Scientific Enlightenment, Div. One Book 2: Human Enlightenment of the First Axial 2.B.3. Chinese Philosophy Chapter 2: The Immediate Articulation of Dao in Daodejing (2) ACADEMY | previous section | Table of Content | next section | GALLERY

Copyright © 2003, 2005, 2006 by Lawrence C. Chin. All rights reserved.

3. The answer to the Grundfrage in Daodejing

The Daoist is particularly concerned with answering this Grundfrage, and as a matter of salvation, he asks it explicitly, i.e. die Frage zustandbringen, sie stellen, sich in den Zustand dieses Fragens noetigen. And the answer to "Why are there things at all?" is the Dao. E.g. chapter 42:

Dao as the progenitor of things is therefore its meaning immediately articulated. As we have seen in connection with Dao as the eternal nameless, it is the eternal substrate called for in the anamnesis of the first law of thermodynamics, the hupokeimenon, and now moreover the (or rather the foundation for the) physis -- the Aufgehen, the Rising, the Growing-Forth, the Begetter. "Begetting", shen 生 here is the active form corresponding to the passive form of earlier ("to be born" = genesqai), and so here means "to give birth to".

The Progenitor and the Eternal are therefore identical: the Eternal is the source of being. Hence asking the Grundfrage and then answering it, not only is it salvation, but also the search for the eternal. All three are identical. Hence Heidegger's Stellung of the Grundfrage should be followed by St. Augustine's dictum determining the preliminary shape of the answer:

4. The Grundfrage and "Nothingness" as the source of Being in Daodejing.

Another important divergence between Heidegger's metaphysical and our thermodynamic reading -- which touches on an apparent difference between philosophy West and East -- is the articulation of "Nothing". With Parmenides, Non-Being (mh einai) cannot be thought. Heidegger, and Conche following him, has read this metaphysically. "Die [just quoted Grundf]rage umgreift alles Seiende und d. h. nicht nur das jetzt Vorhandene im weitesten Sinne, sondern auch das vormals Gewesene und künftig Seiende. Der Bereich dieser Frage hat seine Grenze nur am schlechthin nicht und nie Seiende, am Nichts. Alles was nicht Nichts ist, fällt in die Frage, am Ende sogar das Nichts selbst; nicht etwa deshalb, weil es Etwas, ein Seiendes, ist, da wir doch von ihm reden, sondern weil es das Nichts 'ist'." (Einführung in die Metaphysik, p. 4. "The [just quoted] Grundfrage ranges over all beings and not just what is now at-hand [i.e. before us] in the widest sense, but also what has formally been and will in the future be. The range of this question finds its limit only in what is not and never be-ing, in Nothing. All that is not nothing falls into the range of this question, and in the end even Nothing itself; not because it is something, a being, because after all we speak of it, but because it is nothing.") This reminds of the same with Conche in connection with Parmenides' impossibility for Being not to be: "il y aurait le rien, c'est-à-dire non pas rien mais encore de l'être." The logical articulation thus precludes absolute nothingness, since "there is" is also presupposed in "there is nothing". Our thermodynamic reading of Parmenides has read this impossibility as expressing necessary Conservation and the correlative impossibility of thinking nothingness differently elsewhere. For the logical articulation of experience of being the impossibility of nothingness follows from the very impossibility of thinking "nothing" since "being" is necessarily implicated in it. We diverge from the metaphysical reading.

The Daoist is slowly passing into thinking (of Dao as) nothingness, and asserts somewhat that it is nothing, wu 無. Here not yet literally nothing, but in the sense of the necessary undifferentiation of the substrate (like today's undifferentiated "energy"). The thermodynamic interpretation of the experience of "there is something" on the other hand easily derives nothingness and so the thinking thereof from this experience, since the law of conservation guarantees -- so the thinking consciousness proceeds -- that, ultimately, nothing can possibly exist, so that what exists is nothing, and comes from nothing. In Daodejing the experience of this guarantee seems only implicit, but later on in Ch'an Buddhism it becomes quite explicit when the whole point of meditation -- coming to enlightenment -- consists in realizing, grasping -- feeling -- the necessity of all existence as nothingness. That is, in thinking non-Being, or as the practitioners of Ch'an call it, "emptiness", "emptiness is just emptiness." If there is any superiority -- measured as shorter distance to Truth -- of the Philosophy East vis-à-vis Philosophy West, as some here and there, in the spirit of Fritjof Capra, assert, it is in connection with thinking "nothingness", and not with some sort of view of nature as an interrelated whole or the ability to accept ambiguity such as wave-particle duality, the lack of which in the West has been due mostly to the temporary pre-dominance of Newtonian mechanics or positivism in general and not to the incipient Greeks. Philosophy East converges on modern physics in the recognition of the source of being as nothingness -- by carrying the intuition of the thermodynamic structure of the Universe to its logical conclusion.¹

Francesc Hervada-Sala, in presenting a summary of the goal of Heidegger's Sein und Zeit, says: "Die Frage nach dem Sein wurde von Plato und Aristoteles gestellt aber geriet später in Vergessenheit. Heute sind wir nicht einmal in der Lage, sie als Frage zu verstehen. Sie ist jedoch die philosophische Frage überhaupt und sollte wiedergestellt werden."² This relates to Heidegger's revival of philosophy in face of the derailment of philosophy in the West (not to mention its self-destruction in the English-speaking world through "analytic philosophy") since the Greeks. However, Heidegger's revival is phenomenological: "Sie fragt nicht nach dem, was dies oder jenes ist (was eine Frage innerhalb eines Sachbereiches wäre), sondern nach dem, was überhaupt „ist” bedeutet (also eine fundamentale Frage, die erst das dies oder jenes Sein innerhalb eines Sachbereiches ermöglicht)."³ To figure out was ueberhaupt "ist" bedeutet is however to decipher "why are beings the way they are?" which leads to the analysis of Dasein (i.e. human practice of living, of existence which always involves a self-interpretation, e.g. as a teacher or whatever: a stand on its own Being) which discloses the way things are. It does not answer the question "Whence came these things?" -- which is however the question of the ancient Homo sapiens sapiens, East or West. It is when Heidegger transposes his phenomenological approach to the analysis of the experiences of the ancients motivating their answer that Heidegger (now in the form of "logical articulation of the experience of being"), as in the example of hupokeimenon, diverges from our thermodynamic approach -- which, ultimately, is also phenomenological, since the primordial human experience is of the thermodynamic structure of the Universe. We do not follow Heidegger because his "phenomenological" approach (was ueberhaupt "ist" bedeutet) to Greek philosophy does not seem to lead to the Eternal as the source of being which is the answer the ancients invariably and unequivocably give to the question, "Whence came all things?"⁴ (In this sense Conche's Heideggerian reading of Parmenides is then to fix the problem, to show that Being as "being-present", as Presence, can still lead to the concept of Eternity.)

That Heidegger's reading of Greek philosophy seems to involve a distortive over-interpretation of key metaphysical (or thermodynamic in our way) terms like hupokeimenon or phusis into "presence" (Anwesenheit), and consequently of "truth" (alethia) into "coming into presence" seems to be a function of his phenomenological reflexive approach that is proper to the structural perspective and not functional of the Greeks.

5. Dao and Logos.

Therefore, although the commonality between West and East is quite profound, as a comparison of the Daoist with the Pre-Socratics and of Confucianism with Plato's Republic would reveal, a very apparent difference between East and West also exists in the sliding of Being into non-Being -- and this appears in another connection. Dao (道) means both "the Way" and "to speak". The opening words 道可道 (dao ke dao) mean literally "Dao [that one] can speak", which is however not the eternal Dao. Although Dao with the alternate meaning "speak" corresponds in its symbolism closely to the Logos of Greek, its negative quality (nothing, and unspeakable) contrasts sharply with the generally (not totally, c.f. Plato's agathon) positive quality of the Western counterpart. While Logos (the "Word") serves, for Heraclitus, as the same symbolic designation of the cosmic, divine ordering and creative power giving rise to the existence of all things and determining the "way" they are in such a "way" that they are mutually harmonious so as to belong holistically to the Whole (Logos, the "Word" is exactly the same as Dao, and exactly the power of diakosmon), Heraclitus never asserts a in principle ungraspable nature of the Logos. As we said, "Being" among the Greeks has never quite managed to pass into non-Being, Conche's extraction of nothingness under Heideggerian influence notwithstanding -- which it should do eventually, in accordance with the memory of the law of Conservation which is the progenitor of these spiritual expressions in the first place. Similarly the extraordinary similarity of the beginning of the Book of John of the New Testament with the beginning chapter of the present Daoist cannon contains also the contrast of its positive-ness of the Word (Logos) with the negative, un-namable, nothingness of the Dao (Way, Speak).

First, the Logos of John is the exactly same as Heraclitean Logos or the Daoist Dao: the progenitor of things and (moreover) their orderliness. Whether the Gospel of John was completely influenced by Greek philosophy and especially by Heraclitus or also influenced by, for example, the Memphite Theology of the Egyptian Old Kingdom (creations of gods through the word of Ptah), the point is that the creative and ordering power in the cosmos (the eternal substrate) is frequently symbolized by "word" or "speech" because language tends to associate with orderliness and its production. Through language Homo sapiens sapiens are able to represent the world and make its intelligibility or orderliness out of indeterminate, original chaos. Since creation, as we frequently see in creation myths and earlier philosophic reflection, means usually differentiation or determinat-ion out of the original undifferentiated chaos, it is experienced as speech- or word-like and symbolized thereby. That is, the production of the order of reality (the variety of its intelligible components) is accomplished through naming; or put in another way, as seen with Plato, speech (logos) gathers up what order shows up before us. Dao is the Begetter of things and the ordering power thereof, just like Heraclitean Logos, and hence also its similarity with John, "the Word begets the cosmos" for John and "the Dao begets the ten thousand things" for Lao-Tzu. So also Heraclitus: ginomewn gar pantwn kata ton logon tonde "All things came to be according to Logos", as we have already read. But whereas with John the Word is evidently not qualified any differently, i.e. remains positive, with Laotzu the Dao ("to speak") is immediately qualified with the opposite, as un-speakable -- since the primordial undifferentiated substratum of being cannot be gathered: just as in modern physics the original inflating false vacuum or whatever later source of our universe before its symmetry-breaking has no order (laws of nature) to gather (because the symmetry has yet to be broken!). Once again, profound similarity but apparent difference between the philosophical traditions East and West, and between spirituality religious, philosophic, and even scientific. The symbolism present in John but absent in the Daodejing is the identification of the Word as (true) light.

We may take a quick look at the etymology of logos (following Guerrière, 1990s). "The basic sense of the stem leg- (leg-) is 'gather'. From this, all the other senses derive. They will fall into place as soon as 'gathering' be thought as 'ordering'. The topology of the word may be schematised as follows:

• (1) gathering -> ordering -> measuring -> measure, amount -> due measure
• (2) gathering -> ordering -> organization -> (a, b, c)
  a. general principle -> law
  b. proportion -> relation -> correspondence
  c. organizing -> arguing, reasoning -> reason as faculty
• (3) gathering -> ordering -> collecting -> (a, b)
  a. enumerating, counting -> number
  b. laying out -> laying forth -> letting be manifest -> bringing to unconcealedness -> calling forth -> calling -> naming -> speaking or saying -> (i) utterance... (ii) mention, notice... (iii) conservation... (iv) argument -> a reason, cause; b logical process, logic... (v) language -> capacity for language"

Certain specially noted senses are in bold type (my addition). As the production of things (whence things came) and the principle of their orderliness (the way things are), Logos frequently also means "proportion" in extension of "ordering", as, so seen earlier, Plato said to divide the line of the divided line "according to the same proportion" (ana ton auton logon, in Book VI of the Republic). These are also the inherent meaning of Dao, except that Dao is taken in negative fashion, as unspeakable, un-representable: thus is the principle of the cosmos. The use of a word -- usually having to do with "word" or "intelligence" (again consider nouV) -- to symbolize a most general and singular principle governing the entire cosmos or all of existence is very common among the humanity of functional perspective living in cosmological civilizations. Consider for example the Egyptian Maat, which has the same meaning as Dao or Logos, i.e. the principle of the production and ordering of things -- and insofar as humanity of the cosmological civilizations conceive human society as an integral, i.e. microcosmic, implicated part of the cosmos -- and of social order and peace as well. The occasion for this discussion is in "The Origin of Correlative Thoughts of the Cosmological Civilizations". It will only be hinted at here that this singular and universal principle of the cosmos is also frequently subject in the functional perspective of the cosmological civilizations to quantitative representation, that is, to speak the Dao with numbers, which results in what will be called later "cosmic numerology", such as the Pythagorean tetratys or the Yijing metaphysics. The attempt to find a single numeric formula of the Dao, Logos, or Maat is to sink and be transmuted, when consciousness transits from the functional to the structural perspective, into the search for that one (set of) equation(s) describing Everything in the Universe at the geospheric level (and below), as for example in the superstring theories today, whereas the macroscopic orders above this level become dissociated from this basic numeric order (now as equations) inherent or immediately present in the microscopic fabric of the Universe, but can only be studied, at the very least, by the study of complexity and self-organization without universal "basic" equations.

Heidegger expectedly focuses on the meaning of Logos as the ordering principle in his (so we call) "metaphysical" reading. "Wenn wir sagen, die Grundbedeutung von logoV ist Rede, dann wird diese woertliche Uebersetzung erst vollgueltig aus der Bestimmung dessen, was Rede selbst sagt. Die spaetere Bedeutungsgeschichte des Wortes logoV und vor allem die vielfaeltigen und willkuerlichen Interpretationen der nachkommenden Philosophie verdecken staendig die eigentliche Bedeutung von Rede, die offen genug zutage liegt. logoV wird 'uebersetzt', d.h. immer ausgelegt als Vernunft, Urteil, Begriff, Definition, Grund, Verhaeltnis... logoV als Rede besagt vielmehr soviel wie dhloun, offenbar machen das, wovon in der Rede 'die Rede' ist. Aristoteles hat diese Funktion der Rede schaerfer expliziert als apofainesqai. Der logoV laesst etwas sehen (fainesqai), naemlich das, worueber die Rede ist und zwar fuer den Redenden (Medium), bzw. fuer die miteinander Redenden. Die Rede 'laesst sehen' apo... von dem selbst her, wovon die Rede ist... so dass die redende Mitteilung in ihrem Gesagten das, worueber sie redet, offenbar und so dem anderen zugaenglich macht... Nicht jeder 'Rede' eignet dieser Modus des Offenbarmachens im Sinne des aufweisenden Sehenlassens. Das Bitte (euch) z. B. macht auch offenbar, aber in anderer Weise." (Sein und Zeit, p. 32)

The "letting things show themselves as they are" (the gathering, especially in speech, of the self-showing orders of reality earlier) evidently is the original function of speech. But it is not how the ancients (whether the Daoist or Heraclitus or John) originally used the "Word" to symbolize. They coincide with Heidegger to the extend that the production of things also determines the way things are, which (the determination of the way things are) is the function of "Offenbarmachen" as "aufweisenden Sehenlassen." But the persistent difference between the ancient philosophers and Heidegger is that, as said, when thinking Being, they meant literally the production of things, the source of things, i.e. they were preoccupied with where things came from in addition to Being as the ordering principle, while Heidegger is only concerned with why things are the way they are. Heidegger's metaphysics is reflexive or self-reflective, i.e. it includes within itself why anthropos thinks Being at all and knows things to be as they are, and the foundation of such thinking and knowing, i.e. Dasein. But the ancients were not self-reflective; they did not concern themselves with why they wondered where things came from and how they knew the way things were in the first place (presencing, showing-forth) so that they could subsequently wonder about their origin and marvel about their orderliness by the work of cosmic principle. (As seen, Plato was the first to start on this line of reflexivity, but did not "complete" it.) Becoming conscious of one's own motivation and the foundation of one's own knowledge (instead of just building more on this foundation) is the trend of the higher level modern discourse (such as this work) and in this sense Heidegger has surpassed the ancients. But in this way also Heidegger's Sein does not mesh with the naive conception of Being of the ancients which often meant literally the material source of beings.

To continue with the Gospel of John:

This expresses that necessary tendency of ordinary people to prefer falsehood, illusion, and bad work to truth and good work, already noted (2.A. Ch. 5. The meaning of the sacrifice of Jesus). Only that now this truth is expressed as Logos. That ordinary people do not recognize the Logos which begot them is also lamented over by Heraclitus: tou de logou toud'eontoV aei axunetoi ginontai anqrwpoi kai prosqen h akousai kai akousanteV to prwton. ginomenwn gar pantwn kata ton logon tonde apeiroisin eoikasi "Of the Logos humans always are not-comprehending, both before they have heard it [from me] and once they have heard it. For although all things come to be according to Logos they seem to be devoid of experience of it." (c.f. Kirk and Raven, ibid., p. 187) The difference in lamentation between Heraclitus and John is of course that the former laments over an intellectual (noetic) fault of his fellow human beings while the latter over their spiritual (pneumatic) fault, their sin, in accordance with the greater break of the philosopher with mythic intraworld religiosity and the prophet's continuous imprisonment within it -- in accordance with the former's more empirical, mechanistic understanding of the cosmos, and the latter's more primitive mode of still experiencing the cosmos as a field of inter-personal relationships. Note that the use of idioi "individual, private" also occurs in Heraclitus, "the Logos being common (xunon) the many [people] live as if they had private (idian) understanding of it." (C.f. "Heraclitus".) In the case of Laotzu, as seen, the same lamentation over ordinary people's necessary ignorance of the Dao is expressed in Ch. 41: "When the highest type of people hear of Dao, they diligently follow it; when the average type of people hear of Dao, some things they retain and others they lose; when the lowest type of people hear of Dao, they laugh out loud at it; if they don't, then the Dao is not enough of Dao."

6. Marcel Conche's (Heideggerian) reading of Daodejing. (Tao Te King, PUF, 2003.)

Marcel Conche's preliminary comment on the meaning of Dao: "Une autre appellation de ce que le Tao désigne serait donnée... par le mot grec phusis, 'Nature'... la Nature omnienglobante des Antésocratiques, qui est le Réel en totalité et en perpétuel devenir" (p. 13 - 4; Conche also notes Marcel Granet's La pensée chinoise). We were in essential agreement with Conche on this point when we identified Dao as the Eastern equivalent to the hupokeimenon as the arche the Presocratics were searching after, although we saw the Dao as also more or less identical with the "Is" of Parmenides in Conche's presentation which has, so to speak, and maybe distortively, immanentized the original transcendental vision of Parmenides. "'Tout s'écoule', panta rhei, dit Héraclite. 'Tout l'univers est comporté d'un même flot', dit Confucius (XVIII. 6), semblablement. Telle est aussi la pensée de Lao-tseu. Le Tao, la 'Voie', n'est autre chose que le Fleuve d'Héraclite." (p. 16) As said, equally is Dao Logos. "Le 'Fleuve', la 'Voie' sont des notions omnienglobantes, qui font référence au Tout de la réalité -- des notions métaphysiques, donc." (Ibid.) All-encompassive is the "conserved substrate" of everything existent. "Le plus ancien livre de la Chine... est le Yi King, le 'Livre des transformations' ou des 'mutations'. Mais 'transformations' ou 'mutations', il n'y a, éternellement, rien d'autre. Et la Voie 'de toujours' est la 'mutabilité perpétuelle elle-même' (Duyvendak)." The substrate, the "total amount", is eternally conserved as the same ("amount"), hence if anything comes to be, any change, it is just the self-changing or -shuffling of the substrate.

He translates the most important opening line of Daodejing as: "La voie qui se laisse exprimer n'est pas la Voie de toujours. Le nom qui se laisse nommer n'est pas le Nom de toujours. Le Sans-Nom: l'origine du Ciel et de la Terre. L'Ayant-Nom: la Mère de tous les êtres. Se diriger vers le perpétuel Il n'y a pas, amène à contempler la secrète Essence; se diriger vers le perpétuel Il y a, à contempler les bornes. Ces deux issus d'un même fond/ par le nom seul diffèrent. Ce même fond s'appelle l'Obscur. L'Obscurité de l'Obscur, voilà la porte de tous les secrets." (p. 41) Now Conche is a Heideggerian and reads Laozi in Heideggerian light, which, however, I argue, is not really appropriate, "over-done", when applied to the primordial philosophical thinking (Daoists as well as the Presocratics or Upanishads). First to be noticed is that he translates the Chinese yu ("having", i.e. "being") with il y a. That existentiality ("there is something") is expressed by "have" ("there has"...) in Chinese (or in Japanese for that matter: "... ga arimasu") seems to offer justification for the primordiality of Heidegger's "presence" in metaphysical thinking. But I don't think this is the case. So Conche explains, in this Daoist metaphysical consideration of the origin (arche) of the empirical world around "l'opposition est entre l'indéterminé et le déterminé, le sans-bornes et le borné." (p. 44) These are the two aspects under which the Dao as the origin appears. "L'indéterminé est le 'il n'y a pas', car il n'y a encore rien dont on puisse dire ce que c'est. Le 'il n'y a pas' n'est pas le rien absolu: ce n'est que le 'il y a' lorsqu'on ne peut dire qu'il y ait, ou ce qu'il y a." (Ibid.) This is the primordial meaning of Dao as "nothingness" which we have distinguished: the undifferentiatedness of the substratum before its reshuffling, differentiation, into particular things -- a synchronic recapitulation of the diachronic evolution of the Universe at the stage, most precisely, of the undifferentiated hot soup of Big Bang where, after symmetry-breaking (between all forces), subatomic particles passed back and forth into the "radiation substratum" and the production of particles and antiparticles balanced their annihilation in this passing back-and-forth, but out of which, as temperature fell, subatomic particles eventually crystallized. But Conche's Heideggerian approach is going to deviate from this simple sense. "C'est le 'il y a' pur, mais le 'il y a' pur n'a pas de réalité: il n'y a le 'il y a' que s'il y a ce qu'il y a." (p. 44 - 5) The meaning of "there is" (logically) before "there is this or that". "Se diriger vers le 'il n'y a pas', c'est tendre à regarder vers la limite, où, par exténuation complète de ce qu'il y a, on aurait le 'il y a' pur." (Ibid.) Conche is putting forth again the meaning of Being as -- in Heidegger's manner -- "presence", as he did earlier with Parmenides: "Que signifie 'être' pour ce qui est? être là maintenant, être présent. Mais rien n'est présent que sur le fond de la Présence, laquelle n'est pas nécessairement présence de ceci plutôt que de cela, mais est nécessairement présence de ceci ou de cela, d'une chose ou d'une autre..." ("What does 'Being' signify for that which is [a being]? Being there right now, being present. But nothing is present except on the foundation of Presence, and this is not necessarily the presence of this rather than that, but is necessarily the presence of this or of that, of one thing or of another.") As I said, instead of such logical/ phenomenological interpretation, the simpler reading of the early metaphysical articulation of Being (Dao, apeiron, or the Brahman) in terms of a material substrate from which things materialize (like fermions materializing from the hot ["quark"] soup after the end of inflation and symmetry-breaking between forces, after 10^-34 second) is actually truer to the experiential background of these first mystical pronouncements of the humankind. Conche then moves to the other aspect under which Dao can be characterized as "Being" (or "having", 有 yu): "Se diriger vers le 'il n'y a pas', c'est aller vers le Fond sans fond d'où tout procède, tandis que se diriger vers le 'il y a', c'est aller vers ce qu'il y a et contempler un infini qui n'est plus celui de l'indétermination, mais de la multiplicité: à savoir les 'dix mille êtres'... qui s'entre-limitent, se bornent mutuellement." (Ibid.) This evidently is Conche's approach to understanding "The nameless is the beginning of heaven and earth; the having-name is the mother of all things... The two come from the same source, having different names..."

Speaking from the Heideggerian standpoint of "presence", Conche can thus characterize Dao in terms of discontinuous rebirth not unlike the Buddhist conception of temporality. "Ce que l'on a, à l'origine de 'Tout-sous-le-Ciel' (T'ien hsia yu...): l'indifférencié, l'indéfini. Le Ciel et la Terre ne sont pas nés un jour, n'ont pas commencé: ils naissent continuellement... Si le Tao est le Principe, l'archè, c'est en ce sens qu'il sous-tend l'ensemble de ce qui devient à tous les moments de son devenir. On peut songer ici à la création continuée selon Djalal al-Din Rumi, pour qui, à chaque instant, le monde et nous-mêmes retournons au néant, et, par l'effet du souffle divin, revenons à nouveau à la vie, en précisant toutefois, d'abord que le 'il n'y a pas' de Lao-tseu n'est pas le néant pur, ensuite que le Tao, comme l'apeiron d'Anaximandre, est purement immanent." (p. 44) I see the characterization of Dao as ground for the incessant regeneration of the world as somewhat an over-interpretation, though I concur with the second part that the nothingness of Dao as yet means undifferentiation and is the immanent conserved substratum of existence -- "becoming" (of the second law) not yet purged from "conservation".

This is not to say that Conche does not see Dao also as literally the material origin of everything. "Si la Voie est, d'une part, l'indéterminé, elle est, d'autre part, ce d'où tout provient. Elle porte alors un nom: elle est la Mère -- principe de naissance et de croissance pour tous les êtres individuels. Le Tao indifférencié, en tant que se différenciant, est la phusis, la Force génératrice." (Ibid.) This is, at last, my approach to understanding the early metaphysical concepts: physical, material origin.

As Conche has reduced the meaning of Dao as the material origin of things to the logical/ phenomenological meaning of "presence", the other sense of Dao as the determinant for the way things are he explicates in this way in order for this (sense of) Way to be also appropriately characterized as "not speakable". "[Les voies] n'ont qu'un temps: ainsi les voies romaines, la règle de trois unités du théâtre classique, les 'règles de la méthode' de Descartes, les 'cinq voies' pour prouver l'existence de Dieu, selon Saint Thomas. À la différence des voies (ou règles: les règles de conduite, de méthode, de 'direction de l'esprit', définissent des voies à suivre), le Tao, la Voie absolue, n'est pas appréhensable de façon déterminée, et est donc ineffable, innommable. 'Tao', 'Voie' ne sont que des façons de parler: 'Voie', comme 'fleuve', n'est qu'une métaphore. 'Tout' change: ce qui est toujours n'est autre que le changement même. Le changement n'est pas ce qui change; le changement ne change pas. La Voie 'de toujours' est l'inconstance même: constance de l'inconstance." (p. 42) This is the same Heideggerian approach: the change of things presupposes change itself, which does not change. Now this unspeakable Dao is the infinite Dao. "Les voies ordinaires sont des chemins, des routes à suivre, qui mènent quelque part, ont un point de départ et un point d'arrivée. Mais la Voie sans particularité, la Voie qui n'est que Voie, est infinie: au sens d'indéterminée, mais aussi de sans commencement ni fin. Le devenir, la Voie ne mènent à rien -- qu'à eux-mêmes." (p. 43) Here we see nothing objectionable in Conche's reading.

Footnotes:

1. One must not skip this thermodynamic interpretation and adopt instead the linguistic interpretation by saying that the Chinese are able to think "nothing" better because when they want to say "there is no body" they merely say "no person" 無人, without "there is". We must guard against the deterioration from experience behind the words to the words themselves, i.e. fundamentalism.

2. "The question about Being was put forward by Plato and Aristotle but went into forgottenness later. Today we are not in the position to understand it as a question. But this question is the philosophical question generally and should be put forward again."

3. "The question asks not about what this or that being is (this would be a question within the realm of things), but about what 'is' means generally (thus a fundamental question, which makes possible in the first place this or that being in the realm of things)." -- both translation mine.

4. Again, such "logical articulation" or "phenomenological" -- i.e. dealing with the motivating experiences -- was ueberhaupt "ist" bedeutet can degenerate easily to linguistic analysis rather than experiential. E.g. Pascal: "On ne peut entreprendre de définir l'être sans tomber dans cette absurdité: car on ne peut définir un mot sans commencer par celui-ci, c'est, soit qu'on l'exprime ou qu'on le sous-entende. Donc pour définir l'être, il faudrait dire c'est, et ainsi employer le mot défini dans sa définition." Cited by Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, p. 4. A typical example of derailment of philosophy into sophistic fundamentalism just like religious fundamentalism: playing with words and their definition rather than dealing with the experience behind symbolized by the words. The Chinese are somewhat protected from such degeneration by the fact, in this case, that, unlike the Western Indo-European languages where the linking verb (e.g. c'est) serves also the existential function (e.g. "there is" or "es ist etwas" in German) which makes easier the degeneration by which the existential is explicated through the linking, the classical Chinese does not have a linking verb "is" and expresses the existential function with "have", as we have explained. The linking verb "is" in contemporary Mandarin, shie 是, means "this" in the classical Chinese.