and the ORIGINS OF PHILOSOPHY“Karatani’s book makes you see the entire history of philosophy in a new way.”—

Slavoj Žižek

ISONOMIA and the ORIGINS OF PHILOSOPHYISONOMIA
and theORIGINS OF PHILOSOPHY

kōjin karatani
Translated by Joseph A. Murphy

duke university press · Durham and London · 2017

tetsugaku no kigen
by kōjin karatani© 2012 by Kōjin Karatani
Originally published 2012 by Iwanami Shoten,
Publishers, Tokyo
This English edition published 2017 by Duke
University Press, Durham, NC, by arrangementwith the proprietor c/o Iwanami Shoten,
Publishers, Tokyo.
© 2017 Duke University Press
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America on
acid-free paper ∞Designed by Matthew Tauch
Typeset in Scala by Graphic Composition, Inc.,
Bogart, Georgia
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Karatani, Kōjin, 1941– author.
Title: Isonomia and the origins of philosophy / Kōjin
Karatani ; translated by Joseph A. Murphy.
Other titles: Tetsugaku no kigen.
English Description: Durham : Duke University Press, 2017.
| Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: lccn 2017004990 (print) | lccn 2017011334 (ebook)isbn 9780822368854 (hardcover : alk. paper)isbn 9780822369134 (pbk. : alk. paper)isbn 9780822372714 (e-book)
Subjects: lcsh: Philosophy, Ancient.
Classification: lcc b115. j3 k3713 2017 (print) |lcc b115. j3 (ebook) | ddc 180—dc23
lc record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017004990

Contents

translator’ s note · vii
map · viii
author’ s preface to the japanese edition · ix

introduction
Universal Religion · 1 / Ethical Prophets · 5
Exemplary Prophets · 7
Chapter 1

ionian society and thought
Athens and Ionia · 11 / Isonomia and Democracy · 14
Athenian Democracy · 17 / State and Democracy · 20
Colonization and Isonomia · 22 / Iceland and North America · 26
Isonomia and Council · 31
Chapter 2

the background of ionian natural philosophy
Natural Philosophy and Ethics · 35 / Hippocrates · 39
Herodotus · 42 / Homer · 46 / Hesiod · 51
Chapter 3

the essential points of ionian natural philosophy
The Critique of Religion · 56 / Self-Moving Matter · 58
Poiesis and Becoming · 62

Chapter 4

post-ionian thought
Pythagoras · 68 / Heraclitus · 80
Parmenides · 87 / Post-Eleatics · 96
Chapter 5

socrates and empire
The Athenian Empire and Democracy · 103
Sophists and Rule by Rhetoric · 107 / The Trial of Socrates · 110
The Riddle of Socrates · 114 / Daimon · 118
The Socratic Method · 121 / Plato and Pythagoras · 125
The Philosopher-King · 127 / Isonomia and the Philosopher-King · 130

appendix
From The Structure of World History to
Isonomia and the Origins of Philosophy · 135
timeline of the ancient world · 141
notes · 143
bibliography · 155
index · 159

Translator’s Note

This translation is based on the fourth edition of Tetsugaku no kigen(Iwanami Shoten, 2012). The text incorporates extensive quotationfrom Greek, German, Japanese, French, and Chinese sources.
Where available, accepted English-language translations have beenused. Where not available, translations have been adapted fromweb-based sources, or translated from the original, as indicated in
the citations. I would like to acknowledge the advice and assistanceI received from the author’s wife, Lynne Karatani, which has been
instrumental to the project’s readability.

Adriatic
Sea

MACEDONIA

Amphipolis

Pella

Elea

THESSALY

Mount
OlympusHellespont

Potidaea

Troy

LYDIA

LESBOS

AegeanSea

CrotonMessina

IonianSea

DelphiCorinthMycenae

SicilySyracuse

PELOPONNESE

Kyme
Smyrna Sardis

ThebesMarathon
AthensSAMOS

Colophon
Ephesus

ATTICA

IONIA

Miletus

Halicarnassus

SpartaCOS
Rhodes
CRETE
Knossos

map 1 — Map of the Ionian and Aegean Sea Region

Author’s Preface to the Japanese Edition

In the process of writing my last work, Sekaishi no kôzô (Iwanami
Shoten, 2010; translated as The Structure of World History, Duke
University Press, 2014), it occurred to me that I should give moredetailed consideration to ancient Greece. However, considering theoverall balance of the work, it seemed better advised to place thesethoughts in a new volume. This book is the result. Consequently, ittakes the theoretical framework presented in The Structure of WorldHistory as a premise. Still, even without that knowledge, this bookshould be easy enough to follow. To be on the safe side, though,I have included a summary of the argument of The Structure ofWorld History and notes on how that corresponds to this book, as
an appendix called “From The Structure of World History to Isonomia and the Origins of Philosophy.” In points where the argument of
this book is unclear, please refer to this text.
The first version of this book was serialized in the monthly journal
Shinchô, to whose chief editor, Yutaka Yano, I owe a great debt.
Without his support, this work would never have come to fruition.
I am similarly indebted to the editor of this book, Kiyoshi Kojima,from Iwanami Shoten.

kōjin karatani · september 15, 2012 · beijing

Han Feizi
Gong Sun Lonyzi

Mencius

Mozi
Mahavira
Guatama Buddha
Confucius
Laozi
EzekielJeremiah

Herochitus
Pythagoras
Anaximenes
HeslodHomer
800 BCE

700 BCE

Anaximander
Thales600 BCE

Epicurus
Aristotle
Diogenes
Plato
Democritus
Hippocrates
Thucydides
Socrates
Herodotus
Protagoras
Zeno

Empedocles
Anaxayoras
Parmenides
500 BCE

400 BCE300 BCEfigure intro.1 — Chronology of Ancient Greek and Asian Thinkers

Introduction

universal religion
Around the sixth century bce, Ezekiel and the biblical prophets emerged
from among exiles in Babylon; Thales emerged in Ionia on the coast of
Asia Minor; Gautama Buddha and the Jain founder Mahavira appearedin India; and Laozi and Confucius emerged in China.1 This simultaneityand parallelism are striking and cannot be explained straightforwardly
based on socioeconomic history. As an example, Marxists typically see
philosophy and religion as parts of an ideological superstructure, itself
determined by the economic base, by which is meant the modes of production. However, attention to transformations of the economic base has
not proven sufficient to explain the overall dramatic transformations of
this period.
Consequently, a perspective that would explain the transformations of
this period as a revolution or evolution of spirit taking place at the level ofthe ideological superstructure became dominant. This view is best represented by Henri Bergson’s The Two Sources of Morality and Religion (1932).
According to Bergson, human society started as a small closed society,and morality developed out of it for its benefit. If so, what might havetranspired for it to become open? It is clear that in the time leading up to
the sixth century bce, human society was evolving at multiple locations
from clan society to world empire, where diverse peoples interact on thebasis of trade. But this by itself is not sufficient to bring about an open
society. For Bergson, “Never shall we pass from the closed society to theopen society, from state to humanity, by any mere broadening out. The
two things are not of the same essence.”2 Bergson tried to understandthese transformations at the level of religion. According to him, religion
in a closed society is static, while religion in an open society is dynamic.
The leap from static religion to dynamic religion is brought about by the“individual of privilege.” Bergson argues that elan d’amour, or an “impetus of love,” is at the basis of the evolutionary transformations, andmanifests itself through the actions of these individuals of privilege.
However, we need not, and should not, appeal to this kind of theoretical leap. I acknowledge that the leap from a closed society to an open society occurred on the level of religion. Having said that, this fact itself canbe traced to the economic base, in my opinion, on the condition that weunderstand the economic base in terms of modes of exchange, instead of
the Marxist’s usual modes of production. For example, the developmentof religion—from animism, to magic, to world religion, finally to universal religion—falls out neatly when understood in terms of transformationin the modes of exchange.
Normally, the term exchange implies commodity exchange. I refer tothis as mode of exchange C. This arises when exchange occurs between
one community and another, not in exchange internal to a community
or family. What occurs in the latter is reciprocity in the form of the gift
and repayment, which is mode of exchange A. There is a further typeof exchange, different from both, called mode of exchange B. This is an
exchange between the ruler and the ruled, which at first glance does notappear to be a kind of exchange. However, if the ruled, in offering obedience to the ruler, receives protection and security in return, this too is an
exchange. The state has its roots in this mode of exchange B.
The historical transformations of religion can be tracked in termsof these changes in the mode of exchange. For example, in animism,
all things in the world are each thought to possess an anima (or spirit).
Because of this, a person cannot associate with an object without first
putting its anima under control. For example, a person cannot take ananimal in hunting without this accommodation to the anima. In this case,the person despiritualizes and objectifies the anima, first by means ofmaking an offering to it and imposing debt on it. This is what is called
sacrifice. Burial and funeral rites, as well, accommodate the anima of thedead person through an offering. Magic, too, is a mechanism of this kindof exchange, based on gift giving. It is about putting nature under the
magician’s control by making it into an inanimate object by means of a

2 · Introduction

gift to its anima. If understood in this way, magicians, who see nature as
an object, can be regarded as the first scientific thinkers.
An important point here is that, in the society of nomadic huntergatherer bands, we find the pure gift but not the reciprocal exchange.
There is animism but not magic. Because both reciprocity and magic are
attributes of closed societies, it follows that the closed society and corresponding static religion took shape only after fixed settlements arose. The
earliest nomadic societies were not in fact closed societies. These were notsomething that naturally existed from the outset. Closed society emerged
in a leap when faced with the crisis brought about by fixed settlements.
Fixed settlements brought about accumulations of wealth and power that
had not hitherto been possible, and with this the emergence of class divisions and the state. We may be able to say that clan societies imposed
reciprocity as a duty on their members in order to avoid these divisions.
To repeat, magic was developed in the tribal societies that emerged
after fixed settlements. The fixing of settlements resulted in the need forpeople to coexist with a myriad of others, both living and dead. As a result,magical arts developed, alongside obligations of reciprocal exchange, andthe status of the chief priest ascended. But this ascent happened in adecisive way in state societies. Whenever a centralized state emerges fromconflict among city-states, the power of the king-priest is solidified, alongwith which gods become transcendent.
If we consider this development in terms of modes of exchange, adespotic state is a situation where mode of exchange B is dominant. However, even in this case, both king and subject regard this as a reciprocal
relation (mode of exchange A), rather than a relation of the ruler and theruled, where active submission and rendering of tribute on the part of thesubject makes the security and redistributive action of the state appear agift. The same can be said about the relation between gods and humans.
In a despotic state, gods are rendered transcendent, in domination
over humans, while at the same time the reciprocal relationship between
gods and humans from the preceding magical stage lingers. The logic
there goes something like this. The gods are transcendent and beyond thegrasp of the human mind. However, if people offer gifts and prayers, thegods will be obliged to respond to their requests. In this type of relation,
the transcendent character of the gods is not yet fully established. For
example, if the state were to be defeated, the gods would be discarded.

Introduction · 3

After this stage, conflicts among various states produce over time astate that rules over a vast territory, or world empire. World empire requires not just military dominance, but the establishment of a trading
bloc over a vast area (mode of exchange C). The god in this case becomesa world god that transcends the old tribal gods and tutelary deities. Still, at
this stage, universal religion is yet to appear. Because, here again, the god
would be abandoned if the empire were to be defeated. A world empire,then, is a necessary but not sufficient condition for the emergence ofuniversal religion.
Universal religion too could be understood based on the mode of
exchange. To put it simply, universal religion is an attempt to recuperate mode of exchange A at a higher level, after it has been dissolved bymodes B and C. To put it in other terms, when a society based on theprinciple of reciprocity is dismantled by the permeation of state rule anda money economy, universal religion seeks to reinstate those relationsof reciprocity and mutual support on a higher level. I call this mode of
exchange D.
Mode D seeks to reconstitute A on a higher level. However, D cannot
be realized without the prior negation of A. From a different perspective,
this means the negation of the magical phase in religion. In this sense,
Max Weber is right in locating the defining characteristic of universal religions in “disenchantment.” Disenchantment is generally understood tohappen in relation to the rise of the natural sciences; however, for Weberdisenchantment lies in the negation of the idea that the gods can be bent
to human will by rituals and prayers: “Religious behavior is not worshipof the god, but rather coercion of the god, and invocation [of the god]
is not prayer, but rather the exercise of magical formulae.”3 It is in theloosening of the hold of the idea of coercion of the gods that a scientificattitude toward nature becomes possible.
In terms of modes of exchange, Weber’s disenchantment implies thatreciprocity in the relations between humans and gods is renounced. In
fact, to carry this out is not as easy as it seems; even in today’s world religions, coercion of the god continues to be practiced in the form of prayer.
If this coercion was really to be renounced, it would be nothing less thana world historical event. However, it is not sufficient to attribute such an
event to the appearance of a particular individual of privilege, who opens
the closed society.

4 · Introduction

ethical prophets
So, how did coercion of the gods come to be set aside? We can discoveran example in the establishment of Judaism. The Old Testament narrates
the history of the Israeli people, from the covenant “between God and thepeople,” to the exodus led by Moses from Egypt, to the development of
the state by David and Solomon after settling in Canaan. However, thecodification of the Old Testament was initiated in the Babylonian exile,and the history written there is largely a restructuring, or creation fromwhole cloth, of events from the perspective of that time. That is to say,
Judaism as a universal religion was established among the exiles in Babylon, themselves taken from the fallen kingdom of Judah, and projectedbackward to its origins.
The Jewish people started as a nomadic tribal confederacy. They gathered under the single god Yahweh, and made covenant with this god.
However, this is no anomaly. We see the same process among the cities ofMesopotamia and the Greek poleis. When a number of villages or tribes
join to form a single city-state, this takes the expression of conjointly
following a new deity. This is a type of social contract. We have, then, no
reason to regard the covenant of the Jewish people as exceptional.
The Jewish tribal confederacy formed in response to the presence ofpowerful nations (Egypt and Assyria) all around them. In other words, theconfederacy was formed as a means of resisting external polities. However, once the Jewish people settled in the land of Canaan and started toengage in agriculture, they experienced a fundamental change in lifestyle
from their nomadic origins. What was heretofore a tribal federation was
eventually transformed under the reign of David and Solomon into an“oriental despotism” similar to the order of Egypt. That the people would
switch their allegiance from the Yahweh of the nomadic peoples to theagricultural god Ba’al could be said to be the natural course of events.
In the age of Solomon, God was rendered transcendental, reflecting
the expansion of the royal authority. However, this was still little morethan an extension of the tribal deity. Transcendental though this God may
be, were the people to be vanquished in battle, he would be discarded.
This signifies a relation where the people, while placing themselves ina position of obedience, still feel entitled to coerce reciprocity from God

Introduction · 5through offering gifts. In other words, this religion remained essentiallymagical.
Abandoning of God actually happened, upon the fall of the northern
kingdom of Israel, which was established as the result of the split of the
kingdom of Solomon after his death. God was abandoned yet again upon
the consequent fall of the second kingdom, the southern kingdom of
Judah. However, something unprecedented occurred among the people
taken into captivity in Babylon from Judah. Though vanquished in battle
and their nation lost, rather than repudiate their god, an inversion occurred whereby responsibility for events was sought on the human side.
This is a decisive break with coercion of the gods and signals the disenchantment of religion. Here the rejection of reciprocity between God andhumans brought about a fundamental shift in their relationship. But in
another sense, the relation of human to human was also fundamentallychanged.
The people taken to captivity in Babylon were largely members of theelite and literate classes, and generally engaged in commerce. Away fromhome in Babylon, separated from the older administrative structures
including religion, and separated from their agricultural communities,
they lived as individuals. It was just such individuals who came to form a
new covenant community under God. This took expression as a covenant
between God and the people. This resembles the process of formation ofa nomadic tribal confederacy but is different. And it is also different fromthe thought of the biblical prophets active in the dynastic age.
These prophets criticized oppression by the bureaucracy and priesthood, the degenerate character of the people, and disparities in wealth,warning that the nation would perish if such things persisted. However,their message aimed at restoration of the old nomadic tribal order, a return to the desert—that is, a restoration of mode of exchange A, or areciprocal community. This kind of prophet is not particular to the Jewish
religion. Any place where a nomadic people were turned to agriculture
under a despotic rule, and faced with the crisis of communities and nation, this kind of prophet calling for a return must have appeared. However, the call for a return to mode A by itself does not immediately leadto universal religion.
The arrangement that emerged in Babylon was a covenant communityof free and equal individuals, released from tribal constraints. We canunderstand this as the recuperation of mode of exchange A on a higher

6 · Introduction

dimension, that is to say, mode of exchange D. The recuperation at ahigher dimension requires not only the negation of modes B and C, but
the negation of mode A itself. That is to say, what is required first is forpeople to be released from tribal society and the state. These conditions
were granted by the captivity.
The Jewish exiles in Babylon were released about forty years later by
the Persian Empire, after its defeat of Babylonia, and returned stateless toJerusalem. From that point forward, the Jewish sect was transformed intoa mechanism for governing the stateless people. In other words, the covenant community in Babylon was transmuted into a collective regulated
by priests and scribes. The compilation of the Old Testament was further
advanced at this time. Through this process, the words of the prophets,
the legend of Moses, and so forth were given new meaning.
The compilation of an authorized scripture was carried out by the Jewish sect from the perspective of theocracy and was rearranged so that alllaws would appear as if based in the word of God handed down to Moses.
Through this process, the captivity in Babylon was cast as little more thanan episode in the long history of the Jewish religion or the Jewish peoples.
In this way, Babylon, the true origin of Judaism, was erased. Along with
this, the fact that Judaism, once a universal religion, had fallen back to
a conventional religion ruled by a priestly authority was also forgotten.
As a result, Judaism came to be identified with the religion of the Jewish
people.
In truth, Judaism continued to spread up to the time of Roman rule.
This was not really a matter of population growth among the Jews. Rather,
Judaism as a universal religion attracted many converts. For example,
the sect that sprang up around Jesus grew as one faction in Judaism.
They formed a collective, which was itinerant and communistic. We see asimilar development in other sects that emerged at the time, such as, forexample, the Essenes. These nomadic religious movements of Judaism
sought to recover the covenant community of the age of Babylon.

exemplary prophets
It might appear from the discussion to this point that universal religion
was disclosed solely by the Jewish prophets or those in that lineage. That
is not the case. In relation to this, a distinction drawn by Weber is sug-

Introduction · 7

gestive. Weber divides prophets into two types: ethical and exemplary. In
the former, as with the Old Testament prophets, the prophet is inspired
by God and becomes a medium to proclaim God’s will, demanding thatpeople obey God, as part of the ethical obligations entailed in that trust.
In the latter type, as with Buddha, Laozi, or Confucius, the prophet is astandard to which other people aspire, who points out to people the path
to religious salvation through his own example. In this way, contrary tocommon understanding, Weber is able to subsume some thinkers notnormally thought of as religious into the category of prophets, and by
doing so put the usual definition of world religion in brackets.
This leads to a further bracketing of the standard classifications ofreligion and philosophy. The usual distinction is that philosophy is rational, while religion is nonrational or beyond reason. Further, philosophy
is Greek in origin and religion Hebraic. However, such divisions thwart
our understanding not just of philosophy but of religion.
For example, the prophets of Israel spoke the word of God. However,these in fact were the words of humans. That is to say, these were notmystical communications from a sacred realm, but intellectuals reportingas the word of God realizations they had reached after passing throughcertain trials of understanding.4 Meanwhile, as to the origins of Greek
philosophy, they are usually located in the natural philosophy of Ionia.
This was a critique of the gods of Olympus by means of reason. Hence,
it is generally understood that philosophy began as the antithesis of religion. However, Ionian natural philosophy was not atheism. It is truethat these philosophers criticized the anthropomorphic gods, but such a
critique was possible precisely through the acquisition of the concept of anonanthropomorphic “one God.” As with universal religion, natural philosophy came into being through a process of disenchantment. Hence, it
is not plausible that those philosophers limited their inquiries into nature
in a narrow sense. In this sense, Ionian natural philosophers could evenbe regarded as exemplary prophets.
The concept of the exemplary prophet is necessary to look at the worldhistorical leap that occurred simultaneously around the sixth century bce.
Philosophy appeared in Ionia at virtually the same time as universal religion appeared in Israel. In order to examine the universal significance of
this simultaneity, we need to look at yet another unprecedented intellectual phenomenon arising around the same time in East Asia.

8 · IntroductionIn China, the Hundred Schools of Thought became active in the
Spring and Autumn period, or Warring States period. Thinkers ofthe Hundred Schools would travel from city to city expounding theirthoughts. The condition for the receptivity of these thinkers was that it
had become untenable for city-states to rely solely on the conventional
wisdom of clan societies. The Hundred Schools included figures such
as Laozi, Confucius, and Mozi, Legalists represented by Han Feizi, theLogicians (alternately School of Names) represented by Gong Sun Longzi,
and others. In terms of contemporary disciplines, the Legalists would fallunder political philosophy, and the Logicians linguistic philosophy. However, this kind of classification is meaningless. The leap that occurred inthis period cannot derive exclusively from any of these categories. Whatis important is rather the simultaneous and competitive emergence ofdiverse ways of thinking.
Laozi and Confucius, though they would enter history as founders of
Daoism and Confucianism, were not particularly religious themselves.
It is clear that Laozi’s idea of wu wei ziran (nonaction/naturalness) bears
no relation to Daoism’s later inclination toward magic, because wu wei
or nonaction is nothing other than a negation of the coercive and magical relation to the gods.5 Similarly in the Analects we find, “Of portents,
wonders, and heavenly beings, the Master passes over in silence,” and“not yet even knowing life, how can one seek to know death?” Confucius,
however, was neither an atheist nor a skeptic. It was simply a renunciation of the magical posture of coercion of the gods. Confucius believedin a transcendent heaven. However, this belief had prompted him rather
to transfer the focus of his philosophy to the relation of person to personin this world.
Meanwhile, Laozi developed the concept of dao, or the Way. Dao, in
its literal sense a material object, signifies the infinite here. What Laozi
effected was a form of natural philosophy. This was also a political philosophy. Just as those who inherited the legacy of Ionian natural philosophy advocated doubting nomos (man-made order) and following physis(nature), Laozi’s natural philosophy had direct political implications.
If we consider this from the perspective of modes of exchange, Laozi’s
thought is first a rejection of mode A, or restrictive communities. It is,second, a rejection of mode B, or rule by force. In the midst of the Springand Autumn period, when states and communities were collapsing

Introduction · 9around him, Confucius sought to rebuild them through “benevolence,”
which means a return of mode A. Laozi rejected even benevolence;“When the Great Way falls into disuse, benevolence becomes the fashion.” “The Great Way” implies what is akin to the way of the world ofnomadic peoples prior even to mode A. Then, the idea of wu wei ziran,nonaction and naturalness, can be said to point to mode of exchange D.6
The teachings of Laozi and Confucius were taken in later years to haveopened the way for new religions. However, in both cases they were free
thinkers who refused the course of religions up to that point. In thissense, there is no difference between them and the prophets of Israel orthe natural philosophers of Ionia. As long as we follow the contemporaryclassifications that separate religion, philosophy, and science, we will
never be able to recognize the world-historical leap in the sixth and fifth
centuries bce. What they mark, in each case, is the emergence of modeof exchange D into human history. My effort to rethink the birth of “philosophy” in Ionia is for these reasons.

10 · Introduction

Notesintroduction
1

Cf. Weber: “The period of the older Israelitic prophecy at about the time of Elijah was an epoch of strong prophetic propaganda throughout the Near East andGreece . . . some of which reached into the sixth and even the fifth century. They
were contemporary with Jewish, Persian, and Hindu prophetic movements, andprobably also with the achievements of Chinese ethics in the pre-Confucian period.” Max Weber, The Sociology of Religion, trans. Ephraim Fischoff (Boston: Beacon, 1964), 48–49.

2

Henri Bergson, The Two Sources of Morality and Religion, trans. Ashley Audra (NewYork: Doubleday, 1935), 267.

3

Weber, The Sociology of Religion, 25.

4

According to Koichi Namiki, it was on critical examination of their accumulated
knowledge and ideas that they judged it appropriate to expound them as God’s
words. That is to say, it was their expressive style. “It is totally unconceivable thatthey did so in bad faith. Rather, they must have considered it to be discreet andeffective, to efface the first person of the writer and direct their thoughts back tosomeone else other than themselves. If we don’t grant this it is difficult to justify the extensive involvement of compilers and commentators in the propheticalbooks. However, after the editing of the book is completed, things started to appear differently.” Koichi Namiki, Kyûyaku-Seisho ni okeru Bunka to Ningen [Culture
and person in the Old Testament] (Tokyo: Kyobunkan, 1999), 28.

5「無為自然」or wu wei zi ran. This is a four-character phrase typical of Chinese
rhetoric, with a number of possible connections between the first pair and second
pair. In this case, wu wei or nonaction seems to lead to a “self-thusness” or naturalness. The second pair, zi ran or self-thusness, has come to idiomatically meannature, but retains a logical sense in this phrase [translator’s note].

6This point explains why Laozi, regarded as the founder of Daoism, has repeatedly
served as the philosophical source for anarchist social movements in Chinese
history.

chapter 1 · ionian society and thought
1

Hannah Arendt, On Revolution (New York: Penguin Classics, 1963), 20.

2

Aristotle, Politics, book 6, trans. Benjamin Jowett, in Aristotle II (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1952), 520. Note: All texts from the Great Books are available
in a searchable database, at the Internet Classics Archive, http://classics.mit.edu.