The world calls it "Laozi and Zhuangzi", and Zhuangzi and Laozi are both representatives of Taoism.
Lao Tzu's main ideas are as follows:
First, what is Tao. Laozi thinks that things are mixed, natural, lonely, independent and unchangeable, and can be the mother of the world. I don't know its name, but it says.
Second, the role of Tao. Lao Tzu said that the Tao gives birth to one, two, three and everything. Everything is negative and holds yang, and it is harmonious with anger. One refers to the chaotic primitive, and the other refers to the yin and yang produced by chaotic two gases.
Thirdly, Yin and Yang are unified through collision; Everything is born. Third, the characteristics of pottery. Everything in the world is born, and everything is born without it. Doing nothing means doing whatever you want, and it is a movement against the Tao. Nothing is nothing, nothing is the most useful. Doing nothing and doing nothing, contrary to the movement of Tao, means that things always change in the opposite direction, and the interdependent side of contradictions affects the transformation of their opposites. The so-called happiness lies in misfortune, and disaster lies in happiness. So through these two, the opposite movement is introduced;
Fourth, the method of Tao. Things always turn into the law of Tao in the opposite direction, from birth to death, from growth to aging. Extreme things must be reversed, and extreme joy must be reversed. Lao Tzu said, weak is better than strong. For example, when the wind blows, the trees will break and the grass will stay. The world is not weak, but the strong cannot win. Water is the gentlest, but it has great power to attack. Applying the method of observing the middle of things to personnel, Lao Tzu has a famous conclusion: consolidate if you want, weaken if you want, consolidate if you want, consolidate if you want, abolish if you want, and consolidate if you want. This is called dusk.
Fifth, the essence of Tao. Laozi believes that the essence of Tao is to let everything change naturally without interference. The road is big, the sky is big, the land is big, and the people's congress is large. Earth and heaven, heaven and Tao, Tao is natural. The immortality of the sky is to allow everything to make itself and everything is natural. Laozi naturally yearned for Taoism and Taoism, and got the view of governing by doing nothing.
Zhuangzi's thought can be divided into three main contents.
First, rule by doing nothing.
Zhuangzi's inaction is completely different from Lao Zi's. Laozi did nothing because he opposed the movement of Tao. In other words, in order to achieve truly great social achievements, you should follow the law rather than act rashly. Laozi's inaction means doing whatever he wants. Zhuangzi does nothing because happiness can only be approached when everything (including all people) is free. The more control and rules you have, the more you lose yourself, and the more you lose happiness. Therefore, any unnatural rules suppress people's happiness.
Second, carefree travel. On two ways of happiness.
First of all, Zhuangzi opposes etiquette and law and all "universal" social morality. Because Zhuangzi thinks that people are different from each other, the so-called universal morality is nothing more than cutting off the feet and suppressing people's natural nature. So the first level of carefree travel is called freedom of all kinds of weather in first frost (quoting Chairman's poem blindly). It doesn't matter that everything has its own nature. As long as they fully and freely exert their natural abilities, they are also happy. For example, the happiness of birds is the singing of branches, and the happiness of geese is the migration of thousands of miles. Everyone has his own happiness, but as long as everyone realizes freedom, they are equally happy.
The second level of carefree travel, advanced happiness. The former is low-level happiness, which is not the same. That kind of different happiness can't be complete, because everything can't really "follow one's inclinations" and everything is subject to various constraints. According to Xizhe, it is Nietzsche's superman to do what he wants, but later Heidegger pointed out that superman can't be realized because there are too many restrictions in the world, such as: people will die, and Kangxi will borrow it from heaven for another 500 years, but unfortunately he can't. Therefore, a higher level of happiness can only be the integration of heaven and earth. The so-called unity with heaven and earth is called the unity of heaven and man. This realm transcends the differences between all things and between people and the world, and I can't feel it myself. Man is completely integrated with heaven and earth, so he gets eternal happiness.
Third, homogeneity theory. On the three levels of knowledge, this represents the highest state of Zhuangzi. The first level of knowledge is Hui Shi's theory of relativity. Everyone has only one-sided knowledge, trying to influence others and gain recognition with his own definition of one-sided knowledge. Zhuangzi said, suppose I argue with you. I won, which means I must be right? If you win, you must be right, right? Not necessarily. We'll find a third person to judge. The third person supports me, which means I must be right? The third person supports you, which means you must be right, right? Not necessarily. Everything is relative. You can't get the truth by discussing people and taking sides. As the saying goes: Fang Sheng must die before he dies. We can't do it. We can't do it. Cause is cause, not cause, not cause. This is the first stage of knowledge.
The second stage of knowledge: shine the sky. This stage is roughly equivalent to Hui Shi's so-called freshman, and the small difference rises to the same. However, Hui Shi only put this forward as the highest ideal, and did not discuss it in depth. The highest stage of Zhuangzi is not this stage, which is discussed in detail. Everything, that is, all kinds of knowledge, comes from "one", that is, the only "existence" of the mother of all things. From the point of view of Tao, everything is the appearance of everything. Although everything is different, it is unified into a whole, which is one. When the Tao becomes, it becomes nature, so does the division, and the achievement dies, and everything is unified and immortal.
The third stage of knowledge: chaos and forgetting. Now that we have called one, are we speechless? One plus one equals two, two plus one equals three. Unlike Hui Shi. Zhuangzi thinks "one" is incredible. If it is incredible, then at least words and thoughts are beyond this, and it is not true. So the truth is unspeakable. So it can only be chaos. Only when it comes to chaos can we truly master absolute knowledge. Why abandon wisdom? Because relative understanding leads to differences, and forgetting can really be the same as heaven. However, primitive ignorance does not mean forgetting after knowing. The two are completely different.
Their differences:
Zhuangzi thinks that life and death are the same, nothing is existence, and existence is nothingness, but in fact, existence is not important, and its significance often goes beyond the existence of life and death. And its last stream, taking the world as a bad language, can not be combined with Zhuang language, so it is called being well-informed with the world alone, so there is a saying that it is peaceful with the world. Laozi thinks that heaven does nothing, but nothing is equal. The Tao Te Ching consists of two parts, one is about Tao, and the other is about virtue, and the virtuous get it. Half of the two parts are about "morality" "A dead husband is unwilling to go" (Chapter 2 of Laozi), but he is unwilling to go as he pleases. Zhuangzi's social outlook is just a negative philosophy of life. The so-called "Zhou must be between things and non-things", "He must be able to recover his thickness" and "He must dance with mulberry". Its essence is artistic theory. Laozi's view of society is a unique philosophy of managing the world, which is called "anti-Tao movement", "negative yin holding yang, knowing men and guarding women" and "riding the strongest in the world with the softness of the world" (Chapters 40, 28 and 43 of Laozi). ), its essence is in line with the art of war. Zhuangzi's Journey to the North: "Eta Ursae Majoris said:' If you can have it, you can't have it, and you can't have it, why not!' ""The pursuit of absolute knowledge, like a moth to a fire, is gone forever, and its progress in abstract speculative ontology has come to the end. And Laozi is practical in nature. Laozi said: "It is because saints are not big in the end that they can become big", and they are often called saints, such as Hou's strategy. Being pragmatic and passive is the biggest difference between Laozi and Zhuangzi, which is also the reason why Laozi was able to successfully combine politics with Qin and early Han dynasties before Confucianism and Mohism.
There are three outlets for early Taoist theory in social and political practice. One is Laozi's "governing by doing nothing". Laozi's thought of governing by doing nothing was also called "the southern skill of the monarch" and "the moral skill of Huang Lao" in the Warring States and the early Han Dynasty. Confucianism was also called "Confucianism" in the early Han Dynasty, and Laozi's thought of governing by doing nothing was regarded as a political strategy and became a complete political concept. The second is Zhuangzi's theory of Qi's life and death. He believes that the meaning of life is passive, and life is like death, so we should live quietly. This basically refers to the value of human life, is a kind of outlook on life, and does not involve social and political factors. The third is Zhuangzi's drift, which requires people to follow the crowd and do what they know is impossible. It is a negative social view. In addition, after the Qin and Han Dynasties, there were Taoism and alchemists, who advocated health and longevity in life and social practice. There were schools of methods such as Fulu and internal and external alchemy, but they were not the original intention of early Taoism.
Taoism has two different levels in the form of logical thinking: "opposites are complementary" and "elephant is invisible". On the contrary, the two complementary concepts are opposite, such as difficulty, length, competition, sound, before and after, and so on. Elephant invisibility is an absolutely independent and self-contained concept with the widest connotation and extension. Moreover, there is no corresponding symmetrical concept and no reference object, so that the concept itself is nameless and intangible. This concept is called "generosity", "great manners", "loud voice", "elephant", "great success", "great profit", "great ingenuity" and "great debate" and so on. Laozi has repeatedly stated that "if you want to suppress it, you must open it; If you want to be weak, you must be strong; If it is to be abolished, it must be consolidated; If we want to grasp it, we should fix it with "strangeness" and "tension", "weakness" and "strength", "waste" and "harmony", "bending is all, waste is right" and "waste is all". Although Laozi has made metaphysical achievements in philosophical ontology, his political views and social views are largely extended to lower-level opposition. And Zhuangzi advocated "do nothing for yourself, the sage is nameless" and "do nothing for use". Zhuangzi's life pursuit is to be consistent with the absolute concept of "elephant invisible". Lao Tzu talked a lot about Yin and Yang, and Zhuangzi talked a lot about whether there is or not. Yin and Yang are a pair of concepts that correspond to each other and rise and fall with each other. Being and not only correspond to each other, but being is nothing, and nothing is being. Both of them have the same name and reality, and each represents different links in abstract speculation. Yin and Yang are the concepts of the universe, and existence is the concept of philosophical ontology. Laozi pays attention to the change of the concept of opposition between yin and yang, and the result is naturally a strategic method inclined to humanitarian practice. However, Zhuangzi's persistent pursuit of noumenon is at the expense of people's independent personality and life practice. Zhuangzi Tian Yun: "You can't bring too many names and public tools. Renyi, the first king retired, can only stay overnight, but not for a long time. " People are to the Tao as utensils are to the great cause. They must be respectful, cautious and solemn, and they must never act arbitrarily.
Although Laozi and Zhuangzi share the same Taoist theory, epistemology and logical reasoning, they are both early Taoist philosophers, but they have different degrees of extension in social practice and have diametrically opposite philosophical purposes and social views. Although Laozi and Zhuangzi are both Taoist masters, they belong to different cultural patterns and ideological systems if they are divided and measured from the perspective of human nature and political practice. Laozi tends to be consistent with early Confucianism and other pre-Qin philosophers, while Zhuangzi is independent of a hundred schools. The above is a brief analysis of Laozi and Zhuangzi.