Abstract
In this article we review Western discourse on the relationship between Daoism and anarchist political theory. In particular, we focus on the anarchist reading of Daoism given by Roger Ames, and the more recent contrasting argument against reading Daoism as an anarchism by Alex Feldt. Centering our discussion on the Daodejing 道德經, we argue that, on the one hand, Laozi’s 老子 political theory is less easily reconcilable with anarchist thinking than Ames suggests. On the other hand, we dispute Feldt’s argument that Laozi’s sage-ruler must, of necessity, maintain the capacity for coercive control. Counter to both Ames and Feldt, we suggest that Laozi’s sage-ruler is better framed as a maternal overseer, in contrast to other more paternalistic extrapolations of Daoist thinking, such as that offered in the Hanfeizi 韓非子. In reading Laozi’s thinking as a form of state “maternalism,” we aim to give a more distinctive voice to the nuances of early Daoist political theory.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Ames, Roger T. 1983. “Is Political Taoism Anarchism?” Journal of Chinese Philosophy 10: 27–47.
Ames, Roger T., and David L. Hall, trans. 2003. Daodejing: “Making This Life Significant,” A Philosophical Translation. New York: Ballantine Books.
Chan, Wing-Tsit. 1963. A Sourcebook in Chinese Philosophy. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Chen, Ellen M. 1969. “Nothingness and the Mother Principle in Early Chinese Daoism.” International Philosophical Quarterly 9.3: 391–405.
Clark, John P. 1983. “On Taoism and Politics.” Journal of Chinese Philosophy 10: 65–88.
D’Ambrosio, Paul J., and Shen Lijuan. N.D. “Gender in Chinese Philosophy.” In Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Bradley Dowden and James Fieser. https://www.iep.utm.edu/gender-c/ (last accessed on July 1, 2019).
Dworkin, Gerald. 2017. “Paternalism.” In Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Archive, Winter 2017 Edition, edited by Edward N. Zalta, https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2017/entries/paternalism/ (last accessed on October 8, 2018).
Feldt, Alex. 2010. “Governing Through the Dao: A Non-Anarchistic Interpretation of the Laozi.” Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy 9: 323–337.
Graham, Angus C. 1989. Disputers of the Dao: Philosophical Argument in Ancient China. Chicago and La Salle: Open Court Publishing Company.
Hall, David L., and Roger T. Ames. 2000. “Sexism with Chinese Characteristics.” In The Sage and the Second Sex: Confucianism, Ethics and Gender, edited by Li Chenyang. Chicago and La Salle: Open Court.
Kaltenmark, Max. 1969. Lao Tzu and Taoism. Trans. by Roger Greaves. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Kashani-Sabet, Firoozeh. 2006. “The Politics of Reproduction: Maternalism and Women’s Hygiene in Iran, 1896–1941.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 38.1: 1–29.
Koven, Seth, and Sonya Michel. 1990. “Womanly Duties: Maternalist Politics and the Origins of Welfare States in France, Germany, Great Britain, and the United States, 1880–1920.” The American Historical Review 95.4: 1076–1108.
Moeller, Hans-Georg. 2004. Daoism Explained: From the Dream of the Butterfly to the Fishnet Allegory. Chicago and La Salle: Open Court.
______, trans. 2007. Daodejing: The New, Highly Readable Translation of the Life-Changing Ancient Scripture Formerly Known as the Tao Te Ching. Peru: Carus Publishing Company.
Needham, Joseph. 1956. Science and Civilization in China, vol. 2: History of Scientific Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Plant, Rebecca J., and Marian Van der Klein. 2012. “Introduction: A New Generation of Scholars on Maternalism.” In Maternalism Reconsidered: Motherhood, Welfare and Social Policy in the Twentieth Century, edited by Marian Van der Klein et al. New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books.
Rapp, John A. 2012. Daoism and Anarchism: Critiques of State Autonomy in Ancient and Modern China. London and New York: Continuum International Publishing Group.
Waley, Arthur. 1934. The Way and Its Power: A Study of the Tao Te Ching and Its Place in Chinese Thought. London: George Allen and Unwin.
Wang, Robin R. 2012. Yinyang: The Way of Heaven and Earth in Chinese Thought and Culture. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Publisher’s Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Flavel, S., Hall, B. State Maternalism: Rethinking Anarchist Readings of the Daodejing. Dao 19, 353–369 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11712-020-09731-2
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11712-020-09731-2