No More Learning

But offering this personal, ''individualist'' solution to alienation indepen- dent of any social change did not lead to abandoning any interest in social reform on behalf of the people. Laoists were interested in making society a better place for the masses of the people outside ruling circles. But this did not lead them to identify themselves with ''the people'' in opposition to rulers and managers, nor did it lead them to any plans for a radical restructuring of their society. On the contrary, they accepted the hierarchical structure of society and its accompanying paternalistic approach to governing. Their program for social reform was focused on attempts to infuse social leadership with Laoist values, both by elevating good Laoists to influential middle-level administrative posi- tions, and by acting as counselors to higher level princes and kings (who at the time were either the remnants of hereditary nobility or warlords newly come to power). This leadership would not directly teach Laoist values to the people, nor enshrine them in laws to be obeyed by all. Leaders would, rather, personally
190 recent scholarship and teaching the daode jing
embody Daoist qualities, qualities that would be felt in their personal presence (De) and their style of social interaction, and so would result in a more powerful government, assumed to be necessary for a harmonious and prosperous society.
I ask students, in the light of all this, to reconsider their instinctive an- tipathy to any advice encouraging any ambition to become a representative of the system and to improve and strengthen it, which seems to them to imply rejection of their preferred stance of identification with ''ordinary people'' in opposition to the system. I point out that, willy nilly, most of them will probably at some time become functionaries in some large organization, private or state-run, with responsibilities that place them in control of other people who are either employees or clients of this organization. Their ten- dency is to look on this as an unfortunate economic necessity. Laoists would have them look on this as an opportunity to make the world a better place, at least that corner of the world that they are in charge of.
These are all matters to think about. I want students to suspend their own views long enough to take a sympathetic look at different Laoist attitudes, but then to engage in serious critical thought as to the pros and cons of each way of dealing with these issues. If Laoist views on these subjects are applicable today it is not because they are timeless truths possessing some intrinsic and timeless authority, but by coincidence--because current circumstances bring certain issues and problems to the fore today, and Laoism has a better way of dealing with these issues than the responses that most readily come to minds shaped by the Western cultural tradition. This is a good example of the ad- vantages of a historicist approach over a free reading focused most often on finding ''universal truths. '' Historical reconstructions focusing on particulari- ties of views from the past and other cultures give us something challenging to chew on. ''Universal truths'' tend to get their universality by being vague; lacking specific content and specific implications, they offer us nothing chal- lenging to struggle with.
notes
1. I've outlined this theory in Language and Gnosis: Form and Meaning in the Acts of Thomas (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1985), chap. 1; ''Socio-historical Research and the Contextualization of Biblical Theology,'' in The Social World of Formative Chris- tianity and Judaism: Essays in Honor of Howard Clark Kee, ed. P. Borger, J. S. Frerichs, R. Horsley, and J. Neusner (Philadelphia: Fortress Press 1988), 3-16; ''Are Texts Determinate? Derrida, Barth, and the Role of the Biblical Scholar,'' Harvard Theolo- gical Review 81, no. 3 (1988): 341-357; Tao and Method: A Reasoned Approach to the Tao- te-ching (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994), 5-43) and Michael
hermeneutics and pedagogy: old-time historicism 191
Lafargue ''Recovering the Tao-te-Ching's Original Meaning: Some Remarks on His- torical Hermeneutics,'' in Lao-tzu and the Tao-te-ching, ed. Livia Kohn and Michael LaFargue (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998), 255-276. I owe a great deal both in hermeneutics and in pedagogy to the mentoring of Dieter Georgi,
and partly through him to his teacher Rudolf Bultmann.
2. My resulting interpretation of the first two chapters of the Acts of Thomas was
published as Language and Gnosis.
3. See Michael Ermarth, Wilhelm Dilthey: The Critique of Historical Reason (Chi-
cago: University of Chicago Press, 1981). For my critique of Gadamer, see LaFargue, Tao and Method, 7-12; for Derrida, see LaFargue, ''Are Texts Determinate? ''
4. I've found most helpful Ted Kaptchuk's The Web That Has No Weaver (Chi- cago: Congdon & Weed, 1983) on Chinese medical theory, and B. Frantzis, Opening the Energy Gates of Your Body (Berkeley: North Atlantic Books, 1993).
5. I've adopted A. C. Graham's term ''Laoism'' as a convenient designation of the specific teaching of the Daode jing, to distinguish this from other teachings associated with the term ''Daoism. '' See A. C. Graham, Studies in Chinese Philosophy and Philoso- phical Literature (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990), 118, 124. This enables me to avoid engaging in struggles over what properly deserves the prestige name ''Daoism. '' For students concerned about this question, I recommend Nathan Sivin's very informative article, ''On the Word 'Taoist' as a Source of Perplexity, with Special Reference to the Relations of Science and Religion in Traditional China,'' History of Religions 17 (1978): 303-330, for the situation in China, and Julia Hardy's ''Influential Western Interpretations of the Tao-te-ching,'' and The Tao of Pooh, ed. Benjamin M. Hoff (New York: Penguin Books, 1983), for a history of ''Western Daoism. ''
6. See LaFargue, The Tao of the Tao Te Ching, A Translation and Commentary (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992), 219-253. I assign the essays under the following topics: Organic, Natural, Appearances, Self-Promotion, Con- tending, Confucianism, Empty, Nothing, Uncarved Block, Agitation, Desire, Still, Naming, Understanding, Impressive, Strict, Hurting, Forcing, Low, Softness, Im- provements, Working, Dao, and De. These give an overview of my attempts to re- construct the original historical meaning of the Daode jing. I sometimes also assign the longer and more systematic essay on ''Organic Harmony'' in LaFargue, Tao and Method, 160-172. I think organic harmony as there defined is the core value in Laoism.
7. More complete explanation of my theory about how proverbs mean is given in LaFargue, Tao and Method, chaps. 6-7. See also my ''Understanding the Aphorisms in the Tao-te-ching,'' Journal of Chinese Religions, no. 18 (fall 1990): 25-43.
8. LaFargue, Tao and Method.
9. Ibid. , 104-112, 181-195. My attention was first drawn to parallels between the Daode jing and the Nei Ye by the work of Hal Roth; see ''Psychology and Self-Culti- vation in Early Taoistic Thought,'' Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 51 (December 1991): 599-650.
10. A. C. Graham, Disputers of the Tao: Philosophical Argument in Ancient China (LaSalle, Ill. : Open Court Press, 1989), 243.
192 recent scholarship and teaching the daode jing
11. Many of these ideas are implied in passages using the key recurrent term ''turn back. '' For example chapter 16 speaks of ''turning back to the root,'' which it says is equivalent to achieving a mental stillness (jing) that is the opposite of activity (zuo); this implies that stillness is a kind of primary or ''root'' state, compared to which activity is secondary and derivative. The common tendency is to flee this ''root'' and involve oneself in outward-directed activity. Laoist advice to ''turn back'' is advice to reverse this outward flow and turn back to this neglected root. Similarly, chapter 64 says one should ''desire [to be] desire-less, learn [to be] un-learned . . . turn back to the place all others have gone on from''; chapter 28 speaks of ''turning back to an infant [-like state], turning back to [being] uncarved''; chapter 52 speaks of ''turning back
to the [internal] Mother,'' in contrast to occupying oneself with phenomena in the world, the Mother's ''children''; chapter 32 says that the ''naming'' involved in legalistic rule making is a result of ''cutting up'' an initially ''uncarved'' Dao. I think the end of chapter 1 also pictures conceptual naming as something that arises out of a prior ''merged'' state of mind, that is, a state of mind prior to the emergence of well-defined concepts. If my understanding is correct, this aspect of Laoist thought is probably summed up in the rather cryptic passage in chapter 25: ''One can call it [Dao] 'Great. ' Great means going forth, going forth means going far away, going far away means turning back. '' ' The social world we see is the result of a ''going forth'' from Dao, a movement that initially alienates this world from Dao. Overcoming this alienation is the object of Laoist self-cultivation, which is a reversal (''turning back'') of this cosmic movement away from Dao.
12. LaFargue, Tao and Method, 172-174.
13. Some elements in this list are the result of my attempts to situate the Daode jing in its social setting in ancient China, spelled out in LaFargue, Tao and Method, chaps. 3-5. Many of these assumptions are not specifically Laoist, but were elements of a political culture that Laoists shared with other thinkers of the time, including their Confucian rivals. The tendency among Western scholars is to try to assimilate divisions between different Chinese schools to modern divisions we are familiar with (right vs. left, religious vs. secular, etc. ). I think n historical reading should focus instead on the way that the shared political culture of ancient Chinese thinkers differs from the shared political culture that shapes modern thought.
14. See the remarks by A. C. Graham on what he calls ''hierarchical anarchism'': the utopias of even the most ''primitivist,'' anticivilization thinkers in ancient China were presided over by a sage emperor. Disputers of the Tao, 299-311.
15. This attitude is well represented, I believe, in the Gospel of Mark, another of my favorites among religious classics, though its message is in many ways directly opposed to the Daode jing. See my ''The Authority of the Excluded: Mark's Challenge to a Rational Hermeneutics,'' in Religious Propaganda and Missionary Competition in the New Testament World: Essays Honoring Dieter Georgi, supplement to Novum Tes- tamentum, no. 74, ed. Lukas Borman, Kelly DelTredici, and Angela Standhartinger (Leiden: Brill, 1994), 229-255.
? Selected Bibliography
Abram, David. The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More- Than Human World. New York: Vintage Books, 1996.
Allan, Sarah, and Crispin Williams, eds. The Guodian Laozi: Proceedings of the International Conference, Dartmouth College, May, 1998. Early China Special Monograph Series no. 5. Institute for East Asian Studies, University of California, Berkeley, 2000.
Barnhart, Michael, ed. Varieties of Ethical Reflection: New Directions for Ethics in a Global Context. New York: Lexington Books, 2002.
Barrett, T. H. Taoism under the T'ang: Religion and Empire during the Golden Age of Chinese History. London: Wellsweep Press, 1996.
Bell, Catherine. Ritual: Perspective and Dimensions. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997.
Berling, Judith A. A Pilgrim in Chinese Culture: Negotiating Religious Diversity. Maryknoll, N. Y. : Orbis Books, 1997.
Bilsky, Lester J. ''The State Religion of Ancient China. '' PhD diss. , University of Washington, 1971.
Birrell, Anne M. ''Studies on Chinese Myth Since 1970: An Appraisal. '' Part I. History of Religions 33 (1994): 380-393.
------. ''Studies on Chinese Myth Since 1970: An Appraisal. '' Part II. History of Religions 34 (1994): 70-94.
Blofeld, John. The Secret and Sublime: Taoist Mysteries and Magic. London: Allen & Unwin, 1973.
------. Taoist Road to Immortality. Boston: Shambhala, 1985. Bradbury, Steven. ''The American Conquest of Philosophical Taoism. ''
In Translation East and West: A Cross-Cultural Approach, ed. Cornelia N. Moore and Lucy Lower. Honolulu: University of Hawaii College
of Languages, Linguistics and Literature, and East-West Center, 1992.
194 selected bibliography
Bynam, Caroline Walker. Fragmentation and Redemption: Essays on Gender and the Human Body in Medieval Religion. Boston: Beacon, 1992.
Capra, Fritjof. The Tao of Physics. Boston: Shambala, 1975 (1983, 1991, 1999). Chan, Alan K. Two Visions of the Way: A Study of the Wang Pi and Ho-Shang Kung
Commentaries of the Lao-tzu. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991. Chan, Wing-tsit. ''Influences of Taoist Classics on Chinese Philosophy. '' In Literature of Belief: Sacred Scripture and Religious Experience, Neal E. Lambert, Provo, Utah:
Brigham Young University Press, 1981.
------. Source Book in Chinese Philosophy. Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1963.
Chang Chung-yuan. Creativity and Taoism: A Study of Chinese Philosophy, Art and
Poetry. New York: Harper & Row, 1970.
Ch'en, Ellen. ''Is There a Doctrine of Physical Immortality in the Tao-te-ching? '' History
of Religions 12, no. 3 (1973): 231-247.
Chen, Ellen Marie. The Tao Te Ching: A New Translation with Commentary. New York:
Paragon House, 1989.
Chen, Guying. Lao Zhuang xinlun. Hong Kong: Zhonghua shuju, 1991.
Chu Hsi. Reflections on Things at Hand. Trans. Wing-tsit Chan. New York: Columbia
University Press, 1967.
Clarke, J. J. Oriental Enlightenment: The Encounter between Asian and Western Thought.
London: Routledge, 1997.
------. The Tao of the West: Western Transformations of Taoist Thought. London:
Routledge, 2000.
Creel, H. C. The Birth of China. New York: Frederick Ungar, 1937.
------.
The Origins of Statecraft in China. Vol. 1: The Western Chou Empire. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1970.
------. Shen Pu-hai: A Chinese Political Philosopher of the Fourth Century B. C. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1974.
------. What Is Taoism? And Other Studies in Chinese Cultural History. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1970.
Csikszentmihalyi, Mark, and Philip J. Ivanhoe, eds. Religious and Philosophical Aspects
of the Laozi. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999. Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly. Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. New York:
Harper & Row, 1990.
Culler, Jonathan. Structuralist Poetics: Structuralism, Linguistics, and the Study of
Literature. Ithaca, N. Y. : Cornell University Press, 2002.
Davis, Lydia. ''The Professor. '' Harpers', February 1992, 56-59.
deBary, William Theodore. The Buddhist Tradition in India, China and Japan. New
York: Random House, 1972.
------, ed. Sources of Chinese Tradition. New York: Columbia University Press,
1960.
Eliade, Mircea. The Sacred and the Profane. New York: Harper & Row, 1967. Ermarth, Michael. Wilhelm Dilthey: The Critique of Historical Reason. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1981.
Fish, Stanley. Is There a Text in This Class? The Authority of Interpretive Communities. Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 1980.
Frantzis, B. Opening the Energy Gates of Your Body. Berkeley: North Atlantic Books, 1993.
Girardot, Norman. ''Behaving Cosmogonically in Early Taoism. '' In Cosmogony and Ethical Order, ed. R. Lovin and F. Reynolds. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985.
------. ''Chinese Religion: History of Study. '' Encyclopedia of Religions 3, ed. Mircea Eliade. New York: Macmillan, 1987, 312-323.
------. Disputers of the Tao: Philosophical Argument in Ancient China. LaSalle, Ill. : Open Court Press, 1989.
------. ''Kristofer Schipper and the Resurrection of the Taoist Body. '' In The Taoist Body, by Kristofer Schipper. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993. ------. Myth and Meaning in Early Taoism. Berkeley: University of California Press,
1983.
------. ''Part of the Way: Four Studies on Taoism. '' History of Religions 11 (1972): 319-
337.
------. Studies in Chinese Philosophy and Philosophical Literature. Albany: State
University of New York Press, 1990.
------. '' 'Very Small Books about Very Large Subjects': A Prefatory Appreciation of
the Enduring Legacy of Laurence G. Thompson's Chinese Religion: An
Introduction. '' Journal of Chinese Religions 20 (fall 1992): 9-15.
------. The Victorian Translation of China: James Legge's Oriental Pilgrimage. Berkeley:
University of California Press, 2002.
------. ''Whispers and Smiles: Nostalgic Reflections on Mircea Eliade's Significance
for the Study of Religion. '' Ed. Bryan Rennie. Albany: State University of New
York Press, forthcoming.
------. ''The Whole Duty of Man'': James Legge and the Victorian Translation of China.
19th Century Transformations of Missionary Tradition, Sinological Orientalism, and the Comparative Science of Religions. Berkeley: University of California Press, forthcoming.
Girardot, N. J. , James Miller, and Liu Xiaogan, eds. Daoism and Ecology: Ways within a Cosmic Landscape. Cambridge, Mass. : Center for the Study of World Religions, Harvard Divinity School, 2001. Distributed by Harvard University.
Goodspeed, Bennett W. The Tao Jones Averages: A Guide to Whole-Brained Investing. New York: Dutton, 1983.
Guodian. Ed. Guodian Chumu zhujian. Wenwu chubanshe. Beijing: Jingmen Museum, 1998.
Hall, David, and Roger Ames. ''Daoism. '' In Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward Craig. London: Routledge, 1998.
------. Thinking from the Han. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998.
Hansen, Chad. A Daoist Theory of Chinese Thought: A Philosophical Interpretation. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992.
selected bibliography 195
196 selected bibliography
------. Language and Logic in Ancient China. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1983.
Hardy, Julia. ''Influential Western Interpretations of the Tao-te-ching. '' In Lao-tzu and the Tao-te-ching, ed. L. Kohn and Michael LaFargue. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998.
Hu, Shi(h). Zhongguo gudai zhexueshi. 1919. Taipei: Shangwu, 1961.
Ivanhoe, Philip J. , and Paul Kjellberg, eds. Essays on Skepticism, Relativism and Ethics in
the Zhuangzi. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996. Kaltenmark, Max. Lao Tzu and Taoism. Trans. Roger Greaves. Stanford: Stanford
University Press, 1969.
Kaptchuk, Ted. The Web That Has No Weaver. Chicago: Congdon & Weed, 1983. Kirkland, Russell. ''The Book of the Way. '' In Great Literature of the Eastern World, ed.
Ian P. McGreal. New York: Harper Collins, 1996.
------. ''The Historical Contours of Taoism in China: Thoughts on Issues of
Classification and Terminology. '' Journal of Chinese Religions 25 (1997): 57-82. ------. ''The History of Taoism: A New Outline. '' Journal of Chinese Religions 30
(2002): 177-193.
------. ''On Coveting Thy Neighbor's Tao: Reflections on J. J. Clarke' s The Tao of the
West. '' Religious Studies Review 28, no. 4 (2002): 309-312.
------. ''Person and Culture in the Taoist Tradition. '' Journal of Chinese Religions 20
(1992): 77-90.
------. ''A Quest for 'The Foundations of Taoist Mysticism. ''' Studies in Central and
East Asian Religions, nos. 12-13 (2001): 203-229.
------. Review of The Columbia Anthology of Traditional Chinese Literature, ed. Victor
Mair. Education about Asia 3, no. 3 (1998): 64-65.
------. Review of Sources of Chinese Tradition, ed. William T. deBary and Irene
Bloom. 2nd ed. , vol. 1. Education about Asia 7, no. 1 (2002): 62-66. ------. ''The Roots of Altruism in the Taoist Tradition. '' Journal of the American
Academy of Religion 54 (1986): 59-77.
------. ''Self-Fulfillment through Selflessness: The Moral Teachings of the Daode
jing. '' In Varieties of Ethical Reflection: New Directions for Ethics in a Global Context,
ed. Michael Barnhart. New York: Lexington Books, 2002.
------. ''The Study of Religion and Society in Contemporary Asia: Colonialism
and Beyond. '' Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars 28, nos. 3-4 (1996): 59-63. ------. Taoism: The Enduring Tradition. London: Routledge, 2004.
------. ''The Taoism of the Western Imagination and the Taoism of China: De-
Colonizing the Exotic Teachings of the East'' unpublished lecture, University of
Tennessee, 1997.
------. ''Teaching Taoism in the 1990s.