The Tao of the Tao Te Ching: A Translation and Commentary (S U N Y Series in Chinese Philosophy and Culture)

Rating:
Summary: Not the best translation - that's one.
Review: Explanations and hermeneutics in this book are unfortunately of a rather obvious sort and smack of catechism; they are redundant; any borderline intelligent person would have got as much (and more) from simply reading the original (hopefully in a better translation.) Keep in mind, it's about Tao, one of whose implications is that a word expressed is not the right word -- iow, it would seem in general that the very concept of a Tao commentary is a contradiction in terms, but suppose we overlook that, at least make it original and interesting. This book, unfortunately, is a great testimony to those lines in TTCh saying that the Way that can be walked ain't it, the word that can be spoken ain't it, and so on.

Finally, Mr Lafargue is one of those academicians who like to keep count of how many times they've used the pronoun "he" vs. the count of the pronoun "she" in a generic context -- that, as he suggests, makes the book more modern, relevant. This reader finds the "he/she" PC score-keeping imbecilic and boundlessly irritating.

Anyway, here's the sum of it: the translation is not so good; commentary -- uninteresting, obvious; expository style -- catechetical and annoying. Thumbs down; not recommended; there are many better translations (including free ones on the net); this PC squawking session doesn't get my vote.

Rating:
Summary: Meaningful text or Rorschach test?
Review: Michael LaFargue says the Tao Te Ching is the former even though it's often treated as the latter.

According to LaFargue (my paraphrase), there are two ways to read the Tao Te Ching, just as there are two ways to read any text.

The first -- the one taken by any number of readers of Lao-Tzu, including some "translators" whom LaFargue doesn't name and I won't either -- is to point your face at it and sort of see how it makes you, like, _feel_, you know?

The second, and the one LaFargue favors, is to place the text in the context for which it was written and try to understand what its writer or speaker would have intended by it.

This is the approach LaFargue uses in order to produce his excellent (and thoroughly annotated and cross-referenced) translation of the Tao Te Ching. He also, in an extremely helpful essay on hermeneutics, discusses this approach at length and explains the context in which he believes the text to have been written.

I won't try to discuss every topic he covers, but one extremely helpful point is his identification of much of the text as what he calls "compensatory wisdom." On his view, some of the Tao Te Ching's pithy sayings are intended not as metaphysical speculation but only as counters to contrary human tendencies. (When we say that "a watched pot never boils," we surely do not mean that if you sit there and watch a pot, it will literally _never_ boil. We are merely warning against a common tendency to rush things that can't be rushed.)

This seems to me to be right on the money, and indeed to be pretty widely applicable to Oriental religious literature including the Bible. It is the right way, for example, to read the book of Proverbs, and some of Jesus's sayings from the Christian New Testament as well.

LaFargue's volume, then, may be of interest both to readers of Lao-Tzu and to readers of the Jewish and Christian Bibles. In discussions of "biblical inerrancy" and such, it is too often forgotten that the Bible is ancient Near Eastern literature and therefore not written to modern Western European standards. Inerrantists and religious "liberals" alike could surely profit from greater appreciation of this point; many apparent contradictions just disappear (and so do some theological creeds) once we understand that the text isn't _always_ offering us metaphysical principles.

In any event, widespread reading of LaFargue's book might spare us another spate of ill-considered screeds on "the Tao of" this, that, and the other thing. What a relief that would be.

Rating:
Summary: A Cornerstone of Sorts
Review: The three way comparison format (english translation, cultural translation, and reasoning for translation based on historical and linguistic fact) and the dry, reserved language give this book the cut to access unique tumblers in the most difficult of locks. LeFargue and his students (he mentions them adding their understanding) paint meaning and understanding like a watercolor, with each layer's contribution plainly visible, rather than the masking qualities of psuedo-scientists' day-glo acrylic or the holistic turtles' enamel pastels. Triangulating one's own understanding from a single source is an unusual treat. For a rational and restrained mind the fit is magic and the bolt of suspicion is thrown back (or a rough slide for some). All the same its the only book in its genre I've been able to wholly admire.