On Cooking Fish
In recent weeks I have not kept up with certain blogs, most notably the excellent Chinese philosophy blog of Manyul Im. He has a great post discussing a famous line from Tao Te Ching 60: "Govern a nation as you would cook a small fish." This is generally thought of as a warning not to intervene in government too much - if you handle a small fish while cooking it, it will fall apart. But there is room for interpretation here, and the comments to Manyul's post, all 155 of them, develop the interpretive possibilities more thoroughly than I have ever seen. Worth reading for Tao Te Ching afficiandos.
We just recently finished the TTC in one of my classes, and spent a little time on #60. I particularly liked one interpretation put forth by a particular student, which ran something like this: "The amount of time, energy, and care that it takes to cook a small fish without ruining it far outstrips whatever benefits one might receive from eating a perfectly cooked small fish afterward. As a result, Laozi is telling us not to cook small fish." In other words, anarchism is best.
Posted by: Chris | November 11, 2008 at 02:44 PM