Indian stream·Tao Te Ching·Chapter 18 — When the Tao Is Lost
Humaneness arises when the great Way is forgotten
When the great Tao is forgotten, humaneness and righteousness arise; when wisdom emerges, great hypocrisy follows; when family ties decay, filial piety is proclaimed.
Source context
- Theme
- deterioration of the great Tao and the rise of moralistic substitutes — benevolence, righteousness, and wisdom — as symptoms of primordial wholeness lost
- Soul-faculty
- Consciousness Soul
Steiner
not engaged in the GA corpus
Cross-tradition
- Vedantic traditionThe Vedantic teaching on Kali Yuga describes a progressive loss of dharmic unity in which ethical codes and ritual injunctions multiply precisely as direct cognition of Brahman recedes — a structural parallel to Chapter 18's diagnosis of virtue-language as compensatory for lost Tao.
- Platonic philosophyPlato's account in the Statesman of epochs in which divine governance withdraws and human law must substitute for cosmic order exhibits cross-tradition congruence with Chapter 18's logic: legislation and moral naming arise when the originary principle is no longer directly operative.
- Kabbalistic traditionThe Lurianic concept of tzimtzum — divine contraction producing a space in which secondary structures compensate for the withdrawal of Ein Sof — bears cross-tradition congruence with the Daoist diagnosis that benevolence and righteousness appear only after the great Tao has been abandoned.
Chapter 18
When the Great Tao (Way or Method) ceased to be observed, benevolence and righteousness came into vogue. (Then) appeared wisdom and shrewdness, and there ensued great hypocrisy.
When harmony no longer prevailed throughout the six kinships, filial sons found their manifestation; when the states and clans fell into disorder, loyal ministers appeared.