Laozi and vulnerability as a condition for fitness to rule

05 Feb, 2024

In chapter 13 of Taotejing, Laozi seems to say that "[t]hose who revere their bodies as if they were the entire world" are most fit to govern (178).¹ This is initially puzzling. To revere one's own body as equal to the entire world seems to be to revere it far too much. Intuitively, we might expect a ruler who cares that much for his own body to take insufficient care with the rest of the world, to be a selfish and self-serving ruler.

The chapter begins with the injunctions,

Be apprehensive about favor or disgrace.
Revere calamity as you revere your own body.

The theory it presents thus seems to be that, in so doing, you revere your body as the entire world and are fit to rule. As an explanation of revering calamity, Laozi offers, "I can suffer calamity only because I have a body."

At least two interpretations suggest themselves. First, to revere one's body as if it is the entire world may be an infelicitous translation.² The Chinese is 故貴以身為天下. The 以A為B structure is translated here as "(revere) A as if it was B," but the meaning is rather abstract and can be rendered differently. Several translators reverse the priority. For example,

if he who administers the empire, esteems it as his own body. ... (Goddard and Borel, 1913)³

To those who can sacrifice themselves for the world, .... (Thomas Zhang)

The immediately preceding line, which Ivanhoe gives as,

When I no longer have a body, what calamity could I possibly have? (178)

... can be rendered differently, and then coheres with the alternative interpretation of the final lines:

If we are selfless, then where is the trouble?
If we identify our self with the world,
Then within our self there is the world.
If we love the world as we love our self,
Then within our self there is only the world. (Chang Chung-Yuan)

On this view, the apparent puzzle emerges from a translation choice made by Ivanhoe that has been rejected by many other translators seeking to make sense of the lines. Since the other translations make the sense easier to grasp, we might think, they should be preferred as more likely correct. (On the other hand, "interpret it so as to have a clear and non-paradoxical sense" is not a generally valid hermeneutic for Laozi.)

We might think this interpretation is in line with some remarks from chapter 7, too.

... [S]ages put themselves last and yet come first;
Treat themselves as unimportant and yet are preserved.
Is it not because they have no thought of themselves, that they are able to perfect themselves? (176)

Here the connection is that the ruler in chapter 13 puts himself last by being selfless and caring for the world as himself, and thereby comes first as the ideal ruler.

A second interpretation would be that it is actually virtuously moderate for a ruler to care about their body, and injuries to their body in particular, relative to other things they could care about. For example, in chapter 44, Laozi says,

Your name or your body, which do you hold more dear?
Your body or your property, which is of greater value? (193)

Here, he may be suggesting that it is moderate to value your body, but immoderate to value things like name and property, and valuing such things leads one into too-strong desires. We could then take it that the ruler who values his body as the whole world is specifically not an extravagant ruler; an extravagant ruler would be one who valued name and property and not only body.

We might think that, to value one's body is to have a value that puts one in community with other sufferers. Everyone is at risk of loss of their body, so to worry about such calamities is perhaps to worry about problems that are problems for everyone. It is paradoxically good to be vulnerable, because it puts us in community with others who are vulnerable. This community is both per se good and good because it orients us towards relieving their suffering. We might take it that such an orientation is especially important for a ruler. (In this way, it is good to value one's body, and especially good to value one's body in a way that makes one attend to bad things that could happen to it, because those vulnerabilities are what we share most universally with other sufferers.)

This idea of a virtuous condition of vulnerability is supported earlier in the chapter, too. The opening injunctions, to be "apprehensive about favor and disgrace" and "revere calamity," can be read as treating susceptibility to disgrace and calamity as goods.

What does it mean to be apprehensive about favor and disgrace?
To receive favor is to be in the position of a subordinate.

We might take it that being in the position of the subordinate is actually salutary for a ruler. We can again echo chapter 7:

... [S]ages put themselves last and yet come first....

A ruler who puts themselves last presumably has fitting concern for the welfare of others (this is also what the alternative translations suppose when they say the fit ruler selflessly treats the world as his own body). On this interpretation, then, the chapter is about the fitting condition for a ruler being one in which he is susceptible to the same evils as his subordinates, and thus rules with due concern for those evils.