Ethics without principles in Lao-Zhuang Daoism

Abstract

This study illustrates how ethics is possible without any appeal to antecedent “ethical principles” by drawing on Lao-Zhuang Daoism. What makes Lao-Zhuang Daoist ethics so different from prevailing accounts of the ethical life is that it provides an account of why persons should be apprehensive of being “principled” if they wanted to become morally sensitive human beings. These insights are in turn grounded in the Daoist’s naturalistic account of mind and experience, and this, as I detail, is vastly different from much of western philosophy. For the Daoist, the practical takes precedence to the theoretical. Their account of the ethical life illustrates how certain forms of abstract knowledge (“knowing-that”) can potentially end up inhibiting the ability to respond to situations (“knowing-how”). Daoist ethics is first and foremost centered around the cultivation of perceptual and non-cognitive capacities such that conceptual and theoretical experience do not obstruct the ability to understand and respond to problematic situations.