Similarities Between Daoism And Confucianism

While the literal translation of dao from Mandarin is the “path or way”, from a general philosophical standpoint, the Dao is the way of life, the balance of the universe, and the natural flow of the world. From this definition there stem two main schools of thought on how to maintain this Dao; Confucianism and Daoism. While both of these philosophies define the Dao in a similar manner, each has its own unique characteristics imposed on the Dao and their conceptual idea of how to maintain this Dao are contradictory. The emphasis on the virtues that must be possessed to achieve the Dao have minimal overlap between the two philosophies even though they both strive for the same goal. While neither of these philosophies is necessarily correct, the

In Confucianism if someone is poorly fulfilling their role, the whole Dao is disrupted. The issue with this is that each person involved in a relationship acts independently and the idea that one person acting poorly upsets the whole balance of the whole Dao is strange because of this individuality. For instance if a son can honors his father’s thoughts and opinions but that father beats his son where is the son at fault and how has he disrupted the Dao? The reality is that the son has done nothing wrong and the father is simply a bad link in the chain of relationships and that this should not have an effect on the son’s Dao. This is why the individuality of maintaining the Dao in Daoism makes much more sense than that of Confucianism. Also, contrary to Confucian thought, filial piety does not necessarily make someone a good son. If a father’s poor judgement will result in a situation that is detrimental to the grandfather and only the son sees that, according to filial piety he should not say anything to correct his father but then the grandfather will suffer. It would make the son a poor person if he was to strictly follow the rules of filial piety because his grandfather would be negatively affected. Beyond that, it seems strange to think that the Confucian Dao is not affected in the slightest by a majority of female actions. The Daoist idea of equality lends itself much better to achieving a natural balance of the world. The malleability of a Daoist is also very logical because in order to achieve the Dao, a natural balance of the world, life should be lived as naturally as possible. The constant need to control your desires that is present in Confucianism, seems to run contrary to the idea that the Dao is naturally present in the world as well. Additionally, the naturalness of achieving Dao in Daoism is more reasonable than that of Confucianism. This is due to the fact