Lao Tzu, Chapter 11

Tao Te Ching —
The Classic about Ways And Instances

Lao Tzu

(Translated, with comments, by William P. Coleman)

Chapter 11

Thirty spokes unite at a hub;
it’s the emptiness there that makes the wheel usable.

Shape clay to make a bowl;
it’s the empty space inside that makes the bowl usable.

Cut out doors and windows;
their emptiness makes the room usable.

Thus,
the ways a thing exists make it have benefit;
the ways it doesn’t exist make it usable.

<– Chapter 10

Table of Contents

Chapter 12 –>

Plato and Protagoras: “. . . of things that are, how they are . . .”

How can we know what Plato really thought?

He never (almost never) spoke for himself. He wrote “dialogues” in which the only voices belong to the characters. We know what Meno, Protagoras, Theaitetos, and the others say — but what does Plato say?

. . . every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite

A post in the ongoing series Poetry in the Arts.

In The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, William Blake wrote about the “doors of perception.”

The ancient tradition that the world will be consumed in fire at the end of six thousand years is true, as I have heard from Hell.

For the cherub with his flaming sword is hereby commanded to leave his guard at tree of life, and when he does, the whole creation will be consumed, and appear infinite, and holy whereas it now appears finite & corrupt.

This will come to pass by an improvement of sensual enjoyment.

But first the notion that man has a body distinct from his soul, is to be expunged: this I shall do, by printing in the infernal method, by corrosives, which in Hell are salutary and medicinal, melting apparent surfaces away, and displaying the infinite which was hid.

If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite.

For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro’ narrow chinks of his cavern.

What does Blake mean when he says that if “the doors of perception were cleansed, every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite?”

Why is the world “infinite?” And if it is, what does perception have to do with it?

I’m not sure about what Blake thought, but I have my own personal theories.

Politics, the Polis, aloofness, and involvement

Parthenon, North Frieze

J. J. Pollitt’s The Art of Ancient Greece is a book that I’ve learned much from — and plan to write several entries about. I’m grateful to Pollitt.

In one place in this book, though, he makes some remarks about the relation of Greek philosophers to the political scene around them that I can’t agree with.

The Schools in the Academy and the Lyceum were private, voluntary associations, unsubsidized and unsupervised by the state. Within them political questions might often be examined and data about governmental institutions were collected, but such activities were engaged in primarily for the private satisfaction of the members of the schools, not as a service to society in general.

Rupert Brooke’s “Tiare Tahiti”

Rupert Brooke

Tiare Tahiti

Mamua, when our laughter ends,
And hearts and bodies, brown as white,
Are dust about the doors of friends,
Or scent ablowing down the night,
Then, oh! then, the wise agree,
Comes our immortality.

Socrates — running his hand through Phaedo’s hair

Plato’s Phaedo is one of the hardest dialogues for me to understand. The way some commentators present it seems uncompromisingly, patronizingly self-righteous. Yet, I think there are more humanistic ways to understand it.