Published in Humanity’s quest for Unity, United Nations Teilhard Colloquium, 1985
Mutual and complementary aspects
Introduction
In this paper a tentative approach is presented to discuss the relation between the concepts of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and the vision of early Taoist philosophy on man and the universe. Some indications are offered, showing where the two lines of thought run parallel, where they differ and how they complement and enrich each other. There are various reasons for this study. In the first place it is interesting to analyse how two important movements with a time difference of more than 2000 years come to comparable outlooks, be it through very different ways; Taoism through intuition and spontaneity and Teilhard through struggling with 2000 years of built-in dualism in Western culture.
In the second place enriching Teilhard’s concepts with Taoist elements, will broaden the view, fill some gaps and even correct some aspects of his great work. This may result in a new philosophy of life that will be more complete, more convincing and more inspiring for the present and future generations of the Western world than conventional traditions and scientific education, which are to some extent responsible for creating the unbalanced feeling that very many people experience consciously or unconsciously, today.
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Teilhard and Tao