Laozi
知不知上;不知知病。 夫唯病病,是以不病。 聖人不病,以其病病,是以不病。
James Legge
To know and yet (think) we do not know is the highest (attainment); not to know (and yet think) we do know is a disease.
It is simply by being pained at (the thought of) having this disease that we are preserved from it. The sage has not the disease. He knows the pain that would be inseparable from it, and therefore he does not have it.
Victor H. Mair
To realize that you do not understand is a virtue; Not to realize that you do not understand is a defect. The reason why The sage has no defects, Is because he treats defects as defects. Thus, He has no defects.
C. Spurgeon Medhurst
The highest attainment is to know non-knowledge. [^1] To regard ignorance as knowledge is a disease. Only by feeling the pain of this disease do we cease to be diseased. The perfected man, because he knows the pain of it, is free from this disease. It is for this reason that he does not have it. [^2]
He who wills to do the Will, must know THAT which is beyond knowledge; he must ascend into the regions of the supersensuous. Listen to a few of the simpler sayings of the Master. “Resist not evil”; “Lay not up for yourselves treasures on earth”; “Take no thought … what ye shall eat or drink.” Such sentences appeal to the heart but not to the head. They land us in the region where intellectual machinery is worth little more than old iron. Nevertheless, as Lao-tzu says, ignorance of this indicates disease, for Truth, whether a philosophy or a life, is
”The Somewhat which we name, but cannot know, Ev’n as we name a star, and only see His quenchless flashings forth, which ever show And ever hide him, and which are not he.”
[^1] “Non-knowledge in the sense of absolute knowledge. Everything that is absolute appears to us as nothing because all we know we know relatively.”
[^2] “To know what it is that you know, and to know what it is that you do not know—that is understanding.”—Confucian Analects ii, 17.
”If any man thinketh that he knoweth anything, he knoweth not yet as he ought to know,“—Paul. (I Cor. viii, 2.)
Ursula K. Le Guin
To know without knowing is best. Not knowing without knowing it is sick.
To be sick of sickness is the only cure.
The wise aren’t sick. They’re sick of sickness, so they’re well.
Note UKLG: What you know without knowing you know it is the right kind of knowledge. Any other kind (conviction, theory, dogmatic belief, opinion) isn’t the right kind, and if you don’t know that, you’ll lose the Way. This chapter is an example of exactly what Lao Tzu was talking about in the last one — obscure clarity, well-concealed jade.