Indian stream·Tao Te Ching·Chapter 57 — Governing Without Action
I take no action and the people transform of themselves
Govern a state by uprightness; deploy armies by strategy; gain the world by non-interference. The more prohibitions, the poorer the people; the more sharp weapons, the more disorder; the more laws, the more thieves. The sage: I take no action, and the people transform of themselves.
Source context
- Theme
- governance through non-interference and the paradox of restraint as the source of order
- Soul-faculty
- Consciousness Soul
Steiner
not engaged in the GA corpus
Cross-tradition
- Daoist wu-wei doctrineChapter 57 articulates wu-wei as the sovereign principle: the ruler who does not act coercively finds that the people transform themselves, a structural expression of effortless non-action as the ground of social order.
- Vedantic nishkama karmaThe Bhagavad Gita's counsel to act without attachment to fruit presents a cross-tradition congruence with Chapter 57's teaching that purposive interference undermines the natural self-ordering of the Tao.
- Stoic natural lawStoic political philosophy holds that the wise ruler aligns governance with the logos underlying nature rather than imposing artificial ordinances, a cross-tradition congruence with the chapter's critique of multiplying prohibitions and laws.
Chapter 57
A state may be ruled by (measures of) correction; weapons of war may be used with crafty dexterity; (but) the kingdom is made one's own (only) by freedom from action and purpose.
How do I know that it is so? By these facts:--In the kingdom the multiplication of prohibitive enactments increases the poverty of the people; the more implements to add to their profit that the people have, the greater disorder is there in the state and clan; the more acts of crafty dexterity that men possess, the more do strange contrivances appear; the more display there is of legislation, the more thieves and robbers there are.
Therefore a sage has said, 'I will do nothing (of purpose), and the people will be transformed of themselves; I will be fond of keeping still, and the people will of themselves become correct. I will take no trouble about it, and the people will of themselves become rich; I will manifest no ambition, and the people will of themselves attain to the primitive simplicity.'