Chapter 74第74章

If people aren't afraid of death, what's the use of threatening them with it? If you could make people constantly fear death, and then seize and execute anyone who did something strange — who would dare? There's always an official executioner to do the killing. Taking the executioner's place is like taking the master carpenter's place in chopping wood — you'll rarely escape without cutting your own hand. In other words, killing is not something that human authorities should be in the business of. There's a natural process — call it heaven or fate or the Tao — that handles these things. When we try to take over that role, we inevitably botch it.

When the people do not fear death, how can you threaten them with it? If you could keep them perpetually terrified of death, then anyone who acted strangely you could seize and execute — but who would dare? There is always the master executioner who kills. To substitute yourself for the master executioner — this is like substituting yourself for the master carpenter in cutting wood. Rarely will you escape without injuring your hand. What Lao-tzu is addressing here is the absolute limit of state power: the death penalty. And he's saying something profound — that killing is not a human prerogative. There exists a natural, cosmic executor — the Tao itself handles the dissolution of forms. When human institutions presume to take on this function, they inevitably wound themselves. It's a perfect critique of capital punishment from twenty-five centuries ago, and it hasn't been improved upon.

Wang Bi's commentary here is a sharp critique of capital punishment. If the people are not afraid of death, what is the point of threatening them with death? The answer is: there is none. Wang Bi says there is always a 'master of killing' — which is to say, the natural course of things, the Way itself, which determines the consequences of actions. To take it upon yourself to kill on behalf of this cosmic executioner is like an amateur trying to chop wood in place of a master carpenter — you will almost certainly cut your own hand. Wang Bi explains that what makes people act recklessly — 'doing strange things' — is the suffering they experience from the ruler's oppression. It is not innate perversity. People act desperately because they are desperate. So capital punishment addresses the symptom while perpetuating the cause. The proper response is not more killing but removing the conditions that make people reckless.

Wang Bi's gloss here is a radical critique of the death penalty as a tool of governance. He identifies 'doing strange things' — 為奇者 — not as innate criminality but as the consequence of what the ruler has made people detest: 「作為順者之所惡念也」, the production of conditions that the compliant find hateful. And what is unavoidable in such circumstances — 不得已 — is the people's own illness, their desperation. 「故曰常有司殺也」 — therefore there is always a 'master of killing,' a cosmic executor whose function cannot be usurped. Wang Bi reads the 'master of killing' as the natural process of consequence — what you might call karma, or the self-correcting logic of the Way. To substitute yourself for this cosmic executor — 代司殺者殺 — is like substituting yourself for the master carpenter in chopping wood. 「希有不傷其手矣」 — you will rarely avoid injuring your own hand. This is a systems-level argument: the state that takes killing into its own hands disrupts the natural feedback loops that would otherwise correct behavior organically. Capital punishment is not just morally problematic — it is functionally self-defeating.