The Specter of Tao and the Plights of Contemporary Human Existence

Abstract

The instrumental rationalism of the Enlightenment disintegrates the paradigm of the universe characterized by “knowing the bright but cleaving to the dark” and therefore undermines the organic connection and dynamic balance between the different aspects of the earth’s ecosystem and impacts the unity of matter and spirit, civilization and Nature, knowledge and faith, sense and sensibility, men and women, the country and the city, technology and culture, progress and conservatism, power and vulnerability, benefits and conscience, clarity and vagueness, quantity and quality, etc. It seems that Lao Tzu offers a prophetic description about the consequence of such disintegration.