The Philosophy Of Life Of Lao-tzu And Chuang-tzu And Their Differences And Similarities

Taoist philosophy begins with Lao-tzu,Chuang-tzu inherited Lao-tzu's thought and made further enrichment and development.He basically finished the outline of the Taoist thought.The later generations take their thoughts as base and combined with the reality of the survival of people in different ages and then to do analysis.The main idea of the Taoist philosophy is to search for and explore the relative problem of life,however,because of the different background of times,Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu faced different social reality and suffered different dilemma of life.So,the two persons' thinking and discussion of life are in the same group but with different emphases and different.In the face of the turbulent social reality,Lao-tzu proposed the idea that "Tao produces matter".Then he took it as a starting point and proposed the persuit of ideal life for "Back to the Infantile state" from the ordinary people.At the same time,he proposed the image of the sage with political identity as the pursuit of ideal personality.In the discussion of the problem of life and death,he believes that the human' s body will grow old and die,the enlightened spirit will return to the starting point of life,which is "Tao".Then human' s life will last forever.lt should be said that Lao-tzu want to both save people and society,he still hopes that the "saints" can be the ruling class to change the reality of social chaos.Different from Lao-tzu,.Chuang-tzu lived in the more dark and dangerous times.So,comparing with saving society,Chuang-tzu focused more on saving people.He advocated that people should jump out and escape from the restraint of reality,and pursuit of spiritual freedom.Chuang-tzu inherited the idea about "Tao produces matter" of Lao-tzu.He pursuit the ideal state of life of wandering about in the world at leisure and enjoying the nature with the heart.He proposed three kinds of ideal personalities which are sage,the man of god and the perfect man.In Chuang-tzu's thought system,thoes people don' t need be Ruling class,they just represent three different realm of life from low to high.Comparing with going into cularity and being an official,Chuang-tuz prefers to preserve their own life with the idea of "being useless to the world" and live an easy life in old age.As for the problem of life and death,he just see it as the motion and evolution of the Tao,such as an alternation of day and night.So he did not feel sad for the end of life or feel happy for the birth of life.In other words,the philosophy of life of Lao Tzu tend to combine the personal fate with the rise and fall of all society closely.ln contrast,Chuang-tuz had been despairate of changing the chaos of society,so he is not very enthusiastic about politics.Becauese of this,Chuang Tzu's life philosophy is the more thorough and more transcendent.However,his thought was also labeled as "negative" for this.As a matter of fact,this appaoach exactly ignores the characteristics of the times of philosophy:whether the feelings of saving society which are existing in Lao-tuz' s heart,or the disdain from Chuang-tuz for going into cularity and being an official,which all have infiltrated the deep helplessness when they face the cruel reality.But their understanding and pursuit of the ideal life are still full of love and reverence for life itself.Therefore,it is really not proper to describe the Taoist philosophy of life as a kind of negative philosophy.This paper aims to through a combination of two different background of the times,to comb their thought and make a comparative study of Taoist thought in the aspect of life philosophy,on the one hand,through the analysis of the two one' s thorough perception of life and the love and the reverence of life,to show the positivity of Lao-tzu and Chuang-tuz's philosophy of life;on the other hand,the currently Chinese people(especially the young people)are deeply influenced by the western success theories and consumerism,more and more people work with all their might and try their best to make make money,these have been their all pursuit of life.With this kind of state,most people neglect of life care,not talking about enjoying the process of life.That is why more and more young people fall into the risk of premature aging and premature death.If such a situation continues to develope,the result could not be imagined.Taoist philosophy attaches great importance to the care of life.The paper is intended to make sure of the thoughts of Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu,to wake up people' s love and reverence of life,but also provide some useful reference for getting life happiness and comfort to present people.