Abstract
I compare Aristotle and the Daoists about moving naturally. I consider their views of self-motion enabling one to cross any physical boundaries, to whether the motion is natural or artificial such that natural motion is easier than artificial motion. I draw on Ed Halper’s solution to how nature is knowable for Aristotle, by interpreting the various sorts of motions as complete and incomplete actualities, and hence as more or less knowable, respectively. Comparing Halper’s interpretation of how the various sorts of motions are distinct and knowable for Aristotle, to the functional equivalent motions and knowledge in Daoism, will reveal similarities and differences regarding these traditions’ accounts of motion. Whereas these various types of motions are distinct and hierarchically ordered in Aristotle, they are intimately related for the Daoists. The fluidity and kinship between these motions for the Daoists reveal that moving naturally is the norm. Even artificial and accidental motions are modeled upon natural movement because what is natural is characteristic of the Dao, which is constant and knowable. I trace these thinkers’ accounts of the ease with which one moves naturally to their respective first principles: the unmoved mover for Aristotle, and the Dao for the Daoists. Finally, I briefly gesture toward which of the two philosophies have the stronger ethical resources for dealing with our current environmental challenges.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Halper (1984).
- 2.
This essay’s focus is on motions and knowledge of motions for Aristotle and the Daoists. I’ve elaborated on these thinkers’ respective resources for ethics and environmental ethics in separate articles.
- 3.
Hardie and Gaye (1994–2009), Physics II.1192b14–15.
- 4.
Ibid, 192b18–21. For instance, insofar as a crafted object is made of earth, its tendency is to move downward. Alternatively, consider Aristotle’s discussion of Antiphon’s example about planting a bed 193a12–14. Antiphon’s claim is that if the rotten wood generated a shoot, it would have developed into a tree rather than a bed, showing that it is the accidental material (in this case, wood) instead of the essential nature of the crafted bed that is capable of moving itself.
- 5.
As Daodejing 1 (“DDJ” hereafter, Ivanhoe 2002) states, the 10,000 things originate from the Dao (Way), and even though Dao “grows” or nourishes everything, it doesn’t rule them (DDJ 3, 34). Instead, the 10,000 things on earth take their laws from heaven, and heaven takes its law from the Dao, which law in turn is the natural (ziran, self-soing, spontaneous)(DDJ 25). Again, DDJ 64 states that wanwu (萬物) develops spontaneously (ziran). Supporting the spontaneous movement (ziran) of natural things, Lai (2003, 257) quotes Chung-ying Cheng’s “On the Environmental Ethics of the Tao and the Ch’I,” saying: “ziran is not something beyond and above the Dao. It is the movement of the Dao as Dao, namely as the underlying unity of all things as well as the underlying source of the life of all things. One important aspect of ziran is that the movement of things must come from the internal life of things and never results from engineering or conditioning by an external power” (my italics and substitution of Pinyin for Wade Giles romanization). This internal life refers to de.
- 6.
- 7.
Zhuangzi 5.17, my translation. The Chinese text for my translation of the Zhuangzi is from Zhuangzi 2006–2021. http://ctext.org/zhuangzi; I use Ziporyn (2009) for the chapter references. Unless stated otherwise, all references and translations of the Zhuangzi are, with modifications, from Ziporyn (2009).
- 8.
For a detailed account of Laozi’s talk of harmony as the object of knowledge, which consists in the natural harmony of opposites as the norm of everything, so that one is to assist everything in its natural condition rather than pursuing one extreme of an opposite, see Sim (2014, 55–56).
- 9.
Referring to Metaphysics IX.61048b18–35, Halper says, “Aristotle describes motions as incomplete because their ends do not belong to them. In contrast actualities have their ends present within them” (1984, 815). Again, Halper says, “Actualities last through time, but they are not temporal because they are complete at all times . . . motions remain incomplete until they attain their ends: ‘all motions are in time and are for an end’ (1174a19–20)” (1984, 818). Explaining the unity and unchanging nature of actualities, Halper says, “actualities are never in the process of change; they never alter. Hence there is no objection to unchanging knowledge of them. Further, because each actuality is unchanging, there is no possibility that an actuality might become something else. Thus, there are no objections to ascribing unity to an actuality. It follows that there are no objections to identifying actualities as forms” (Halper 1984, 818).
- 10.
Zhuangzi’s ideal for human beings is for them to be without their “characteristic inclinations” to distinguish between things that are right and wrong, or to like or dislike certain things, as such practices are the stuff of unnatural, or conventional knowledge. Rather, he maintains that one should “follow along with the way each thing is of itself, going by whatever it affirms as right, without trying to add anything to the process of life” (Ziporyn 2009, 5.22–5.23). The implication is that natural things are constantly changing so that we cannot identify them by fixed categories. Instead, going by what is momentarily right for the thing in whatever context it happens to be is to abide by its natural motion or process in life that is also in harmony with other things, in its present context of the Dao. See also Zhuangzi 7.3–7.4., 2.16, 2.11–2.14, and DDJ 64.
- 11.
For a detailed account of the various senses of substance or form in Aristotle’s Metaphysics upon which the last three of these causes are based, see Sim (1995).
- 12.
- 13.
See Halper’s distinction between incomplete motions and actualities in note 9 and especially (1984, 817, 820, and 830).
- 14.
What “art imitates nature” means is ambiguous for interpreters of Aristotle, according to Coughlin (2018). On one interpretation, Coughlin maintains that the analogy between art and nature could mean that because productive arts are teleological, so too must things in nature be teleological. He states, “Evidence for this view is found in Physics II 8,… generally art in some cases completes [ἡ τέχνη τὰ μὲν ἐπιτελεῖ] what nature is unable to complete, and in other cases imitates it [τὰ δὲ μιμεῖται]. If, therefore, artificial products are for the sake of an end, so clearly also are natural products” (Coughlin 2018, 2). On another interpretation, Coughlin claims that “art imitates nature” could mean that the sort of knowledge in natural science should be the model for artistic knowledge. Coughlin says, “if Aristotle thinks artistic forms of knowledge imitate natural science, then natural science should be used as a model for inquiring into artefacts” (Coughlin 2018, 3). Neither of these analyses regarding the teleology in nature and art, nor knowledge of natural science and art could bridge the gap between art and nature sufficiently to explain Zhuangzi’s example of how the tree grew into a bell-stand because each interpretation of art and nature hangs on the sharp distinction between the two which doesn’t exist for Zhuangzi.
- 15.
Zhuangzi says of the source of the transformations of everything in the world, including joy, anger, sorrow, happiness, day, and night, that “If there is some controller behind it all, it is peculiarly devoid of any manifest sign. Its ability to flow and to stop makes its presence plausible, but even then it shows no definite form. That would make it a reality with no definite form” (2.6–2.8).
- 16.
- 17.
- 18.
Tredennick & Armstrong 1935, 1071a14–18.
- 19.
Ibid, 1071a37.
- 20.
Ibid, 1071b20–21.
- 21.
Ibid, 1072a21–25.
- 22.
Tredennick 1933, 1028a31–b3.
- 23.
Gabbe maintains that there is order and interconnectedness of all living things in the universe for Aristotle by arguing that there’s a common good they share by contributing to the eternity and unity of the universe, which are ultimately “attributes that also belong to god” (2012, 378). Despite the initial similarity between the orderliness and unity in this account of Aristotle’s universe and the Daoists’ harmonious cosmos governed by the law of the Dao, they differ when we consider how Aristotle’s God is transcendent and separate from everything else, while the Dao is both transcendent and immanent. Moreover, whereas Aristotle’s universe is hierarchically and teleologically ordered, the former cannot be asserted without qualification for the Daoists, and the latter cannot be true for them since the Dao does not set a definite end or goal for everything.
- 24.
For the characteristics of God, see Tredennick 1933: 1028a31 and 1029a28. For God’s independence, see Tredennick & Armstrong 1935: 1074b35.
- 25.
For detailed discussions that Aristotle’s metaphysics results in his prioritizing theôria over phronêsis, and how his ethics is limited to human communities rather than the cosmic world, unlike the Confucians and Daoists, see Sim (2010, 5–7 and 9).
Works Cited
Chai, D. 2014. Zhuangzi’s Meontological Notion of Time. Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy 13: 361–377.
Cooper, D.E. 2014. Daoism, Nature and Humanity. Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements 74: 95–108.
Coughlin, S. 2018. Art and Nature in Aristotle’s Physics: Some antecedents. In Metaphors in Ancient Cultures, ed. C. Barth, C. Ferella, and D. Werning, 1–28. Berlin: Edition Topoi.
Gabbe, M. 2012. Aristotle on the Starting-Point of Motion in the Soul. Phronesis 57: 358–379.
Halper, E. 1984. Aristotle on Knowledge of Nature. The Review of Metaphysics 37: 811–835.
Hardie, R.P., and R.K. Gaye, trans. 1994–2009. Physics by Aristotle. http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/physics.2.ii.html
Ivanhoe, P.J., trans. 2002. The Daodejing of Laozi. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing.
Lai, K. 2003. Conceptual Foundations for Environmental Ethics: A Daoist Perspective. Environmental Ethics 25: 247–266.
Sim, M. 1995. Senses of Being in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. In The Crossroads of Norm and Nature: Essays on Aristotle’s Ethics and Metaphysics, ed. M. Sim, 51–78. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield.
———. 2010. From Metaphysics to Environmental Ethics: Aristotle or Zhu Xi? In Democracy, Ecological Integrity and International Law, ed. R. Engel, L. Westra, and K. Bosselmann, 77–90. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
———. 2011. Being and Unity in the Ethics and Metaphysics of Aristotle and Liezi. In How Should One Live? Comparing Ethics in Ancient China & Greco-Roman Antiquity, ed. R.A.H. King and D. Schilling, 304–323. Berlin/Boston: de Gruyter.
———. 2014. Travelling with Laozi and Plato. In Landscape and Travelling East and West: A Philosophical Journey, ed. H.-G. Möller and A. Whitehead, 53–70. London: Bloomsbury Academic.
Tredennick, H., trans. 1933. Aristotle’s Metaphysics. Vol. I: Books 1–9. Loeb Classical Library 271. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Tredennick, H., and G.C. Armstrong, trans. 1935. Aristotle’s Metaphysics. Vol. II: Books 10–14. Oeconomica. Magna Moralia. Loeb Classical Library 287. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Xu, K. 2011. A Different Type of Individualism in Zhuangzi. Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy 10: 445–462.
Zhuangzi, 2006–2021. Chinese Text Project: Zhuangzi. http://ctext.org/zhuangzi
Ziporyn, B. 2009. Zhuangzi: The Essential Writings. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2022 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Sim, M. (2022). Moving Naturally for Aristotle, Laozi, and Zhuangzi. In: Bloom, D., Bloom, L., Byrd, M. (eds) Knowing and Being in Ancient Philosophy. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-98904-0_8
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-98904-0_8
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-98903-3
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-98904-0
eBook Packages: Religion and PhilosophyPhilosophy and Religion (R0)