Abstract
Purpose
Ignorance has been seen as negative in the mainstream philosophical narrative and knowledge-based society. This study introduces Chinese epistemic traditions of Confucianism and Daoism as resources to reunderstand ignorance and current educational issues.
Design/Approach/Methods
Guided by hermeneutic openness, this study fuses ancient epistemic and modern educational horizons by reinterpreting early Confucian and Daoist classics.
Findings
The boundary between ignorance and knowledge is flexible and blurry in Confucianism and Daoism, and ignorance is distinctively understood as Confucian admissible propriety and Daoist transcendence of conventional knowledge. Rooted in these epistemologies, Confucianism and Daoism have developed unique educational ideas and forms—congyou (从游) and zuowang (坐忘)—which advocate moral socialization and self-reflexivity beyond knowing through language. These traditions inspire today's educators and learners to find more space for self-formation, appropriate forgetting, and illuminating intuition in education.
Originality/Value
As an initial exploration, this study examines potential nonnegative ignorance and its educational implications in Confucian and Daoist wisdom. The findings are instructive for rethinking today's knowledge-based society and the text-oriented education of Chinese culture and can contribute to world epistemic diversity and cultural interactions.
Introduction
Since the beginning of the 21st century, the knowledge-based society has ushered in the explosive growth of information, requiring a paradigm shift in education (Nagy, 2003). The priorities of speed and efficiency lend credence to the pursuit of answers, certainties, and truth (Keller & Deborah, 2011, p. 107). In recent years, the COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted teaching activities and expanded technology-based learning worldwide. Physical human interaction is increasingly being replaced by virtual interaction, which limits the space for social education and emotional connectedness (Biesta, 2016, p. 1). As uncertainties grow, it becomes increasingly complicated to position knowledge and ignorance in education. Scholars pay more attention to the role of not knowing (Buckingham, 2014) and the need for “learned ignorance” (de Sousa Santos, 2009), rethinking the relationship between ignorance and education traditionally construed in the framework of the Enlightenment (Szkudlarek & Zamojski, 2020). Ignorance has been a negative property in the mainstream philosophical narrative. It stands against or behind knowledge at the most fundamental epistemic level. The Enlightenment has endowed knowledge with power, freedom, and rationality; ignorance, as “knowledge's virtue opposite” (Quinn, 2011, p. 39), has been associated with failure, helplessness, and impotence (Smithson, 2008, p. 216). Correspondingly, scientists have commonly viewed ignorance as the shadow and by-product of knowledge or the native state of scientific progress. Hence, in education, ignorance—a primitive void where knowledge has not penetrated—should be trivialized or corrected. Educators striving to spread knowledge should help students escape from ignorance. This scientific perspective from the Enlightenment has deeply marked today's knowledge-based worldview and science-oriented education (Vanderstraeten & Biesta, 2006, p. 161).
The narrative above fails to tell the whole story, and alternative perspectives are scattered in some epistemic traditions. Socratic ignorance is one of the most well-known and influential alternatives. Socrates acknowledged that he knew nothing and was confident about the merits of being in a state of ignorance (Bett, 2011). Opposed to rigid categories, it holds great value for improving learning paradigms (Keller & Deborah, 2011). 1 Besides, some indigenous interpretations of ignorance have long been “ignored” by the epistemic mainstream. 2 The epistemic traditions in ancient China are typical examples. According to Hegel, China has not developed a philosophy in a strict sense. The so-called Chinese and, more generally, “Oriental” philosophy must be excluded from the history of philosophy (Roetz, 2005, pp. 50–51). Even for today's Chinese philosophers, how to defend Chinese philosophy's legitimacy still lies at the very center of academic debates (Song, 2023; Wu, 2021; Yu, 2004; Zhang, 2003). One essential consensus among these debaters is constructive for this research: Philosophy is not absent from Chinese traditions as it has unique forms and contents (Cheng, 2007). Moreover, epistemology, or the theory of knowledge—the core of philosophy—existed in distinctive forms in ancient China.
This study challenges the common narrative about negative ignorance by introducing Chinese epistemic traditions as an alternative perspective for reunderstanding ignorance and observing educational realities in a knowledge-based society.
Methodological considerations
Hermeneutics is a textual analysis method that exposes hidden meanings using an artful form of understanding (van Manen, 2006). Gadamer's hermeneutic philosophy is known for its openness and is generated by his historic and dynamic interpretive concepts. He argues that when readers understand and interpret classics, they always have intentions and perspectives that are necessarily based on their previous experience, and “the fusion of horizons of understanding” (Gadamer, 2004, p. 370) is realized through a dialogic interaction between readers and classics. In this process, both readers and classics endlessly transcend their original horizons. This affirms the significance of ancient classics and makes them eternally alive, renewed, and furnished with fresh insights. Gadamer's hermeneutic philosophy has inspired several researchers, some of whom have discovered hermeneutic traditions in Chinese culture (Tu, 2000), developed new models, and applied them to interpret ancient Chinese classics (Assandri, 2011; Cheng, 2003; Höchsmann, 2007; Hong, 2021; Teubert, 2015). For example, Gu (2005) believes that texts and generations of readers have their historicity and intentionality. The awareness of hermeneutic openness is equally important in Chinese literary traditions, which began incredibly early in the fourth century BC (Gu, 2005, p. 2). Therefore, hermeneutic openness can be found in both Chinese and Western traditions, and classics have no “correct” interpretation or multiple interpretations (Gu, 2005, p. 2). This lays the preliminary philosophical foundation for this interpretative study.
Based on hermeneutic openness, this study reinterprets ignorance through the lens of Confucianism and Daoism. As two major and native-born intellectual schools in China, their representative thinkers and classics emerged in the Spring and Autumn Period (770–476 BC). This study traces back to the very origins of Confucian and Daoist thoughts and attempts to fuse the ancient and modern epistemic horizons in two steps: (a) it reinterprets early Confucian and Daoist classics by examining how the dichotomy of ignorance/knowledge or knowing/unknowing is commonly used; (b) it proceeds with articulating nonnegative ignorance by expounding Confucian and Daoist educational ideas and their implications for current practical problems. Doing so creates a dialogue between the past and the present and broadens the meanings of both classics and ignorance.
Reexamining The Analects: Ignorance as propriety
Confucius (551–479 BC), the initiator of Confucianism, was the greatest thinker and the first educator in Chinese history. His words and deeds are mainly recorded in The Analects (or The Analects of Confucius, Lunyu, 论语), based on which many scholars have analyzed Confucian epistemic and educational ideas. Some advocate ritual or ritual propriety (li, 礼) as the key underlying epistemological assumption in Confucianism (Hall & Ames, 1987). Appearing 74 times in The Analects (Yang, 2014, p. 66), ritual propriety extends beyond rites and encompasses all human actions in society and life (Tan, 2017, p. 334). It is demonstrated by each individual's thinking, behavior, and experience in concrete societal situations (Ivanhoe, 2013, p. 34). “Knowing the Way (zhidao, 知道)” can be understood as knowing “the human ways of social interaction encoded, with greater or lesser flexibility, by the cultural canon, and inculcated through social praxis” (Coutinho, 2004, p. 122). Thus, in The Analects, the “knowledge” that Confucius himself pursued and imparted to his disciples was about appropriate social behavior instead of universal and ultimate truth. What is knowing/unknowing is flexible, depending on one's personality and circumstance; given the limitations of personal experience, ignorance is of propriety, and an exemplary person (junzi, 君子) should acknowledge ignorance and maintain a humble mind.
A flexible boundary between knowledge and ignorance
Embedded in particular social relations and practices, knowledge in Confucianism, as some scholars encapsulate, is variable“knowing to act in the moment” (Lai, 2012, p. 347) and “know-how” or “know-to”instead of stationary“know-that” (Hansen, 2000, pp. 85–86).
The first key point is situationality, which refers to knowing how to react in particular situations. It is common to see that Confucius responded differently to his disciples on the same topic in The Analects. For instance, Meng Yizi, Meng Wubo, Ziyou, and Zixia got four different answers to how to understand filial conduct (xiao, 孝) from Confucius (The Analects, 2.5, 2.6, 2.7, and 2.8). Similar conditions happened when Confucius explained the meanings of other critical moral notions, such as excellence (de, 德) and felicitous (shan, 善). By linking these masses of particulars to their own experiences, disciples gained “empirical cumulative knowledge” (Schwartz, 1985, p. 89) and the ability to harmonize themselves with the dynamic world.
Furthermore, one's disposition determines how one acts in the present circumstances. Authentic knowledge should be practiced in actual contexts to match personal traits and living situations. One example is that Confucius gave different suggestions to disciples on authoritative conduct according to their characteristics. Sometimes, even Confucius’ disciples felt confused about his “contradictory” responses. In the story, Zilu and Ranyou inquired about how to act, but Confucius answered paradoxically, so another disciple, Gongxi Hua, was confused and asked why. Confucius replied, “Ranyou is diffident, and so I urged him on. But Zilu has the energy of two, and so I sought to rein him in” (The Analects, 11.22) (Ames & Rosemont, 1999, pp. 146–147). First, the living conditions of Zilu and Ranyou were different. Zilu's father and elder brothers were alive, so Zilu had to listen to their suggestions before acting. Besides, Zilu and Ranyou had divergent personalities. Therefore, they needed to know things differently. Lai (2012, p. 360) asserts that the reliability of Confucian knowledge is a kind of reliability constituted by realizing a belief or value commitment in an extensive range of different scenarios based on one's character traits. As a result, the scope of knowledge and ignorance was constantly changing. The borderline between knowledge and ignorance also varied across conditions and people.
Admissible ignorance and the exemplary person
Since knowledge is exhaustively rooted in ritual propriety and exercised in social praxis, two forms of ignorance are noticeable in Confucianism: ignorance caused by the limitations of one's life experience and by not knowing something outside the worldly human society.
Limitations of life experience may come from unknown skills and unreached ages, and Confucius never felt shameful about them. Therefore, when his disciple Fan Chi asked how to farm and grow vegetables, Confucius admitted that a farmer and vegetable grower knew more and could teach him better (The Analects, 13.4) (Ames & Rosemont, 1999, p. 163). Besides, when looking back upon his life, Confucius thought he only knew the crucial sage knowledge—the propensity of tian (tianming, 天命) at the age of 50. The propensity of tian, or the propensity of circumstances, is not irrevocable fate or destiny, but “one's natural defining conditions forces” and “one's life in the world” (Hall & Ames, 1998, p. 277). Understanding the propensity of circumstances, as Confucius emphasized, is not only a spiritual stage in the development of his life but also a quality of an exemplary person (The Analects, 20.3) (Ames & Rosemont, 1999, p. 229), which should be realized step by step with age. Lack of knowledge beyond the temporal empirical world is also appropriate and wise. In The Analects, this belief is manifested by Confucius’ attitudes toward ghosts and spirits—he had nothing to say about strange happenings, the use of force, disorder, or spirits (The Analects, 7.21) (Ames & Rosemont, 1999, p. 115). Thus, when Fan Chi inquired about wisdom, Confucius replied, “To devote yourself to what is appropriate for the people, and to show respect for the ghosts and spirits while keeping them at a distance, can be called wisdom” (The Analects, 6.22) (Ames & Rosemont, 1999, p. 108).
When Confucius was confronted with not knowing, he adopted a humble attitude and found it worth advocating. He said, “Do I possess wisdom? No, I do not. But if a simple peasant puts a question to me, and I come up empty, I attack the question from both ends until I have gotten to the bottom of it” (The Analects, 9.8) (Ames & Rosemont, 1999, p. 128). Moreover, Confucius’ behavior was consistent with what he taught his disciples regarding admissible ignorance. He explained to Zilu that wisdom meant knowing “what you know and [knowing] what you do not know” (The Analects, 2.17) (Ames & Rosemont, 1999, p. 79), or in other words, acknowledging ignorance is wisdom. According to Confucius, going astray is not terrible. Instead, failing to get right back on track is to stray indeed (The Analects, 15.30) (Ames & Rosemont, 1999, p. 190); thus, he felt fortunate that if he went stray, others were certain to notice it (The Analects, 7.31) (Ames & Rosemont, 1999, p. 118).
Rereading The Book of Way and Zhuangzi: Ignorance as transcendence
Lao Tzu (or Laozi, 老子), a real or fictitious figure who was older than Confucius, and his disciple Chuang Tzu (or Zhuang Zhou, 庄周) (369–286 BC) are two founders of Daoism (or Taoism). Their books—Lao Tzu's The Book of Way (or Dao De Jing, 道德经) and Chuang Tzu's Zhuangzi (庄子)—are essential Daoist classics where the following interpretation is grounded. Daoist epistemology begins with vagueness. In the present times, people often devalue vagueness, confusion, and uncertainty while advocating clarification, explication, and specification as remedies (Coutinho, 2004, p. 10). However, vagueness and indistinctness are natural features in Daoism and provide a deeper insight into the world (Matthyssen & Sundararajan, 2021, p. 46). Lao Tzu claimed that the Way (Dao or Tao, 道), as the source of everything, was “entirely illusive (huang, 恍) and evasive (hu, 惚)” (Dao De Jing, Chapter 21) (Chen, 1989, p. 107). Another story in Zhuangzi is more figurative. Chuang Tzu personified vagueness and chaos (hundun, 浑沌) as an emperor with a blank face, but he died once facial features were bored on him (Watson, 2013, p. 59). This fable implies that the world should be viewed through naturalness rather than artificial categories. Daoist thinkers reckoned that the boundary between knowledge and ignorance was blurry, and ignorance was a higher stage where the Daoist sage could arrived.
A blurry boundary between knowledge and ignorance
In Daoism, there is no need to distinguish right from wrong, true from false, and knowing from not knowing, because all these dualities are of the same order. This belief is exemplified in the second chapter of Zhuangzi. Entitled “Discussion on Making All Things Equal (Qiwulun, 齐物论)” (Watson, 2013, p. 7), it contains many fables that revolve around issues concerning knowledge and language. Chuang Tzu wanted to explain that, as with all distinctions, there could be no moral and epistemic distinctions that would not be arbitrary and futile (Coutinho, 2004). In a fable, Chuang Tzu dreamed of being a butterfly. He knew that there should be some distinction between himself and the butterfly in his dream, but whether the distinction could be known and deciphered was not significant. Instead, the unclear line between knowing and not knowing allowed Chuang Tzu to enjoy being a happy butterfly. This is the ultimate harmonization of self and thinghood.
Chuang Tzu was also skeptical about the fixation on correctness (Chiu, 2018, p. 1068), which can be reflected in another fable about the dialogue between Nie Que and Wang Ni. Nie Que wanted to understand the possibility of a settled standard of right or wrong. However, Wang Ni provided three instances as an indication to Nie Que that no one can know “the proper place to live,” “how food ought to taste,” and “how to fix the standard of beauty for the world,” so he could not know the universal discrimination between right and wrong (Watson, 2013, pp. 14–15). What Chuang Tzu wanted to convey in this fable was neither anti-intellectualism nor the act of forsaking the right things. In Daoism, right and wrong, good and bad, and true and false are two complementary parts of a whole. They are inseparable from each other in the mutual transformation, just like the interaction between yin (阴) and yang (阳) as two qualities of the cosmos that constantly blend into each other. As Moeller remarks, Daoist morality should be considered a kind of amorality. Daoist philosophy, in general, does not intend to deny or eliminate distinctions that, after all, constitute the world and its changes, but instead tries to find a way to harmonize what is distinct (Moeller, 2009, pp. 32–34).
Transcendent ignorance and the Daoist sage
Because the authentic Way is associated with vagueness and all things should be perceived as naturally as possible, artificial knowledge and skills are likely to cloud people's judgment. Lao Tzu had a central concept of “wu (无),” intending to break the limited knowledge and surpass conventionality (Huang, 2015). Instead of translating “wu” as “non-,” “in-,” and “un-,” “wu” should be understood as an open, receptive, and spontaneous attitude and way of living. “Wuzhi (无知),” the ignorance in Daoism, did not mean knowing nothing or embracing stupidity by any means but meant anarchic and unprincipled knowing unforcefully. Conventional knowledge is denied by Daoist ignorance for its failure to achieve sage-like wisdom and its growing absence of the Way (Nelson, 2009). Consequently, Daoism rejects the knowledge accumulation and self-cultivation that Confucianism advocates, because the knowledge that could be acquired and taught was meaningless and fake. Chuang Tzu said, The Way has its reality and its signs but is without action or form. You can hand it down, but you cannot receive it; you can get it, but you cannot see it. It is its own source, its own root (Watson, 2013, p. 45).
However, how could a man have authentic knowledge and be an “ignorant” Daoist sage? The story of Cook Ding in Zhuangzi provides some implications. Cook Ding was cutting up an ox for Lord Wenhui. During this, Lord Wenhui was startled to see Cook Ding slithering the knife into the ox's body in perfect rhythm, so he asked Cook Ding why he had such high-level skills. Cook Ding replied that he cared about the Way, which went beyond skills. Cook Ding's experience echoes Feng Youlan's summary of Daoist epistemology. He stated that there is a difference between “having-no knowledge” and “having no-knowledge.” The first state of “having-no knowledge” is one of original not knowing and is a gift of nature; only after passing through the second state of having knowledge can one reach the third state of “having no-knowledge,” which is an achievement of the spirit (Feng & Bodde, 1948, p. 116). Thus, a Daoist sage is a person without artificial or educated knowledge. He possesses what can be called knowledge as nonknowledge or wisdom as nonwisdom, which is antithetical to the common understanding of wisdom—an additional quality to both intelligence and knowledge (Paper, 2004, p. 23). With this kind of wise “ignorance” beyond conventional knowledge, a sage prefers chaos to order and transcends all limitations, discriminations, and oppositions in worldly life. As Chuang Tzu described, The sage does not work at anything, does not pursue profit, does not dodge harm, does not enjoy being sought after, does not follow the Way, says nothing yet says something, says something yet says nothing, and wanders beyond the dust and grime (Watson, 2013, p. 15).
Educational implications: Congyou (从游), zuowang (坐忘), and nonnegative ignorance beyond language
Confucian and Daoist epistemologies have unique educational tenets and forms that can be resources for rethinking current knowledge-based education. First, Confucianism and Daoism take different approaches to education. Confucianism emphasizes self-cultivation (xiushen, 修身) in hierarchically organized social education. For this, disciples should accompany the master traveling around (congyou, 从游) to gain real social experience. Daoism advocates self-knowing (zizhi, 自知). Hence, a man should sit and forget everything (zuowang, 坐忘) to willingly turn toward the unfolding naturalness of the world and self (Nelson, 2009, p. 298). In addition, as some scholars have observed, classical Chinese philosophy is characterized by contextualization, a dialectical and intuitive method of inquiry, and a holistic and correlative worldview (Hall & Ames, 1998; Rošker, 2008). Confucianism and Daoism both assert that clear-cut reasoning, a logical mindset, and language are too restrictive to deal with reality and that only ignorance can go beyond them. Their suspicion of the text and language is revelatory and cautionary for today's educators and learners who are likely to lose themselves in this era of information boom.
Congyou (从游) and Confucian self-cultivation in daily life
The knowledge-based society has made students busy with vocational or professional education aiming at employment (Young, 2013). In this sense, knowledge comprises resources, skills, capabilities, competitiveness, and technologies, accompanied by marketization and capitalization (Burton-Jones, 1999); schools and teachers also become knowledge sellers. As an important part of education but without a form of knowledge, cultivating oneself through moral socialization is losing the environment it relies upon. This has been accelerated by the booming digitalization of education brought about by pandemic-related lockdowns, making face-to-face communication and collective life seemingly rare. In the post-pandemic period, Confucian congyou, which literally means "following and traveling," can be a pedagogical resource for educators to embrace the new normal and think about knowledge beyond formal education (Collet-Sabé & Ball, 2022).
Confucius created a teaching and learning form called “congyou,” which successfully synchronized his disciplies' practice in society with his teaching by deeds. Since one's observance of ritual propriety is ingrained into concrete sociocultural practices (Tan, 2017), Confucianism highlights the importance of moral action in life and the continuity of knowledge and action. Confucius declared this education idea in the first sentence of The Analects: “Having studied, to then repeatedly apply what you have learned—is this not a source of pleasure?” (The Analects, 1.1) (Ames & Rosemont, 1999, p. 71). The purpose of learning is to put knowledge into routine practice, and actions with good morals occur prior to learning knowledge.
However, how should disciples learn from Confucius to be of good moral action and character? Confucius spent about 14 years traveling state by state to preach his political formulas to state leaders, and some staunch disciples always followed him. During these years, they stayed together, exploring the geographical, political, social, and civil conditions of different states. For these disciples, society was their “school,” Confucius’ action was the best “textbook,” and they realized self-cultivation through everyday intercourse and long-term companionship. This was why Confucius knew his disciples well and gave them targeted suggestions. Thus, in The Analects, even though the teaching process was recorded as a dialogue, it should not be misunderstood as a kind of superficial instructionbut in the deeper sense of promoting reflection through inner dialogue (Li & Wegerif, 2014, p. 22). The dialogue between Confucius and his disciples was open, pleasant, impromptu, and casual, similar to chitchat but saturated with moral implications.
The teaching form of congyou has been espoused by later generations of Chinese educators. For example, in 1941, Mei Yiqi (梅贻琦), the principal of Tsinghua University, criticized university pedagogies and considered congyou as an instructive teaching method. He used a metaphor to illustrate the merit of congyou: School is water, while teachers and students are fishes in it, and they act like fishes swimming in water. Big fishes swim ahead, and small fishes swim closely behind, which is the so-called “congyou.” After long-term congyou, students will be influenced by what they constantly see and hear and then perfect themselves without learning on purpose. However, the current relationship between teachers and students is the same as executants and audience, which has been far away from congyou (Mei, 1941, p. 4).
Zuowang (坐忘) and Daoist wisdom of forgetting
As Malewski (2011, p. 302) points out, “educators have been pushed and pulled by modern forces for so long that they risk mistaking learning how to survive among the currents for all the earthly knowing.” In this context, we cannot see, hear, feel, and comprehend our inner being or the natural world in which we live. Many scholars, especially those in the psychological field, have noticed the problems caused by excessive knowledge and underlined the value of forgetting (Bernecker & Grundmann, 2019; Michaelian, 2011; Schooler & Hertwig, 2005), offering academic evidence for the necessity of forgetting in terms of bodily functions. Daoism also emphasizes the wisdom of forgetting and self-reflexivity. Unlike the view of scientific psychology, it philosophically points to the natural human psyche, which is heuristic for educators to reevaluate the creed “the more knowledge, the better” in a knowledge-based society.
In contrast to Confucian self-cultivation, Daoism devalues external education and believes that knowing one's own true nature leads directly to an immediate and intuitive cognition of the Way. Lao Tzu said, “One who knows others is knowledgeable; one who knows the self is enlightenment” (Dao De Jing, Chapter 33) (Chen, 1989, p. 136). Here Lao Tzu gave two forms of knowledge. One is knowledge of the external world, which is merely worldly wisdom; the other is a pure form of knowing oneself and where one belongs, which can be called enlightenment and brings peace and contentment (Chen, 1989, p. 137). As Lao Tzu's disciple, Chuang Tzu followed this pattern and had a more elusive manner of natural knowing. He refused and heckled students who came to him for wisdom because he believed that invitations to teach were akin to invitations to rule — nothing but trouble (Corley, 2002, pp. 36–37). The only real teacher was spontaneous awareness and nature, without any preconceived notion. Furthermore, a man who could be called “a teacher” should be the “True Man,” such as how Zifang described his teacher Master Shun in Zhuangzi. Zifang said, “He is the kind of man who is True — the face of a human being, the emptiness of Heaven. He follows along and keeps a tight hold of the True; pure, he can encompass all things” (Watson, 2013, p. 166). Zifang's answer delineated what the true exemplar of the ideal Daoist teacher looked like.
To step into self-knowing and spiritual illumination in practice, Chuang Tzu provided a unique way called “zuowang,” which can be simply translated as "sitting and forgetting." "Forgetting" is a frequent word in Zhuangzi, pointing to a complete absence of intellectual effort that characterizes the Daoist sage. Zuowang is a way to be a Daoist sage with exact steps. “I smash up my limbs and body, drive out perception and intellect, cast off form, do away with understanding, and make myself identical with the Great Thoroughfare. This is what I mean by sitting down and forgetting everything” (Watson, 2013, p. 53). Zuowang does not mean loss of memory but an active and engaging process of undoing learning or forgetting something added. That is, “to be in a state of forgetfulness is to have not only no intelligence or knowledge, but, in effect, no awareness of, let alone concern for, accomplishments” (Paper, 2004, p. 26). Finally, when the eye does not see, the ear does not hear, and the mind does not know (Watson, 2013, p. 78), then one can be the Perfect Man (zhiren, 至人) who has no self (Watson, 2013, p. 3).
Zuowang can serve as a lens for reobserving the popular educational concept of "a learning school." As Wang (2013) criticizes, a learning school focuses on developing students’ intellectual power and performance at the expense of their emotional and spiritual growth. Tan (2020) argues that Daoist wisdom is key to fostering a climate of self-reflexivity and mindfulness, opposing the blind acceptance of received knowledge. With concrete steps, Zuowang can be a potential way to shape the climate of self-reflexivity in educational practice.
Finding nonnegative ignorance beyond language
In a knowledge-based society, knowledge is usually acquired as a collective system of signs configured like languages (Marginson, 2023, p. 78) and dispersed through overwhelming information. In the lecture “The Future of Expert Knowledge,” American sociologist Andrew Abbott reflected on the pervasive commodification of knowledge brought about by technological progress in the U.S. Algorithms and computer programs have dramatically changed our understanding of knowledge: The term “knowledge” now refers to the vast number of facts that our society collects, which can be transformed into valuable “information” by algorithms. In return, it causes our desire for more knowledge to become increasingly stronger and leads to our perpetual quest for shortcuts to knowledge; hence, we keep inventing goods that can help us know more things in detail. This ratchet mechanism generates cognitive overload in society and education. Teachers find that testing commodity content is easier to repeat and potentially fairer than testing reasoning ability, which has driven a high degree of commoditization of textbooks and examinations. Students tend to define reading as browsing and believe in fragmented content rather than ideas (Abbott, 2019). A similar educational scenario can also be found in the UK: Schools teach children based on what is expected by “learning objectives” in the textbook, and university students are busy auditing their employability skills (Smith, 2016).
Skepticism toward language, manifested in Confucianism and Daoism, is instructive for finding nonnegative ignorance beyond language. Chilean philosopher Francisco Varela points out that in the three wisdom traditions of the East (Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism), a wise (or virtuous) person is the one who knows what is good and does it spontaneously (Varela, 1999, p. 4). Language as a conventional and artificial vehicle for reasoned knowledge can hardly convey the authentic Way. Confucius believed that glib speech was rarely related to authoritative conduct (The Analects, 1.3, 17.17) (Ames & Rosemont, 1999, pp. 71, 208) and that exemplary persons were always deliberate in their speech and cautious in what they said (The Analects, 13.27, 1.14) (Ames & Rosemont, 1999, pp. 170, 74). As for Daoism, Lao Tzu claimed that “Tao (the Way) that can be spoken of is not the Everlasting (chang, 常)” (Dao De Jing, Chapter 1) (Chen, 1989, p. 51). The Way is essence without a name and cannot be expressed in words, and language is excrescent and only leads to distortions. “One who knows does not speak; one who speaks does not know” (Dao De Jing, Chapter 56) (Chen, 1989, p. 188). Thus, Lao Tzu advocated “teaching without speech” that was carried by the sage, and anything in the world could not compare with it (Dao De Jing, Chapter 2, Chapter 43) (Chen, 1989, pp. 55, 160). Chuang Tzu developed this idea further. He thought it was a pity that men supposed that name and sound were sufficient to convey the truth of a thing, but what the world viewed as valuable—books, texts, words, and language—were not of real value (Watson, 2013, p. 106). When it comes to teaching and learning, Chuang Tzu also believed that the breadth of learning did not necessarily mean knowledge, and eloquence did not necessarily mean wisdom (Watson, 2013, p. 180). Therefore, the sage could rid himself of these things and practice teaching without words—that is, wordless teaching and a formless way of “bringing the mind to completion” (Watson, 2013, p. 34).
Therefore, Confucian and Daoist nonnegative ignorance is vigilant about too much conventional knowledge in the form of texts, words, and messages in education. Nevertheless, Confucian and Daoist educational legacies, including the development of virtues in daily life, the natural growth in social relations, and the emphasis on self-knowing and the pure mind, are largely ignored in the current text-oriented education of Chinese culture. Since the 1980s, the “national studies craze” has become an intellectual and educational trend in the Chinese mainland (Chen, 2011). To revive traditional values, many scholars and educators have made earnest efforts to promote the teaching and learning of Chinese culture. However, in many cases, their practice is counterproductive because the pedagogies they use are constrained by memorizing the textual materials of Chinese classics. Confucian and Daoist thoughts are itemized as moral law, literalized as textbook passages, and designed into questions on exam papers. Children will likely lose interest in traditional culture when they repetitively read and recite the context of classics without truly understanding the meaning. Ironically, focusing too much on language and narrowing humanistic education to text reading was exactly what early Confucianism and Daoism objected to, but they are now widely adopted as primary pedagogies. Zhao (2020) has reflected on this problem and proposed “Confucian do-after-me pedagogy” to cultivate critical thinking. However, more efforts are needed to promote moral socialization and natural self-reflexivity in education, and more space should be left for self-formation, appropriate forgetting, and illuminating intuition.
Conclusion
This study interpreted the distinctive “ignorance” in early Confucian and Daoist epistemologies and its modern educational implications. In Confucianism and Daoism, the roles of knowledge and ignorance are not merely mirrored images of one another (Smithson, 2008, p. 225). Also, the dichotomous relationship between knowledge and ignorance is deconstructed: Ignorance can be propriety, virtue, wisdom, transcendence, and an integral part of the ideal personality; knowledge can be something with limitations and deficiencies or a barrier to self-knowing. Accordingly, through the lens of ancient Chinesenonnegative ignorance, we can reassess the role of knowledge and the epistemic foundation of current education. Trapped in a prison of language, we have indulged in the game of “learning more” for a long time. We seem to have forgotten that knowledge alone, especially conventional knowledge, is inadequate to run the world and achieve well-being.
However, as an initial exploration, what this study involves and provides is limited. Although some problems of the education of Chinese culture have been highlighted, this study hardly provides constructive suggestions or offers practical pedagogies due to the lack of empirical quantitative or qualitative data. Some other studies have made significant contributions toward incorporating Chinese epistemic traditions into teaching, learning, and curricula (Buckingham, 2014; Chiang & Karjalainen, 2022; Eppert & Wang, 2008; Lewerenz, 2017; Moon & Guo, 2022; Tan, 2017; Yu, 2018; Zhang, 2008; Zhao, 2020). They can encourage further studies to explore harnessing traditional Chinese heritage as an effective pedagogy rather than dull text. Moreover, there are many unexplored issues in the interplay between knowledge and ignorance, and unnoticed traditional resources for educational practices. This study can be one step toward world epistemic diversity and the never-ending multicultural interactions.
Footnotes
Declaration of conflicting interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Notes
Contributorship
This study is a conceptual work, and the author independently built the idea and structured the article.