wandelaar

Taoism and Imperfectionism

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There are indeed lots of people who combine Confucianism and Taoism by applying them to the spheres of social and spiritual matters respectively. I don't like the extreme ritualism of Confucianism, but apart from that I think there is a lot of common sense wisdom in the Analects. I don't think that as a (philosophical) Taoist one should have any reservations in accepting common sense wisdom from whatever source.

 

As for measurability there is the basic restriction of the time available. I don't believe in immortals and so I consider (even enlightened)  people as finite in the amount of time they have to spend in their lifetime. Now one could of course care for all of humanity in a rather abstract sense, and that would take perhaps a few minutes. But that in itself would be no more than an empty gesture. To get personally involved with someone takes a lot more. And so there are certainly limits to the number of people one can get personally involved with (and personally care for) within the space of one lifetime. That doesn't mean that one considers other people as being less worthy in any objective sense, it just means that you simply don't have the time to treat everybody you meet on an equal footing.

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