courage
integrity
intellect
mind
respect

all these names
and honored upright human character
are the strengths that flow from the tao way of life
emerging from a mystic pass
invisible
as an ever-elusive source

for the tao source of living has no shape or form
that can be perceived in ordinary waking consciousness
it is the invisible center of all shapes
the marrow of all forms and hidden quintessence

the present and the past conspire
to hide the name and secret from you

stomp your heels to reveal the conspiracy
as points of fire rise in the blackness of ages past

the inner sense of this mystery gives you comfort
and has always been felt by man
but vital nourishment comes only when you chew on the tao way of life

externalized shapes beyond the apparent confines as manifested
forms
behave as a paternal fool entertaining time itself

by touching the earth beneath your feet
you solidify the moment and know the name

of quintessence unrevealed

—Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching; An authentic Taoist translation. translated by John Bright-Fey

What is the purpose of philosophy? To many, it may seem like a waste of time and mental energy to contemplate abstractions when the empirical fields such as the sciences, mathematics, medicine, and engineering are producing material wealth, comfort, and over-abundance. This view is understandable if your experience with philosophers is to hear them quibble over some point of logic, the example argued about being some impossibly unlikely set of circumstances that aren’t relevant to the here and now. Though I would disagree that such an exercise in logical rigor is useless—reason must be robust or else arguments devolve into games of guile or power—I can empathize with the bewildered onlooker. It does indeed seem like a meaningless waste of time.

However, the truth is that philosophy as an exercise in constructing coherent premises and conclusions is really one of many stepping stones toward higher and higher purposes. The aforementioned science was once known as natural philosophy and to this day requires logic for the proper construction of its experiments and from the interpretation of its data. Alongside natural philosophy stand branches known as ethics, teleology, and underpinning them, metaphysics. Whereas natural philosophy is a methodology for making predictive models of and discoveries about the empirical world, these other fields make maps describing concepts such as objectivity itself, values, meaning and purpose, as well as how we ought to behave.

“But what do those abstractions matter? They aren’t really real.” If this is your position, only you can save yourself from the nihilistic abyss in which all human action and relation has been reduced to games of power. If this is your position, I’m sure this, too, you deny. You presuppose yourself on the side of right, though what that means in light of the destruction of ethics must remain hidden lest you glimpse the monster in the mirror.

In one of his more famous works, Beyond Good and Evil, Friedrich Nietzsche remarked:

“He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby become a monster. And if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will also gaze into thee” (Nietzsche “Apothegms and Interludes” Aphorism 146, p.55).

What does any of this have to do with Lao-tzu and the Tao Te Ching? Chapter twenty-one opens with a list of character attributes—character as in moral character: “courage,” “integrity,” “intellect,” “mind,” and “respect” are all listed as things cultivated from living the Tao way of life. Or rather, perhaps cultivating these aspects is, in part, living in accord with the Tao. Either way, the focus is on those very abstractions which to abandon is to invite nihilism into your house. In other words, you have a choice. Ascribe the good to externals and deny all that which you cannot see or hold in your hands, elsewise place the good in that which transcends external consequences—that is to place the good in your choices, that which is in your power to control, within the faculties of assent and dissent. That is all to describe your moral character—who you are above what you are and what you can, cannot, do, or do not actually accomplish.

“Why is this important? What value has something transcendent to me?”

Though unknowable, the Tao source of life—that which is truly objective, the nominal world, the thing in itself—is by definition that which is true and real. Insofar as you are real as well, a being who exists and acts according to your will, interests, desires, and conditions, you must therefore interact with this transcendent, objective nominal existence. That means that your subjective experience can be wrong in its assessments. It means that your map can be inaccurate, and despite your beliefs that the path is clear, you may run headlong into an obstacle you didn’t see but is nevertheless there. Therefore, if you want to make progress toward whatever mode of being you find valuable or admirable, it is in your interest to understand how you ought to act so as not to descend face first into pitfalls—or worse, mislead yourself in the opposite direction.

But it is not so easy to cultivate courage and integrity. It is not even clear what those words ought to mean. The words are mere shapes and forms, and the truth that is the Tao source of life “has no shape or form . . . it is the invisible center of all shapes / the marrow of all forms”—read as: that which produces words and labels and not the other way around. Naming a thing is merely an imperfect attempt at encapsulating a thing so as to accurately and usefully distinguish it from another.

As for the Tao way of life, as is the source itself, it is necessarily obscured by our perception—that perception itself obscured by our experience, past and present. We cannot clearly see what could be because our vision is colored by what seems to have been possible, right, or true up to this point. However, this conspiracy between past and present is but an illusion. You are a being in the world, and therefore within you is the impression that reality has left upon you. Interpreting the caverns of the earth as the symbol of the unconscious, Lao-tzu claims you’ll find fire—a light shining in the consciousness. This has parallels with certain dream images associated with alchemy and the Gnostic Christians: a sphere of light dwelling in the depths of the ocean, the philosophers stone hidden in the darkest parts of the human soul.

Again, the Tao Te Ching echoes the imperative to look inside yourself at those aspects which you most wish to hide in the shadowy corners of your mind. Find out who you truly are, partly shaped by your experience, partly by your conscious decision, and partly by inherited traits and flaws. Only once you can mull over these qualities of yourself can you begin to understand how to accord yourself with the Tao way of life. Only then can you consciously begin to develop your moral character.

Lao-tzu. “Chapter Twenty-One”. Tao Te Ching; An Authentic Taoist Translation, translated by John Bright-Fey, Sweetwater Press, 2014. p.40

Nietzsche, Friedrich. Beyond Good and Evil. 1886. translated by Helen Zimmerman. Enhanced Media, 2017.