Human beings have from the beginning tried to discover the relationship between themselves and the universe in which they live. They noted the life cycle of birth, life, and death and wondered if there was something more beyond, and this a question that has been addressed by religion and philosophy ever since. Taoism as represented by the writings of Lao-Tzu and Idealism as represented by Plato differ in certain key aspects of how the world is viewed, how human beings are thought to relate to that world, and so the philosophy developed by each writer. Lao-Tzu is a pantheistic thinker and views the human being as one with the universe. Plato, like most Western philosophers, sees a dualism between man and nature and within man himself, separating mind and body. Plato is even more of a dualist in that he sees this world as a reflection of an ideal world existing on some other plane.
The Tao te Ching of Lao-Tzu is the oldest scripture of Taoism and was written during the warring states period when China descended into a chaos of rival kingdoms, some time between the sixth and the fourth or third centuries BC. Nothing is known about Lao-Tzu, including whether he existed at all or was a name given to these writings. The title of the book means "the classic of the way of virtue." It is written in poetic form and teaches that there is a dynamic, cosmic structure underlying everything that happens in the world. The individual amy discover the Way (Tao) which exists in all aspects of this world, and the individual will then find a way to fit into that whole:
And the Three gave birth to the ten thousand things (Lao-Tzu 12).
Tao is a choice between being and non-being, and this original polarity is found in force throughout the world. Non being is emptiness, or what is not, and it has as much significance as does being, the fullness of things, or what is. In this way, Lao-Tzu captures and reforms the earlier Chinese concep...