On the Philosophy of Taoism

Abstract

The question of whether what is known as ‘Eastern Philosophy’ qualifies as real philosophical venture engenders lingering divergent positions among scholars.  Edmund Husserl, for instance, view the entire corpus as some forms of religion embodying specific systems of belief and mystical practices bereft of Greco-European model of philosophy. This paper is an attempt to further, in the context of ‘Receiving Asian Philosophy’, the project of consolidating the reality of that Philosophy. The paper attends to the project by exposing and examining, the philosophy of Taoism, which advances the interconnection between nature and reality, with special attention to its principles of nature. As a research based on qualitative method, this paper relies on library and web sources for data collection. It combines the methods of phenomenology and analysis (Phenomenalysis) for its enquiry. The paper finds that against the polemical viewpoints of Husserlian like minds, some other scholars including Joseph Adler, Chen Chung-Ying, Bina Gupta and Cheng Derong endeavoured to establish the philosophical appropriateness of Eastern Philosophy. It also finds that since philosophy can be viewed, in line with the thought of Theophilus Okere, as hermeneutics of culture, Chinese philosophy, an important aspect of Eastern philosophy is the critical presentation and interpretation of the Chinese culture. The paper further finds that Taoism with its emphasis on nature represents the oriental perspective to the entire corpus of humanism, although with minor content on scientific and technological progress.  The uniqueness of this paper lies in its attempt to reinvent the import of Taoism especially its theory of quiescence in the contemporary world driven so much by the blare of homocentric humanism. Nevertheless, the paper’s appraisal of Taoism shows that its tenets cannot be taken in its totality. Rather any adherent of Tao ought to find a balance of life by developing intellectual capacity and proper disposition to the human preservation driven progress of the modern time.

Keywords: Philosophy, Taoism, Quiescence, Humanism

DOI: 10.7176/JPCR/50-08

Publication date:October 31^st 2020