Zhao Tingyang Lecture and Series: Tianxia (and its critique)

Title: The maze of Tianxia–all-under-heaven

Time: 22 Sep 2022

Site: online

http://warpweftandway.com/zhao-tingyang-lecture-and-series/ 

Speaker: Tingyang Zhao

Zhao proposes the notion of Tianxia, all under heaven, in order to cope with global challenges nowadays. 

There are diverse values in our world. Diversity means infinity to some degree. Infinity would become an obstacle for humans to seek good. So, Zhao attempts to give a universal truth by ontological argument. Tianxia rests on the ontological argument.

There have been two ontological arguments. On the one hand, Laozi gives a naturalistic world. However, Zhao thinks that human makes the world so that world is evitable to become unnatural. On the other hand, Leibniz presents a logical world. Zhao says that our society is very complicated, so the logical world as the best possible world is too simple and unrealistic. Therefore, he speculates a world, called Tianxia. 

Tianxia is a balanced and symmetric system. Subjects co-exist in terms of ontological good. By comparison, modern western democracy, especially its voting system, is easy to be manipulated. As a result, current democracy will destroy democracy in near future. So Zhao claims that the current democracy should be transformed into smart democracy which includes a new voting system (1 person 2 votes to express love and hate ---pros and cons, rather than 1 person 1 vote) and two rounds of election (public election and election by expert committee).

Zhao also mentions the Zhou dynasty set an example of the Tianxia system, but it collapsed later because of the poor economy. Hence, Tianxia today should pay attention to not only politics but also economics.