Laozi - Daodejing

OXFORD WORLDS CLASSICS

DAODEJING

The Daodejing or Classic of the Way and the Life Force dates from the fifth to fourth centuries BCE and is the best-loved of all classical Chinese texts. The author or editor is thought to have been someone who rejected the scholastic philosophy of Master Kong (Confucius) in favour of a way of thinking that was closer to nature. Deliberately void of all proper nameseven the author is known only as the Old Master (Laozi)the text is set in an eternal and universal present. Revered as a religious classic by Chinese Daoists, it is not only one of the foundational texts of Chinese thought, but has been rightly acknowledged as one of the most inspiring books in world literature.

EDMUND RYDEN teaches at Fujen University in Taiwan. He was the first director of the John Paul II Peace Institute at Fujen University and has edited a series of conference papers in the field of human rights. Among his other publications is a translation of Zhang Dai-nians Key Concepts of Chinese Philosophy (2002).

BENJAMIN PENNY is Fellow in the History of China in the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies at the Australian National University. He is the editor of Biography and Religion in China and Tibet (2002) and Daoism in History: Essays in Honour of Liu Tsun-yan (2006).

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OXFORD WORLDS CLASSICS

LAOZI

Translated with Notes by
EDMUND RYDEN
With an Introduction by
BENJAMIN PENNY

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Translation, commentary, notes, and other editorial matter Edmund Ryden 2008
Introduction Benjamin Penny 2008

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First published as an Oxford Worlds Classics paperback 2008

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Data available

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Laozi.
[Dao de jing. English]
Daodejing / Laozi; translated with notes by Edmund Ryden; with an introduction
by Benjamin Penny.
p. cm.(Oxford worlds classics)
Includes bibliographical references (p.).
ISBN 9780199208555
I. Ryden, Edmund. II. Title.
BL1900.L26E5 2008b
299.5' 1482dc22
2008011595

Typeset by Cepha Imaging Private Ltd., Bangalore, India
Printed in Great Britain by
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ISBN 9780199208555

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How easily we can find our own image in the Daodejing! It is a magic mirror, always found to reflect our concept of the truth.

The Daodejing is one of the foundational texts of Chinese thought. Its fortunes have risen and fallen with different dynasties and regimes, with influential scholars and writers acclaiming it as a pre-eminent work of the Chinese tradition or damning it as metaphysical nonsense. Nonetheless, it has been a feature on the landscape of learned Chinese people for more than two millennia. In more recent times the Daodejing has become known and been celebrated beyond the Chinese world. First translated into French in 1841, and into English in 1868, it has been re-translated numerous times, with ever more versions appearing today in electronic form. Some of these versions are serious attempts at making sense of a famously difficult text, but many more have little to do with the original; as little, perhaps, as that stream of books whose titles begin with The Tao of.

As interest in the Daodejing has become more widespread and as its popularity as a text for translation has grown, it has sometimes been considered as a philosophical gem suspended in a historical and cultural void, removed from its ancient Chinese context. Without this context, some translators and writers on the Daodejing have dressed it in clothes of their own choosing, often inappropriately. Strangely, this process has taken place at the same time as our knowledge of the origins of the text has increased immeasurably. In the west, as Sinology developed in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and as our familiarity with the wealth of literature from ancient China grew, so our knowledge of the conceptual world of that time and place broadened and became more nuanced. Indeed, from the 1970s remarkable archaeological discoveriesparticularly the texts on silk and bamboo strips unearthed from Mawangdui near Changsha in Hunan in 19724 and Guodian near Jingmen in Hubei in 1993have caused our ideas about the origins and composition of the Daodejing to be revised in fundamental ways. We are, therefore, in the extraordinary position of being more informed about the original Daodejing now than any reader for the last 1,500 years or more. This new translation takes these discoveries into full account, restoring the context in which the Daodejing came into being.