Chapter 19第19章

Throw away holiness and abandon cleverness, and the people will benefit a hundredfold. Throw away morality and abandon righteousness, and the people will return to natural love. Throw away profiteering and abandon cunning, and theft will disappear. But these three sayings alone aren't quite enough as a prescription, so let me add this: look at plain silk, embrace simplicity. Diminish selfishness, reduce desires. It's like cleaning an over-decorated room — strip away the ornaments and you can finally see the natural beauty of the space itself.

Abandon sageliness, discard wisdom — the people will benefit a hundredfold. Abandon benevolence, discard righteousness — the people will return to filial piety and compassion. Abandon skill, discard profit — robbers and thieves will disappear. These three, regarded as mere ornament, are insufficient. Therefore let there be something to hold to: see the simple, embrace the uncarved, diminish the self, reduce desires. This is the most concentrated dose of anarchist philosophy in the ancient world. Lao-tzu is saying: every institution that claims to solve a problem is actually perpetuating it. The cure is worse than the disease. Strip away the cultural overlay — the moralism, the cleverness, the profit motive — and what remains is the natural human being, which is inherently cooperative, inherently connected, inherently whole.

Wang Bi explains that sagehood and wisdom are the highest among talents; benevolence and righteousness are the highest among human virtues; skill and profit are the highest among practical utilities. But the text says flatly: treat them as mere ornament, as insufficient. For the practitioner of the Way, what is gained through daily study is lost through daily cultivation of the Way. The point is that these three — sagehood, benevolence, and skill — are all forms of cultural accomplishment, and as long as they remain external additions, they will always be inadequate. What then should people belong to? Manifest plainness, embrace the uncarved block, reduce selfishness, diminish desires. Wang Bi’s reading here is radical: cut away everything that has been added on and return to what was there before cultivation began.

Wang Bi’s gloss here is a taxonomy of cultural accomplishment and its insufficiency. Sagehood and wisdom: the pinnacle of talent. Benevolence and righteousness: the pinnacle of human virtue. Skill and profit: the pinnacle of practical utility. And all three are declared mere ornament, insufficient. This is an extraordinary claim — that the very highest products of civilization are inadequate. The practitioner of the Way strips away daily what the practitioner of learning accumulates daily. These three categories are treated as wen, cultural decoration, as opposed to zhi, the raw material of natural reality. What should people belong to then? The text answers: manifest the plain, embrace the uncarved block, reduce self-interest, diminish desire. Wang Bi is describing a program of cultural detoxification — the systematic removal of everything that has been layered over the original nature. This is not anti-intellectualism; it is the recognition that intellect, virtue, and skill are all tools, and tools can become prisons when they are mistaken for the thing itself.