Great Virtue (Tao Te Ching 38)

38.

Great Virtue (Te) doesn’t virtue signal,

so it is true virtue.

Cheap virtue merely virtue signals,

so it’s not virtue after all.

Great Virtue is spontaneous,

so it is non-transactional.

Cheap virtue is contrived

and is transactional.

Great charity is contrived

yet isn’t transactional.

Self-righteousness is 

both contrived and also

transactional.

Propriety is contrived,

and when it doesn’t get its way,

it flexes its muscles 

and resorts to coercion.

So, when we lose the Tao

we lose Great Virtue.

When we lose Great Virtue,

we turn to acts of charity.

When we lose charity

we turn to self-righteousness.

When we don’t even care about 

righteousness anymore, 

we are left with propriety.

When we turn to propriety

we have a cheap imitation 

of faithfulness and sincerity.

It’s a sure sign that society 

is breaking down. 

When we turn to divination 

we have a cheap imitation of the Tao. 

It’s a sure sign that society

is giving into superstition.

Therefore, a great man

abides in substance

rather than externals,

in fruit rather than flower,

cherishing the former

while disregarding the latter.

Written Reflection

We are now into the section of the Tao Te Ching that focusses on true or great virtue (Te), something that flows from the Tao itself. While we use the Chinese term Te elsewhere, here “virtue” is a more natural rendering, given the concern at this point is ethics, so we provide an English term. 

Lao Tzu’s take on ethics is what clued us in to the Tao Te Ching in the first place. Jeff was researching historical connections between mysticism and morality in various traditions for a book related to erotic virtue. He was worried that, too often, contemporary conversations about practical morality too often focus on protocols, legislation, etiquette, and contracts but not enough about the power behind truly virtuous interactions. Lao Tzu’s summary of the societal breakdown that happens when individuals and society detach themselves from the source, the Tao, makes sense of what often happens in our own familial lives and is all too evident across the global political landscape today, especially in America.

Given our Lutheran background, we are reminded of a sometimes-perplexing idea from Martin Luther: that doing a good work apart from genuine faith can be a mortal sin. Try to aside the theology behind that language for a moment if needed, so you can see the value of the general principle. The main takeaway isn’t that people with the wrong religion can’t do good things. Rather, it’s that great virtue can only really occur when it isn’t contrived or transactional. Luther, by the way, seems to have been inspired in this by an anonymous mystical writer whose work comes down to us entitled Theologia Germanica. In that text, the author describes the truly virtuous person as a member of the family rather than a hireling. The point of this illustration is that we can pay people to do nice things for us, but truly loving relationships are engaged in mutual gift giving.

When we are focused on external aspects of societal relationships, we have a mere façade of ethical relation. Granted, we are glad when people aren’t acting toward us in ways that are overtly cruel, but we really long for deep relationships that are rooted in genuine affection and good will. 

In the end, when societies focus on etiquette and the husk of ethical relations, we are often dangerously close to having to turn to coercion and force instead of naturally harmonious interactions. This is where “flexing the muscles” comes in. When folks don’t follow the rules, the enforcers of societal stability have to remind everyone of their punitive power that is behind the rituals and protocols of politeness. 

We can see this all at work at the level of family gatherings. Say it’s your aunt’s birthday, and she’s invited you and your immediate family to a party to celebrate the event, and say she lives a couple hours away. An ideal situation is one in which your family has a positive relationship with this aunt and thus wants to go to the birthday because it will be mutually enriching. That occurs most often when both the family and the aunt are tapped into the Tao. The second-best situation is when the family realizes that the aunt is a bummer to be around, but since she needs cheering up, the whole crew agrees to be charitable and make the best of things, in an attempt to lift the aunt’s spirits. The worst situation, however, is when a family all begrudgingly responds to the demands of the aunt and they come out because of rules of family etiquette. At such a party, no one is really happy and the outer husk of familial love, masks unhealthy relations. For Taoist philosophers, this is what they saw the Confucian protocols and rituals as being: an external display of relationship that couldn’t compete with real relationship.

One last note is in order about relationships and the Tao. From ancient China to today, many have seen in the Tao a way to game things. It’s an attempt to short cut the process of contemplating the Tao in order to make relationship decisions, by turning to divination. Texts like the I Ching, which also speaks to themes of yin and yang energies, have been used through casting lots (or tossing sticks as the case may be) and landing on texts that might provide life advice. We may be reading into things here, but there is a chance that Lao Tzu is speaking in this chapter about fortune telling and parlor tricks associated with the Tao. While we don’t know enough about Feng Shui, talismanic magic, and herbal medicine to provide any valuable criticism, we can say that such things are rightly differentiated from the philosophical reflections in the Tao Te Ching. 

The lesson here is broader than the nuances of traditional Chinese religion. An application might be that whenever religious people make the focus of their religion legalism and ritual rather than the flourishing of our human neighbors, that religion is in a sick state. Jesus seems to have said something similar when he spoke of religious leaders who were good at tithing their spices precisely, but “neglected the weightier matters of the law” which include justice and mercy.