ABSTRACT
In this chapter we survey one pre-Western pragmatic tradition. We could have just as easily selected one of the pre-Socratic Greeks, such as Anaximander, Heraclitus or Protagoras. However, their teachings survive mostly in fragments or incidental references in the works of others. In electing to go instead with a non-Western dialectician, Lao Tse, one has the advantage of at least one coherent, if short and sometimes enigmatic, text of Philosophical Taoism (the Tao Teh Ching), together with the more earthy writings of its second major exponent, Chuang Tse.
