ABSTRACT
Naturalism is a polemical term, and the polemic does not translate well into the terms of traditional Chinese thought. The universe is self-contained, without an external principle or source of unity. Different versions introduce further conditions, but naturalism is always a thought about immanence, and that gives people a point of entry into the Chinese material. The late Zhou dynasty was a time of crisis, climaxing with dynastic collapse. The crisis seriously challenged the idea of a heavenly approved political order. Immanence implies that what a thing is has no substantial, intrinsic determination or identity. Identity is instead a matter of relations in ramifying networks and process without end. The Confucian idea is that people cannot understand what a thing is without understanding its relation to others upon whose existence it depends, and which define the norm of its interaction. Dao is not an entity, not a being with a form, shape, or presence in the world or beyond it.
