 Differences in the way philosophy is conceived may reflect differences in the interests philosophy is meant to satisfy. Chad Hansen (1992) points to another possible difference in interests – this time in interests that language is meant to satisfy, arguing that the classical Chinese thinkers did not conceive of the primary function of language to be descriptive and as attempting to match propositions with states of affairs, but rather as a pragmatic instrument for guiding behavior. In fact, Hansen sees the Chinese tradition as centrally concerned with the conflict of daos, which he defines as sets of behavior-guiding practices, including discourses. Western interpreters have been unable to see this, argues Hansen, because they have imposed their own concerns with correspondence truth and metaphysics on the Chinese tradition. They have as a result imposed upon Daoism an irrational mysticism focused on a metaphysically absolute Dao. Michael LaFargue (1992) also argues that the Daodejing is not to be interpreted as as concerning some metaphysical entity called the Dao, but is rather concerned with self cultivation that allows one to have a transforming experience of deep and peaceful stillness within one’s personal center. Wuwei is the style of action that is rooted in such an experience. David Hall and Roger Ames (1987) give a related interpretation of Confucius, in part reacting against Herbert Fingarette’s (1972) influential interpretation of Confucius’ Dao as an ideal normative order transcending the contingencies of time, place, history, and culture. Hall and Ames argue Confucius’s Dao was not conceived as a tradition and language-independent reality against which linguistically formulated beliefs were to be measured as reliable or unreliable, but in fact a cumulative creation of individuals working from within a context provided by a society’s tradition, consisting of customs, conventions, conceptions of proper behavior and good manners, conceptions of right conduct and of what is of ultimate value and of what lives are worth living.