Karen Duval (Berkeley: University of
California
Press, 1993), 113-119.
Teaching-the-Daode-Jing
Indeed, Zhuangzi seems to maintain that there must be some sound and valid approach to living.
The famous parable of the butterfly dream shows a mind doubting the validity of two contrary models of self-identification.
Yet the writer does not conclude that all models are necessarily invalid: ''Between
hermeneutics and pedagogy: methodological issues 159
Zhou and the butterfly there must be a difference'' (bi you fen yi). But the writer urges us to look for proper perspective not in any coherent interpretive model, but rather in the indeterminate ''transformation of things'' (wuhua).
To return to my starting point, I repeat that there seems to be no de- finitively right or wrong way to teach the Daode jing. But that fact does not logically lead to the conclusion that all approaches are equally valid. There are clearly better and worse approaches, and some can legitimately be condemned as invalid. After all, Zhuang Zhou might not have been able to be entirely sure whether he was Zhou or a butterfly, but there was no question that his reality lay somewhere within that bipolarity: he did not conclude that he might really be a gourd or a millipede! So our task as educators is to weed out invalid approaches to the Daode jing and to work within the remaining possibilities.
For some, this task will mean teaching the text as a product of its time, as a response to a particular set of historical and intellectual realities. In that sense, the Daode jing is, in its final form, someone's attempt to provide an alternative to certain patterns of thought and behavior in parts of ancient China. For other educators, it may mean teaching the Daode jing as an early expression of key aspects of Daoist practice, pointing out the significance of the text's passages on self-cultivation. To me, it seems necessary to teach our students both of those perspectives, because the text's composer (or at least, its final redactor) gave us a text that includes both. I try to help students cope with the resulting ambiguities by offering them a new hermeneutic model: unraveling a text that is composed in various layers, each the work of different minds, minds that proceeded from different assumptions, values, and concerns. This model, which reflects the textual and historical conclusions of many scholars, helps students understand the importance of historical realities, the importance of textual realities, and the fruitfulness of scholarly analysis as a hermeneutical tool.
This approach also gives students an intelligible reason to reject all the truly silly interpretations of the Daode jing that float around today. Just as Zhuang Zhou may or may not have been a butterfly but was certainly not a gourd, so the Daode jing is an expression of ancient Chinese sociopoliti- cal thought, an expression of interest in meditational and behavioral self- cultivation, possibly even an expression of popular values of ancient Chu, but it is certainly not the product of a modern or postmodern mind and was certainly not intended to correct the evils of our own age. So, although some educators may not yet feel ready to smash those interpretive gourds, we should help our students see what they are good for--studying the unreflective cultural impe- rialism that lingers in the postmodern West--and what they are not good for: understanding the Daode jing.
160 recent scholarship and teaching the daode jing
notes
1. Some of the thoughts presented here were stimulated by a 1993 Minneapolis workshop entitled ''Text and Context: Critical Thinking Strategies for Texts in Translation. '' In that workshop, sponsored by the University of Minnesota, M. J. Abhishaker of Normandale College examined the problems of critical thinking in a culturally diverse interpretive context, and I focused discussion on hermeneutical issues involving the Daode jing I am indebted to Dr. Abhishaker and the other participants.
2. For decades, the Daode jing has been widely interpreted as offering solutions to problems that modern Westerners see as afflicting their own world. As Steve Bradbury has said, ''Because the vast majority of its translators, Western and Chinese, were attracted to it in the first place because of their humanist faith in . . . the Daode jing as proto-humanist doctrine compatible with liberal Protestantism, they have usually produced . . . readings of the work that . . . endorse a Western agenda. '' That agenda generally relates to a modern metanarrative that subordinates textual, his- torical, and cultural facts to a yearning for a utopian society freed of the evils that supposedly afflict the world under the oppressive yoke of ''organized religion,'' ''in- dustrial development,'' ''technology,'' ''patriarchal hegemony,'' or the linear rational- ism of ''the Western mind. '' Educators should acquaint themselves with Bradbury's essay, ''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), 29-41. More generally, see J. J. Clarke, Oriental Enlightenment: The Encounter between Asian and Western Thought (London: Routledge, 1997); J. J. Clarke, The Tao of the West (London: Routledge, 2000); and Russell Kirkland, ''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.
3. The 1963 Penguin edition of Lau's translation is still useful, though it trans- lates the received text, that is, the traditional version edited by the third-century phi- losopher Wang Pi. Students today should know that version, but should also be given a reliable translation of the Ma-wang-tui manuscripts, such as that by Robert G. Henricks, Lao-tzu Te-Tao Ching (New York: Ballantine Books, 1989). Henricks's version is readable and sinologically sound. In the same year, Lau translated the Ma- wang-tui edition, though the translation was published in Hong Kong, rendering it inaccessible to most students and educators. Fortunately, it has now been published in North America: D. C. Lau, Lao-tzu: Tao Te Ching (New York: Knopf, 1994), with a sound introduction by a good scholar, Sarah Allen. There is also a lovely translation of the Ma-wang-tui texts by Victor Mair: Tao Te Ching (New York: Bantam Books, 1990). Mair's translation is the most elegant of the reliable minimalist translations, but his explanatory efforts (in his preface, afterword, and appendix) contain so many prob- lems that I recommend it only to advanced students, who may be capable of sorting through them.
4. In the original assignment, I exhibited my personal values by referring to ''the writer'' as ''he/she. '' Since that time, I have learned not to project my wishes on
hermeneutics and pedagogy: methodological issues 161
history. My colleague Vivian-Lee Nyitray (University of California, Riverside) teaches students to ''avoid imposing a modern sensibility on the past,'' to remember that ''people in the past were not, for the most part, democratic, tolerant of religious or racial difference, concerned for individual rights . . . , fascinated by the personality . . . , particularly squeamish, or believers in 'Progress. ''' I pass these observations along to my students, adding, among other things, that we should beware of logical problems in applying gender-inclusive language to data from ages or cultures that were reso- lutely gender-exclusive. For instance, the category of ''Confucian scholar'' ( ju) has always been closed to women, whether or not we believe that it should have been. So I urge students to consider such facts when they write; today, for instance, readers of the Daode jing come in both genders, but such was not the case in ancient China. See notes 11 and 14 below.
5. Scholars like A. C. Graham and Harold Roth have made clear that, historically, the term ''Taoism'' was only a bibliographic classification until about the third century c. e. As Roth has put it, ''The 'Lao-Zhuang' tradition to which [modern 'tradition'] refers is actually a Wei-Jin literati reconstruction, albeit a powerful and enduring one. '' Harold Roth, ''Some Issues in the Study of Chinese Mysticism: A Review Essay,'' China Review International 2, no. 1 (1995): 157. I address these issues much more fully in Taoism: The Enduring Tradition (London: Routledge, 2004), and ''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).
6. On the figure of ''Lao-tzu,'' a rich and constantly evolving cultural construct, see A. C. Graham, ''The Origins of the Legend of Lao Tan,'' in his Studies in Chinese Philosophy and Philosophical Literature (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990), 111-124; Judith Magee Boltz, ''Lao-tzu,'' in The Encyclopedia of Religion (New York: Macmillan, 1987), 8:454-459; Livia Kohn, God of the Dao: Laozi in History and Myth (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Center for Chinese Studies, 1998), and ''The Lao-tzu Myth,'' in Lao-tzu and the Tao-te-ching, ed. Livia Kohn and Michael LaFargue (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998), 41-62. The Western cultural construct of ''Lao-tzu'' remains wholly unstudied.
7. See Kirkland, Taoism: The Enduring Tradition, 39-52, and ''Varieties of 'Tao- ism' in Ancient China: A Preliminary Comparison of Themes in the Nei yeh and Other 'Taoist Classics,' '' Taoist Resources 7, no. 2 (1997): 73-86.
8. My complete ''Historical Outline of Taoism,'' with explanations of certain interpretive positions, appears in ''The Historical Contours of Taoism in China: Thoughts on Issues of Classification and Terminology,'' Journal of Chinese Religions 25 (1997): 57-82; more recent thoughts, and a revised outline, appear in ''The History of Taoism: A New Outline,'' Journal of Chinese Religions 30 (2002): 177-193. An exposi- tion of my analysis of the ''layers'' of the Daode jing appears in Kirkland, ''The Book of the Way,'' in Great Literature of the Eastern World, ed. Ian P. McGreal (New York: HarperCollins, 1996), 24-29; a new analysis appears in Taoism: The Enduring Tra- dition, 52-67.
9. Again,Iemploythemasculinepronounhereasamatterofhistoricalaccuracy.
162 recent scholarship and teaching the daode jing
10. I am unaware of any study that properly examines the facile modern as- sumption that the Daode jing, or Zhuangzi, can or ought to be read in terms of what Westerners understand to be ''philosophy. '' In my ''Self-Fulfillment through Self- lessness,'' I suggest some critical perspectives on the interpretive assumptions of Arthur C. Danto and Chad Hansen.
11. Again, I use masculine-gendered language here for a reason. I see evidence in the Daode jing that some of its thoughts could have originated in the minds of women, for example, members of local communities of Chu, whose ''elders'' (laozi) may not all have been male. (This analysis originates in ideas of Kimura Eiichi; see my ''Book of the Way. '') But I also assume that, given the general absence of literacy among women in pre-Han China, the composer or redactor of the Daode jing must have been male (albeit possibly with input from female associates).
12. Such is apparently the view of Chad Hansen: ''Laozi's position . . . remains a way station in Daoist development . . . We still have no final answer to the question, 'What should we do? '. . . If there is some advice, some point, Laozi could not state it. And so neither can I. But Zhuangzi can! Daoism must still mature more. '' Hansen, A Daoist Theory of Chinese Thought: A Philosophical Interpretation (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 202, 230.
13. The happiness of some interpreters to read the Daode jing's teachings as a watery ''mysticism''--a category utterly alien to China--can generally be explained in terms of the Western cultural experience. While some traditional cultures did have occasional ''mystics'' who communed directly with some higher reality, the modern interest in finding new forms of mysticism in old traditions has been propelled by the desperate search for a modern (i. e. , nonreligious) religion. No longer willing to take God, Church, or moral absolutes seriously, many moderns yearn for a ''Truth'' that ''liberated'' persons can accept and practice without having to yield to any authority outside themselves. To such seekers, the very concept of mysticism involves a de- deified Truth, purged of the premodern cultural baggage that moderns blithely dis- miss as ''superstition''--that is, all beliefs that deny the autonomy of the individual to dictate what is or is not real, true, or important. In this sense, mysticism is a nar- cissistic cultural construct, cherished by moderns as a means of escaping God (who, in Western tradition, embarrassingly demands obedience) and sacral community (which embarrassingly suggests that reality exists outside the individual's own ''au- tonomous'' consciousness). Though there has still been no critical assessment of the Western cultural notion that the Daode jing contains mysticism, a few preliminary reflections in that direction appear in Hansen, A Daoist Theory of Chinese Thought. Other reflections on the applicability of concepts of mysticism to Daoist data appear in Lee Yearley, ''The Perfected Person in the Radical Chuang-tzu,'' in Experimental Essays on Chuang-tzu, ed. Victor Mair (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1983), 125-139.
14. Elsewhere I have commented on Tu Wei-ming's effort to facilitate post- modern appropriation of Confucius's teachings by retranslating Confucius's term for the human ideal--zhun zi, which originally meant ''the sons of the rulers'' and was transformed by Confucius to mean ''the noble man'' rather than ''the nobleman''--as ''the profound person. '' Such a translation is intended to render Confucian ideals
hermeneutics and pedagogy: methodological issues 163
accessible and attractive to everyone, male and female alike. However, historical facts clearly reveal that prior to the age of Tu himself, the Confucian tradition was reso- lutely ''sexist. '' To sanitize for modern consumption a conservative tradition that al- ways rejected, on principle, individual efforts to ''improve'' tradition seems to be a move well justified in postmodern terms, but illegitimate in Confucian terms. Daoism is a different case, since premodern Daoism welcomed women as practitioners, though it could not fully escape the gender constraints of the surrounding society. See my entry, ''Taoism,'' in Encyclopedia of Women and World Religion (New York: Mac- millan, 1999), 2: 959-964.
15. See the chapter in this volume by Norman J. Girardot, and his book The Victorian Translation of China: James Legge's Oriental Pilgrimage (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002).
16. As Tu Wei-ming has noted, the Enlightenment mentality is the common heritage of all modern minds, Chinese and Western alike. Liu Xiaogan, for instance, may be Chinese, but he is a product of twentieth-century China, not pre-Han China. The same is true for all living interpreters, none of whom know what it would be like to look at the Daode jing as would a pre-Han person, as someone who had never experienced a world without a politically and culturally unified China, Buddhism, Neo-Confucianism, rationalism, democracy, Marxism, Christianity, and all the cul- tural and intellectual realities of the twentieth century. The text is thus an alien world for Chinese and Western interpreters alike.
17. In this day and age, it is socially unacceptable in most parts of Western society, even in the supposed ivory tower of academia, to provide students with a liberating model for rejecting colonialistic habits by explicitly comparing cultural appropriation to sexual appropriation. That is, no one today would accept that John's needs, however legitimate, could condone his appropriation of Jane. But even post- moderns seem content to look the other way when Westerners argue that their personal needs justify their unauthorized appropriation of Asian texts or Native American rituals. Postmoderns, like moderns, assume that it is the individual herself or himself who ''authorizes,'' so all cultural appropriation is logically acceptable, since such an act is no more than my exercising my unchallengeable individual autonomy. As a matter of fact, postmoderns are as eager as moderns to reject the value of tradition, so ripping cultural artifacts out of their traditional settings is not only innocuous, but virtuous.
18. It should be noted that the ''Great Minds''/''Great Books'' model for under- standing Daoism leads almost inevitably to a total disregard for the lives and thought of the Daoist women throughout history. The traditional Chinese canon of Great Books--essentially Confucian--generally excludes works by or about women, though Daoists of various periods valued and preserved records of women's lives and teach- ings. See my entry in Encyclopedia of Women and World Religion (New York: Mac- millan, 1999), 2: 959-964.
19. On the reasons for the growing ignorance of, and antipathy toward, Daoism among late imperial Confucians, see Kirkland, ''Person and Culture in the Taoist Tradition,'' Journal of Chinese Religions 20 (1992): 77-90.
164 recent scholarship and teaching the daode jing
20. Fordecades,thestandard''scholarly''overviewofDaoismwasHolmesWelch, Taoism: The Parting of the Way (Boston: Beacon Press, 1965), a slightly revised edition of a 1957 book. Welch's chapter ''Later Philosophical Taoism'' (158-163) disregards all the Daozang's texts of religious thought and (like ''authorities'' from Fung Yu-lan to Stephen Mitchell) tells the reader that such texts are by people ''whom we can only regard as representatives of quaint, but moribund superstition'' (163). The ''real heirs'' of Laozi and Zhuangzi, Welch tells us, were Neo-Confucians, Zen masters, and land- scape painters. Meanwhile, in another chapter, Wang Che, whose writings Welch ap- parently never bothered to read, is ridiculed as ''eccentric'' and even ''fanatical'' (145).
21. The long-standard Sources of Chinese Tradition, edited by William T. deBary (New York: Columbia University Press, 1960), mentions no such sources, any more than Wing-tsit Chan mentions them in his still standard Source Book in Chinese Philosophy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963). See my review of Wm. T. deBary and Irene Bloom, eds. , Sources of Chinese Tradition, 2nd ed. , vol. 1 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), in Education about Asia 7, no. 1 (2002): 62-66.
22. See especially Livia Kohn, ed. , The Taoist Experience: An Anthology (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993). Other ''new'' Daoist texts appear in Donald S. Lopez Jr. , ed. , Religions of China in Practice (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996). However, as noted in my review in Education about Asia 2, no. 1 (spring 1997): 58-59, Lopez chose to swing the pendulum fully in the other direction, that is, ig- noring all Daoist texts that present ''intellectualized'' models of the Daoist life, thereby falsifying the reader's image of ''Daoism'' as gravely as deBary and Chan had done at the other extreme. One should also note that anthologies of Chinese literature con- tinue to follow Confucian paradigms by continuing to exclude most of the literature that originated among Daoists. See, for example, my review of Victor Mair, ed. , The Columbia Anthology of Traditional Chinese Literature (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995), in Education about Asia 3, no. 3 (1998): 64-65.
23. Isabelle Robinet, Taoism: Growth of a Religion, trans. Phyllis Brooks (Stan- ford: Stanford University Press, 1997), 29.
24. See Kohn, ''The Lao-tzu Myth,'' and God of the Dao. Some of the roles of Laozi in Daoism are highlighted in Kohn's ''Laozi: Ancient Philosopher, Master of Immortality, and God,'' in Lopez, Religions of China in Practice, 52-63; but one should note that the account of Laozi that she translates there, from Ge Hong Shen-hsien- chuan, casts him in the role of ''a successful practitioner of immortality'': Ge ''had no interest in stylizing him as the Dao, as the religious followers did'' (54).
25. John Lagerwey, Taoist Ritual in Chinese Society and History (New York: Macmillan, 1987), 23.
26. These central elements of Daoist thought, generally ignored before the present generation of specialists, are outlined in Kristopher Schipper, The Taoist Body, trans.
Karen Duval (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 113-119. Another long ignored facet of these beliefs is that ''the mystical vision of the body in Taoism'' probably ''served as a model of reference in Chinese medicine'' (124), which focuses on transformations of life energy (qi), unlike the more materialistic models of Western medicine, which deny the existence or value of such realities.
hermeneutics and pedagogy: methodological issues 165
27. See Livia Kohn, ''The Tao-te-ching in Ritual,'' in Kohn and LaFargue, Lao-tzu and the Tao-te-ching, 143-161. ''The value and sense which the Taoists attribute to their sacred writings'' is usefully summarized in Isabelle Robinet, Taoist Meditation, trans. Julian Pas and Norman Girardot (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993), 19-28.
28. As Timothy Barrett has said concerning Tang times, ''The Taoists were not preaching any new religious message about the human condition but offering their expertise in dealing with the world of the supernatural. '' T. H. Barrett, Taoism under the T'ang: Religion and Empire during the Golden Age of Chinese History (London: Wellsweep Press, 1996), 16.
29. See Judith A. Berling, A Pilgrim in Chinese Culture: Negotiating Religious Diversity (Maryknoll, N. Y. : Orbis Books, 1997), especially 85-86, 97-98.
30. See Russell Kirkland, ''The Study of Religion and Society in Contemporary Asia: Colonialism and Beyond,'' Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars 28, nos. 3-4 (1996): 59-63.
31. Indeed, the intellectual history of ancient China suggests that the concept of wuwei originated not in ''Daoist'' circles, but rather among political pragmatists of the fourth century b. c. e. The term was used not only by Confucius, but also by the ''Legalist'' Shen Buhai (d. 337 b. c. e. ). See H. G. Creel, Shen Pu-hai: A Chinese Political Philosopher of the Fourth Century b. c. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974), especially 176-179.
32. See Harold D. Roth, ''Redaction Criticism and the Early History of Taoism,'' Early China 19 (1994): 1-46, and Original Tao: Inward Training (Nei-yeh) and the Foundations of Taoist Mysticism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999); and my review, ''A Quest for 'The Foundations of Taoist Mysticism,' '' Studies in Central and East Asian Religions, nos. 12-13 (2001): 203-229.
33. See especially Livia Kohn, ed. , Taoist Meditation and Longevity Techniques (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, Center for Chinese Studies, 1989).
34. Scholars like Kristofer Schipper have spent a generation laboring to explicate such continuities, as seen most readily in his book, The Taoist Body. Another study of a hitherto ignored continuity between classical and later Daoism, the advocation of altruistic activity, is Russell Kirkland, ''The Roots of Altruism in the Taoist Tradition,'' Journal of the American Academy of Religion 54 (1986): 59-77. For more on integrating the data of Later Daoism in the teaching of Daoism, see Russell Kirkland, ''Teaching Taoism in the 1990s,'' Teaching Theology and Religion 1, no. 2 (1998): 121-129.
35. See Philip J. Ivanhoe and Paul Kjellberg, eds. , Essays on Skepticism, Relativism and Ethics in the Zhuangzi (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996).
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? Hermeneutics and Pedagogy: Gimme That Old-Time Historicism
Michael LaFargue
My approach to teaching the Daode jing is based in part on an ap- proach I've developed to hermeneutics, a subject that I have thought about a lot, beginning in my days as a graduate student in biblical studies. 1 I formulated the beginnings of this hermeneutic theory in my graduate dissertation, in which I thought what I was doing was rescuing gnosticism, and a particular gnostic text (the Acts of Thomas), from its misinterpretation by Christian theologians. They were in- terpreting gnostic texts from a perspective shaped by mainstream Christian assumptions. (Gnosticism traditionally serves as a kind
of whipping boy for Christian theologians, a counterpoint that serves to show the obvious superiority of mainstream Christianity by con- trast. ) I realized early on the implausibility of attacking this kind of interpretation on substantive grounds, that is, on the grounds of substantive weaknesses in the orthodox Christian assumptions it was based on. I needed to focus on developing an interpretive method, a method that could derive from a text itself and from historical re- search the proper framework of assumptions within which it should be interpreted, rather than rely on the interpreter's own views about substantively correct assumptions.
At this point I had the good fortune of coming across Jonathan Culler's Structuralist Poetics. Culler argued that a text's ''structure'' does not lie on the surface to be observed by a neutral observer. The key to structure lies in the reader, the assumptions that a reader
168 recent scholarship and teaching the daode jing
brings to the text, causing her to construe it as she does. Culler used Chomsky's term ''competence'' to refer to such assumptions.
Some hermeneutic theorists use notions similar to competence to legiti- mate a very free reading of texts. Because there are no universal, normative assumptions, every reader should feel empowered to read the text in the light of whatever assumptions she happens to have and like. But in the context of my work at the time, this seemed to me to simply legitimate the practice of or- thodox Christian theologians, reading gnostic texts in the light of their own assumptions. I took the notion of competence in a different direction, devel- oping the idea that there are different kinds of competence appropriate to different texts. We arrive at good historical interpretations of a given text, not by reflecting on possible meanings of given sentences, but by trying to discover the nature of competence appropriate to this text. This competence is partly liter- ary, having to do with the textual code and verbal genres being used. Partly it is substantive, having to do with the basic, taken-for-granted assumptions of the original author and audience and the basic concerns, questions, and problems they were addressing. Taken without reference to this specific competence, every text is ambiguous, since a given set of words can be construed in any number of different ways, to address any number of different concerns. But most texts were not so ambiguous to their original authors and audience: the shared competence they brought to the text is what gave their words specific meanings to them. Chiefly by reflecting on indirect indications in the text itself, aided by additional historical research, we can gather clues as to the compe- tence necessary to understand it.
This approach gave me a basis for arguing that the Acts of Thomas should be read in a way fundamentally different from the way it was customarily read by Christian theologians2--not because the assumptions they brought to the text were questionable in themselves, but because, historically speaking, they did not match the assumptions that the original authors and audience brought to the text.
But this view also set me at odds with a good deal of contemporary her- meneutic theory and practice, allying me much more closely with the historicist hermeneutics of Dilthey and his mentor Schleiermacher, than with their much more popular modern critic H. -G. Gadamer. 3 The works of Gadamer, Paul Ricoeur, and Jacques Derrida seem to me to have inspired a kind of herme- neutics that is a throwback to the pre-Dilthey tradition of scripture interpreta- tion, which was always for the most part ideological warfare conducted by indirect means. Everyone feels supported in trying to capture classical texts for whatever cause they feel strongly about (Christian fundamentalism, feminism, Zen Buddhism, and so on) by simply reading these texts in the light of their
hermeneutics and pedagogy: old-time historicism 169
own dearly held assumptions, concerns, and values. An interpretation is a ''good interpretation'' if it accords with the values and assumptions that the interpreter regards as the right ones. The result seems to me very often just propaganda masquerading as ''interpretation. ''
Pedagogy: Why Try to Recover the Original Meaning?
The project of ''recovering the original meaning'' of classical texts is almost universally associated with the assumption that the original meaning has an authoritative status because it is original. I think this is an important assump- tion to bring to light and argue against when teaching classical texts like the Daode jing. I advocate instead a kind of ''confrontational'' hermeneutics. Clas- sical texts give paradigmatic expression to perfectionist views of the world and of human excellence, based on values that millions have found inspiring. But these are not universal values, and the views of ancient gnostics or ancient Daoists may or may not be appropriate to life today. Interpretation should give us something very challenging, something very strong to wrestle with. Con- fronting such a challenge can show us some weaknesses in our own conven- tional and often mediocre views. Meeting this challenge might mean adopting some of the views expressed in the text; it might also mean developing better versions of our own values that contrast with those found in the text.
Confrontational hermeneutics entails two different elements. The first element should aim at understanding the text precisely in its otherness from our own views and values, focusing on the ways the basic thought patterns of the text's original authors and audience were fundamentally different from our own. Doing this requires temporarily setting aside our own most cherished assumptions so as to produce for ourselves a strong opponent to wrestle with, so to speak. The second element should be the wrestling itself, considering the pro's and con's of this reconstructed view of the world vis-a` -vis our own views or other views we might be attracted to.
I very much believe in ''empowering the reader'' to challenge the message of a text. Neither the Daode jing nor any other text should be regarded as having some intrinsic unquestionable authority. I also believe that an en- counter with the text becomes much more productive if one first takes care to understand the text in its otherness, something worth wrestling with.
I should make it clear that I think ''understanding'' a text is a creative enterprise in itself. It does not mean memorizing some positivistically un- derstood ''doctrines'' that the text teaches, abstracted from human life and experience. It is a work of disciplined creative imagination. Using parameters
170 recent scholarship and teaching the daode jing
given by the text (different from one's own), one must try to construe the text in such a way that it makes sense. ''Make sense'' means, first, to understand the pragmatic implications of a given idea: what change accepting this idea would bring about in readers, their outlook, or their conduct. It means, sec- ond, to understand why a sensible person would adopt these ideas as a principal guide to how to lead one's life.
Following this pedagogical approach, my usual assignment for graded papers (which I use also for other religious texts in other courses) directs students first to choose some challenging idea central to the teaching of the Daode jing, some aspect that they think would be difficult for the average person to make sense of. Their paper should address a person unfamiliar with this book, showing their own understanding by their ability to explain their chosen idea in such a way that it would make sense to this person.
Frequently Asked Questions
Are you saying it is wrong to ignore the question of original meaning and use the Daode jing as a stimulus and guide in one's personal search for the truth? Absolutely not. This has been the approach of Chinese commentators throughout the ages, and millions have undoubtedly profited greatly from this kind of reading. ''American Daoists'' such as Benjamin Hoff and Fritjof Capra are simply continuing this tradition--why should it matter that they are not Chinese? The Daode jing is public property and people can do with it whatever
they want. If it serves to stimulate and inspire, who could object?
I do have trouble with scholars who place great emphasis on some lin- guistic or historical point they think others have missed, complain about ''translations'' by unscholarly amateurs like Stephen Mitchell and Witter By- nner, insisting on setting limits to what can be considered a ''legitimate'' in- terpretation of the Daode jing--but then in the next breath declare their belief that the Daode jing is an ''open'' text, by its very nature inviting multiple in- terpretations, so that the project of reconstructing its original meaning is misguided from the start. I believe that either one is trying as best one can to reconstruct what the Daode jing meant to its original authors and audience, or one is not. If one is not, then there is no basis for placing any limits to what can be considered a legitimate interpretation; historical and linguistic information is at best just one more source of interesting ideas among many. Serious historical and linguistic scholarship is relevant only if one is trying to recon- struct what the text originally meant. And in this case, the idea that the Daode jing is an open text with no determinate meaning means that historical research
hermeneutics and pedagogy: old-time historicism 171
will always be half-hearted, providing an opening for scholars to insert their favorite personal ideas unsupported by historical or textual evidence, while at the same time claiming special status for these personal interpretations be- cause they are somehow connected to expertise in linguistic and historical matters.
Why do you insist that students not take a more free and ahistorical approach in your classes?
Free reading is something all readers can do on their own at home, using whatever version or ''translation'' of the Daode jing gives them the most in- spiration and stimulation. Using the Daode jing in this way might also be quite appropriate in a creative writing course, for example, where the goal is to give students some stimulus and inspiration for developing their own thoughts on whatever subject interests them.
On the other hand, the project of recovering and engaging with the original meaning of the Daode jing is something difficult to do on one's own, and something for which a college classroom is uniquely suited. And there are some things that can be gained from this kind of historical reading that cannot be gained from a more free reading. For example, this kind of reading is more likely to present students with something more foreign to their own present views, therefore something that will require them to stretch their minds fur- ther. Also, the Daode jing gives paradigmatic expression to some ways of seeing the world that became foundational for many aspects of later East Asian culture (aspects not always specifically associated with the Daode jing or Daoism). Free reading interpretations may be more inspirational and useful to modern stu- dents in their personal quest for spiritual truth, but they are very misleading if one wants to understand certain foundational aspects of East Asian culture formulated in the Warring States period. I try to give students some sense of how the worldview expressed in the Daode jing has influenced other aspects of East Asian culture by including some readings related to Chinese medicine and Qigong and some excerpts from the Daoist meditation manual The Secret of the Golden Flower. 4 When time has permitted, I've also used K. Schipper's book about later Daoist religion, The Taoist Body, discussing some continuities and discontinuities between the Laoist worldview and the worldview that Schipper describes.
I have found that students from Japan, in particular, find the teachings of the Daode jing similar to many elements of Japanese culture (though many have never heard of ''Daoism''), which contrast with aspects of culture in the United States that they found jarring on their first encounter. I would like to find ways of drawing out their views on this subject in class discussions.
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Why do you present your interpretation to students as representing the original meaning of the Daode jing? How do you know that you have trans- cended all your own cultural biases and recovered the Daode jing's original meaning?
Going by the relevant historical information I presently know about, my interpretation currently seems to me to approximate the Daode jing's original meaning better than any other interpretation I know of. If it were not what I consider to be the best historical approximation, it would not be my inter- pretation: I would reject it and adopt some other one. I would think this should be the position of any scholar who has done serious research trying to recover the Daode jing's original meaning.
Do I think that my interpretation is free of cultural biases that might prevent me from fully recovering the Daode jing's original meaning? I think most likely it is not. In the course of twenty-five years' study of this work, I have discovered many cases of mistakes due to such biases, and I can only suppose there are more that I have not yet become aware of. I just don't know what they are at this point. If I did, I would try to correct my interpretation to remedy these inadequacies.
If time permits, I do sometimes begin the study of the Daode jing by drawing out students' previous associations with ''Daoism,'' derived often from books like Hoff's The Tao of Pooh or Capra's The Tao of Physics. It is often helpful to have some explicit discussions of this kind of ''American Daoism'' as a point of contrast with early Chinese Daoist texts such as the Daode jing and the Zhuangzi, but also to make it clear that this difference does not necessarily and by itself imply that American Daoism is by nature inferior.
I also try to make it clear that students are responsible for understand- ing the interpretation of the Daode jing given in my commentary. I don't think there is anything very essential about my translation of the Daode jing, in con- trast to the translations of other competent scholars such as Addiss and Lom- bardo, Victor Mair, Mary Ellen Chen, Wing-tsit Chan, D. C. Lau, J. J. L Duyvendak, and Arthur Waley. I do advise students against using other ''translations,'' such as those of Stephen Mitchell and Witter Bynner, which may be good for spiritual inspiration but are not appropriate for my courses since they are not informed by historical and linguistic competence. (In col- laboration with Julian Pas I've published an essay explaining some of the difficulties one faces in translating the Daode jing and some major reasons for variations in translations. This includes some illustrations of cases where Mitchell and Bynner insert lines that bear little or no relation to the Chinese text. )
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Doesn't the Daode jing itself say that its message can't be put into words? Doesn't this mean that academic analysis is an obstacle to understanding Dao? Your approach to interpretation is not a Daoist approach.
Exactly. The approach to interpretation I am teaching is not a Daoist approach. So far as I can see, Daoists were totally uninterested in the project of recovering the original meanings of texts, or challenging themselves by wrestling with sympathetically reconstructed views of the world fundamen- tally at odds with their own. The course I teach is not religious instruction aiming to make students into Daoists. If it were, we would need a teacher who would put us through a rigorous training of a different sort.
The fact that Dao cannot be put into words does not mean that it has no definite content, that it is vague, or that whatever inspirational meaning anyone attributes to this word gets at the meaning it had for the Daode jing's authors. One should not confuse depth with vagueness. The project of recovering orig- inal meanings requires that we develop some clearly articulated proposals about what this text might mean, so that these proposals can be tested. Likewise, the project of confronting ourselves with a challenging text requires that we specify clearly what it is that we are confronting. Leaving the text vague makes it easier to domesticate, reducing it to some views more familiar and more congenial to our own views of the world. There is an important sense in which understanding what Dao is requires going beyond what can be expressed straightforwardly in conventional language and concepts. This is due to the limitation of conven- tional language and concepts, not to the fact that Dao is not a definite and precise notion. And this kind of understanding normally takes place after struggling with some difficult notions, not as a substitute for such struggle.
Method in Reading
In practice, my pedagogy in courses on the Daode jing combines trying to teach students to be ''competent'' readers of the text, on the one hand, and summarizing for them the main elements of ''Laoism''5 on the other. In courses where I can devote only a brief time to the Daode jing, the first as- signment I give is usually to read several short essays in the topical glossary that accompanies my translation and commentary on the Daode jing. 6
As to competence, one of the main issues I focus on is the issue of how to understand the proverblike aphorisms contained in the Daode jing. 7 When we hear proverbs familiar in our own culture, spoken in contexts where they are appropriate, we have no difficulty understanding their meaning without
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analysis. But when we are forced to think reflectively on unfamiliar aphorisms from another culture, the usual reaction is to try to read them in a literal- minded way. By ''literal-minded'' I mean that we construe each word according to a dictionary definition, or simply think of whatever meaning comes to mind, and that we take statements to be enunciating a general principle applicable in an unrestricted way to all situations whatsoever. Literal-minded reading is one of the main sources of misunderstanding of religious texts, and in particular is the source of many objections students immediately think of to many lines in the Daode jing. ''One who shows off will not shine''--but how about people who get famous by self-advertising (e. g. , Madonna)? ''One who knows does not speak''--but what about speaking the words of the Daode jing? And so on.
I try to go through some common American proverbs to show that they are also generally false if we take them literally. ''Slow and steady wins the race''--but did so-and-so win the hundred-yard dash by going slow and steady? ''No news is good news''--but last week I had no news about my midterm grade because it was so bad the teacher was afraid to tell me about it. ''When it rains, it pours''--but all last week it just drizzled every day.
The opposite of literal-minded understanding is contextual understanding. In regard to proverbs and aphorisms, this means chiefly two things: relating the aphorism to some appropriate restricted range of situations and construing the words of the aphorism in a narrow way so that they make sense in relation to each other.
First, any given aphorism makes sense only in relation to a restricted range of circumstances. ''Slow and steady wins the race'' applies only to some kinds of races or competitions, the kind where pacing oneself is important. This is something we intuitively understand in our common use and understanding of proverbs. It is something we have to explicitly think about when trying to understand aphorisms in the Daode jing. When trying to understand ''One who shows off will not shine,'' one should not right away start directly thinking of possible meanings of these words. The first thing to do is try to imagine the kind of situations that this aphorism might apply to in such a way that it would make sense.
As Arthur Waley pointed out long ago, much of the Daode jing is intensely polemical. This means that the ''situation'' any given proverb addresses is one in which the speaker thinks there is some mistake being made that needs cor- recting. Identifying the situation to which the aphorism applies means iden- tifying the particular mistake that the speaker means to counteract. This again is true of many proverbs and aphorisms in common use today. For example, ''If it ain't broke, don't fix it'' is meant to counteract the common tendency to meddle with something even if it is functioning in a reasonably satisfactory
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way. ''It takes two to tango'' is usually meant to counteract the tendency to blame one person in a quarrel when both are at fault. If one does not know what the proverb means to counteract, one does not know its meaning.
Hyperbole is a common feature of proverbs related to this counteractive function. ''Don't believe anything you hear, and only half of what you see'' states its point in a very exaggerated form no one would ever take as a literal rule. It does this because it wants to say something that contrasts in the strongest possible way with the tendency toward gullibility that it means to counteract.
I think this is one of the most important methodological principles that ought to guide a ''competent'' reading of the Daode jing, combating the ten- dency toward literal-mindedness. Part of the polemic strategy of the Daode jing's' authors is to use terms that go against common views in the most flagrant way. ''The five colors make men's eyes go blind'' (chapter 12) is clearly false if taken literally. It exaggerates the point that overstimulation causes in- sensitivity in order to counteract people's attraction to stimulating sensations.
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Zhou and the butterfly there must be a difference'' (bi you fen yi). But the writer urges us to look for proper perspective not in any coherent interpretive model, but rather in the indeterminate ''transformation of things'' (wuhua).
To return to my starting point, I repeat that there seems to be no de- finitively right or wrong way to teach the Daode jing. But that fact does not logically lead to the conclusion that all approaches are equally valid. There are clearly better and worse approaches, and some can legitimately be condemned as invalid. After all, Zhuang Zhou might not have been able to be entirely sure whether he was Zhou or a butterfly, but there was no question that his reality lay somewhere within that bipolarity: he did not conclude that he might really be a gourd or a millipede! So our task as educators is to weed out invalid approaches to the Daode jing and to work within the remaining possibilities.
For some, this task will mean teaching the text as a product of its time, as a response to a particular set of historical and intellectual realities. In that sense, the Daode jing is, in its final form, someone's attempt to provide an alternative to certain patterns of thought and behavior in parts of ancient China. For other educators, it may mean teaching the Daode jing as an early expression of key aspects of Daoist practice, pointing out the significance of the text's passages on self-cultivation. To me, it seems necessary to teach our students both of those perspectives, because the text's composer (or at least, its final redactor) gave us a text that includes both. I try to help students cope with the resulting ambiguities by offering them a new hermeneutic model: unraveling a text that is composed in various layers, each the work of different minds, minds that proceeded from different assumptions, values, and concerns. This model, which reflects the textual and historical conclusions of many scholars, helps students understand the importance of historical realities, the importance of textual realities, and the fruitfulness of scholarly analysis as a hermeneutical tool.
This approach also gives students an intelligible reason to reject all the truly silly interpretations of the Daode jing that float around today. Just as Zhuang Zhou may or may not have been a butterfly but was certainly not a gourd, so the Daode jing is an expression of ancient Chinese sociopoliti- cal thought, an expression of interest in meditational and behavioral self- cultivation, possibly even an expression of popular values of ancient Chu, but it is certainly not the product of a modern or postmodern mind and was certainly not intended to correct the evils of our own age. So, although some educators may not yet feel ready to smash those interpretive gourds, we should help our students see what they are good for--studying the unreflective cultural impe- rialism that lingers in the postmodern West--and what they are not good for: understanding the Daode jing.
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notes
1. Some of the thoughts presented here were stimulated by a 1993 Minneapolis workshop entitled ''Text and Context: Critical Thinking Strategies for Texts in Translation. '' In that workshop, sponsored by the University of Minnesota, M. J. Abhishaker of Normandale College examined the problems of critical thinking in a culturally diverse interpretive context, and I focused discussion on hermeneutical issues involving the Daode jing I am indebted to Dr. Abhishaker and the other participants.
2. For decades, the Daode jing has been widely interpreted as offering solutions to problems that modern Westerners see as afflicting their own world. As Steve Bradbury has said, ''Because the vast majority of its translators, Western and Chinese, were attracted to it in the first place because of their humanist faith in . . . the Daode jing as proto-humanist doctrine compatible with liberal Protestantism, they have usually produced . . . readings of the work that . . . endorse a Western agenda. '' That agenda generally relates to a modern metanarrative that subordinates textual, his- torical, and cultural facts to a yearning for a utopian society freed of the evils that supposedly afflict the world under the oppressive yoke of ''organized religion,'' ''in- dustrial development,'' ''technology,'' ''patriarchal hegemony,'' or the linear rational- ism of ''the Western mind. '' Educators should acquaint themselves with Bradbury's essay, ''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), 29-41. More generally, see J. J. Clarke, Oriental Enlightenment: The Encounter between Asian and Western Thought (London: Routledge, 1997); J. J. Clarke, The Tao of the West (London: Routledge, 2000); and Russell Kirkland, ''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.
3. The 1963 Penguin edition of Lau's translation is still useful, though it trans- lates the received text, that is, the traditional version edited by the third-century phi- losopher Wang Pi. Students today should know that version, but should also be given a reliable translation of the Ma-wang-tui manuscripts, such as that by Robert G. Henricks, Lao-tzu Te-Tao Ching (New York: Ballantine Books, 1989). Henricks's version is readable and sinologically sound. In the same year, Lau translated the Ma- wang-tui edition, though the translation was published in Hong Kong, rendering it inaccessible to most students and educators. Fortunately, it has now been published in North America: D. C. Lau, Lao-tzu: Tao Te Ching (New York: Knopf, 1994), with a sound introduction by a good scholar, Sarah Allen. There is also a lovely translation of the Ma-wang-tui texts by Victor Mair: Tao Te Ching (New York: Bantam Books, 1990). Mair's translation is the most elegant of the reliable minimalist translations, but his explanatory efforts (in his preface, afterword, and appendix) contain so many prob- lems that I recommend it only to advanced students, who may be capable of sorting through them.
4. In the original assignment, I exhibited my personal values by referring to ''the writer'' as ''he/she. '' Since that time, I have learned not to project my wishes on
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history. My colleague Vivian-Lee Nyitray (University of California, Riverside) teaches students to ''avoid imposing a modern sensibility on the past,'' to remember that ''people in the past were not, for the most part, democratic, tolerant of religious or racial difference, concerned for individual rights . . . , fascinated by the personality . . . , particularly squeamish, or believers in 'Progress. ''' I pass these observations along to my students, adding, among other things, that we should beware of logical problems in applying gender-inclusive language to data from ages or cultures that were reso- lutely gender-exclusive. For instance, the category of ''Confucian scholar'' ( ju) has always been closed to women, whether or not we believe that it should have been. So I urge students to consider such facts when they write; today, for instance, readers of the Daode jing come in both genders, but such was not the case in ancient China. See notes 11 and 14 below.
5. Scholars like A. C. Graham and Harold Roth have made clear that, historically, the term ''Taoism'' was only a bibliographic classification until about the third century c. e. As Roth has put it, ''The 'Lao-Zhuang' tradition to which [modern 'tradition'] refers is actually a Wei-Jin literati reconstruction, albeit a powerful and enduring one. '' Harold Roth, ''Some Issues in the Study of Chinese Mysticism: A Review Essay,'' China Review International 2, no. 1 (1995): 157. I address these issues much more fully in Taoism: The Enduring Tradition (London: Routledge, 2004), and ''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).
6. On the figure of ''Lao-tzu,'' a rich and constantly evolving cultural construct, see A. C. Graham, ''The Origins of the Legend of Lao Tan,'' in his Studies in Chinese Philosophy and Philosophical Literature (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990), 111-124; Judith Magee Boltz, ''Lao-tzu,'' in The Encyclopedia of Religion (New York: Macmillan, 1987), 8:454-459; Livia Kohn, God of the Dao: Laozi in History and Myth (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Center for Chinese Studies, 1998), and ''The Lao-tzu Myth,'' in Lao-tzu and the Tao-te-ching, ed. Livia Kohn and Michael LaFargue (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998), 41-62. The Western cultural construct of ''Lao-tzu'' remains wholly unstudied.
7. See Kirkland, Taoism: The Enduring Tradition, 39-52, and ''Varieties of 'Tao- ism' in Ancient China: A Preliminary Comparison of Themes in the Nei yeh and Other 'Taoist Classics,' '' Taoist Resources 7, no. 2 (1997): 73-86.
8. My complete ''Historical Outline of Taoism,'' with explanations of certain interpretive positions, appears in ''The Historical Contours of Taoism in China: Thoughts on Issues of Classification and Terminology,'' Journal of Chinese Religions 25 (1997): 57-82; more recent thoughts, and a revised outline, appear in ''The History of Taoism: A New Outline,'' Journal of Chinese Religions 30 (2002): 177-193. An exposi- tion of my analysis of the ''layers'' of the Daode jing appears in Kirkland, ''The Book of the Way,'' in Great Literature of the Eastern World, ed. Ian P. McGreal (New York: HarperCollins, 1996), 24-29; a new analysis appears in Taoism: The Enduring Tra- dition, 52-67.
9. Again,Iemploythemasculinepronounhereasamatterofhistoricalaccuracy.
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10. I am unaware of any study that properly examines the facile modern as- sumption that the Daode jing, or Zhuangzi, can or ought to be read in terms of what Westerners understand to be ''philosophy. '' In my ''Self-Fulfillment through Self- lessness,'' I suggest some critical perspectives on the interpretive assumptions of Arthur C. Danto and Chad Hansen.
11. Again, I use masculine-gendered language here for a reason. I see evidence in the Daode jing that some of its thoughts could have originated in the minds of women, for example, members of local communities of Chu, whose ''elders'' (laozi) may not all have been male. (This analysis originates in ideas of Kimura Eiichi; see my ''Book of the Way. '') But I also assume that, given the general absence of literacy among women in pre-Han China, the composer or redactor of the Daode jing must have been male (albeit possibly with input from female associates).
12. Such is apparently the view of Chad Hansen: ''Laozi's position . . . remains a way station in Daoist development . . . We still have no final answer to the question, 'What should we do? '. . . If there is some advice, some point, Laozi could not state it. And so neither can I. But Zhuangzi can! Daoism must still mature more. '' Hansen, A Daoist Theory of Chinese Thought: A Philosophical Interpretation (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 202, 230.
13. The happiness of some interpreters to read the Daode jing's teachings as a watery ''mysticism''--a category utterly alien to China--can generally be explained in terms of the Western cultural experience. While some traditional cultures did have occasional ''mystics'' who communed directly with some higher reality, the modern interest in finding new forms of mysticism in old traditions has been propelled by the desperate search for a modern (i. e. , nonreligious) religion. No longer willing to take God, Church, or moral absolutes seriously, many moderns yearn for a ''Truth'' that ''liberated'' persons can accept and practice without having to yield to any authority outside themselves. To such seekers, the very concept of mysticism involves a de- deified Truth, purged of the premodern cultural baggage that moderns blithely dis- miss as ''superstition''--that is, all beliefs that deny the autonomy of the individual to dictate what is or is not real, true, or important. In this sense, mysticism is a nar- cissistic cultural construct, cherished by moderns as a means of escaping God (who, in Western tradition, embarrassingly demands obedience) and sacral community (which embarrassingly suggests that reality exists outside the individual's own ''au- tonomous'' consciousness). Though there has still been no critical assessment of the Western cultural notion that the Daode jing contains mysticism, a few preliminary reflections in that direction appear in Hansen, A Daoist Theory of Chinese Thought. Other reflections on the applicability of concepts of mysticism to Daoist data appear in Lee Yearley, ''The Perfected Person in the Radical Chuang-tzu,'' in Experimental Essays on Chuang-tzu, ed. Victor Mair (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1983), 125-139.
14. Elsewhere I have commented on Tu Wei-ming's effort to facilitate post- modern appropriation of Confucius's teachings by retranslating Confucius's term for the human ideal--zhun zi, which originally meant ''the sons of the rulers'' and was transformed by Confucius to mean ''the noble man'' rather than ''the nobleman''--as ''the profound person. '' Such a translation is intended to render Confucian ideals
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accessible and attractive to everyone, male and female alike. However, historical facts clearly reveal that prior to the age of Tu himself, the Confucian tradition was reso- lutely ''sexist. '' To sanitize for modern consumption a conservative tradition that al- ways rejected, on principle, individual efforts to ''improve'' tradition seems to be a move well justified in postmodern terms, but illegitimate in Confucian terms. Daoism is a different case, since premodern Daoism welcomed women as practitioners, though it could not fully escape the gender constraints of the surrounding society. See my entry, ''Taoism,'' in Encyclopedia of Women and World Religion (New York: Mac- millan, 1999), 2: 959-964.
15. See the chapter in this volume by Norman J. Girardot, and his book The Victorian Translation of China: James Legge's Oriental Pilgrimage (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002).
16. As Tu Wei-ming has noted, the Enlightenment mentality is the common heritage of all modern minds, Chinese and Western alike. Liu Xiaogan, for instance, may be Chinese, but he is a product of twentieth-century China, not pre-Han China. The same is true for all living interpreters, none of whom know what it would be like to look at the Daode jing as would a pre-Han person, as someone who had never experienced a world without a politically and culturally unified China, Buddhism, Neo-Confucianism, rationalism, democracy, Marxism, Christianity, and all the cul- tural and intellectual realities of the twentieth century. The text is thus an alien world for Chinese and Western interpreters alike.
17. In this day and age, it is socially unacceptable in most parts of Western society, even in the supposed ivory tower of academia, to provide students with a liberating model for rejecting colonialistic habits by explicitly comparing cultural appropriation to sexual appropriation. That is, no one today would accept that John's needs, however legitimate, could condone his appropriation of Jane. But even post- moderns seem content to look the other way when Westerners argue that their personal needs justify their unauthorized appropriation of Asian texts or Native American rituals. Postmoderns, like moderns, assume that it is the individual herself or himself who ''authorizes,'' so all cultural appropriation is logically acceptable, since such an act is no more than my exercising my unchallengeable individual autonomy. As a matter of fact, postmoderns are as eager as moderns to reject the value of tradition, so ripping cultural artifacts out of their traditional settings is not only innocuous, but virtuous.
18. It should be noted that the ''Great Minds''/''Great Books'' model for under- standing Daoism leads almost inevitably to a total disregard for the lives and thought of the Daoist women throughout history. The traditional Chinese canon of Great Books--essentially Confucian--generally excludes works by or about women, though Daoists of various periods valued and preserved records of women's lives and teach- ings. See my entry in Encyclopedia of Women and World Religion (New York: Mac- millan, 1999), 2: 959-964.
19. On the reasons for the growing ignorance of, and antipathy toward, Daoism among late imperial Confucians, see Kirkland, ''Person and Culture in the Taoist Tradition,'' Journal of Chinese Religions 20 (1992): 77-90.
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20. Fordecades,thestandard''scholarly''overviewofDaoismwasHolmesWelch, Taoism: The Parting of the Way (Boston: Beacon Press, 1965), a slightly revised edition of a 1957 book. Welch's chapter ''Later Philosophical Taoism'' (158-163) disregards all the Daozang's texts of religious thought and (like ''authorities'' from Fung Yu-lan to Stephen Mitchell) tells the reader that such texts are by people ''whom we can only regard as representatives of quaint, but moribund superstition'' (163). The ''real heirs'' of Laozi and Zhuangzi, Welch tells us, were Neo-Confucians, Zen masters, and land- scape painters. Meanwhile, in another chapter, Wang Che, whose writings Welch ap- parently never bothered to read, is ridiculed as ''eccentric'' and even ''fanatical'' (145).
21. The long-standard Sources of Chinese Tradition, edited by William T. deBary (New York: Columbia University Press, 1960), mentions no such sources, any more than Wing-tsit Chan mentions them in his still standard Source Book in Chinese Philosophy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963). See my review of Wm. T. deBary and Irene Bloom, eds. , Sources of Chinese Tradition, 2nd ed. , vol. 1 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), in Education about Asia 7, no. 1 (2002): 62-66.
22. See especially Livia Kohn, ed. , The Taoist Experience: An Anthology (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993). Other ''new'' Daoist texts appear in Donald S. Lopez Jr. , ed. , Religions of China in Practice (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996). However, as noted in my review in Education about Asia 2, no. 1 (spring 1997): 58-59, Lopez chose to swing the pendulum fully in the other direction, that is, ig- noring all Daoist texts that present ''intellectualized'' models of the Daoist life, thereby falsifying the reader's image of ''Daoism'' as gravely as deBary and Chan had done at the other extreme. One should also note that anthologies of Chinese literature con- tinue to follow Confucian paradigms by continuing to exclude most of the literature that originated among Daoists. See, for example, my review of Victor Mair, ed. , The Columbia Anthology of Traditional Chinese Literature (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995), in Education about Asia 3, no. 3 (1998): 64-65.
23. Isabelle Robinet, Taoism: Growth of a Religion, trans. Phyllis Brooks (Stan- ford: Stanford University Press, 1997), 29.
24. See Kohn, ''The Lao-tzu Myth,'' and God of the Dao. Some of the roles of Laozi in Daoism are highlighted in Kohn's ''Laozi: Ancient Philosopher, Master of Immortality, and God,'' in Lopez, Religions of China in Practice, 52-63; but one should note that the account of Laozi that she translates there, from Ge Hong Shen-hsien- chuan, casts him in the role of ''a successful practitioner of immortality'': Ge ''had no interest in stylizing him as the Dao, as the religious followers did'' (54).
25. John Lagerwey, Taoist Ritual in Chinese Society and History (New York: Macmillan, 1987), 23.
26. These central elements of Daoist thought, generally ignored before the present generation of specialists, are outlined in Kristopher Schipper, The Taoist Body, trans.
Karen Duval (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 113-119. Another long ignored facet of these beliefs is that ''the mystical vision of the body in Taoism'' probably ''served as a model of reference in Chinese medicine'' (124), which focuses on transformations of life energy (qi), unlike the more materialistic models of Western medicine, which deny the existence or value of such realities.
hermeneutics and pedagogy: methodological issues 165
27. See Livia Kohn, ''The Tao-te-ching in Ritual,'' in Kohn and LaFargue, Lao-tzu and the Tao-te-ching, 143-161. ''The value and sense which the Taoists attribute to their sacred writings'' is usefully summarized in Isabelle Robinet, Taoist Meditation, trans. Julian Pas and Norman Girardot (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993), 19-28.
28. As Timothy Barrett has said concerning Tang times, ''The Taoists were not preaching any new religious message about the human condition but offering their expertise in dealing with the world of the supernatural. '' T. H. Barrett, Taoism under the T'ang: Religion and Empire during the Golden Age of Chinese History (London: Wellsweep Press, 1996), 16.
29. See Judith A. Berling, A Pilgrim in Chinese Culture: Negotiating Religious Diversity (Maryknoll, N. Y. : Orbis Books, 1997), especially 85-86, 97-98.
30. See Russell Kirkland, ''The Study of Religion and Society in Contemporary Asia: Colonialism and Beyond,'' Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars 28, nos. 3-4 (1996): 59-63.
31. Indeed, the intellectual history of ancient China suggests that the concept of wuwei originated not in ''Daoist'' circles, but rather among political pragmatists of the fourth century b. c. e. The term was used not only by Confucius, but also by the ''Legalist'' Shen Buhai (d. 337 b. c. e. ). See H. G. Creel, Shen Pu-hai: A Chinese Political Philosopher of the Fourth Century b. c. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974), especially 176-179.
32. See Harold D. Roth, ''Redaction Criticism and the Early History of Taoism,'' Early China 19 (1994): 1-46, and Original Tao: Inward Training (Nei-yeh) and the Foundations of Taoist Mysticism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999); and my review, ''A Quest for 'The Foundations of Taoist Mysticism,' '' Studies in Central and East Asian Religions, nos. 12-13 (2001): 203-229.
33. See especially Livia Kohn, ed. , Taoist Meditation and Longevity Techniques (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, Center for Chinese Studies, 1989).
34. Scholars like Kristofer Schipper have spent a generation laboring to explicate such continuities, as seen most readily in his book, The Taoist Body. Another study of a hitherto ignored continuity between classical and later Daoism, the advocation of altruistic activity, is Russell Kirkland, ''The Roots of Altruism in the Taoist Tradition,'' Journal of the American Academy of Religion 54 (1986): 59-77. For more on integrating the data of Later Daoism in the teaching of Daoism, see Russell Kirkland, ''Teaching Taoism in the 1990s,'' Teaching Theology and Religion 1, no. 2 (1998): 121-129.
35. See Philip J. Ivanhoe and Paul Kjellberg, eds. , Essays on Skepticism, Relativism and Ethics in the Zhuangzi (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996).
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? Hermeneutics and Pedagogy: Gimme That Old-Time Historicism
Michael LaFargue
My approach to teaching the Daode jing is based in part on an ap- proach I've developed to hermeneutics, a subject that I have thought about a lot, beginning in my days as a graduate student in biblical studies. 1 I formulated the beginnings of this hermeneutic theory in my graduate dissertation, in which I thought what I was doing was rescuing gnosticism, and a particular gnostic text (the Acts of Thomas), from its misinterpretation by Christian theologians. They were in- terpreting gnostic texts from a perspective shaped by mainstream Christian assumptions. (Gnosticism traditionally serves as a kind
of whipping boy for Christian theologians, a counterpoint that serves to show the obvious superiority of mainstream Christianity by con- trast. ) I realized early on the implausibility of attacking this kind of interpretation on substantive grounds, that is, on the grounds of substantive weaknesses in the orthodox Christian assumptions it was based on. I needed to focus on developing an interpretive method, a method that could derive from a text itself and from historical re- search the proper framework of assumptions within which it should be interpreted, rather than rely on the interpreter's own views about substantively correct assumptions.
At this point I had the good fortune of coming across Jonathan Culler's Structuralist Poetics. Culler argued that a text's ''structure'' does not lie on the surface to be observed by a neutral observer. The key to structure lies in the reader, the assumptions that a reader
168 recent scholarship and teaching the daode jing
brings to the text, causing her to construe it as she does. Culler used Chomsky's term ''competence'' to refer to such assumptions.
Some hermeneutic theorists use notions similar to competence to legiti- mate a very free reading of texts. Because there are no universal, normative assumptions, every reader should feel empowered to read the text in the light of whatever assumptions she happens to have and like. But in the context of my work at the time, this seemed to me to simply legitimate the practice of or- thodox Christian theologians, reading gnostic texts in the light of their own assumptions. I took the notion of competence in a different direction, devel- oping the idea that there are different kinds of competence appropriate to different texts. We arrive at good historical interpretations of a given text, not by reflecting on possible meanings of given sentences, but by trying to discover the nature of competence appropriate to this text. This competence is partly liter- ary, having to do with the textual code and verbal genres being used. Partly it is substantive, having to do with the basic, taken-for-granted assumptions of the original author and audience and the basic concerns, questions, and problems they were addressing. Taken without reference to this specific competence, every text is ambiguous, since a given set of words can be construed in any number of different ways, to address any number of different concerns. But most texts were not so ambiguous to their original authors and audience: the shared competence they brought to the text is what gave their words specific meanings to them. Chiefly by reflecting on indirect indications in the text itself, aided by additional historical research, we can gather clues as to the compe- tence necessary to understand it.
This approach gave me a basis for arguing that the Acts of Thomas should be read in a way fundamentally different from the way it was customarily read by Christian theologians2--not because the assumptions they brought to the text were questionable in themselves, but because, historically speaking, they did not match the assumptions that the original authors and audience brought to the text.
But this view also set me at odds with a good deal of contemporary her- meneutic theory and practice, allying me much more closely with the historicist hermeneutics of Dilthey and his mentor Schleiermacher, than with their much more popular modern critic H. -G. Gadamer. 3 The works of Gadamer, Paul Ricoeur, and Jacques Derrida seem to me to have inspired a kind of herme- neutics that is a throwback to the pre-Dilthey tradition of scripture interpreta- tion, which was always for the most part ideological warfare conducted by indirect means. Everyone feels supported in trying to capture classical texts for whatever cause they feel strongly about (Christian fundamentalism, feminism, Zen Buddhism, and so on) by simply reading these texts in the light of their
hermeneutics and pedagogy: old-time historicism 169
own dearly held assumptions, concerns, and values. An interpretation is a ''good interpretation'' if it accords with the values and assumptions that the interpreter regards as the right ones. The result seems to me very often just propaganda masquerading as ''interpretation. ''
Pedagogy: Why Try to Recover the Original Meaning?
The project of ''recovering the original meaning'' of classical texts is almost universally associated with the assumption that the original meaning has an authoritative status because it is original. I think this is an important assump- tion to bring to light and argue against when teaching classical texts like the Daode jing. I advocate instead a kind of ''confrontational'' hermeneutics. Clas- sical texts give paradigmatic expression to perfectionist views of the world and of human excellence, based on values that millions have found inspiring. But these are not universal values, and the views of ancient gnostics or ancient Daoists may or may not be appropriate to life today. Interpretation should give us something very challenging, something very strong to wrestle with. Con- fronting such a challenge can show us some weaknesses in our own conven- tional and often mediocre views. Meeting this challenge might mean adopting some of the views expressed in the text; it might also mean developing better versions of our own values that contrast with those found in the text.
Confrontational hermeneutics entails two different elements. The first element should aim at understanding the text precisely in its otherness from our own views and values, focusing on the ways the basic thought patterns of the text's original authors and audience were fundamentally different from our own. Doing this requires temporarily setting aside our own most cherished assumptions so as to produce for ourselves a strong opponent to wrestle with, so to speak. The second element should be the wrestling itself, considering the pro's and con's of this reconstructed view of the world vis-a` -vis our own views or other views we might be attracted to.
I very much believe in ''empowering the reader'' to challenge the message of a text. Neither the Daode jing nor any other text should be regarded as having some intrinsic unquestionable authority. I also believe that an en- counter with the text becomes much more productive if one first takes care to understand the text in its otherness, something worth wrestling with.
I should make it clear that I think ''understanding'' a text is a creative enterprise in itself. It does not mean memorizing some positivistically un- derstood ''doctrines'' that the text teaches, abstracted from human life and experience. It is a work of disciplined creative imagination. Using parameters
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given by the text (different from one's own), one must try to construe the text in such a way that it makes sense. ''Make sense'' means, first, to understand the pragmatic implications of a given idea: what change accepting this idea would bring about in readers, their outlook, or their conduct. It means, sec- ond, to understand why a sensible person would adopt these ideas as a principal guide to how to lead one's life.
Following this pedagogical approach, my usual assignment for graded papers (which I use also for other religious texts in other courses) directs students first to choose some challenging idea central to the teaching of the Daode jing, some aspect that they think would be difficult for the average person to make sense of. Their paper should address a person unfamiliar with this book, showing their own understanding by their ability to explain their chosen idea in such a way that it would make sense to this person.
Frequently Asked Questions
Are you saying it is wrong to ignore the question of original meaning and use the Daode jing as a stimulus and guide in one's personal search for the truth? Absolutely not. This has been the approach of Chinese commentators throughout the ages, and millions have undoubtedly profited greatly from this kind of reading. ''American Daoists'' such as Benjamin Hoff and Fritjof Capra are simply continuing this tradition--why should it matter that they are not Chinese? The Daode jing is public property and people can do with it whatever
they want. If it serves to stimulate and inspire, who could object?
I do have trouble with scholars who place great emphasis on some lin- guistic or historical point they think others have missed, complain about ''translations'' by unscholarly amateurs like Stephen Mitchell and Witter By- nner, insisting on setting limits to what can be considered a ''legitimate'' in- terpretation of the Daode jing--but then in the next breath declare their belief that the Daode jing is an ''open'' text, by its very nature inviting multiple in- terpretations, so that the project of reconstructing its original meaning is misguided from the start. I believe that either one is trying as best one can to reconstruct what the Daode jing meant to its original authors and audience, or one is not. If one is not, then there is no basis for placing any limits to what can be considered a legitimate interpretation; historical and linguistic information is at best just one more source of interesting ideas among many. Serious historical and linguistic scholarship is relevant only if one is trying to recon- struct what the text originally meant. And in this case, the idea that the Daode jing is an open text with no determinate meaning means that historical research
hermeneutics and pedagogy: old-time historicism 171
will always be half-hearted, providing an opening for scholars to insert their favorite personal ideas unsupported by historical or textual evidence, while at the same time claiming special status for these personal interpretations be- cause they are somehow connected to expertise in linguistic and historical matters.
Why do you insist that students not take a more free and ahistorical approach in your classes?
Free reading is something all readers can do on their own at home, using whatever version or ''translation'' of the Daode jing gives them the most in- spiration and stimulation. Using the Daode jing in this way might also be quite appropriate in a creative writing course, for example, where the goal is to give students some stimulus and inspiration for developing their own thoughts on whatever subject interests them.
On the other hand, the project of recovering and engaging with the original meaning of the Daode jing is something difficult to do on one's own, and something for which a college classroom is uniquely suited. And there are some things that can be gained from this kind of historical reading that cannot be gained from a more free reading. For example, this kind of reading is more likely to present students with something more foreign to their own present views, therefore something that will require them to stretch their minds fur- ther. Also, the Daode jing gives paradigmatic expression to some ways of seeing the world that became foundational for many aspects of later East Asian culture (aspects not always specifically associated with the Daode jing or Daoism). Free reading interpretations may be more inspirational and useful to modern stu- dents in their personal quest for spiritual truth, but they are very misleading if one wants to understand certain foundational aspects of East Asian culture formulated in the Warring States period. I try to give students some sense of how the worldview expressed in the Daode jing has influenced other aspects of East Asian culture by including some readings related to Chinese medicine and Qigong and some excerpts from the Daoist meditation manual The Secret of the Golden Flower. 4 When time has permitted, I've also used K. Schipper's book about later Daoist religion, The Taoist Body, discussing some continuities and discontinuities between the Laoist worldview and the worldview that Schipper describes.
I have found that students from Japan, in particular, find the teachings of the Daode jing similar to many elements of Japanese culture (though many have never heard of ''Daoism''), which contrast with aspects of culture in the United States that they found jarring on their first encounter. I would like to find ways of drawing out their views on this subject in class discussions.
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Why do you present your interpretation to students as representing the original meaning of the Daode jing? How do you know that you have trans- cended all your own cultural biases and recovered the Daode jing's original meaning?
Going by the relevant historical information I presently know about, my interpretation currently seems to me to approximate the Daode jing's original meaning better than any other interpretation I know of. If it were not what I consider to be the best historical approximation, it would not be my inter- pretation: I would reject it and adopt some other one. I would think this should be the position of any scholar who has done serious research trying to recover the Daode jing's original meaning.
Do I think that my interpretation is free of cultural biases that might prevent me from fully recovering the Daode jing's original meaning? I think most likely it is not. In the course of twenty-five years' study of this work, I have discovered many cases of mistakes due to such biases, and I can only suppose there are more that I have not yet become aware of. I just don't know what they are at this point. If I did, I would try to correct my interpretation to remedy these inadequacies.
If time permits, I do sometimes begin the study of the Daode jing by drawing out students' previous associations with ''Daoism,'' derived often from books like Hoff's The Tao of Pooh or Capra's The Tao of Physics. It is often helpful to have some explicit discussions of this kind of ''American Daoism'' as a point of contrast with early Chinese Daoist texts such as the Daode jing and the Zhuangzi, but also to make it clear that this difference does not necessarily and by itself imply that American Daoism is by nature inferior.
I also try to make it clear that students are responsible for understand- ing the interpretation of the Daode jing given in my commentary. I don't think there is anything very essential about my translation of the Daode jing, in con- trast to the translations of other competent scholars such as Addiss and Lom- bardo, Victor Mair, Mary Ellen Chen, Wing-tsit Chan, D. C. Lau, J. J. L Duyvendak, and Arthur Waley. I do advise students against using other ''translations,'' such as those of Stephen Mitchell and Witter Bynner, which may be good for spiritual inspiration but are not appropriate for my courses since they are not informed by historical and linguistic competence. (In col- laboration with Julian Pas I've published an essay explaining some of the difficulties one faces in translating the Daode jing and some major reasons for variations in translations. This includes some illustrations of cases where Mitchell and Bynner insert lines that bear little or no relation to the Chinese text. )
hermeneutics and pedagogy: old-time historicism 173
Doesn't the Daode jing itself say that its message can't be put into words? Doesn't this mean that academic analysis is an obstacle to understanding Dao? Your approach to interpretation is not a Daoist approach.
Exactly. The approach to interpretation I am teaching is not a Daoist approach. So far as I can see, Daoists were totally uninterested in the project of recovering the original meanings of texts, or challenging themselves by wrestling with sympathetically reconstructed views of the world fundamen- tally at odds with their own. The course I teach is not religious instruction aiming to make students into Daoists. If it were, we would need a teacher who would put us through a rigorous training of a different sort.
The fact that Dao cannot be put into words does not mean that it has no definite content, that it is vague, or that whatever inspirational meaning anyone attributes to this word gets at the meaning it had for the Daode jing's authors. One should not confuse depth with vagueness. The project of recovering orig- inal meanings requires that we develop some clearly articulated proposals about what this text might mean, so that these proposals can be tested. Likewise, the project of confronting ourselves with a challenging text requires that we specify clearly what it is that we are confronting. Leaving the text vague makes it easier to domesticate, reducing it to some views more familiar and more congenial to our own views of the world. There is an important sense in which understanding what Dao is requires going beyond what can be expressed straightforwardly in conventional language and concepts. This is due to the limitation of conven- tional language and concepts, not to the fact that Dao is not a definite and precise notion. And this kind of understanding normally takes place after struggling with some difficult notions, not as a substitute for such struggle.
Method in Reading
In practice, my pedagogy in courses on the Daode jing combines trying to teach students to be ''competent'' readers of the text, on the one hand, and summarizing for them the main elements of ''Laoism''5 on the other. In courses where I can devote only a brief time to the Daode jing, the first as- signment I give is usually to read several short essays in the topical glossary that accompanies my translation and commentary on the Daode jing. 6
As to competence, one of the main issues I focus on is the issue of how to understand the proverblike aphorisms contained in the Daode jing. 7 When we hear proverbs familiar in our own culture, spoken in contexts where they are appropriate, we have no difficulty understanding their meaning without
174 recent scholarship and teaching the daode jing
analysis. But when we are forced to think reflectively on unfamiliar aphorisms from another culture, the usual reaction is to try to read them in a literal- minded way. By ''literal-minded'' I mean that we construe each word according to a dictionary definition, or simply think of whatever meaning comes to mind, and that we take statements to be enunciating a general principle applicable in an unrestricted way to all situations whatsoever. Literal-minded reading is one of the main sources of misunderstanding of religious texts, and in particular is the source of many objections students immediately think of to many lines in the Daode jing. ''One who shows off will not shine''--but how about people who get famous by self-advertising (e. g. , Madonna)? ''One who knows does not speak''--but what about speaking the words of the Daode jing? And so on.
I try to go through some common American proverbs to show that they are also generally false if we take them literally. ''Slow and steady wins the race''--but did so-and-so win the hundred-yard dash by going slow and steady? ''No news is good news''--but last week I had no news about my midterm grade because it was so bad the teacher was afraid to tell me about it. ''When it rains, it pours''--but all last week it just drizzled every day.
The opposite of literal-minded understanding is contextual understanding. In regard to proverbs and aphorisms, this means chiefly two things: relating the aphorism to some appropriate restricted range of situations and construing the words of the aphorism in a narrow way so that they make sense in relation to each other.
First, any given aphorism makes sense only in relation to a restricted range of circumstances. ''Slow and steady wins the race'' applies only to some kinds of races or competitions, the kind where pacing oneself is important. This is something we intuitively understand in our common use and understanding of proverbs. It is something we have to explicitly think about when trying to understand aphorisms in the Daode jing. When trying to understand ''One who shows off will not shine,'' one should not right away start directly thinking of possible meanings of these words. The first thing to do is try to imagine the kind of situations that this aphorism might apply to in such a way that it would make sense.
As Arthur Waley pointed out long ago, much of the Daode jing is intensely polemical. This means that the ''situation'' any given proverb addresses is one in which the speaker thinks there is some mistake being made that needs cor- recting. Identifying the situation to which the aphorism applies means iden- tifying the particular mistake that the speaker means to counteract. This again is true of many proverbs and aphorisms in common use today. For example, ''If it ain't broke, don't fix it'' is meant to counteract the common tendency to meddle with something even if it is functioning in a reasonably satisfactory
hermeneutics and pedagogy: old-time historicism 175
way. ''It takes two to tango'' is usually meant to counteract the tendency to blame one person in a quarrel when both are at fault. If one does not know what the proverb means to counteract, one does not know its meaning.
Hyperbole is a common feature of proverbs related to this counteractive function. ''Don't believe anything you hear, and only half of what you see'' states its point in a very exaggerated form no one would ever take as a literal rule. It does this because it wants to say something that contrasts in the strongest possible way with the tendency toward gullibility that it means to counteract.
I think this is one of the most important methodological principles that ought to guide a ''competent'' reading of the Daode jing, combating the ten- dency toward literal-mindedness. Part of the polemic strategy of the Daode jing's' authors is to use terms that go against common views in the most flagrant way. ''The five colors make men's eyes go blind'' (chapter 12) is clearly false if taken literally. It exaggerates the point that overstimulation causes in- sensitivity in order to counteract people's attraction to stimulating sensations.
