Re-reading Smullyan now, I realised the enduring appeal for American Taoists like Smullyan for me is their alien perspective on contemporary Chinese society and culture.

In the imperial era, Confucian and Taoism functioned in a closed cultural system where Chinese language and thinking enjoyed unparalleled and implicit dominance. Generations of invasion, migration, and even outright conquest did not change the situation. The mandarin and literati remained the cultural and political elite even when they were serving under foreign emperors in the Qing dynasty.

The most highly visible cultural import in the imperial era was likely Buddhism from India: bur even in that case, there was little sustained interest in the study of classical Buddhist texts in their original language. And while some notable literati resisted it, many Buddhist ideas were modified to fit into the cultural mainstream along side Taoism, Confucianism and general classical studies.

In the 20th century, European imperialism, and later the dominance of Anglophone culture, posed an existential challenge to the Confucian worldview.

From its inception in the Han dynasty (and likely in part at its very birth at the Spring and Autumn or Warring States period), Confucianism involves the studies of ancients rites of governance assumed to be eternal and universal.

It is true little by way of precise doctrines developed over the years, and much of Confucianism can be described as basic ruling-class common sense. But Confucianism (and Taoism for that matter) do proceed on basic assumptions that

  • there is one deep underlying rhythm to life,
  • that rhythm in expressible in the Chinese language,
  • that this rhythm is in fact expressed in Chinese-language poetry and Chinese-origin visual and audio culture, which are
  • supportive of (and in turn supported by) the political structures of the ancient Chinese.

Faced with Anglophone Classics, the Confucian/Taoist only really has two options:

(a) accept that the Tao or the Heavenly Mandate has passed to a Western way of doing things (eg Communist rule), and seek Tao among Greek, Roman, German and English sources, or

(b) re-interpret and re-imagine Confucian and Taoist philosophy where the classic Chinese-language texts are still dominant, and need only absorb selected aspects of Western thinking. On this model, (say) Kant’s philosophy would be absorbed into Chinese thinking and transformed beyond recognition, just like Buddhism was absorbed into Chinese thinking and transformed beyond recognition in Zen.

To my knowledge, most ethnic Chinese writers operating within wider China (including Taiwan and Hong Kong) work on project (b). An example already mentioned is the Neo-Confucians of incorporating Kant into Confucianism.

Project (a) is a less well-trodden path: an example might be Joseph Chan’s Confucian Perfectionism, which situates elements of Confucian thinking in the context of contemporary Anglophobe political philosophy. It is notable that Chan had to explicit clarify his project as a re-construction of Confucianism, and disassociate his theories as a Confucian worldview as understood in the imperial era.

But to me, project (a) is far more interesting.

Like it or not, in the 21st century, the traditional imperial way of life in China has changed beyond recognition. The mandarins simply never regained its cultural prestige: which is inseparable from its premier political and economic status. The closest profession that plays a similar role (esp. in Hong Kong) is likely lawyers: but then clearly barristers/solicitors are professions rooted in English not Chinese history.

The old imperial China really is gone, and attempts to modify or rescue its ideology seems to me both artificial and irrelevant. Better to start with a Western-origin framework (which govern almost all aspects of our daily lives anyway) and see what insights we can derive from the classical Chinese texts from that strange angle.

This is where Smullyan comes in. Judging from the bibliography to the the Tao is Silent, Smullyan does not read Chinese and got all his Taoism in translation.

But then Smullyan enjoys the advantage of starting out deep within Western intellectual traditions. He was a mathematical logician by training, and also had a deep appreciation for music: he claims that he would have become a concert pianist for an illness that stopped him pursuing that career.

Smullyan’s starting point and the way he engages with Taoist texts deeply unorthodox. Like many Western enthusiasts, Smullyan happily ignores the fact that Taoism in Laotze had a clear social-political agenda. The historical Laotze was advocating for small communities, governed by conventional norms, against deliberate organisation and attempts at progress. This aspect wasn’t reflected in Smullyan’s book at all.

But it is precisely this unusual starting point that makes Smullyan enjoyable and even enlightening.

The political aims of Laotze is one of pure historical interest now. The Spring and Autumn/Warring States period are simply too different from what happens today. In any case, their cultural influence were interpreted through the lens of old imperial rule: an ideology (rightly) jettisoned by all Chinese-speaking polities.

To feel the contemporary relevance of Taoism, one could do worst than to hold the original text at a distance, and use the text as a respondent to various distinctively Western and apolitical concerns: on objectivity, on God, on morality, on how to spend one’s leisure, on how to choose one’s career. In fact, to the extent that the better project is to bring the Chinese classics in conversation with the Western canon, this may be the best starting point.