You need the right translation. Duyvendak all the way (pun unintended).

>>24551966
It's hard to find a good translation cause many of those words can be interpreted in many different ways. I'll try this version, thank you anon.

>>24551947 (OP)
It's so vague that you can basically interpret anything you want, so it's useless to talk about it

>>24552024
>>24551966
Johnathan Star's is the best translation. I think you could even make your own translation of the Tao Te Ching if you wanted based off his book.

>>24552027
Are you saying the Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao? That's crazy.

Ziporyn doesn't get enough love on this board.

>>24551947 (OP)
Yeah, it's great. As other anons said, the translation is key. I read a version that was "economic" and it was very good, bought a higher end version of the book later and it sucked. The academics tried to take the spiritual aspect off the text lol

>>24552035
>the Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao
You're not chinese, use the term Way. Still unintelligible though.

>>24551947 (OP)
https://annas-archive.org/md5/9c41db4597263160d8c272a7618aaf1c

>>24552036
Ziporyn is one of those guys who sees Chinese philosophy as a instrument for "correcting" his grievances with Western philosophy. I couldn't even finish his "Ironies of Oneness and Difference" because I was rolling my eyes so much. At one point he coyly states that World War II happened because of how the West handles the problem of universals (unlike the East, of course, where such violent conflicts have been deftly avoided. No World War II in China or Japan!) Just lmao at this fucking guy.

>>24552140
The West has always had a pathological relationship with space. Ziporyn's point was that the East's conflicts aren't rooted in cultural rot like the West's are.

>>24552036
>>24552140
>>24552159
>He is currently working on a ... book-length exposition of atheism as a form of religious and mystical experience in the intellectual histories of Europe, India and China.
What's the deal with this guy? Elaborate.

>>24552036
>>24552140
>>24552159
>He is currently working on a ... book-length exposition of atheism as a form of religious and mystical experience in the intellectual histories of Europe, India and China.
What's the deal with this guy? Is he just a shitlib or an actual unorthodox metaphysician? Elaborate.

I like how Lu Xun makes fun of Laozi.

>Laozi smiled again, revealing his gums. 'Do I have any teeth left?' he asked.
>'No.'
>'Do I still have a tongue?'
>'Yes.'
>'My point being?'
>'The hard falls away, while the soft survives, master?'
>'Well said'

>'If you hadn’t dozed off, you'd have heard him say "everything can be done by doing nothing". He's as ambitious as a prince, but as weak as a pauper – since he thinks he can do anything, he ends up doing nothing.'

>>24552159
Ziporyn's work is just sloppy and ideological, like Hansen and Ames before him. Ironies of Oneness and Difference is filled with atrocious exegetical arguments, where the text plainly does not say anything in support of his metaphysical system, which is constructed explicitly as a foil to what he takes to be "Western metaphysics" (which is itself already an incredibly sloppy and ideological generalization).

The one thing these types all have in common is that their interpretations of China's philosophy in 500 BC is by sheer coincidence totally consistent with 20th/21st century Western, atheist, naturalist, secularism. In other words, their "interpretation" of an ancient foreign culture is identical to their own views. That's why a book that is nominally about China begins with 50 pages of Ziporyn's own critique of the West: All of his work has to be understood as motivated through this critique.

>>24552179
actual unorthodox metaphysician. Buddhism is atheistic in practice.

>>24552101
It's the Tao. "The Way" is what OrthoLARPers say.

>>24552181
That's cute and all, and while I don't doubt a Western scholar will invariably interpret an ancient tradition in terms of what he's been raised to understand, you're giving him a short thrift to be the epic 4chan guy here to demolish my illusions about Brook Ziporyn, Ph.D. it's tiresome. charitable readers are the only people on the internet worth talking to anymore, especially those who have read more than one book of the individual in question.

>>24551947 (OP)
There is a book you must read called The Essential Art of Great Peace. Learn its content and never sway from the path or you will bring about utter ruin.

>>24552185
So what can you tell me about his translations of Laozi and Zhuangzi? I have considered investing in his complete Zhuangzi as I've never come across a comprehensive tome of the sort, and the Outer Chapters seem neglected.

>>24552209
All I can tell you is his grasp of Tiantai Buddhism is yes, unavoidably Western, but emotionally mature and philosophically sophisticated. Read his SEP article on Tiantai Buddhism if you need a primer. He's not the raging polemic the other anon would lead you to believe he is. I lump Ziporyn's detractors in with Schelling's: lame nerds who haven't been through it.

>>24552200
You're the larper here, clearly.

>>24552201
>He has a PhD and you don't so he's right
So does Jordan Peterson.

Let's look closely. Open your copy of the book to pages 93-94, in Chapter Three. This is where he presents his justification for his entire metaphysical interpretation of the Analects. Let's take note of two important textual facts: The passage from the Analects he presents here is the one and only passage he presents in the ten pages explicating his conception of "non-ironic coherence", and he himself says explicitly:

>This is my "key passage" for interpreting the Analects.

So I am not cherry picking here. What we are about to examine is Ziporyn's exegetical justification for his metaphysical interpretation of the Analects, as chosen by him. It is his strongest evidence in favor of his views. Here it is:

>(Analects 19:22) The Way of Kings Wen and Wu has not yet completely fallen to the ground; it is to be found present in living people. The more worthy know its major aspects, but even the less worthy know its lesser aspects; hence there are non who do not have the Way of Kings Wen and Wu in them. So from whom did our master not learn? And yet how could he have had any one constant teacher?

Here is Ziporyn's interpretation:

>We are told that [a specific cultural tradition] can be found everywhere in that community, but the decisive thing here, the turning of the tables, is that what really actualizes this omnipresence is Confucious himself, that is, his ability to recognize the coherence of these various cultural forms, to ask the right questions, to "thread them together", to borrow a trope he uses elsewhere... If he were not there to see it that way, the fragments of the Way of Wen and Wu, through present everywhere, would not cohere into anything intelligible.

Ziporyn's metaphysics of "omniavailability" is the denial of the existence of objects simpliciter. It is a subject-relative metaphysics in which the types of objects which exist depend on a context and observer. He explains this position in detail in Chapter 2. Here he is explaining that Confucius does not merely observe the Way of Wen and Wu, but that the Way of Wen and Wu do not even *exist* (in the Western metaphysical sense of this word) until a particular type of agent observes them.

Refer to the passage from the Analects above. Where does it state that Confucius's presence *makes it the case* that the Way of Wen and Wu are partially known by even the less worthy?

It is not sufficient to show that this passage is consistent with Ziporyn's interpretation, because a passage can be consistent with multiple contradictory positions by expressing no particular opinion on the subject. The important point is that this passage *is the evidence* that Ziporyn's metaphysical interpretation is correct. It is his single strongest supporting passage, chosen by him, to illustrate his point. And it quite literally makes no comment in support of his position.

>>24552255
>So does Jordan Peterson.
"PhD" made my sentence flow better. I haven't read a page of Peterson but he's no dumbass, by any stretch. Anyone who can hold a conversation with Paglia for ten minutes isn't by definition. I'm not a credentialist.

I haven't read this book. I'm exclusively interested in his interpretation of Tiantai, barring his obvious Western indulgences. Whether he uses these traditions as a vehicle for his own idiosyncratic interpretations or not makes no difference to me: his understanding of Buddhism is true to life, in my experience. Until you can demonstrate that his interpretation of pic rel is nonsensical, let's agree to disagree. And I apologize for insulting you.

>>24552140
so tired of jewish "Buddhists". absolutely exhausting 'people'

>>24552254
What do you think of the Mawandui manuscript. Located in a Han tomb, dated around 168 B.C., were discovered both an alternate version of the Yi Jing and the Lao Zi (Tao Te Ching). This version of the Yi differs in a few important aspects, the first is a re-naming of 38 of the 64 trigrams (though the associated texts are quite similar) Next that it only contains the first two wings13 and an assemblage of lost texts. Though most importantly a difference in the ordering of the hexagrams is present. In this version the upper trigram is fixed and the lower follows a regular rotation in variance. This ordering seems “to be tailored to the needs of yarrow stalk consultation.” which Wang Donglang suggests is a clear indication that it had a primary use for divination and not philosophical pondery in this period.

I think it's important to talk about the yi jing and the tao te together because there is as much an art to interpreting the lines. If you were trying to make the hexagram (s)say anything you wanted you would feel the reach.

>>24552505
>jewish "Buddhists"
This doesn't get talked about enough... probably because there is no way to talk about it without coming across as a /pol/ diatribe. But jews have taken over western Buddhism and eastern schools of thought in the west in general for 50+ years, going back to at least Ram Dass. And let's just say their interpretations can be very tendentious... There are entire deconstructionist schools within western Buddhism composed of converts that see the sangha and the patriarchs as a relic and an elitist/problematic institution.

>>24552544
>tendentious
Almost like /pol/ is right about jews

Zhuangzi better but for DDJ read the Adiss and Lombardo translation.

>>24551947 (OP)
It's kino and based and patrician. Antijew vaccine type stuff. However if you attempt to follow it in your daily life and are NOT an extremely aged hermit dwelling in cave grottos whittling away the latter years of existence it will ruin your fucking life.

Best to adhere to a course of action whilst young. Save Daoist musings for your aged old years. I had to learn this shit the hard way and am still paying for it today.

Westerners despise Daoist philosophy because it's basically a "bums philosophy" and we're all supposed to be vicious little worker bees.

The very basic tennent of "abstaining from the feverish obsessiob of naming/cataloging of things" would make any gender politics-obsessed alphabet flag people lose their fucking SHIT which is of course, in-of-itself, a based attribute of Daoist philosophy.

>>24552036
I love him

>>24552024
This is why you need to read multiple translations. Pic related is a good start.

I prefer Zhuangzi
I think the Zhuangzi is far more profound and mysterious

>>24553279
>I had to learn this shit the hard way and am still paying for it today.
elaborate

>>24553677
Action through inaction is bullshit. Great way to miss an opportunity, that's pretty much all I'll say about it here. I don't want to blogpost.

>>24553279
Well said.

>>24552101
>>24552027
A dim man reads The Way and doesn't understand it.
A clever man reads The Way and understands it.
A wise man never reads The Way, but understands it.

One of my favorites. Strengthened my belief in Christianity. This happen to anyone else?

>>24553690

I understand what you mean, but my instinct is to try to think of some concrete counterexample, however dull. I just got my quarterly statement and my 401k is doing well (at the moment) despite my never once having messed with it. I always sort of took the action-thru-inaction business to refer to whoever is the boss, leader or sovereign of such-and-such. Guide the peons/fund managers/others to do what you want, pay attention to it, in this very banal example of mine, but leave it there (unless of course things really go terribly, in which case a possible "action" might be to appoint so-and-so to clean up whatever the problem happens to be, not really a direct, personal action in a sense...). A king/queen in a respected royal system, or respected leader, is seen and shown to be sitting in the royal chair, and this in and of itself gives a certain stability to the country. And so on.

>>24553954

Pretty much every work that I read which seriously engages with the content of christianity in some way manages to strengthen my rejection of it. In two examples, I have clear memory of my impressions when both the Brothers Karamazov and the Divine Comedy had this happy effect on me.

The strongest arguments in favor of christianity have nothing to do with the patent nonsense at its core, but the secondary, downstream social stability that it tends to encourage. But it all remains based on a lie, which is the central problem. People live their entire lives without ever feeling that they need to get clear of the lie.

>>24553939
Now this is what I call wiseposting.

>>24551947 (OP)
I taought about te chingks if you get what I ming

>>24551966
Duyvendak's is good and I reference it often, but it was made before the Mawangdui and the Guodian versions were discovered. Really you need 2 or 3 translations.

>>24552024
very true. i read the chinese version after i learned chinese and compared it to the english translation i read many years ago and i wouldn't have translated it that way. the english version is much more poetic whereas the chinese version isn't, as if the translator was adding too much, making it seem grander and themselves smarter and imo, too invasive.

>>24552200
it is Dao if you are being pedantic. Tao is outdated Wade–Giles nonsense no one uses besides Republicans.

>>24556050
The consonant is ambiguous enough to be either dental or alveolar.

I like Le Guin’s translation, it’s a bit loose with the text but the original benefits from that treatment, being more ambiguous and polysemous than English.
If you’re trying to learn the signs, you might benefit greatly from comparing Le Guin’s version to one of the classic translations side by side, but I think even on its own it stands up to the others for its elegance and poetry, as well as providing a different angle of interpretation in some passages.

>>24556050
>besides Republicans
Oh boy are you in the wrong place.

>>24555393
>In comparing the Ma-wang-tui texts of the Lao-tzu to later editions, let us state clearly at the outset that the Ma-wang-tui texts do not differ in any radical way from later versions of the text. That is to say, there are no chapters in the Ma-wang-tui texts that are not found in later texts and vice versa, and there is nothing in the Ma-wang-tui texts that would lead us to understand the philosophy of the text in a radically new way. The differences tend to be more subtle. A different word is used here and there, or a word, phrase, or line is added in or left out, or the syntax of a phrase or line is not the same.
From Henrick's translation of the Mawangdui Silk Texts
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1wWQGu5FHNLHCrSqTawgg1iSh_eXF46a1/view?pli=1
As important as the discovery may be for the historical context and datation of the text, it doesn't seem to add to the intelligence of its content.

>>24551947 (OP)
I had to read it over 100 times to realize that it is garbage. But when you realize why it is garbage, everything else becomes garbage too,

>>24551966
really? noted