The concept of wuwei 無為/无为, often translated as nonaction or effortless action, is central to classical Chinese philosophy. But what exactly is the idea and what are its practical implications? What puzzles does it raise regarding the nature of human actions, purpose, and intention? We examine these questions by focusing on some central passages from the Daodejing.
Featured passages
Daodejing 2
天下皆知美之為美,斯惡已。皆知善之為善,斯不善已。故有無相生,難易相成,長短相較,高下相傾,音聲相和,前後相隨。是以聖人處無為之事,行不言之教;萬物作焉而不辭,生而不有。為而不恃,功成而弗居。夫唯弗居,是以不去。
Everyone in the world knows that when the beautiful strives to be beautiful, it is repulsive.
Everyone knows that when the good strives to be good, it is no good.And so,
To have and to lack generate each other.
Difficult and easy give form to each other.
Long and short off-set each other.
High and low incline into each other.
Note and rhythm harmonize with each other.
Before and after follow each other.This is why sages abide in the business of nonaction,
and practice the teaching that is without words.
They work with the myriad creatures and turn none away.
They produce without possessing.
They act with no expectation of reward.
When their work is done, they do not linger.
And, by not lingering, merit never deserts them.
(Daodejing 2, Philip J. Ivanhoe’s translation)
Daodejing 37
道常無為而無不為。侯王若能守之,萬物將自化。化而欲作,吾將鎮之以無名之樸。無名之樸,夫亦將無欲。不欲以靜,天下將自定。
The Way does nothing yet nothing is left undone. Should barons and kings be able to preserve it, the myriad creatures will transform themselves. After they are transformed, should some still desire to act, I shall press them down with the weight of nameless unhewn wood. Nameless unhewn wood is but freedom from desire. Without desire and still, the world will settle itself.
(Daodejing 37, Philip J. Ivanhoe’s translation)
Daodejing 48
為學日益,為道日損。損之又損,以至於無為。無為而無不為。取天下常以無事,及其有事,不足以取天下。
In the pursuit of learning, one does more each day; In the pursuit of the Way, one does less each day; One does less and less until one does nothing; One does nothing yet nothing is left undone. Gaining the world always is accomplished by following no activity. As soon as one actively tries, one will fall short of gaining the world.
(Daodejing 48, Philip J. Ivanhoe’s translation)
Some terms and references mentioned in the episode
- Daoism (Taoism)
- Wuwei 無為/无为 (non-action, effortless action, maybe “without deliberate action”)
- The Daodejing 道德經/道德经 (sometimes romanized as Tao Te Ching)
- The Laozi 老子 (sometimes romanized as Lao Tzu)
- Scott Cook, The Bamboo Texts of Guodian
- The Han Feizi 韓非子 (the Legalist text that also discusses wuwei)
- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience
- Daodejing 60 (“governing the large state is like cooking a small fish”)
- Ivanhoe, The Daodejing of Laozi – see the introduction for Ivanhoe’s discussion of the Daoist “primitive agrarian utopia”
- Daodejing 80
- Unhewn wood (pu 樸/朴)
- wuyu 無欲/无欲 (without desire, freedom from desire)
- Analects 1.15
- Daodejing 12 (“the sage is for the belly and not for the eye”)
- “one does nothing and yet nothing is left undone” (wu wei er wu buwei 無為而無不為/无为而无不为)
Concerning the translations of the DDJ/Laozi, I published a bibliography of these translations in 2022 that includes 2052 translations in 97 languages. There should be hundreds more now. It is quite likely the most translated work after the Bible and the most translated “philosophy” work.
Thanks for the point Misha. It is incredible the number of translations out there. It certainly demonstrates the love of this wonderful text.
Wuwei 無為 in the Daodejing: I enjoyed this episode. I was a bit concerned at the start when Richard Kim explained wei as purposeful or deliberate action. While it certainly has this sense, it doesn’t always. But Justin Tiwald acknowledged that wei is polysemous and the talk focused primarily on the sense of interference or coercive action, which I think is more appropriate in the Daodejing. After all, interpreting both weis in 無為而無不為 as purposive action makes no sense. When Justin discussed the “personal” use of wuwei, citing skill-stories from the Zhuangzi, he could have mentioned that the term doesn’t appear in any of those stories.
It was good that both mentioned that wuwei as a government policy works better with small communities and also mentioned some drawbacks as well. They observed that the Daoists appear to have had an optimistic view of human nature. It seems the Daoists cherry-picked what they liked in primitivist society. Saw it with rose-coloured glasses on. Still, I think it’s a helpful corrective, even if we don’t see primitivist life the same way.
Chapter 2 – Ivanhoe provides an interesting translation at the beginning “when the beautiful strives to be beautiful” (美之為美). I don’t think I’ve read a similar translation. It’s intriguing.
Chapter 37 was a great choice. The fact that this natural transformation (自化) occurs only when rulers refrain from wei-ing, (that is, when they practice wuwei), suggests that wei 為 should be understood as coercive action or interference, forcing things to be different than they are, on their own. It has little to do with purposive action, especially since the author suggests that if people’s desires/ambitions get out of hand, the ruler should restrain (鎮) them, which is purposive.
Both Richard and Justin hinted bat but never mentioned my preferred understanding of wuwei as “less is more.” The less we try to accomplish, the less we try to force things to be a certain way, the better things will be. This doesn’t mean we NEVER act purposely: I see the advice as more of a corrective, especially for rulers who are often very ambitious and meddling.
If anyone’s interested, several years ago I wrote a very long essay on wuwei on my blog found here: https://baopu81.wordpress.com/2017/01/01/classical-daoism-is-there-really-such-a-thing-part-4-4/ (also on pdf at Academia.edu: https://www.academia.edu/30700365/Classical_Daoism_Is_There_Really_Such_a_Thing_Part_4_4_Wuwei_%E7%84%A1%E7%82%BA)
Thanks Scott for this insightful comment! Yes, you are right that the wu-wei here is being contrasted here with the notion of interference rather than purposeful action. I had been reading a lot of Xunzi lately which probably led to that error. And thanks for sharing that blog post which I enjoyed reading.
The “less is more” is a core theme and I’m sure we could have done more to bring that out. Perhaps in a future episode!
Thank you for this episode on 無為, and pointing to further examples of perceived contradictions in the Daoist classics. First and also addressing Scott’s “cherry-picking” point above, beginning at 15:50 and picked up again at 24:16 and then briefly at 59:30, do you have any evidence a 無為, or “flow,” state correlates with a “primitive,” which is to say “ignorant,” agrarian society?
A quick search of Csikszentmihalyi’s “Toward a Psychology of Optimal Experience” turned up the following snippet (pp. 218-19): “A central task of any human community is to make flow experience available to its members within productive, prosocial activities. In many ways, hunting and gathering societies seem to have been more effective than later cultures at making work and maintenance activities enjoyable (Firth 1929; Sahlins 1972). With the invention of farming, and even more during the past two hundred years since the Industrial Revolution restructured everyday survival tasks, people have had to work more while enjoying it less (Thompson 1963; Wallace 1978).”
So in that case, it’s not that the “primitive” societies were “naturally” as in somehow “unconsciously” engaged in 無為, but that they recognized the utility of it. What if in this respect we have actually regressed?
Csikszentmihalyi of course also connects flow to a challenging condition. Could hunting and gathering have been just such a condition? And then, wouldn’t farming as well have been more challenging than a task like butchering? If there are depths of flow, why couldn’t a farmer attain as deep a flow state as Butcher Ding (庖丁) did, and likewise experience that state as a great musicality? Why not?
For its part, the Dao De Jing simply offers “人法地” on the way back to the“道,” defined as 自然. As you suggest, farmers are perhaps closer to the 地 than a butcher is, but again why would that mean a farmer is somehow more “natural” (自然), and thus capable of according with the 道 than say a butcher is? And as you note, it is not like farmers may not deviate from the Dao.
Also, doesn’t a Zhuangzi Chapter 12 passage feature 一丈人 as a sagacious farmer? And in any case, how much farther from nature is a farmer than a butcher, ferryman, carver, or fisherman, all of whom you recognize as cultivating 無為?
Relatedly at 55:00, are you sure the farmers at that time could not have considered a wisdom tradition, especially inasmuch as their lived experience may have accorded with it? What if it is not that complicated? What about what we now call indigenous cultures? Too, why couldn’t the farmers have been able to appreciate the Dao De Jing if only orally, and even been poetic themselves? For what it’s worth, in places like 武夷山 I have met wonderfully poetic peasants.
In short, coming from the Daoist perspective how is a term like “primitive” at all suitable for what they are explaining as an ideal agrarian society? If such a society was 無為, it was not so much that they were “closer to nature” but that they recognized the utility of being so. In attaining 無為, they are just like everyone else. One difference, as you seem to recognize at 59:35, is they do not have so much affected knowledge (知). Another difference, as you get into at 53:00, 55:00, and again 1:01:00, is they are not so entangled by artificial desires (欲).
Again anecdotally and to bring this discussion into the present day, growing up in Iowa I saw how farming still requires a great deal of skill including because of nature some skills like adaptability and quick (simple) fixes that our scholarly class may lack. And even the farmers who may not have obtained a college education often were curious about all sorts of things and very talented at an art like story-telling or singing. The community theatre was terrific. The Dao De Jing Chapter 80, which you refer to at 30:30, seems to recognize just this kind of “樂”. Why not?
Second for ostensible contradictions, at 38:00 is it that the Daoists are talking about having “to accept it all, both the good and the bad,” or that through cultivating 無為 they cease to be attached to “the good” (善) as opposed to “the not good” (不善)? Could a sage then even experience “the Good”? A flow state is described as just such a sublime experience. This point again relates also to the last discussion here of 無欲.
Third with respect to the Dao De Jing’s political sense of 無為 at 17:55 and again at 46:30, why wouldn’t the Dao De Jing’s 無為 with respect to a ruler or even just a public official also require skill and thus cultivation of a flow condition? For such a ruler or official who may have to engage “為” people on a regular basis, could 無為 be any different? Wouldn’t the other possibility of “nonintervention” put such a ruler at a distinct disadvantage? And if they simply appointed an official to act for them, isn’t that in and of itself necessarily either 為 or 無為? So then, they are never actually just 不為, no?
Notably, all three of the Dao De Jing entries included in this episode also use the character “不” to negate some act, like “to desire” (欲), and Chapter 37 actually uses 不為. So why would it be the Dao De Jing at select times is using “無為” to mean simply “不為”?
Fourth, based on the previous points and back at 15:30, how could Zhuangzi and his followers have seen their sense of 無為 as any different from Laozi’s? Specifically on this point, doesn’t the Zhuangzi Chapter 14 quote Laozi on 無為, and there Laozi liken 逍遙 to 無為 in the context of agriculture? At the same time, doesn’t the Zhuangzi Chapter 33 biography of Laozi again feature 無為? And where in the next biography for Zhuangzi does it suggest any difference between the two on this central point?
Lastly and at 52:45, do the Daoists use 無欲 to mean simply “no desire” and thus contemplate a conflict with “desire” (欲)? Wouldn’t that instead be 不欲 and 欲? Or, are the Daoists referring to something akin to 無為 and thus a subtle“non-desiring” or “without/beyond desirousness”?
As already mentioned in connection for the Butcher Ding episode, a flow state typically entails “the loss of self-consciousness” (pp. 243-44). On this point of desire, moreover, Csikszentmihalyi at 242 provides: “Because the direction of the unfolding flow experience is shaped by both person and environment, we speak of emergent motivation in an open system (Csikszentmihalyi 1985): what happens at any moment is responsive to what happened immediately before within the interaction, rather than being dictated by a preexisting intentional structure located within either the person (e.g., a drive) or the environment (e.g., a tradition or script). Here, motivation is emergent in the sense that proximal goals arise out of the interaction; later we will consider the companion notion of emergent long-term goals, such as new interests.”
So again in conclusion, what if it is not that the Daoist texts are contradictory but that we are imposing our own contradictory experiences and thought modes onto them? Why would we not want to consider this point? Might we ourselves need to cultivate 無為?
@Justin Tiwald
Further to my above remarks, if as you raised before you and Richard would be willing to have an episode on interpretative approaches to the Zhuangzi (and Dao De Jing), I would be happy and honored to participate. We could get into the basic logic of such, and as Carlo suggested, talk about how a lawyer may differ from others in approaching these works. Hopefully, such an episode would benefit everyone involved in this by all accounts central and even critical issue.
If I may here, relatedly and recently a well-subscribed podcast with its roots in philosophical Daoism in taking on “the spiritual malaise of our times” distinguished what it took to be on the one hand a “good” contradiction with a certain embrace of “ambiguity” (無定向 (i.e. 不定向) or 不/未确定) and on the other hand a “bad” yet still having “a key point” contradiction also with the quality of ambiguity—Slavoj Žižek’s new work on atheism. For a person going through say a mid-life crisis, the proffered, Tiantai Buddhist-sounding view might be useful (I don’t know), but the two championed qualities certainly do not appear as such in the Daoist works. As the Dao De Jing Chapter 1 expresses, for a sage as denoted by “常無欲” reality is “subtle” (妙).
That Dao De Jing chapter of course goes on to explain for others who “常有欲” reality is defined by “boundaries” (徼). In that respect and logically speaking, reality may seem to be “contradictory” and at some point ironically also “ambiguous.” The “boundaries” after all would be illusive.
This difference may be why passages like the Dao De Jing Chapter 41 highlight personal cultivation, there for “上士聞道”expressed by the line“勤而行之,” and in a sense caution against contradiction and even ambiguity, there for the “中士聞道”included in the phrasing“若存若亡.” In short, a person must cultivate the Dao, or 無, to see reality as it truly is.
But even more importantly for this difference, for a society out to maintain order, the value of a theory based on contradiction and ambiguity is nil or really even worse. If our lawmakers including judges were as openly contradictory and ambiguous as such scholars claim to be, how could our society not collapse in on itself? And then there would not be any sort of “play” for such theoreticians or anyone else.
Anyway and again, I really would be happy to join an episode on this interpretive question, and thank you for having entertained this possibility. If we do have such an episode, perhaps for my perspective we could ask for more examples of what people see as major contradictions within the Daoist texts or even between different versions of a text. Recently a person reached out to me about the use of 免 and 晚 in different versions of the Dao De Jing Chapter 41, a really good question. Again, we also could talk about how a lawyer parses language and so forth. You guys and others may not agree with my take on these matters but at least we all may come to a better understanding of the differences. —Joe
@ Scott Barnwell: good points, and good extended essay on wuwei 無為 as “less is more.” “Less is more” has a certain theoretical elegance as an interpretation and should be in the mix of defensible interpretations.
@ Joe Pratt: several interesting points. I couldn’t quite tell what the upshot was in a few cases, and I take it that some of your questions were meant to challenge or problematize specific claims in the episode itself, marked by timestamps that I would need to listen to again and compare with the questions. I regret that I don’t have the time to give these challenges and insights their due! The podcast is a part-time job, on top of our full-time jobs and everything else.
@ Misha Tadd: I now remember hearing about this impressive bibliography of translations of the text. Astounding!
The timestamps were meant only to show you said those things, including describing the Dao De Jing’s ideal as “a primitive agrarian utopia” that was “ignorant.” In any case, I look forward to the new episodes, and certainly will keep my comments brief. Thank you again.
@ Joe Pratt: Okay, thanks for your understanding. Brevity (or lack there of) isn’t really the issue. The problem is on me: you are making some implicit inferences that I have trouble following, and it would take a lot of back-and-forth to ensure that I understand your position and arguments correctly.
Long-winded comments are welcome! I say this as a long-winded person myself. I hope it’s understandable that we don’t faithfully respond to all of the comments. That’s just not a viable option for us. Nor is it a viable model for most podcasts, I think. Up to this point, however, we can say that we’ve read all of the feedback posted here, on social media, and sent to us by email, and often talk about it when discussing changes to make to the show. I hope that’s something.
I do admire the unitary account of wuwei, and the suggestion that for the authors of the DDJ, the farmers in the ideal agrarian communities choose to adopt wuwei because they see the advantages of it, rather than just accept it naturally and unselfconsciously (due to lack of awareness of other options or possibilities). It’s a good and intriguing proposal.
Many thanks, friends and regular commentators, for your feedback. I really do regret that I can’t give all of the feedback its due, but I can say in all sincerity that we take both the appreciation and the criticisms to heart. We have three more episodes recorded and awaiting editing: Zhuangzi’s playfulness (with Pauline Lee), women in the Analects (with Erin Cline), and Zhuangzi on uselessness (with Chris Fraser). The episode with Erin Cline is really any excuse to look closely at Analects 6.28, and the episode with Chris Fraser is our excuse to talk about useless trees and the (“useless”) goose that couldn’t honk. And we have a mighty list of other topics to cover this year. There is much to do.
Wuwei means the action of “feeling” for ex. when in Spring you see new small leaves and forseen how they will be falling in a six month and when you alredy have seen these falling leaves your feelings could without any forces to catch the motion of this “falling” in a 2 seconds.. Wuwei means such action-feeling without any rude actions from yourself