Asian Journal of Philosophy (2024) 3:68

https://doi.org/10.1007/s44204-024-00198-z

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Laozian metaethics

Jason Dockstader1

Received: 21 June 2024 / Accepted: 17 September 2024

© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature B.V. 2024

Abstract
This paper contributes to the emerging field of comparative metaethics by offering a
reconstruction of the metaethical views implicit to the Daoist classic, the Laozi 老子
or Daodejing 道德經. It offers two novel views developed out of the Laozi: one-all
value monism and moral trivialism. The paper proceeds by discussing Brook Zipo-
ryn’s reading of the Laozi in terms of omnipresence and irony, and then applies his
reading to moral properties like values and names (ming 名). The paper emboldens
Ziporyn’s monistic tendencies in order to claim that the Laozi not only treats the
Dao as an omnipresent value, but also as the one value that is all values. I call this
view one-all value monism. I then argue that, in terms of moral epistemology, one-
all value monism entails moral trivialism, the view that all moral judgments are true.
I conclude by emphasizing the therapeutic motivation for holding such apparently
outrageous metaethical views. The paper thus defends the basic claim that there is a
point at which Ziporyn’s omnipresence and irony become monism and true contra-
diction, and that further exploring the consequences of these inevitable transitions
leads to the discovery of novel metaethical views.

Keywords Daoism · Laozi · Metaethics · Value monism · Trivialism

1 Ziporynian omnipresence

This paper contributes to the emerging field of comparative metaethics by offering

a reconstruction of the metaethical views implicit to the Daoist classic, the Laozi 老
子 or Daodejing 道德經 (Marshall, 2019).1 It offers two novel views developed out
1
In this paper, I will use Brook Ziporyn’s recent translation of the Laozi (Ziporyn, 2023) and Hans-
Georg Moeller’s translation (2007). I will also focus on aspects of both of their interpretations of the text
in this paper, nudging their views into novel metaphysical and metaethical territory. I do so because I am
mostly sympathetic to their respective interpretations. Also, I use their translations because I feel they
reflect their interpretive stances and because they are aesthetically preferable to the many other Laozi
translations on the market, with Ziporyn’s translation offering a sort of maximalist approach, capturing

* Jason Dockstader
[email protected]
1
University College Cork, 4 Elderwood, College Rd, Cork, Ireland

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of the Laozi: one-all value monism and moral trivialism.2 The best place to begin
this metaethical reconstruction is with the Dao itself (道), the way or course of all
things, the way things are (Mou, 2009: 44). As it is presented in the Laozi, the Dao
is perhaps best characterized by the attribute of omnipresence (Banka, 2022; Cowl-
ing & Cray, 2017). In his recent translation of the Laozi and his earlier work on irony
and coherence in classical Chinese thought, Brook Ziporyn has offered a detailed
account of the Laozian Dao in terms of omnipresence (Ziporyn, 2012, 2023). As
Ziporyn says of the Dao in the Laozi, “the Dao is everywhere and nowhere” (Zipo-
ryn, 2012: 161).
Ziporyn’s reading of the Dao in the Laozi is a combination and development of
two other scholarly moves: Tang Junyi’s analysis of six separate senses of Dao in
the Laozi and A.C. Graham’s list of the “parallel dyads” or “chains of oppositions”
that permeate the descriptions of the Dao in the text (Ziporyn, 2012: 152; Graham,
1989: 223). First, this is how Ziporyn summarizes Tang’s six sense of the Dao in the
Laozi:
(1) Dao as the unifying totality of the various principles in all things…
expressed in their concrete characteristics and behavior, existing immanently
within them rather than beyond them; (2) Dao as the nameless objective trans-
cendent metaphysical substance…from which all reality emerges, which is
beyond all apperception and predication; (3) Dao as named and manifested…,
that is, through such terms as weakness, return, mother, mystery, and the like;
(4) Dao as identical to De, Virtue or Virtuosity, which Tang sees as a some-
times used in distinction to Dao but at other times as an alternate denotation
of the ontological identity and cosmological function of Dao; (5) Dao as the
guiding principle for the cultivation of Virtue and other practical applications,
in ethical and political life; (6) Dao as ideal or original state of persons and
things.” (Ziporyn, 2012: 142; Tang, 1986: 368-81)
Second, here is Graham’s original list of “chains of oppositions”—listed in two
groups, (A) and (B)—culled from the Laozi’s many descriptions of the Dao:

Footnote 1 (continued)
the many often missed nuances in the text, and with Moeller’s translation capturing more of the terse
power of the text.
2
One-all value monism represents a novel view in contemporary axiology, while moral trivialism rep-
resents a novel view in the sub-field of contemporary metaethics that is concerned with moral epistemol-
ogy. In this paper, I will treat axiology as an aspect of metaethics very broadly construed. Clearly, axiol-
ogy is the study of values and there are more than just moral values. However, the remit of metaethics
has expanded over the years to include the study of not only the metaphysical, epistemological, semantic,
and psychological aspects of moral judgments, but the very nature of all normative judgments, including
judgments concerning all sorts of values. This is sometimes described as metanormativity, the study of
reasons, which raises another issue as well, that of the relationship between values and reasons. There is
debate as to whether values are reducible to reasons or vice versa. I will remain agnostic about that issue
in this paper. Whatever kind of ultimate metaphysical entity the truthmaker for normative and axiologi-
cal judgments turns out to be, we can address other aspects of that entity that can tell us much about its
metaphysical status. I make no claim then in this paper that values are ultimately reasons or vice versa.
What I claim will not turn of which entity enjoys more metaphysical priority.
Asian Journal of Philosophy (2024) 3:68 Page 3 of 19 68

A: Something, Doing Something, Knowledge, Male, Full, Above, Before,

Moving, Big, Strong, Hard, Straight
B: Nothing, Doing Nothing, Ignorance, Female, Empty, Below, Behind, Still,
Small, Weak, Soft, Bent (Graham, 1989: 223).
Ziporyn then modifies Graham’s list of “parallel dyads,” turning them into what
he calls “the dyadic a priori,” adding axiological distinctions that will become
important for us below (Ziporyn, 2012: 140):
A: (the Valued/Coherent): Name, High, Male, Vessel, Moving, Full, Adult,
Bright.
B: (the Disvalued/Incoherent): Nameless, Low, Female, Unhewn Material,
Still, Empty, Infant, Dark.
(Ziporyn, 2012: 152).
Both Graham and Ziporyn emphasize that all the B traits are associated with wu
無 (nothing, non-being, nonexistence, non-having, nonpresence, emptiness, and so
on) and the Dao in the Laozi. These traits are also associated with the yin quali-
ties in the yinyang 陰陽 distinction that characterizes Daoist cosmology. However,
borrowing Tang’s emphasis on the Dao’s being both immanent and transcendent to
things, Ziporyn interprets the Dao of the Laozi as being simultaneously both what
is opposed to and exists prior to all things, and what encompasses and permeates
them, what is present in all A or you 有 (being, existing, having, presence, fullness,
and so on) or yang traits as their true or real nature (Ziporyn, 2012: 153). As we will
see, my move will be to embolden this claim concerning the Dao’s omnipresence
in A traits to the degree of making it an ultimately monistic view concerning the
identity of the Dao as all things and all things as the Dao, especially in the context
of the value of the Dao and the value of things. This will also entail an exacerbation
of Ziporyn’s ironic reading of the Dao to the degree of the affirmation of true con-
tradictions, first in an only localized sense of permitted dialetheia, but then in a fully
explosive trivialist sense in which all judgments are true, especially moral ones. But
let us first see how Ziporyn argues for the Dao’s omnipresence in the Laozi.
Ziporyn’s favored image for discussing the Laozian Dao is that of the “uncarved
block,” pu 樸, which he usually translates as the “unhewn” and which is contrasted
with carved vessels or other useful objects, qi 器, the hewn entities that are thought
to emerge from the unhewn, as mentioned in chapter 28 of the Laozi (Ziporyn, 2012:
152–53; 2023: 34). The unhewn stands for all the B traits listed above. It thus stands
for the Dao itself. On the one hand, the unhewn is the opposite of the hewn. It is
what is left over after the carving has begun. It is the debris or detritus, the “form-
less, nameless, unintelligible” stuff or material left over after a carving (Ziporyn,
2012: 151). On the other hand, the unhewn is what precedes any cutting, the whole
entity that contains both the soon-to-be carved tool and the material debris that will
be left over. The unhewn is thus both the remainder following any carving and what
precedes any carving. But, on a third hand, the unhewn is also what encompasses
and permeates the carved entity as well. The unhewn is not the hewn, what precedes
the hewn, and what follows the hewn, what thrives within and through the hewn
itself. The uncarved block is not the carved entity insofar as it is what is left over
 68 Page 4 of 19 Asian Journal of Philosophy (2024) 3:68

after a carving, but it is also what precedes the carving insofar as it is the stuff out
of which what will be carved, and it is also what makes the carved entity what it is
insofar as it permeates the carved entity and thus gives it its nature, substance, form,
and function. It is this third sense of the unhewn as what encompasses the hewn, as
what serves as its “pattern or principle,” that gives us a glimpse into what Ziporyn
means by omnipresence (Ziporyn, 2012: 153).
Ziporyn organizes his analysis of omnipresence into five separate meanings of the
unhewn. These five meanings capture what he regards as the doubleness or irony of
the Laozi’s understanding of the Dao. By the fifth meaning, we see how the Dao (the
unhewn, all the B entities listed above: the yin, nameless, low, still, empty, dark, and
so on) is present in all things, all the A entities (the hewn, the yang, named, high,
moving, full, light, and so on). For Ziporyn, “B in all cases is (1) the opposite of A;
(2) the totality of both A and B; (3) neither A nor B; (4) the true B; and (5) the true
A” (Ziporyn, 2012: 153). The unhewn is not the hewn insofar as it is the whence and
whither of the hewn, its source and end, that out of which it goes and into which it
returns (1).3 The unhewn is both the unhewn and hewn insofar as it is the material
or stuff out of which the hewn and the detritus remaining after the making is made
(2). The unhewn is neither the unhewn nor the hewn insofar as it is neither what
emerges from the carving nor the detritus left after the carving, neither the thing nor
the condition of possibility of thinghood insofar as it precedes both ad infinitum, a
remainder that precedes it is becoming a remainder (3). The unhewn is thus the true
unhewn, the truly uncut entity, not the unhewn that is not the hewn, that gets cut into
the hewn, that is left over after a cutting into the hewn, that is that out of which and
into which the hewn emerges and returns (4). The unhewn then is finally the true
hewn insofar as it is what permeates and encompasses the hewn, what serves as the
principle and pattern for the hewn, what never leaves it, what constitutes, causes,
sustains, and destroys the hewn, what reverses and returns the hewn back into itself
(5).
It is with this fifth meaning that Ziporyn reaches his full understanding of the
omnipresence of the Dao in the Laozi. He summarizes it in these terms:
The true A as opposed to so‐called “A,” i.e., the pattern or principle of aris-
ing and returning, the inherent tendency back toward its unintelligibility and
valuelessness which is always immanent in it, which determines how A acts,
permeates A, makes A, sustains A as A, and hence is the real locus of its iden-
tity as A. A is A as opposed to B only because A is value, and the unhewn (B)
is the real value of A. The unhewn is thus the real A. (Ziporyn, 2012: 153)
Ziporyn next makes this final point again in the language of truth and irony, mix-
ing both the alethic sense of “true” as accurate or correspondent and the metaphysi-
cal sense of “true” as real. He claims that the truth of B is that it is the true A,

3
This returning is in reference to the fact that “reversal is the movement of the Dao,” to cite Moeller’s
translation of chapter 40 (Moeller 2007: 97). Ziporyn has this line read, “reversal, opposition: the activity
of the course” (Ziporyn 2023: 50). What is key here, as we will see, is that this reversal is a returning of
carved entities to an unhewn source they never actually left.
Asian Journal of Philosophy (2024) 3:68 Page 5 of 19 68

precisely what is not true of it qua B. To be the true A, it must be true that B is what
it is not, A. This then explains how B is omnipresent throughout A as well. Since it
is the truth of A, the true A, B is everywhere where A is. It is this truth, that B is
the true A, “that constitutes the ‘irony’ of the Daoist tradition” and thus renders the
Dao “everywhere and nowhere” (Ziporyn, 2012: 153). That is, it is the case both
that the Dao is everywhere where non-Dao is because it is the truth of non-Dao
and non-Dao is everywhere where Dao is because it is the truth of the Dao. Dao is
the true non-Dao; “‘non-Dao’ is the true ‘Dao’” (Ziporyn, 2012: 153). To steer this
discussion towards the metaethical status of the ironically omnipresent true Dao, let
us move to how Ziporyn presents these claims concerning omnipresence in terms of
value.

2 Axiological omnipresence

At first, Ziporyn associates the hewn, all the A entities, with value and the unhewn
with disvalue. The locus of value is in the carved vessel, while the now-carved block
is disvalued as the discarded detritus left over after a carving. But the unhewn block
is also the constant value of what will become the valued carved entity and the dis-
valued detritus. If so, then the unhewn’s value must precede the distinction between
value and disvalue that only arises with the carving, with evaluation, the distinction
into valued vessel and disvalued detritus. If so, then it is not that the unhewn is val-
ued or has value in the way carved entities do. Carved entities are so many degrees
of value, all the good or bad tools, utensils, things, and so on. The unhewn is not
on the spectrum of valued entities. It is no mere (valued) thing. But if so, then it
must be the truly valuable thing, the true value which precedes and which follows
from valuation, what all values must emerge from and return to, indeed what must
generate and destroy all values. The unhewn is thus the true source and nature, the
true value, of the valued and the disvalued as well, both discarded disvalue and the
ultimate disvalue associated with all the B traits (low, still, empty, dark, and so on).
The unhewn is the valueless value of the valued then, the valuable disvalue of the
valueless. It is the true value of all values, all that is valued and disvalued, because it
permeates and conditions all values no matter how valuable. The unhewn is the true
value of all values by not being merely any one of them, but by being omnipresent
in them all. Ziporyn puts it this way: “The unhewn is the truth about the vessel (i.e.,
the vessel is taken as the locus of value, but the true locus of value lies in the anti‐
vessel, viz., the unhewn, which is what truly satisfies the original definition given to
‘vessel’—its valuableness)” (Ziporyn, 2012: 153).
What this value paradox entails is that the value of the unhewn is present in all
values and disvalues, which means, ironically, that it is both the true disvalue of all
the values and disvalues which it is not and, likewise, the true value of all the values
and disvalues in which it is present. The Dao is the value that is both in and not in
all values and disvalues. The Dao is the Value which permeates, which is the pattern
or principle inherent to, all value/disvalue distinctions, all the value distinctions it
ultimately makes or generates, which includes the Dao’s own distinction from itself,
all the values and disvalues which it produces, permeates, and returns to itself. No
 68 Page 6 of 19 Asian Journal of Philosophy (2024) 3:68

values or disvalues ever leave the Dao’s omnipresent value because the Dao never
leaves them. This is evident from the last line of chapter 28 of the Laozi, which says
that “the vastest of all structures is formed by the great cutting and carving that sev-
ers nothing” (Ziporyn, 2023: 35). It is in this “severing of nothing” that enables the
Dao to remain omnipresent in all that is cut and carved, all values, all things. Even
while hewn and carved, nothing leaves the Dao, the unhewn. All carvings, all val-
ues, are all ways inherent to the Dao, all ways in which the Dao is always present in
all values, all things, everywhere and nowhere.
Perhaps another example from the Laozi besides that of the unhewn will help us
understand Ziporyn’s reading of the Dao in terms of axiological omnipresence. In
the famous first chapter, the Laozi tells us about the permanent, constant, or eternal
(chang 常) Dao and name (ming 名), the Dao and name that is not specified and
named, at least not as any mere specific thing or name.4 Now, what’s in a name?
As we have seen, Ziporyn includes names in the A group. So, on the one hand,
names name things. They name carvings and thus are themselves carvings. How-
ever, on the other hand, names are not only descriptive. In classical China, names
name normative or axiological properties, social roles, and communal expectations,
and the reputation or fame accrued for properly fulling these roles and meeting
these expectations. Names are thus also prescriptive, and sometimes they succeed
at corresponding to what they name and sometimes they do not (Makeham, 1994;
D’Ambrosio et al., 2018). For Ziporyn, names are values, evaluations, or projections
of value or disvalue. He says that the second line of chapter 1 (“Any name can be
named to determine what is or should be, but no name like that can be what deter-
mines them always.”) could also be loosely translated as “Its value can be valued,
but then it will not be enduring value” (Ziporyn, 2012: 284). What is interesting is
that the Dao as well could be understood both descriptively and prescriptively. It is a
concrete thing in terms of being an actual path, road, or way, to the degree of being
the cosmogonic and cosmological way, the immanent and transcendent course of all
beings and events, as we saw with Tang’s six senses of Dao. It is also a value insofar
as it inherently instantiates normative properties, as can be discerned from earlier
understandings of the Dao as “course of behavior,” “plan of approach,” or “way of
engaging.” Dao can thus mean a purposive activity, but one that, in the Laozi, will
be the ironic activity of purposeless or spontaneous (ziran 自然) nondoing or non-
acting (wuwei 无为). So, the concepts of name and Dao designate values, and in the
case of the Dao designate value itself, but a value that is not only or merely any of
the values or disvalues that are named, followed, or rejected.
To set the Dao and names back into Ziporynian omnipresence, we can regard the
first lines of the first chapter of the Laozi as saying that the constant or permanent
Dao and name is the value that is no mere specifically named or followed value or

4
Ziporyn translates the first two lines of chapter 1 of the Laozi in this way: “Any course can be taken as
the right course to take, but no course like that can be the course taken always. Any name can be named
to determine what is or should be, but no name like that can be what determines them always” (Ziporyn
2023: 1). Just to get a sense of how else these lines could sound, here is Moeller’s translation of the
same: “As to a Dao—if it can be specified as a Dao, it is not a permanent Dao. As to a name—if it can be
specified as a name, it is not a permanent name” (Moeller 2007: 3).
Asian Journal of Philosophy (2024) 3:68 Page 7 of 19 68

course, but the permanent or constant value that is always there in all degrees of
value. Where exactly is the Dao in all these degrees of value? Well, everywhere,
in and through all things, values, names, and courses. The Laozi next tells us that
having no name is the beginning of all things while having a name is the mother of
all things (wanwu 萬物). What is the difference between a beginning and a mother?
According to the Laozi, nothing really, considering chapters 25 and 52 describe the
beginning of the world as its mother. Also, chapter 1 declares that both having no
name and having a name “emerge together as one, but when named are determined
as different” (Ziporyn, 2023: 1). This means that the Dao’s namelessness, its name
of “nameless Dao,” is its permanent causation of the world, of all things, all names.
In terms of value, this means the Dao’s valuelessness, the value of its valueless-
ness, is its being the constant causal source of all values, all names. The world is
shot through with the Dao’s constant value as it generates and returns to itself all
values and disvalues that are carved, projected, and named. The way the world is, is
thus the way it should be, and this is what we have already seen with respect to the
unhewn. The Dao is the uncut source, nature, function, and so on of all hewn enti-
ties, all cut and carved entities, all things. It is present throughout them, hence it is
omnipresent. The value of the unhewn is the nameless, valueless value of its simul-
taneously eternally named value and everlasting valuelessness as the source and per-
meating presence of the valued values, all the things so valued, all the names, all the
carved entities, all the entities (namely, all of them) that it generates and returns to
itself, the whole world, heaven and earth (tiandi 天地), all that is.
Ziporyn’s reading of the Laozi in terms of axiological omnipresence would be
a fascinating interpretation in its own right, but there are hints of something more
going on in his discussion of the text. Ziporyn does not only say that “the Dao is
everywhere and nowhere,” but he continues by saying, “is everything and nothing”
(Ziporyn, 2012: 161). “The Dao is everything and nothing” means something quite
distinct from “the Dao is everywhere and nowhere.” The Dao’s being everything and
nothing is no mere paradoxical simultaneity or coincidence of opposites. Usually,
in theological discussions, the entity thought to be omnipresent—in the West, God,
the tri-omni perfect person of the Abrahamic tradition—is not identified with all the
things in which it is present. God’s omnipresence in creation is not his being eve-
rything he creates, but rather just his being everywhere where he has created crea-
tures, which is, obviously, everywhere considering God is meant to be the author of
existence and creator of spacetime and all that occupies all its regions.5 Fortunately,
Daoist omnipresence is not as nearly beset by the many problems Western theo-
logians have had to wrestle with in relation to God, like the problems of simplic-
ity (how can something that is indivisible, God, be in multiple regions of space?),
multilocation (how can something simultaneously occupy distinct regions of space
without contradiction?), containment (how can something limitless be contained in
a region?), timelessness (how could something atemporal be in a region of space?),

5
For some Biblical references for this, see Jeremiah 23: 24 (“Do I not fill heaven and earth? says the
Lord.”) and Acts 17:27–8 (“God…is not far from each one of us. For ‘In him we live and move and have
our being.’’’).
 68 Page 8 of 19 Asian Journal of Philosophy (2024) 3:68

incorporeality (how could something without a body be in a region of space?), and

co-location (how could two different things occupy the same region?) (Hudson,
2009: 205). All the contradictions that these questions are anxious to avoid are hap-
pily affirmed in the Laozi as true. We will return to the issue of true contradictions in
the last section.
Another reason why Daoism is not as troubled by these problems is likely
because the Dao is not a perfect person. Also, if Ziporyn is right about the Dao
being everything and nothing, then it is not truly distinct from the things, every-
thing, in which it is present. The Dao is everything it is in. Everything in the Dao is
it. This is likely the full entailment of the cutting that severs nothing: things remain
in the Dao and the Dao in them precisely because they are the Dao, all the ways it is
so. In Western debates about omnipresence, this is closer to a pantheistic supersub-
stantivalist view in which God is numerically identical to spacetime, especially as
it is sometimes attributed to a figure like Spinoza, though Spinoza never described
God as omnipresent and his God is rarely described in those terms in Spinoza schol-
arship. Regardless, what is key here is that the concept of omnipresence is slipping
into the concept of monism. If something is everything and nothing, then it is cer-
tainly one thing, the one thing, that all things are in some to-be-specified way, either
as dependent upon or simply identical to the one thing. In terms of value, if Laozian
omnipresence is really a theory of a monistic Dao, as Ziporyn seems to intimate,
then there is going to be only one value to which all values and disvalues are identi-
cal. Developing Ziporyn’s comments then, the Daoism of the Laozi offers some sort
of value monism. In what follows, I discern which sort of value monism we find
hinted at in Ziporyn’s interpretation of the Laozi and explicate the full metaethical
implications of just such a novel form of value monism.

3 One‑all monism

The first point to make is that it is not a radical or novel thought to view the Dao-
ism of the Laozi, or Daoism in general, as containing a monism (Lai, 2008: 93). The
issue is discerning what kind of monism it offers, which is the aim of this section.
Moeller has read the Laozi in monistic terms. He tells us that “as a numerical sym-
bol, ‘one’ or ‘oneness’ stands for the Dao” (Moeller, 2007: 94). He emphasizes that
the image of the wheel from chapter 11, with “thirty spokes united in one hub,” is
representative of the Laozi’s monist metaphysics (Moeller, 2007: 27). Moeller sees
the hub of the wheel as being identified with all the B or wu 無 traits and the spokes
with all the A or you 有 traits. In Ziporyn’s terms, we could say the hub is the oppo-
site of the spokes (1), the totality of the hub and spokes (2), neither, and thus more
than, the hub and spokes (3), the true hub (4), and thus the true spokes (5). In other
words, the hub is the Dao which is the wheel which is not merely the hub, but the
hub and the spokes, the true spokes qua the hub qua the wheel. The Dao itself, the
wheel, is both an affirmation of the absolute oneness of B and the absolute plurality
of A. This dynamic is found in the Dao’s generative power as well. The Dao is one
wheel whose self-causally generative power is expressed in both its constantly or
permanently still namelessly named valueless centrality (qua hub) and its infinitely
Asian Journal of Philosophy (2024) 3:68 Page 9 of 19 68

moving named and valued plurality as all the ways it eternally generates, destroys,
and returns to itself (qua spokes). The hub is the non-thing the Dao is only insofar as
it also all the spokes it remains present to and ultimately exists as, as all the things it
produces and destroys, all the ways it functions in and through all that it carves itself
into without ever severing what it thereby cuts. Moeller reaches similar conclusions
to Ziporyn concerning the Laozian Dao’s omnipresence, and he likewise has his
notion of omnipresence drift into monism:
Although the ‘absolute’ opposite constituents of hub/spokes…never change
their differing roles, they still form a single and indivisible unit. The hub rep-
resents the inner unity of the wheel. It unites the spokes and is the pivot for all
‘contradictory’ movement. Insofar as the Dao can be identified as the empty
center or the hub, it contains nothing. Since there is nothing within it, it is the
smallest of all things. But insofar as the Dao can also be identified with every-
thing that is going on, or in the image of Laozi 11, with the whole wheel, there
is nothing that does not take part in its movement. Being all-inclusive, the Dao
is of the greatest extension. The Dao, as both the inner and greater unity of all
perfect happenings, is nowhere and everywhere at the same time. It is both the
hub and the wheel. (Moeller, 2004: 33)
In other words, by being everywhere and nowhere, the Dao is everything and
nothing. Ziporyn and Moeller agree on this point.
Moeller likewise reads chapter 42 of the Laozi as providing a description of
the Dao as both an indivisible oneness and an absolute plurality. This chapter
notoriously tells us that.
The Dao generates Oneness. Oneness generates Twoness. Twoness generates
Threeness. Threeness generates the ten thousand things. The ten thousand
things; carrying Yin, embracing Yang—blending Qi to create harmony. (Moe-
ller, 2007: 103)6
Moeller does not read this story of generation diachronically or sequentially in
any literal temporal sense. Contrary to Tongdong Bai’s reading as well, neither
Moeller nor Ziporyn offer, in their final analysis, a layered or hierarchical vision
of the metaphysical priority of wu over you in the Laozi (Bai, 2008). Rather, all
generation and return are always eternally, spontaneously, naturally happening. The
Dao is one constant process of continuous and indivisible self-causal generation and
return of and as all things. Moeller writes, “That which generates the generated is
itself part of the monistic circle of generation” (Moeller, 2007: 96). Indeed, B and A
traits appear mutually self- and other-generating considering chapter 2 of the Laozi
tells us that “presence and nonpresence generate each other” (Moeller, 2007: 7). The

6
Ziporyn’s poetic rendering of these same lines shows how interpretative similarity can be found even
in rather divergent translations: “The course generates continuities. Continuities generate polarities.
Polarities generate triplicities. Triplicities generate the ten thousand things. All the ten thousand things
bear the darkness of shadow on their backs as they hug the brightness of sunlight to their breasts—and in
the intermingling of these two energies all their harmonies are formed.” (Ziporyn 2023: 53).
 68 Page 10 of 19 Asian Journal of Philosophy (2024) 3:68

Dao, then, is the whole self-causally and mutually generative wheel, both the self-
and other-generating hub and the self- and other-generating spokes. The one is the
permanent production and destruction of all as all, of each as each, of each as all,
and all as each. All are each the permanent production and destruction of the one as
the one, the one that is all. Moeller again writes,
At the center of the process of generation is the Dao which is identified with
nothingness (wu) or emptiness as well as with the number one (note: not
zero) that stands for both singleness and totality. Explained with the help of
the image of the wheel, the Dao is both the empty and single hub (the inward
center and ‘origin’’ of the wheel’s function) as well as the whole wheel (the
outward totality of all that happens or the monistic cosmos). …This oneness
and twoness together constitute the threeness that stands for the multiplicity
of the ten thousand things. Seen as a totality, the Dao is one, but its oneness
is just the frame of a fundamental twoness that is at the heart of change and
reproduction.” (Moeller, 2007: 100)
Just as with Ziporyn’s reading of omnipresence, I would embolden Moeller’s
claim of monistic oneness here from being merely a frame to its being the very
nature and essence of each thing that exists. The Dao is not only the frame but eve-
rything within it as well, not only the whole, but the whole which is each and every
one of its parts, which means each part is also the whole Dao, both all the parts that
are the whole and each part that is all the parts, the whole Dao. Each wave is the
whole ocean which is every wave.
This brings us to a discussion of the role of mereology (the study of the relations
between parts and wholes) in contemporary debates in metaphysics about monism. I
have already hinted at the view I think we find implicit in the Laozi, which I will call
“one-all monism.” The Laozian view of reality resembles Megan Wallace’s (2011),
and at times Donald Baxter’s (1988), strong composition as, or many-one, identity
view that says the parts of a whole are, taken together, identical to the whole they
compose. With the reading of the Laozi on offer here, however, what we have is
something closer to perhaps a strongest conceivable composition as, or many-one,
identity view insofar as it is not merely the parts taken collectively that are identi-
cal to the whole, but each and every part taken individually that is identical to the
whole. There is only one concrete particular, the whole, and each individual concrete
particular of the absolute infinity of them that composes that one concrete particular
is that one concrete particular, the whole. This could be called “one-all identity”
instead of merely “many-one” identity. In terms of the recent debate over metaphysi-
cal monism, the Laozi offers another intensified and modified view. In opposition to
both Jonathan Schaffer’s (2010) priority monism, where the whole universe is meta-
physically prior to its parts that irreflexively and asymmetrically depend upon it, and
Horgan and Portč (2008) existence monism, where only the whole exists without
any parts at all, Laozian monism would have to be called something like “one-all
monism,” where the whole universe is one thing that is reflexively and symmetri-
cally identical to each one of its parts. Each part of the universe, whatever it may
be, is the whole universe and vice versa. Each thing is the Dao and the Dao is each
thing. The Dao is not merely any one thing opposed to or in relation to another,
Asian Journal of Philosophy (2024) 3:68 Page 11 of 19 68

hence its status as nothing, not a mere thing. But it is also each thing insofar as
each is all things, each part is the whole, all the other parts that along with it are the
whole. This is what the Dao’s being everything and nothing fully entails.
Rafał Banka has recently provided a few excellent mereological analyses of
the Laozi as well (Banka 2018; 2022; 2023). Where his view differs from the one
offered here is in his claim that A or you traits exhibit restricted composition while
B or wu traits, the Dao, exhibit unrestricted composition. This is mostly because, for
Banka, the Dao eternally contains infinitely unrealized or unactualized forms only a
portion of which are eventually actualized in the temporal generation of A traits. By
contrast, insofar as I am claiming that wu and you traits are discernibly identical—to
borrow another of Baxter’s ideas describing many-one identity: ‘the discernibility of
identicals’ (Baxter 1999)—I am thus ascribing unrestricted composition, or mereo-
logical universalism, to all things. This entails that all entities, both the Dao and
all things, are actual, that the Dao is not some reservoir of unrealized potentialities
that far exceeds the actual world, but rather that all there is to the Dao’s infinity is
the actual infinity of all the A traits, and that the Dao’s eternity or constancy is its
permanent temporal emergence and decay of and as all things. This might make my
view incoherent or self-contradictory in strictly logical terms, but that is something I
happily affirm in Sect. 5, as we will see below, because the Laozi’s trivialism follows
from its one-all monism. While not claiming to be offering as sophisticated an anal-
ysis of the Laozi’s latent mereology as Banka has, what I am claiming is that if one
works out the Laozi’s mereology starting from an analysis of its monism, then one
will likely reach a different conclusion, one that emphasizes a kind of strong actual-
ism that entails the Dao must be all the A traits it ultimately generates, differentiates,
and returns to itself without any of them having left. Such a strong actualism allows
each actual thing to be the one actual thing that it is, the one thing that all things are,
the Dao, the eternally and infinitely actual thing that is all things.

4 One‑all value monism

Now that we have a better idea of the Laozi’s one-all monism, we can address this
view in terms of its axiological and metaethical import. In terms of value, one-all
monism is a one-all value monism. There is debate in axiology concerning value
monism and value pluralism. It is not, strictly speaking, a debate about how many
values there are, but about whether there is only one ultimate, intrinsic value
(Mason, 2023; Schroeder, 2021). Both value monism and value pluralism admit
there are a plurality of values. What they debate is whether one of them is the ulti-
mate, intrinsic value to which all the other values serve as the instruments for its
fulfilment. In these exact terms, the Laozi has little specifically to say. However, fol-
lowing certain readings of the Laozi, one of which we will discuss below, we can
interpret the Dao as being the ultimate, intrinsic value: the Good. On the other hand,
if an amplified and combined version of Ziporyn’s omnipresence and Moeller’s
monism gives us a one-all monism as the correct view of the Laozi’s metaphysics,
then it will not make sense to view all A and you traits as merely instrumental values
for the fulfilment of the Dao’s ultimate value. Rather, each and every thing or value
 68 Page 12 of 19 Asian Journal of Philosophy (2024) 3:68

will have to be the ultimate value of the Dao. In other words, each spoke, each carv-
ing, each value, is the ultimate value of the hub, the unhewn, the Dao and vice versa.
This would also mean that not only is every value the instrumental value for the
fulfilment of the ultimate value of the Dao, but each value is both ultimately instru-
mentally and ultimately valuable as the Dao. If B is true A, then the valueless value
of the Dao will be the true value of each valued and disvalued value and disvalue.
So, a one-all value monism will not say that all value ultimately reduces to a single
property (like happiness or pleasure, say), but that all value is ultimately the same
value, which is all the different values and disvalues. John Richardson has recently
written somewhat similarly of Nietzsche’s metaethics that, for Nietzsche, “all of life
is good, and the bad is only a form of the good” (Richardson, 2020: 355). Yet, while
close, this would only be half-true for the Laozi, for according to one-all value mon-
ism not only is all life good and the bad only a form of the good, but also that all life
is bad and the good is only a form of the bad as well. It is important to keep in mind
that the Dao is also the disvalued detritus, the useless debris after a carving, and
that if the Dao is all carvings, all names, then all carvings are this disvalued detritus
as well. Of course, on the other hand, given the final, more positive statement con-
cerning the Dao’s being the true A, it is better to speak of it as the good which is all
forms of good and bad, what all values ultimately are, all values and disvalues.
If it was not entirely controversial to read the Laozi as offering a monism, then
it is likely just as non-controversial to read the Laozi as offering a form of value
monism as well. In the introduction to a recent collection on The Oneness Hypoth-
esis, we read that “Daoism is another of the several East Asian traditions that main-
tain the world is a grand interconnected whole, with each and every aspect enjoying
the same moral status” (Ivanhoe et al., 2018: 3). Again, the key here is in discern-
ing what is meant by “same moral status.” Chung-Ying Cheng has read the “onto-
ethics” of the Laozi in similar terms, and so has something essential to say about
moral status in the Laozi. By “onto-ethics,” Cheng seems to mean something like
a strong form of moral naturalism, stronger than even the usual Aristotelian moral
naturalism that grounds most virtue ethics in the West, whereby moral properties are
grounded in natural yet normative and telic properties.7 In the Laozi, according to
Cheng, moral facts or properties, and indeed all values, are rooted in and explained
by the cosmogonic and cosmological Dao and its power (de 德) (Cheng 2004: 166).
Cheng focuses on the role of shan 善, which can mean “good,” “goodness,” “the
good,” but also “skill” and “skilful” in the sense of “being good at”’ something.

7
The reading of the Laozi as offering a robust kind of metaethical realism in the form of a moral natu-
ralism appears to be the common or received view in the scholarship. It is found in some form or another
in Xiaogan Liu (1999: 211–238), JeeLoo Liu (2003: 282), Karyn Lai (2006: 83–105), and Tao Jiang
(2021: 212–223), among others. It is hard to discern, however, whether scholars of the Laozi view the
text’s moral naturalism in a reductive or non-reductive manner, that is, whether they think, for the Laozi,
moral facts or values are natural facts reducible to other more basic natural facts or are already irreduc-
ible natural facts themselves. One gets the sense of a latent preference for the latter reading. Either way,
while true, reading the Laozi in terms of moral naturalism remains only part of the story. The Laozi’s
moral realism is more robust than moral naturalism, which, as we will see, remains only a partial success
theory.
Asian Journal of Philosophy (2024) 3:68 Page 13 of 19 68

Cheng emphasizes that the good person taps into and ultimately becomes the Dao’s
goodness, the good that is the Dao’s spontaneous eternal self-generation. The way
the good person does this is by having their non-action (wuwei) be the expression of
the Dao’s spontaneity (ziran).
Cheng develops his reading of values in the Laozi by focusing on chapter 2 where
value distinctions between beauty and ugliness, good and bad, are said to follow
from knowledge of beauty and the good: “Everybody knows what is good. Thus
there is that which is not good” (Moeller, 2007: 7). Cheng takes this to mean that
the true good of the Dao will not be found in the distinction between good and bad,
in the naming of value or disvalue. Rather, true good permanently, namelessly pre-
cedes the distinction into good and bad. There is thus a meta-distinction between
dependent and relative goods and bads based on distinctions and names and a good,
the good, an independent and absolute good, based on its own spontaneous and nat-
ural namelessness, its permanent precedence (Cheng 2004: 168). This latter good is
the Dao, the Dao’s good, the Dao as the Good. Cheng sees chapter 8’s discussion of
“the highest good” being “like water” as emblematic of the Dao’s absolute and inde-
pendent goodness because water is “so deft, so good at benefiting things by never
competing with them, by putting itself where none want to go” (Ziporyn, 2023: 9).
Cheng next describes the Dao as the good, and the good person who embodies and
non-acts in accordance with it, in these terms:
What is important is that the supreme or absolute goodness is inherent in the
dao and hence can be found in a person if the person follows the dao. As an
inherent quality of a person, the good comes out from the action of the person
without having the person first to make a distinction between good and bad.
The absolute goodness is natural and essential to the dao and one may even
say that it is part of the naturalness of the movement of the dao just as what is
manifested from water is part of the naturalness of the movement of the dao.
(Cheng 2004: 169)
Now, if the reading of value in the Laozi I offered above, in terms of a one-all
value monism, is on the right track, then Cheng’s reading will have to be seen as
only partially true. Cheng is right that the goodness of the Dao is not any mere good
found in a known and named good stemming from a good/bad distinction, that the
Dao itself, in relation to them, is not (merely) a named or known good. But it is also
the case that it is the nonpresent Dao itself that generates all these value distinc-
tions, all these known names, values, present goods and bads, and so on. The Dao
ultimately is all these value distinctions. As we have already seen, chapter 2 contin-
ues, after telling us there is bad once good is known, by stating that “presence (you)
and nonpresence (wu) generate each other.” This means all good/bad distinctions are
both distinct from and identical to the Good that produces and ultimately is them and
which they too produce. The absolute, independent Good that is the Dao generates
and returns to itself all good/bad distinctions and likewise all good/bad distinctions,
all named and known values, generate the Dao’s absolutely independent goodness.
All relative, dependent goods and bads are the Dao’s goodness. Each named and
known good and bad is the Good that is the Dao. The Dao is all the ways it carves
values into itself while severing nothing from itself. So, while the Dao’s good, the
 68 Page 14 of 19 Asian Journal of Philosophy (2024) 3:68

Good, is not all the known goods and bads, by being both the perpetual post-carving
disvalue and what precedes and forever remains distinct from all values, it is also
that out of which and into which they are all generated and return. The Dao is thus
ultimately the true value of all known and named values and disvalues. The Dao
is the one value that is all values, that all values are. Hence, one-all value monism
might be the best way the read the Laozi’s latent axiology, an axiology based on an
omnipresence rendered properly monistic.
One-all value monism might also help explain certain aspects of the sage’s
behavior in the Laozi. The Daoist sage tends to treat the good and the bad, or at least
non-good, as being equally good, as being of equal value, as “enjoying the same
moral status.” For example, in chapter 27, we read about how sages have “multiple
clarity” or “extended illumination,” a kind of moral knowledge or wisdom that does
not result from the mere relative distinguishing between good and bad. Rather, this
special moral wisdom results from how “sages are so constantly good, so good at
rescuing people, so good at considering them good—finding not one to be worth-
less, abandoning none (Ziporyn, 2023:32). Moeller speaks of how everything fits
seamlessly into the sage, how “no people or goods remain outside him” (Moeller,
2007: 66). Likewise, in chapter 49, the Laozi describes the sage as having no heart
or intentions of his own, as always taking the people’s heart or intentions as his own.
The Laozi has the sage tell us why he does this: “I regard the good as good, but I
also regard the not-good as good. For virtuosity is to be good at finding them all
good” (Ziporyn, 2023: 60). For the sage, who embodies and expresses the perspec-
tive of the Dao, all things, all people, good and bad, are good. Which good are they
all? I would say the Dao’s Good, the goodness that all values, goods and bads, are
and with which he identifies, the good that he is and all things are. The goodness of
the sage is the goodness of the Dao, and such goodness is the way and fact that all
things are good. As we read in chapter 62 of the Laozi, “The Dao is the flow of the
ten thousand things, the treasure of the good person, and that by which the person
who is not good is protected” (Moeller, 2007: 143). Similarly, in chapter 79, the
Laozi says “The course of heaven has no favorites—it is constantly with good peo-
ple,” which on the face of it sounds incoherent, but makes perfect sense if we under-
stand the course of heaven’s impartiality being nothing but the good person’s, the
sage’s, seeing all things, all goods and bads, as what they really are: the absolute and
independent, the impartial, goodness of the Dao (Ziporyn, 2023: 92). All values are
the real value of the valueless value of the Dao, and that is what the sage is as well.

5 Moral trivialism

After having the sage tell us, in chapter 49, that he finds the good and the not-good
as equally good, the Laozi continues by reporting that, for the sage, “that which is
true he holds to be true [and] that which is not true he also holds to be true. Thus he
attains truth” (Moeller, 2007: 117). What could this mean? How could the truth be
the attainment of the true and not true being both true? Clearly, it is a contradiction
for the true and not true to both be true. But, for the Laozi, it is a true contradic-
tion, for it is how truth is attained. Truth is the attainment of the true contradiction
Asian Journal of Philosophy (2024) 3:68 Page 15 of 19 68

between true and not true. Now, a true contradiction is a dialetheia. Dialetheism is
the attempt to offer a non-classical or paraconsistent logic that would allow from
some local true contradictions to be attained, but not all. Dialetheism is thus the
attempt to prevent the application of the principle of explosion (ex contradictione
quodlibet), which says the attainment of one true contradiction entails the attain-
ment of all true contradictions. This entails that every proposition, contradictory
ones and the non-contradictory ones they are composed of, is true. The view which
says that all propositions and all contradictions are true is trivialism (Kabay, 2010;
Priest, 2006).8 Dialetheism is the attempt to prevent trivialism. That the Laozi says
many seemingly paradoxical and contradictory (or to use Ziporyn’s term, “ironic”)
things has long been noted. What has not been addressed directly is whether the
Laozi treats its contradictions as true, and whether the Laozi in the end not only
entertains dialetheism, but positively offers trivialism, a trivialist vision of truth and
thus reality. If we do not get the sense that the Laozi is aiming to provide hints for a
non-classical or paraconsistent logic that may prevent explosion into full trivialism,
as perhaps one may find in certain forms of Madhyamaka Buddhism (Deguchi et al.,
2008), then I think we can hazard the claim that the Laozi can be read trivially, that
is, it can be read as offering a version of trivialism, especially a moral trivialism.9
If one-all monism is the right reading the Laozi’s metaphysics, then we may
already have established an indirect defense of trivialism. For trivialism to be true,
reality must be trivial, which is to say all truthmakers must obtain. With respect to
trivial reality, to say that one is all is clearly to utter a contradiction. To be one is
usually not thought to mean that one is many, let alone that one is all. The reading
on offer here has it that it is true that one is all and that each is that one, that one
being is all beings and that each being is that one being. One being all beings is thus
a true contradiction. Each being that one being is also a true contradiction. Indeed,
these are true contradictions that apply to all beings and hence all judgments about

8
Paul Kabay offers many very sophisticated arguments for trivialism in his work on the topic, but we do
not have the space to rehearse them here. However, the best place to start with a defense of trivialism is
to simply point out that its denial is impossible, for trivialism already asserts its own denial insofar as it
holds that all assertions are true, including the assertion, “trivialism is false” (Kabay, 2010: 39–50).
9
While Takahura Oda has claimed that the Laozi “embraces contradictions manifestly and…conceives
them to be true resoundingly,” he also asserts that nothing at all follows from the Laozi’s apparent trivi-
alism. Instead of the application of the principle of explosion, the Laozi’s embracing of contradictions
entails the application of a principle of non-explosion, of ex contradictione nihil instead of ex contra-
dictione quodlibet. “This is because Daoist contradictions…remain to be true per se and thus invalidate
those Western classical rules” (Oda 2024: 4). But I would claim the opposite: the Laozi’s trivialism cer-
tainly does entail that everything follows from it and thus that every proposition is true, thus providing
validation and fulfilment of classic logic. Without the application of the principle of explosion, classical
logic would have to be replaced by a non-classical or paraconsistent logic like dialetheism, but, as men-
tioned, there is no evidence that the Laozi entertains such a possibility. Graham Priest has argued other-
wise by claiming that, while the Laozi’s Dao is a “contradictory object” insofar it is true that the Dao is
both ineffable and effable, such a status as a contradictory object does not entail the Laozi explodes into
trivialism (Priest 2021: 57). This is because, for Priest, through a paraconsistent logic like dialetheism,
contradictories may indeed overlap, there by providing some true contradictions such as the ones found
in the Laozi, but such overlap is never complete and so never leads to full explosion. Again, I see no
reason to think the Daoism of the Laozi does not bite the bullet and go fully into trivialist territory, thus
leaving classical logic as is.
 68 Page 16 of 19 Asian Journal of Philosophy (2024) 3:68

them, not merely to a locally true contradiction, a dialetheia, but a full explosion of
truth into trivialism, hence the attainment of truth through the holding of true and
not true as true of each and every thing. If each one is the one that is all, then there is
nothing that cannot be affirmed and confirmed of it. To be everything and nothing is
to be unable to have anything false said of it. Or, putting the same point differently,
everything false said of something that is everything and nothing is also true. All
contradictions, all false judgments, all true judgments—they are all true. All truth-
makers for all judgments obtain. Why? Because each truthmaker is all truthmakers.
Just as we saw with Ziporyn’s notion of omnipresence entailing and ultimately
becoming a monist view, a view of one-all monism, so must we view Ziporyn’s
ironic reading of the Laozi as ultimately entailing a global trivialism. Saying “the
Dao is non-Dao and the non-Dao is Dao” is not merely (or even really) to utter an
ironic statement. It is to utter a contradiction, a contradiction taken as true, a true
contradiction. Just as there is a point at which omnipresence becomes monism, so
too is there a point at which irony becomes contradiction. Irony involves a discrep-
ancy between what is said and what is meant. It is a play on implied and literal
meaning. But a contradiction involves two mutually exclusive statements being in
direct opposition to each other. It would seem the statements “the Dao is everything
and nothing” and “the Dao is non-Dao and non-Dao the Dao” would be much closer
to the latter than the former. These are not mere pieces of irony. They are full-blown
contradictions, contradictions the Laozi takes to be true. Based on this extended and
amplified reading of Ziporyn’s interpretation, we can say the Laozi offers both a
one-all monism and global trivialism. These views mutually entail each other. Every
judgment is true because every truthmaker exists as both what it is and what it is not,
both one thing and all things. Each thing is the one thing that is all things because
there is nothing false that could be said of it. Ironic omnipresence becomes trivialist
monism.
If trivial moral truth follows as a local expression of trivial global truth—that is,
if moral trivialism is a local expression of global trivialism—then what we have is
a quite distinct and novel metaethical view. Moral trivialism is thus the metaethical
we find in the Laozi. However, as a view, moral trivialism does not exist yet. With
respect to moral epistemology, the contemporary taxonomy of metaethical views is
incomplete. Robustly realist metaethical views like moral non-naturalism and moral
naturalism are partial success theories, claiming that some moral judgments succeed
at capturing the moral truth while others fail (Miller, 2013; Sayre-McCord, 2015).
On the other hand, one robustly anti-realist view, moral error theory, is a complete
failure view. It says that all moral judgments fail to capture moral truth because
moral facts, as non-negotiable and categorically prescriptive reasons for action, are
too weird to exist (Joyce, 2001; Mackie, 1977; Olson, 2014). Other positions, like
certain noncognitivist views, which reject the psychological cognitivism and seman-
tic factualism of the other realist and anti-realist options, technically do not regard
moral judgments as in the business of being possibly true or false. Insofar as moral
judgments are the expressions of mental states other than beliefs, and beliefs are the
carriers of propositions, moral judgments could neither succeed nor fail at capturing
moral truth (Ayer, 1952; Miller, 2013; van Roojen, 2023). Likewise, moral discourse
is technically not truth-apt insofar as it has a function other than the reporting of
Asian Journal of Philosophy (2024) 3:68 Page 17 of 19 68

purported moral truths. So, thus far, we have three moral epistemological options
with respect to whether moral judgments can be true: partial success and partial fail-
ure, complete failure, and neither success nor failure (complete or partial) (Camp-
bell, 2024). But what about complete success? What if every moral judgment suc-
ceeds at corresponding to the moral facts? Indeed, what if every moral, normative,
and axiological judgment succeeded? What if all value judgments succeeded? What
if all moral, normative, and axiological judgments were true? This would give us a
moral, normative, and axiological trivialism. For the sake of ease, let’s just describe
this view as ‘moral trivialism.’
Moral trivialism follows from one-all value monism. If every value is the one
value that is all values, then there is no judgment concerning that value that could
be false. Each value is itself and all the values it is not. Indeed, it is the one value
that is all values and disvalues: the Good of the Dao. Good is good. Good is bad.
Good is good and bad. Good is the Good. It is the Bad as well. It is the Good which
is the Bad and vice versa. Each good, each bad, is the Good that is all goods and
bads. Each bad, each good, is the Bad that is all bads and goods. No value judgment
fails. Each value instantiates all values. Each thing instantiates all values, consider-
ing from the perspective of values, all things are values. Not only do values per-
meate all things, they ultimately are all things. Axiological omnipresence become
one-all value monism. Thus, all things are values. All things are all values. Value is
both in and simply identical to all things. In metaethical terms, what we are describ-
ing is a robustly realist view that is both cognitivist and factualist like other realist
views, but which denies a moral judgment could ever fail to succeed at correspond-
ing to moral facts, that is, to values. This view would be the most robustly realist
view conceivable. Moral reality—indeed, all reality—could never get realer than
that. Why? Because every thing, as the Dao, is everything and nothing. Every value
and disvalue is the Dao’s ultimate value and disvalue. Each spoke is the hub that is
the wheel which is the hub and every spoke. Each carving is the unhewn and all its
carvings.
To conclude, let us consider what the motivations there could be for even consid-
ering views as apparently outrageous as one-all value monism and moral trivialism.
For the early Daoists, as for most if not all ancient philosophers the world over, the
goal was primarily therapeutic. In particular, the point in engaging in philosophical
speculation was often the attainment of tranquility and even immortality. Could it
be that moral trivialism, along with trivialism in general, offers a way to attain some
therapeutic upshot? Kabay concludes his defense of trivialism in just such a manner,
discussing “trivialism and the good life” (Kabay, 2010: 138). He argues that moral
trivialism, believing that “every state of affairs obtains—good and bad,” can lead to
an experience of ataraxia, of freedom from trouble and anxiety (Kabay, 2010: 138).
Kabay has his trivialist offer the following wise advice, advice that sounds remark-
ably Daoist, especially Laozian:
Why be worried? Because of the misfortune that befalls you? You regret not
having taken a different course of action? But necessarily all things obtain—
including everything that is bad for you. There is nothing you could have done
to prevent this. So why regret your past actions? Instead, be happy and relaxed.
 68 Page 18 of 19 Asian Journal of Philosophy (2024) 3:68

And besides, everything good obtains too—you have missed out on nothing.
The conditions for a peaceful, tranquil, and meaningful life are here to enjoy.
And there is nothing you need to do in order to ensure that this remains so.
Stop your worry, and be happy—and do whatever pleases you. (Kabay, 2010:
138)
The Laozi appears to also advise us to avoid the usual emotional turmoil that
attends most uses of morality. To Daoists, moralists like Confucians often betray
their instability by their use of morality as a vehicle for discharging a variety of
negative emotions: anxiety, fear, rage, impotence, and so on. Morality is pathologi-
cal (Fraser forthcoming). The Laozi recommends, by contrast, to affirm all things
as equally good and bad—to affirm each as what they are: the Good itself, the Bad
itself—thus leaving one quiescent and at ease, affirmative and impassive. Moral
trivialism is thus construable as a means for what could be described as salvation
or liberation. Trivializing morality could be a way of perfecting morality and thus
overcoming its pathological status. To remove from morality the usual sources of
anxiety and anger that often leads to and follows from its use could be a way a Laoz-
ian metaethics contributes to the attainment of the good life, the life everyone and
everything already enjoys.

Declarations
Ethical declaration Not applicable.

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