The Philosopher and the Sage: Plato and Lao-Tzu on Following the Way of Nature

*** Lao-Tzu, paradoxical poet-philosopher of the mysterious Tao, father of the mysticalmeditative philosophical religion of Taoism. Plato, mathematically-minded theorizer of Forms, father of Academic philosophy and Western rationalism. What could these two foundational thinkers of East and West possibly have in common? Quite a lot, as it turns out. As we shall see, for both Plato 1 and Lao-Tzu, metaphysics and ethics are intimately and essentially connected, because human beings are intimately and essentially related to the order of being. In particular, I will show that there are significant parallels between their accounts of the highest metaphysical principle, of the cosmic order that follows from that principle, and of the life that human beings should live in response to that principle and order. The paper will proceed by examining each of these areas in turn. I. First Principles: The Good and the Tao At the heart of Plato's Republic 2 Socrates introduces the Idea of the Good as the “greatest study,” and so the linchpin of philosophic education, with the argument that justice and other good things depend on the Good for their goodness, as their benefit to us depends on our knowledge of the Good that makes them good (504e-505b). His account of the Good itself proceeds by way of analogy: just as the sun is the source of the light that links vision with visible objects and also the source of the generation, growth, and nourishment of such objects, the Good is the source of the truth and being that links intelligence to intelligible objects and also the source of the existence and being (einai and ousia) of such objects (507a-509c)—as well as of the the sun, its “offspring,” and so by extension of all its generated objects (517c). Hence, the