Daoist Conception of Time: Is Time Merely a Mental Construction?
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Daoist Conception of Time: Is Time Merely a Mental Construction? Nihel Jhou 1 Accepted: 1 September 2020/ # Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract There have been very few studies of the Daoist conception of time in either the West or the East. The only explicit study on this topic in the English literature is David Chai’s (Chai 2014). Chai maintains that “human measured time” manifested in the myriad things in the Daoist universe is merely a mental construction, whereas the authentic time is cosmological time, which consists of neither an A-series (which is ordered by nonreducible pastness, presentness, and futurity) nor a B-series (which is ordered by earlier-than relations) but something without order and directionality. In this article, I start with Daoist texts (i.e., Dao De Jing 道德經 and Zhuangzi 莊子) about fundamental reality and time. I then explain and analyze Chai’s interpretations of these texts. Lastly, I argue that Chai’s interpretations violate an important Daoist principle. In addition, the idea that human measured time is merely a mental construction is not the best available interpretation of the texts. Keywords Daoism . Time . Presentness . Temporal passage . A-series . B-series
1 Preliminaries While most writers on the nature of time trace the debate to ancient Greek philosophy, citing, for example, Heraclitus and Parmenides, it is worth exploring the thoughts of similar precursors in the Eastern tradition. In the Daoist literature, there are certain hints about the nature of time, but not much has been written on it. In addition, there have been very few succeeding studies on the Daoist conception of time in both the West and the East (the only explicit one in English literature is Chai 2014). Given that Daoist philosophical framework deviates significantly from the contemporary Western ones, it is an interesting yet challenging task to explore what Daoist views on the nature of time might look like. * Nihel Jhou [email protected]
1
Department of Philosophy, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan
Nihel Jhou
Daoist metaphysics, according to the mainstream interpretations both in the East and the West, maintains that Dao (the descriptive, natural daoway 道, as opposed to normative, social daoway 道) is either the ultimate ground or cosmogony of all things (depending on interpretation). Dao is infinite in every way, indeterminate, nonmaterial, self-grounding, universal, and eternal (G. Chen 2006: 2–4). Dao manifests itself first as mere possibilities, as primal nothingness (wunonbeing 無); through self-differentiation, Dao creates the One, or the primal chaos (hundunundifferentiated-wholeness 混沌), and manifests itself as the One; further through self-differentiation are the myriad things formed (Shen 2009: 251; Chai 2014: 362; G. Chen 2006: 4–6). The myriad things constantly change, but a sage can do away with past and present and enter where there is no life and death. Grounded in the above interpretation of Daoist metaphysics, David Chai formulates a Daoist conception of time: “human measured ti
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