IB Philosophy 10.10.6 Epistemological Humility Notes

The Tao Te Ching’s Critique of Knowledge

1. As established in 10.10.1, the opening line of the Tao Te Ching declares that ‘the Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao’. This establishes from the outset that the most fundamental reality is beyond the reach of propositional knowledge (the kind of knowledge expressed in statements that can be true or false). This is not a minor caveat but the foundational epistemological claim of the entire text, shaping everything that follows.
2. The Tao Te Ching’s critique of knowledge operates on two distinct levels: first, it challenges the adequacy of language to capture reality, arguing that naming and categorising inevitably fragment what is whole; second, it challenges the attitude of the knower who approaches reality as an object to be mastered rather than a mystery to be inhabited.
3. Chapter 48 articulates the inverse relationship between learning and wisdom: ‘In the pursuit of learning, one does more each day; in the pursuit of the Tao, one does less each day,’ suggesting that genuine understanding requires not the accumulation of information but the progressive unlearning of fixed concepts that obstruct direct experience.

Learning Backwards: Unlearning as Wisdom

1. This position directly challenges the Western epistemological tradition from Plato through Descartes to contemporary analytic philosophy (the dominant style of academic philosophy in Britain and North America), which assumes that knowledge is a positive achievement gained through rational inquiry. For Lao Tzu, the highest form of knowing is a kind of learned ignorance (knowing enough to know what you cannot know) that recognises its own limits.
2. The concept of ming (illumination) distinguishes Taoist epistemology from mere scepticism. Lao Tzu does not claim that nothing can be known. Rather, he claims that the most important things can be known only through a mode of awareness that transcends the subject-object structure of ordinary conceptual knowledge (the split between a detached observer and the world they study). This deeper knowing requires stillness, receptivity, and the dissolution of the grasping ego.
3. Chapter 71 states that ‘knowing that you do not know is the highest; not knowing that you do not know is a disease’, echoing the Socratic insight that wisdom begins with the recognition of ignorance; however, while Socrates used this recognition as a starting point for further rational inquiry, Lao Tzu treats it as a resting place, a mode of being rather than a stimulus to investigation.
4. The Tao Te Ching’s critique of naming and categorisation (discussed in 10.10.1) has epistemological force: every act of naming creates a distinction (this/not-this) that carves the seamless reality of the Tao into artificial compartments, producing the illusion of separate, self-subsistent entities where there is in fact continuous, undifferentiated flow.
   1. The concept of the uncarved block (pu), discussed in 10.10.3, has an epistemological dimension: just as the person who maintains simplicity retains a fullness of possibility, the mind that refrains from imposing fixed categories retains an openness to reality that the expert, specialist, or ideologue has lost.
   2. Lao Tzu’s epistemological humility is intimately connected to wu wei (discussed in 10.10.2): just as wu wei in action means not forcing outcomes, wu wei in knowledge means not forcing reality into preconceived conceptual frameworks but allowing understanding to arise naturally through attentive, non-grasping awareness.