World’s Great Thinkers Report
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Added on 2020-04-21
World’s Great Thinkers Report
Added on 2020-04-21
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Running head: WORLD’S GREAT THINKERSWorld’s Great ThinkersName of the Student:Name of the University:Author Note:
1WORLD’S GREAT THINKERSTopic: What are the Taoist views of the natural world? How such views influence the Daoist conceptions of human experience and knowledge of this world?IntroductionThe world’s great thinkers have the different perceptions about the human existence andnatural scenario. The Taoism is the concept that deals with the centralized ideas on relationships.The approaches of this view revolve around the nature and the relationships as a part of theoriginal orders1. The views presented in Taoism develop the ideas about the discovery of theoriginal orders by turning to nature. The study would present the concern related to the Taoistviews towards the natural world. It would also discuss the Daoist conceptions of the humanknowledge and experience in this world. DiscussionThe central idea of Taoism is the development of relationships. The Taoist textsintroduced the conceptual ideas about the human existence. The earlier Taoist text indicated thatthe human alignment with the nature results the harmony and result. The evaluation of thisperspective determines the purpose of self-cultivation, which is considered as the return to theexistence mode. In spite of being natural, this existence mode is often obscured by the socialconditioning2. The Taoism view also depicts that the human requires repeating several actions,such as physical exercise, which would free their body from the spontaneous and naturalreaction. It is believed that this spontaneous mode is fully experienced by the immortals. The1 Lin, M.H., 2016. Traditional Chinese Confucianism and Taoism and Current EnvironmentalEducation.Environmental Ethics,38(1), pp.3-17.2 Park, Y.C. and Pyszczynski, T., 2016. Cultural universals and differences in dealing with death.Denying death: Aninterdisciplinary approach to terror management theory, pp.193-213.
2WORLD’S GREAT THINKERSTaoism view also determines that the humans can deviate from the natural sequence. Thisdeviation point creates the destruction upon the humans or the society. Taode jing, the Confucianscholar explained that the social threats of punishment cause harm due to the continuousforcefulness3. The scholar was criticized for presenting the rules and social expectations. It isalso specified that appropriate modeling is the only way to encourage the justified behavior. It isobserved the impeccable character of the leader would make the people follow them to adopt thenatural behavior. Taoist believe in a myth, which is “Who governs his body, governs thecountry”. It is even noticed that the self-cultivation practices are quite visible in Chinese nobilityduring the Warring state period. It is important to mention that some of the practices in Taoismwere once province of fangshi and shamans4. This process is also called the method of“nourishing life” that promotes longevity. The physical exercise like “gymnastic” is designed toimprove health and helps human in breathing. It also suggests the dietary restrictions, such asdrinking talisman water and avoidance of grains. This talisman water is prepared with the ashesof a sacred diagram, which is drawn on a paper and then burned. The ashes would be dissolvedin the water and this water was then drunk5. The sexual practices are also included in thisprocess. This process is suggested for generating the sexual energy, but then redirecting ittowards the brain. This natural view of world by the Taoist is quite unique to the other worldlyviews. 3 Miller, J., 2015. Time, and Again, and Forever: The Somatic Experience of Time in Daoist Philosophy andReligion.KronoScope,15(1), pp.13-25.4 Huang, C., 2017. The Influence of Taoism on Landscape Design from Lion Forest.DEStech Transactions onSocial Science, Education and Human Science, (icsste).5 Wang, C.L., 2016. Towards Self-Realisation: Exploring the ecological self for education.Educational Philosophyand Theory,48(12), pp.1256-1265.
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