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DOI
10.4324/9780415249126-G015-1
DOI: 10.4324/9780415249126-G015-1
Version: v1,  Published online: 1998
Retrieved March 29, 2024, from https://www.rep.routledge.com/articles/thematic/dao/v-1

Article Summary

Dao, conventionally translated ‘the Way’, is probably the most pervasive and widely recognized idea in Chinese philosophy. The specific character of Chinese philosophy arises because a dominant cultural factor in the tradition, now and then, has been the priority of process and change over form and stasis, a privileging of cosmology over metaphysics. That the Yijing (Book of Changes) is first among the Chinese Classics in every sense bears witness to the priority of cosmological questions – how, or in what way (dao) should the world hang together? – over metaphysical and ontological questions – what is the reality behind appearance, the Being behind the beings, the One behind the many, the true behind the false? The contrast lies in finding a way rather than seeking the truth.

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Citing this article:
Hall, David L. and Roger T. Ames. Dao, 1998, doi:10.4324/9780415249126-G015-1. Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Taylor and Francis, https://www.rep.routledge.com/articles/thematic/dao/v-1.
Copyright © 1998-2024 Routledge.

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