Given wuwei 無為 describes the life praxis of the sage and statecraft of the enlightened ruler while also denoting the comportment of the Dao 道—an alternating state of quiet dormancy and creative activity—are the standard translations of wuwei as “nonaction” or “effortless action” up to the task? They are not, it will be argued, in that they fail to convey the true profundity of wuwei. The objective of this essay is twofold: to show that wuwei is better understood as “abiding (...) harmony” than nonaction, and to demonstrate this via a close reading of the Lüshi Chunqiu 呂氏春秋 (Master Lü’s Spring and Autumn Annals) which makes wuwei the epicenter of its doctrine of “the Dao of the ruler.” Indeed, the Lüshi Chunqiu’s unique application of wuwei lies not only in its borrowing of Daoist and Legalist norms, but in having the ruler meet the following prerequisites: be without knowledge, keep the senses and heart-mind pure, be reliant on others, follow Yin 陰 and Yang 陽, and study the course of heaven and earth to know the ways of humanity. There is, therefore, more to wuwei than meets the eye. (shrink)

Leadership is the art of discovering and expressing one's inborn nature. It is a natural response, a way of being and doing within reality that creates a powerful influence on one's community toward greater degrees of peace and harmony on the individual and communal levels. In this paper, I use Chuang Tzu's philosophy (in its 1968 translation by Burton Watson) about the nature of reality and how one finds inner peace and harmony within themselves in order to demonstrate why it (...) is the self-realized individual who is the best candidate to non-coercively influence one's community into sounding more like a symphony, rather than a cacophony. (shrink)

Bibliografía seleccionada y comentada sobre Taoísmo Clásico : Dao De Jing.

Reevaluates Western and Chinese philosophical traditions to question the boundaries of entrenched conceptual frameworks.

In nontheistic moral traditions, there is a typical ethical conundrum concerning the relation between cosmic order and human agency. Within those traditions, it is generally recognized that the universe has its own order and history that are independent of human will. A moral discourse has to find space to accommodate human agency in the midst of the iron grid of cosmic law. Both Confucius and Aurelius use the concept of timeliness (kairos) to resolve the difficult issue. But their philosophies take (...) on divergent paths. By studying their resolutions of the issue, we will be able to appreciate the distinctive nature of their nontheistic moral narratives. (shrink)