Reading Professor Lee Seok-myeong's Annotated Lao Tzu

About the Book

This Book Is One of Many Commentaries

Minumsa’s Tao Te Ching

This book is a commentary on the original Tao Te Ching. Since it was written so long ago, the complete text can now be read on Wikisource and elsewhere, but the meaning is heavily condensed for poetic rhythm, and however you approach the content, there are many parts that feel alienating from a modern perspective, making solo reading a considerable burden. In that context, the Minumsa Tao Te Ching I read is in fact one of many commentaries—and another commentary on those commentaries. As a classic that can only be understood with such difficulty, I had similar preconceptions to my previous reading of Meditations—that the Tao Te Ching might be too old and outdated a philosophy for the 21st century. I opened the book with those expectations, and likewise received a pleasant shock.

The Tao That Can Be Spoken Is Not the Eternal Tao

道可道也，非恒道也。名可名也，非恒名也。

The opening line immediately establishes the theme of language’s limitations. Confronting the ancient Classical Chinese text felt like becoming a schoolboy reciting Confucius and Mencius. But as I followed the content, it felt more like encountering insights that transcend all ages than blindly following literary elitism. The concept of Tao appears from the very first sentence and runs through all chapters as a natural principle.

Since I have only read it through once, I cannot be certain, but as soon as I read the commentary, I felt a strong sense of déjà vu. When I try to explain to others the feelings or knowledge about an activity I enjoy—programming, drawing, photography—I feel I cannot fully convey its principles through language. I can only approximate them; I cannot perfectly transmit the context that arises in my mind. This is not because of a lack of language ability on either side, but because of the inherent limits of language. The Tao Te Ching encapsulates this succinctly: language is abstract and ambiguous, and terms created artificially can never fully capture the concepts they denote.

The commentator explains that things and phenomena originally have no names—people merely agreed to call them one way or another, but often mistake these conventional names for fixed entities. However, names cannot reveal the thing itself; the moment something is named, the name ceases to be the thing. The same logic applies to the relativity of beauty and ugliness, good and evil, long and short—these concepts have no substance in themselves and exist only in relation to their opposites, which is the unchanging order of nature.

This is the commentator’s explanation. Although it feels similar at first glance to the concept of “imagined fictions” from Sapiens, the conclusion drawn is not that human cooperation was made possible through this, but rather that misunderstandings arise from it, and it leads to a self-reflective persuasion to cast these aside and focus on the essence. From my personal experience, not many people point this out, even though I felt the same when reading Sapiens. Even if people know it a priori, they more often argue about who is right rather than reflecting this insight in everyday conversation. This is unfortunate, considering that the very first condition for such a discussion undermines agreement from the start.

This was not only excellent as a linguistic reflection but also welcome because it aligned with thoughts I have had recently. The idea I mused alone five years ago—“A rigid way of thinking isn’t always the answer”—and the memory of nodding along four years ago when Professor Kim Gyeong-il of Ajou University’s Psychology Department said in a lecture that “nouns are a unique part of speech humans created to reduce the amount of thinking,” meet the criticism of number-dependency in my earlier review of The Art of War—that “one must reach the level of extracting reality”—and feeds back into the Laozi/Tao Te Ching, forming a small conviction. Language and writing are undeniably overwhelmingly useful tools, but they have limits in their power to convey meaning. What is needed is the ability to explore the intangible meaning contained within, beyond the surface.

Rejection and Critique of Artificiality (人爲)

六親不和，案有孝慈。 國家昏亂，案有貞臣。

The commentator explains that Lao Tzu does not deny filial piety or parental affection as such—he criticizes the social atmosphere that overemphasizes them. True filial piety should arise spontaneously, not be forced or indoctrinated. Similarly, an abundance of “loyal ministers” is not a sign of a stable state but a symptom of troubled times; rather than praising their sacrifice, it is better to live in a peaceful world where such figures are unnecessary.

This passage well demonstrates the charm of the Tao Te Ching. At first it sounds like wordplay, but one can infer that it is part of the argument about the relativity of beauty and ugliness, good and bad. The paradox that the very concepts of loyalty (忠) and filial piety (孝) presuppose a world where they are absent is interesting in itself, but the core of this section is a critique of the exaltation of artificial values. Lao Tzu points out that artificiality (人爲) causes people to focus on form rather than true morality. If this critique is brushed aside with “Whatever, let’s just get along,” then from Lao Tzu’s perspective, it means one has failed to see through the artificial value system and is chasing an illusion detached from the Tao (道). This passage strongly reminds me of the Cynic school on the opposite side of the globe.

However, although I understand the content, I also wonder whether this approach is too idealistic. Looking at the history of warfare around the world, conflict seems inevitable, and realizing Daoist political philosophy seems too difficult. Lao Tzu says to manage situations well so that loyal ministers (貞臣) are not needed in the first place, but some cases involve irresistible natural disasters. Like many contemporary schools of thought beyond the Hundred Schools, it is hard to shake the feeling that Lao Tzu overconfidence in his own intuition. This becomes more concrete in the distinctively Daoist political philosophy, which I will examine below.

上義為之，而有以為也。上禮為之，而莫之應也，則攘臂而仍之。

The commentator explains the Confucian gradation of virtues from Lao Tzu’s perspective: benevolence (仁) is the natural expression of the heart; righteousness (義) involves regulating external conditions, where norms begin to outweigh inner autonomy; ritual propriety (禮) is the stage of coercive regulation where one loses self-respect and becomes an object of unilateral control. Hence Lao Tzu criticizes ritual as evidence that loyalty and sincerity have worn thin, marking the beginning of chaos.

I found this passage remarkably well-stated. For a long time, Confucianism has been the foundation of East Asian order. Looking particularly at East Asian history, Confucian thought continues to function as an implicit premise of social order even through the period of enlightenment and into modern society. My parents and grandparents, even if they do not strictly enforce hierarchies between men and women or between parents and children, would often subtly mention them, and many people—including myself—still pour alcohol and hold memorial services at ancestral graves during Seollal and Chuseok. Confucianism is so familiar to us that simply not following this cultural pipeline feels uneducated, improper, or at least awkward.

But personally, I have long felt a lingering aftertaste from that Confucian culture. My parents would urge me to join the ancestral rites but avoided explaining why we must perform them. I had questions—why does honoring ancestors have to be limited to pouring alcohol and bowing at the gravesite, whether these people practiced Confucian teachings in their daily lives, and whether they had clear sources like the “Sarye Pyeollam (四禮便覽)” or the “Book of Rites (禮記)“—but I could not easily ask. Watching several adults in black socks and white shirts bowing before a folding screen in an oppressive atmosphere, and later having to follow suit, was something I simply could not understand. I knew that ancestral rites are a tradition to be accepted, but tradition often amounts to nothing more than a faded meaning with only the form remaining.

And Lao Tzu precisely criticizes this point. The rejection of artificiality (人爲), the direct competition with the Confucian school. At first I thought it was merely audacious, but I was struck when I read the part pointing out the peculiarity of form overwhelming substance. Its gist well explained the discomfort I had felt. If filial piety and ancestral rites were spontaneous, unbound by fixed times and rules—if their message were rooted in human nature, such as “They lived through truly difficult times” or “I miss the sight of them laughing and giving me rice cake when I was young”—then that sentiment would exist in me as well, and there would be no questions or discomfort.

Lao Tzu’s Vision of Ideal Governance

The commentator explains Lao Tzu’s political philosophy: a monarch who has grasped the Tao practices non-action (無爲), respecting the people’s spontaneity and avoiding commands and instructions as much as possible. Under this approach, the people govern themselves and maintain order naturally. The problem with modern leaders, according to Lao Tzu, is that they impose uniform values and standards without considering the diverse nature of each individual. When a leader schemes and acts out of greed, the people imitate him, and the entire nation heads toward ruin.

Lao Tzu’s critique of the limits of language and formal values leads into his distinctive political theory. The core is to respect—or at least harness—individual autonomy. That is quite a remarkable statement. Lao Tzu argues that a monarch should not be someone who imposes uniform values on the people, but someone who establishes principles that allow each person’s autonomy to be expressed. This is a perspective that can only be reached by viewing social organization not as a product of hierarchy but as an equal community and a single ecosystem. Considering how many people in modern society hold positions with the character “長” (chief/head) still regard top-down approaches as the desirable way of handling things, this passage is deeply significant.

Nevertheless, the argument that knowledge and wisdom should be cut off remains difficult to accept. At first I tried to interpret it euphemistically as a warning against cunning and trickery, but when I confirmed that it really seems to encompass the entire realm of learning and scholarship as we know it, I was quite surprised. In my view, this is likely because the era in which the Tao Te Ching was written was not a time when the power of knowledge could be easily felt. The 5th century BCE, when the Zhou dynasty entity was still intact, was an era before even paper had been invented. I believe that if the author had seen the products of modern printing, the compass, civil engineering, and electronic engineering, and witnessed the maturity of modern intellect using them, they might have expressed a somewhat different opinion.

Closing the Review

In connection with my experience writing code, I felt a certain familiarity with the sensibility of designing program structure. What is important when writing object-oriented programs is the conceptual objectification of things. If traditional procedural commands are explicit directives and instructions from the code designer, object-oriented programming focuses on creating a large interaction flow chart that respects each component’s autonomy. Strictly speaking, this does not rigorously implement the Tao (道) no matter how you look at it, but it is similar in that it organizes principles held in the mind and creates a data flow.

A structural feature of this book is that, beyond interpreting the original text, it carefully compares the content of different editions. Understanding the original intent is important, but the historical status of distorted manuscripts cannot be ignored either. Just as the Bible or Buddhist scriptures exist in multiple versions, it would have been impossible for a commentary aiming to present the Tao Te Ching as neutrally as possible to skip over this issue. Perhaps for this reason, the book overall gives the impression that it expects the reader to have Classical Chinese reading skills. This is somewhat true of the commentator’s explanations, but the edition comparison sections in particular involve comparing Classical Chinese character by character to distinguish intent and meaning, which can be disorienting and perhaps unnecessary for those unfamiliar with Classical Chinese. Since this content typically accounts for half or more of a given chapter, readers can adjust their reading pace and read through it quickly.