The universality of virtue ethics—III—Daoism

Aspects of virtue ethics are found in all major Eastern philosophical traditions

Lao-Tzu, the founder of Daoism. Image from worldhistory.org, CC license.

Is virtue ethics an approach limited to the Greco-Roman-Christian tradition, or has it been explored also by other philosophies, for instance those that developed around the same time in India and China, and later on in Japan? This is the question we have been exploring in the first two essays of this series, on Buddhism and Confucianism respectively. We conclude with a look at Daoism, on the basis of a provocative paper published by Yong Huang in the Journal of Asian Studies and entitled “Respecting Different Ways of Life: A Daoist Ethics of Virtue in the ‘Zhuangzi.’”

The author’s goal is to make the case for a Daoist virtue ethics based on the Zhuangzi, one of the fundamental Daoist texts. Huang points out that a major difference among accounts of virtue ethics lies in their specific conceptions of virtue. Aristotelian virtue ethics, for instance, belongs to the eudaimonist account common in ancient Greece and Rome, while David Hume developed an intuitionist account of virtue. It is this latter approach that Huang attempts to apply to Daoism.

Intuitionism is particularly appropriate here because the Zhuangzi doesn’t work by producing arguments, as an Aristotelian text would, but rather through story telling. There are two types of stories: so-called knack stories and difference stories. Knack stories are about masters who perform difficult activities almost on autopilot, effortlessly, while experiencing what a modern psychologist might call a state of flow. Consider for instance the story of Cook Ding carving an ox:

“At every touch of his hand, every movement of his shoulders, every step of his foot, and every nudge of his knees, there is a sound of the knife slicing the flesh, a perfect rhythm that matches the Dance of Mulberry Trees and the music of Jing-shou in the time of Sage Yao.” (Zhuangzi 3.117-18).

When asked to describe his experience, this is what Cook Ding says:

“What I love is Dao, which is beyond skill. When I began to carve an ox, what I saw is nothing but the whole ox. Three years later, I no longer see the ox as a whole. Today I see the ox through the intuition, not with eyes. My sense organs yield to the mystical intuition. Following the natural structure of the ox, I cleave along the main seams and thrust the knife into the big cavities. Going by what is inherently so, I never touch veins or tendons, not to mention big bones. Good cooks change their knives every year, as they cut the flesh. Common cooks change their knives every month, as they hack the bones. I have used this knife for nineteen years, with thousands of oxen carved, but its edge is still as sharp as it is just from the whetstone. … I stand with the knife in my hand, looking around proudly, dawdle to enjoy the triumph until I am satisfied.” (Zhuangzi 3.119)

I know what you’re thinking: what about the ethics of carving thousand of oxen? Are we going to discuss that? Hold on to your hat, we will. Meanwhile, if you wish to have an idea of the beauty of what Cook Ding is talking about, you may want to check out the documentary Jiro Dreams of Sushi. Trust me, you won’t regret it.

Back to Daoism. In another story (Zhuangzi 13.491), the main character again talks about having a knack for doing a certain thing (wheel-making, in his case), but he cannot explain his skill in words, and he cannot teach it to his own son. This is reminiscent of Socrates’s observation, in the Meno, that virtue cannot be taught, otherwise we would see it done by virtuous fathers to their own sons:

“[Thucydides] belonged to a great house; he had great influence in the city and among the other Greeks, so that if virtue could be taught he would have found the man who could make his sons good men, be it a citizen or a stranger, if he himself did not have the time because of his public concerns. But, friend Anytus, virtue can certainly not be taught.” (Meno, 94)

Anytus gets really mad at Socrates for saying this, as he takes it to be a personal affront. He will be one of the three who will accuse Socrates in front of the Athenian assembly and trigger his death sentence. Talk about the danger of expressing philosophical opinions!

Huang points out that the knack stories in the Zhuangzi all focus on spontaneity, grace, effortlessness, and joy, with the main characters able to get into the flow of the Dao. The general idea is that we can be inspired by these stories and incentivized to do things properly. There is a pattern in nature, and it is the task of the Daoist sage to follow it. At some level, this appears similar to Stoicism, which also claims that nature is orderly as a result of the logos, and that we should strive to live in accordance with it. Remember, however, that in Stoicism sages are very rare, if they exist at all.

The knack stories also emphasize the importance of properly carried out roles, be they that of a carver of oxen or of a maker of wheels. A possible analogy here can be drawn with Stoic virtue ethics, which comes in two flavors: one articulated by the middle Stoic Panaetius and discussed in book I of Cicero’s On Duties, the other by Epictetus and outlined in several passages in the Discourses (see The Role Ethics of Epictetus: Stoicism in Ordinary Life, by Brian Johnson.)

But this is only half of the picture. Huang makes the further point that the knack stories tell us how to do things well, but not which things are right to do, the equivalent of the Stoic kathekonta, or proper actions.

That second bit is given to us by the second cluster of stories from the Zhuangzi, the so-called difference stories.

One such story tells of the Marquis of Lu, who saw a seabird outside his palace. The Marquis gave the bird wine and ordered music to be played to amuse the animal. In other words, he treated the bird improperly, as he would wanted to be treated. As a result, the bird died three days later (Zhuangzi 18.621). What is the meaning of these stories? In a chapter tellingly entitled “The equality of things” Zhuangzi says:

“If a human being sleeps in a damp place, the person will have a pain in his or her loins and some paralysis. Is that true of eels? If a human being lives up in a tree, the person will be frightened and tremble. Is that true of monkeys? Which of the three knows the right place to live?” (Zhuangzi 2.93)

According to Huang, what we are meant to learn is an ethics of difference: the appropriateness of our actions as moral agents depends on the needs of our moral patients, so to speak. This implies a recognition of the equal worth of different forms of life (hence the title of the above mentioned chapter in the Zhuangzi). Don’t impose your standards of right or wrong, recognize and respect other people’s standards instead. Both Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius say something along similar lines, though the underlying message seems to be more prescriptive than in Daoism:

“Whenever you see someone weeping out of grief for the departure of a child or because he’s lost some property, make sure you don’t get carried away by the impression that his external circumstances really are bad. Instead, have at hand the reminder that ‘It’s not what’s happened that’s distressing him (otherwise it would distress everyone), but his judgment about what’s happened.’ Don’t hesitate, however, to sympathize with him verbally, and even to mourn along with him, if that is what the occasion calls for. But make sure that you don’t mourn inwardly as well.” (Enchiridion 16)

Epictetus is recognizing that people have their own needs and that we ought to respect them and not impose our way of thinking. He does, however, also remind us that the Stoic way is better and that we are well served by putting it into practice when presented with similar circumstances. I don’t think Zhuangzi would go that far.

Remember the oxen from before? Now we can argue that their nature is not to be carved up for human consumption, so it turns out that Cook Ding is acting skillfully, but not ethically. Huang comments:

“Difference stories tell us what constitutes a morally appropriate action—the action that recognizes the equal value of diverse ways of life—while knack stories tell us how to perform the morally appropriate action in an admirable way—to be spontaneous, natural, and effortless. It is wrong to read knack stories as if they tell us what a moral action is or to read difference stories as if they tell us how to perform our moral actions. To fully understand the ethics of difference in the Zhuangzi, therefore, we must combine the two messages conveyed in these two different clusters of stories.” (p. 1059)

Huang suggests that Zhuangzi’s difference ethics amounts to the use of the Copper Rule: “Do (or do not do) unto others as others would (or would not) have us do unto them.” But wait a minute, if Daoist ethics is rule-based, then how can one argue that it is a type of virtue ethics? The suggestion here is that virtue ethics is compatible with rules, so long as these are generated by virtues. In this case, the Copper Rule can be understood as generated by the virtue of respect for different ways of life. Similarly, the Stoics derive their appropriate actions (kathekonta) from virtues, not the other way around.

In virtue ethics, like in Daoism, one aims at acting morally in a way that is natural, effortless, graceful, and joyful, which—it can be argued—is the point of Epictetus’s third discipline, that of assent, although, characteristically, he puts it in more dramatic, less cheerful fashion:

“I’d like what I’ve learned to be securely and unassailably available to me, not only when I’m awake but also when I’m asleep, drunk, and in a black mood.” (Discourses, 2.17)

One does not achieve this—either in Daoism or in Stoicism—without mindful effort. The masters in the knack stories are not born with their skills, and similarly we are not born with a natural tendency to respect the natural tendencies of others. Instead, we choose to act morally, and initially our actions are clumsy and unskilled. The ideal is reached only after a long practice.

In a sense, the Zhuangzi says that we should cultivate our natural disposition, which sounds like an oxymoron, but is very similar to the Stoic (and Ciceronian) notion that Nature gives us the beginnings of virtue, but it is up to us to use reason to cultivate and expand on such beginnings. While other animals can only be what they are naturally (that is, instinctively), we can help each other become more natural, so to speak.

Morality in Daoism, then, depends on different kinds of knowledge: the knowledge of what to do (difference stories) and the knowledge of how to do it (knack stories), but also an inner, embodied type of knowledge that we might call instinct.

“So it is easy to love with effort, but more difficult to love effortlessly. It sounds paradoxical, but conveys a profound message: sages can do things effortlessly, but one cannot become a sage without making great effort.” (Huang, p. 1065)

Seneca would likely approve.