Abstract

It is with Parmenides that a metaphysic of Being--of the existent--first begins to take shape in Western philosophy. Plato and later thinkers moved from these first steps to what we know as Western philosophy and science . The ancient Chinese did not posit such a distinction between unchanging Being and the interwoven process of being and nonbeing which is Becoming, instead taking as fundamental to reality a principle of nondifferentiation: the unity of all in Tao, upon which conceptual distinctions are imposed by human convention. As a result, there is a breech of understanding when making comparisons between Ancient China and Ancient Greece. While in Plato's philosophy, a metaphysic of Being is developed, the Taoists under Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu embraced both being and non-being as existing in a mutually transforming relation: Becoming. As a result, the insight of Chinese philosophy into the nature of the human and the human society has been extraordinary. In this dissertation I investigate the ontological foundations of these two traditions and implications which follow from the dualism of the Platonic tradition and the holism of the Taoist tradition