The Pristine Dao: Metaphysics in Early Daoist Discourse (review)

Those in the field of Chinese philosophy, and comparative philosophy in general, often find their work overlapping uneasily with projects carried out by those in the field of Chinese religious studies. Author Thomas Michael takes aim at this departmental divide by challenging an accepted distinction between early "philosophical" Daoism and the later "religious" tradition. He does this by arguing not only that the textual evidence of early Daoist discourse is more cohesive than commonly thought but also that this discourse is robustly related to the organized religion that followed it. He considers early Daoist texts as those "most readily identified through their participation in a common complex of notions about the pristine Dao not shared by any other writings from any other traditions" (p. 2). Michael does not immediately clarify what he means by the titular term "pristine Dao," though readers will be able to glean this meaning in subsequent chapters. The early Daoist material, as delineated by Michael, dates from the appearance of the Laozi writings to the death of the prince of Huainan in 122 B.C.E. (p. 3). Michael organizes his discussion of this material around the four main categories of cosmogony, cosmology, ontology, and soteriology, in order to support one of his central theses: early Daoist discourse distinguishes a "first-order harmony" existing prior to all distinctions from a "second-order harmony" achievable through the reunification of distinctions. Attaining this second-order harmony constitutes the soteriological project of the sage.

Michael does not claim that all elements of early Daoist discourse readily correspond to the Western-derived categories of cosmogony, cosmology, ontology, and soteriology, but only that these categories provide a useful framework in which to highlight the distinction between first-order and second-order harmony. Neither does he absolve himself from the charge that the Chinese tradition is misrepresented when categorized along Western philosophical and theological lines. Acknowledging this danger, he continues his analysis, and readers may judge the appropriateness of his terminology.

In the chapter devoted to "Early Daoism and Cosmogony," Michael provides the first indication of what he means by "pristine." Early Daoists, he argues, are the first of all the Chinese thinkers to offer a cosmogonical account of time as arising from a timeless origin, a "time before time" (p. 7). Whereas other traditions describe the creation of the world, and of time and space, they lack the notion of a pristine source, itself timeless and spaceless, from whence all of creation originates. Common creation myths of the early southern tribes rely on an originary dualism, usually the incestuous intercourse between a primordial couple. The personified couple is often associated with other dualistic forces, such as hot and cold qi or yin and yang (p. 9). Early Daoists employ many of these dualistic motifs derived from the southern tribes, but they go one step further to describe the origin of the dualism itself. This origin is the pristine Dao existing prior to any distinctions. Michael argues, citing both conceptual and linguistic evidence, that this notion of Dao is directly related to the cosmogonical tale told in the Taiyi sheng shui, a fourth century B.C.E. text excavated at the Guodian site (p. 27). Taiyi is described in watery, placental, and maternal metaphors, images that also characterize the Dao of the Laozi writings. Michael places the Taiyi sheng shui into his early Daoist canon, along with other texts such as the Daoyuan and Huainanzi. From these sources he composes a general account of early Daoist cosmogony, namely the birth of dualistic forces such as yin and yang from the undifferentiated Dao, characterized alternately as a mother, an abyss, or a watery chaos.

Michael builds upon this general cosmogony in the next chapter, "Early Daoism and Cosmology." Following the cosmogonical continuum from the pristine Dao to the fully differentiated world, Michael identifies seven facets of this...