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RE: Utilitarian voluntarism vs. natural rights libertarianism
Hi @samupaha, very nice article. I'm not sure whether we can call Daoism utilitarian. Daoists, to me, seem to me to be negating the conception of utility - or at least, utility for society in general. This is well exemplified in the story of the tree and the carpenter.
Good point. I should have made it more clear that mean is only the political side of taoism. It's very well aligned with utilitarianism because it references to the consequences of actions.
You probably mean this story? http://www.zoomdout.com/home/chuang-tzu-the-dream-of-the-carpenter-and-the-oak-tree
For me it actually represents pretty well the dangers of naive utilitarianism. You can't just look at the immediate and easily seen benefits – there are always consequences that won't be seen. There are trade-offs that are not evident until later. World is complicated place.
For politics this means that non-action is very often the best action – if you don't do anything, at least you are not making an effort to change the situation to worse.
While googling the story, I also happened to find this blog post which had some interesting points: http://uselesstree.typepad.com/useless_tree/2008/02/is-the-tao-te-c.html
Thanks for your comment @samupaha. I like how you define naive utilitarianism. I look forward to read more philosophical articles from you and can already see some great future discussions between us on Steemit. It would definitely help enrich the Steemit platform. :)
Trolley problem is another good example of that. It deals with only one situation, completely separated from real life. I'm much more interested in philosophical thinking that can help to understand real life with real people with all its complexities.
Yeah, it's great to see some taoist thinking here!
I haven't yet got very deeply into it, just reading about it every now and then. I think it was @limitless who introduced me to The Drunken Taoist podcast, and from there I found Bolelli's Taoist lectures, which I listened to and enjoyed.
Do you happen to have any good book (or other media) recommendations to learn more about taoism?