PHILOS 2120 Lecture Notes - Lecture 8: Meta-Ethics, Tao Te Ching, Taoism
21 Nov 2017
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Society forces us to go against our natures and that is what is messing everything up: our problems ultimately stem from greed. And we are taught greed from society: normally, our desires are quite modest. Perhaps the best way to put it is that daoists are more optimistic about human potential. Instead, act in accordance with nature: follow your own human nature to get back to actual nature (since they are not separate, getting back to nature doesn"t just mean going out in the woods. It means falling back into natural conformity with the universe, rather than allowing society to try to conform you: to this end, daoism is anti-establishment, individualistic, against ritual and custom, and favors. Getting used to the dao: we"(cid:448)e already discussed daoist criticis(cid:373)s of co(cid:374)fucia(cid:374)is(cid:373). It tells us how we should act: the daoist dao, in contrast, is the dao of the universe of reality.
