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Chinese characters have been corrected.
Notes
The reviewer uses pinyin with tone marks; romanization that appears in quoted text is kept as in the respective source.
Where not otherwise indicated, Chinese text was retrieved from the ctext corpus (Sturgeon, 2019).
Where not otherwise indicated, English translations are by the reviewer.
Interested readers might refer to Mou 2018.
“古之善為道者, 非以明民, 將以愚之。 民之難治, 以其智多。”《道德經六十五章》
“故以智治國, 國之賊; 不以智治國, 國之福。 知此兩者亦塴式。 常知塴式, 是謂玄德。 玄德深矣, 遠矣, 與物反矣, 然後
乃至大順。”《道德經六十五章》
This much more “Daoist” understanding of the passage is well supported by scholarship. In his new reference translation of Laozi, where this chapter is extensively discussed, Guying Chen asserts: “The theme of this chapter has been generally mistaken by later generations who read it as Laozi advocating for obscurantist policies (愚民政策). However, the yu 愚 [fool, foolishness, unsophisticated, ignorant, stupid] intended by Laozi, actually means genuineness and simplicity. He not only expects the people to be genuine and simple, but he requires the rulers in particular to pursue genuineness and simplicity for the sake of self-cultivation” (Chen 2020, p. 351–352).
“吾止之於有窮, 流之於無止。 予欲慮之而不能知也……目知窮乎所欲見, 力屈乎所欲逐, 吾既不及已夫! 形充空虛, 乃至委蛇。 汝委蛇, 故怠。”《莊子‧天運》
Expressed for example, when Confucius reflects on a former state of societal harmony as the proceeding of the “Great Dào” (大道) in the chapter “Lǐ Yùn” of the Book of Rites《禮記‧禮運》.
“From the meaning of Kūn Qián, and the almanac of Xià, I deduced [the Lǐ 禮]” (Book of Rites, Lǐ Yùn) (坤乾之義, 夏時之等, 吾以是觀之。 《禮記‧禮運》). Kūn Qián 坤乾, the Earth and Heaven trigrams are texts on yīn 陰 yáng 陽 cosmology that were considered ancient even in Confucius’ times.
For example: “How the tracks of tiān are due to the supreme process of the dào” Book of Changes, “Dà Xù” (「何天之衢, 道大行也。」《易經‧大畜象傳》).
In the words of the Yellow Emperor: “As for music, it starts from being shaken, being shaken turns to awe; I add more to cause weariness; being weary you flee; it culminates in bewilderment, bewildered, therefore stupefied; stupefied, therefore dào, as the dào can carry, so it accompanies as well” Zhuangzi, “Heavenly Motions” (樂也者, 始於懼, 懼故祟; 吾又次之以怠, 怠故遁; 卒之於惑, 惑故愚; 愚故道, 道可載而與之俱也。 《莊子‧天運》).
References
Chen, G. (2020). The annotated critical Laozi: With contemporary explication and traditional commentary. Brill.
Jaspers, K. (1949). Vom Ursprung und Ziel der Geschichte (The origin and goal of history). Piper.
Lai, K. L. (2008). An introduction to Chinese philosophy. Cambridge University Press.
Mou, B. (Ed.). (2018). Philosophy of language, Chinese language, Chinese philosophy: Constructive engagement. Brill
Priest, G., Berto, F., & Weber, Z. (2018). Dialetheism. In E. N. Zalta (Ed.), The Stanford encyclopaedia of philosophy. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2018/entries/dialetheism/
Sturgeon, D. (2019). Chinese text project: A dynamic digital library of premodern Chinese. Digital Scholarship in the Humanities, 36, i101–i112. https://doi.org/10.1093/llc/fqz046http://ctext.org
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Chen, Y. The Art of Chinese Philosophy: Eight Classical Texts and How to Read Them. Paul R. Goldin. Journal East Asian Philosophy 2, 127–135 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s43493-021-00005-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s43493-021-00005-6