“Which,” Pascal famously asked, “is more believable: Moses or China?” Taking as his starting point the irreducible “Otherness” of China to Western eyes—for it lies outside our most basic concepts of language (Indo-European), history (Judeo-Arabic), and philosophy (Classical)—Jullien develops his inquiry in a series of paired words and concepts. The Western approach to getting something done, he asserts, tends toward an abstract model and the subsequent imposition of this model on reality: hence geometry and physics. The Chinese approach proceeds not from the attempted imposition of a model but the study of existing conditions in a given situation, and how they may be best teased out and turned to one’s greatest advantage.

From this study of the ideal model vs. inherent potentiality, Jullien goes on to juxtapose the war treatises of Clausewitz and Sun Tzu. The Western notions of courage, heroism, and the historic deed exist, he concludes, in praise of difficulty, while the Chinese qualities of invisibility, discretion, and continuity exist in praise of ease. Moving to the Age of Reason, he notes that the development of Europe and China diverges sharply when Leibniz conceives of mathematics as an abstract language unto itself. China never devises a language to separate the acts of man from those of nature, seeing the two as an inseparable unity. For the “Tao”, Jullien explains, is properly translated not as a “way to” but as a “way by which”, shifting the Western emphasis on means toward ends to a Chinese one on condition and consequence in a neverending circle: process instead of progress. The secret of effectiveness is effortlessness: not to cause or set in motion, but, by seeing continuous transformation as ubiquitous and inevitable, to channel that natural transformative power: “Do nothing, but leave nothing undone.”