Tao Te Ching Ch. 71: The Wisdom of Knowing

Lao Tzu

The Wisdom of Knowing Nothing

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Summary

Lao Tzu draws a sharp line between two kinds of knowing. To know and yet think we do not know is the highest attainment. Not to know and yet think we do know is a disease.

The disease is false certainty: projecting expertise where understanding is thin. It is simply by being pained at the thought of having this disease that we are preserved from it. Discomfort with our own ignorance is the cure.

The sage has not the disease. He knows the pain that would be inseparable from it, and therefore he does not have it. Intellectual humility is not weakness; it is immunity. The person who can say I do not know keeps the door open to learning. The person who bluffs closes it.

To know and yet think we do not know is the highest attainment. Not to know and yet think we do know is a disease. Preservation from the disease is simply being pained at the thought of having it. The sage has not the disease. He knows the pain that would be inseparable from it, and therefore he does not have it. The chapter is only those turns: a highest attainment, a disease, the pain that prevents it, and a sage who stays free because he already knows what the disease would cost.

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Why This Matters

Detecting False Expertise

You can be busy all day and still move against the grain of what is actually happening. Lao Tzu says not to know yet think you do know is a disease, and the sage avoids it by knowing the pain inseparable from false certainty.

Before you answer the next question you are unsure about, say let me check and watch how trust changes.

This chapter

Inside the Mind: The one who thinks he knows

To know and yet think we do not know is the highest; not to know, and yet think we do know, is a disease. Being pained at the thought of having this disease is what preserves a person from it. The sage does not have it, because he knows the pain that would be inseparable from it.

Continue this thoughtUse Depends on the Space You Cannot Point To

Coming Up in Chapter 72

When the people do not fear what they ought to fear, that which is their great dread will come on them. Next Lao Tzu warns what happens when societies lose their sense of real danger and indulge thoughtlessly.

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Original text

70 wordscomplete

Chapter 71

The Wisdom of Knowing Nothing

71.1. To know and yet (think) we do not know is the highest
(attainment); not to know (and yet think) we do know is a disease.

2.It is simply by being pained at (the thought of) having this
disease that we are preserved from it. The sage has not the disease.
He knows the pain that would be inseparable from it, and therefore he
does not have it.

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