Answer to Question #238754 in Philosophy for Chy

Question

What is Lao-tzu trying to say about language when he claims to “say without saying” ?

Answer 1

Lao-tzu in his claims to “say without saying” was trying to mean that in language, the meaning of a word, or a text, is not fixed, but consists of the many perspectives offered in debate. Each new input interprets what has been said and thus adds to its meaning and this is akin to the approach of modern hermeneutics. What a text means is determined by its intersexual links to previous texts, and by the traces it leaves in its subsequent interpretations.