This semester I did an independent study with a student.  It was a second class in ancient Chinese philosophy.  We read, and she wrote on, Xunzi and Mozi (which I do not include in my usual class or tutorial).  Then she went back to Mencius, which we had read before but which makes for a good contrast with the other two volumes.   After that, we went to the Daoists and she read Liezi, a new text for her.

All of this was great for me, as it brought me back to some texts that I do not dwell upon all that much.  And it presented me with this passage from Liezi that got me thinking:

In this country there are no teachers and leaders;
all things follow their natural course. 
The people have no cravings and lusts; all men follow their natural
course.  They are incapable of delighting
in life or hating death, and therefore none of them dies before his time.  They do not know how to prefer themselves to
others, and so they neither love nor hate. 
They do not know how to turn their faces to things or turn their backs,
go with the stream or push against it, so nothing benefits or harms them. (Liezi 34)

This passage is rather like stanza 80 from the Daodejing, something of an ideal society, a utopia even.  For Liezi this is a fantastical, mythic land, yet still ideal.  This is how society would operate if everyone simply followed Way, if they just permitted the natural course of events to unfold.

The thing that strikes me here is the expectation of human emotional detachment.  People will not only give up desire – their "cravings and lusts" – but they will also let go of love and hate.  This same idea can be found in Zhuangzi and the Daodejing; it is something that runs through all the key Daoist texts.  Daoism generally aspires to a naturalism in which people, in simply accepting and following Way, will separate themselves from deep emotional attachment.  We will get past joy and sadness, love and hate. 

But can we really do that?  Is Daoism asking us to do something that is simply inhuman, out of keeping with the Way of humankind?  That is, emotional attachment is not some kind of artificial construction but is essential to what it means to be human.  Moreover, if we do naturally accept and follow Way, we will genuinely express emotions, we will love and hate.   

Perhaps we can avoid obsessing over love and hate; we can keep from making them into more than they might be, steer clear of the tendency to become overwrought in our emotions.  But we cannot, it seems to me, rid ourselves of love and hate.

Liezi may be asking too much of us.