⁴ Names can never fully refer--all attempts at reference are failures. What, then, does the name do? It "mothers" the ten thousand things. Under traditional sexist mythology, one can interpret this to mean that the name takes care and nurtures the ten thousand things. It is clear, however, that names are deceptive in that they allow us to lose sight of the Dao within each of the ten thousand things, and losing sight of this degrades the ability to bring any thing into maturity and into measured and appropriate expenditure of itself and its environment. This is because the name, in carving out, leads to pitfalls, but the name, in mothering, for this very reason multiplies not only the classifications but the systems of classification pertinent to the tasks demanded by the situation, and thereby endows the control necessary to exercise choice. Language in daoism would seem to be the mother. Desire must accept names insofar as names nurture desire and at the same time allow it to have the control to "take care" of not simply it's single-minded goal, but each and every thing among the ten thousand. It's not clear whether this view of language is meant to be descriptive, or is primarily meant to be normative. It is likely normative, given that this stanza also sees language as fundamentally deceptive. There is buried underneath this stanza a relationship between deception, desire and care that remains inarticulate.