Abstract

In this project, I suggest that the rapprochement of Taoism in the ancient China and Complexity Theory recently developed in the West can provide us proper insight into the alternative concept of the human person, which is different from the centeredness of the modern subject. The alternative, I suggest, shares great sympathy with the critique of the modern subject discussed in the works of Heidegger, Foucault, Habermas, and Bourdieu. And yet, from the vantage point of a new worldview dubbed as the Tao of Complexity, I argue that the alternative concept of the subject is the synthesis of viewing each of their one-sided and different constructions of the human person as a consistent whole. ;The Tao of Complexity, I conclude, is that the world we live in is a complex of interacting elements , and yet, is spontaneous self-organizational from simpler rules; the world is a temporary invariant structure sensitive to small disturbances occurring inside or outside the system, and is constantly subject to evolutionary mutation, bifurcation, and transformation; the motor of change in the world is the clash of contradictory principles and elements; and lastly, the spontaneous evolution of the world is 'virtuous' in the sense that the Tao lets things be without manipulation. ;In parallel to the four aspects of the Tao of Complexity, I also construct the new concept of the subject, that is, the subject is decentered without being inactive; the subject is intersubjective without being ideal; the subject is strategic without being manipulative; and lastly, the subject is critical without being absolute. ;Taking 'the scientific Tao' and the 'virtue' of the sciences of Complexity together, I conclude that the new subject is neither fully independent , nor is it completely subjected to the conditions of existence . As a result, the solution to collective evil cannot be given in terms of the subject understood as independent or subjected