Customer Reviews

Daoism Explained: From the Dream of the Butterfly to the Fishnet Allegory (Ideas Explained)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is truly one of the finest books on Daoism. Professor Moeller's ability to illuminate many difficult daoist concepts in a clear and concise manner is very rare. Please take the time to read excerpts from the book. The excerpt: The Wheel - An image of Dao is a brilliant examination of Chapter 11 of the Tao Te Ching. Also, the chapters "The State", and "Presence and Nonpresence" (usually translated as being and non-being) are excellent. "Daoism Explained" is not a rehash of ideas taken from previous books on the subject. It is a unique and intelligent examination of Daoism.

This is a great book for readers of Daoist works- mainly the Daodejing (Laozi), Liezi, and Zhuangzi. It covers the fundamentals of Daoism succinctly without glossing over important concepts. After reading this book anyone should be able to read the aforementioned works with a greater degree of comprehension. As the previous reviewer stated, this is indeed one of the best books on Daoism. However, it also contains one of the most backwards economic theories ever put on paper. Fortunately, the author limits his hopelessly surreal ideas of the latter topic to only the last few pages. In his attempt to explain society as a self-perpetuating force that runs itself without human action, he makes statements that are so blatantly silly that it almost seems as if he added them in just to see if readers were really paying attention. In his own words, "the functioning of the modern economy has to be explained largely in terms of the flow of money and stocks- and no longer as a causal result of human enterprise." So somehow if human enterprise were to suddenly cease, the flow of money and stocks will just keep going- right? This notion seems too ridiculous to entertain, but the author continues by stating that "mass communication has quite obviously detached itself from actual human performances and 'autonomized' itself as a self-generating 'hypertext.'" It's quite interesting to know that this author feels as if mass communication on planet Earth will continue unabated if all the humans got on spaceships and left. The whole idea that economies and politics and mass communication don't need people sounds like something that would happen if robots took over the planet Terminator-style. If that's what the author is referring to, then I suppose I am wrong. But if the author thinks the "Dao" will handle monetary exchanges just fine without us around, then he needs to put the bong down for a while. In all, this book is great and would have fully earned its five stars if it weren't for this little delusional twist at the end.

It is a very accurate, readable book, and does great service in clarifying concepts previously and otherwise mis-interpreted.

A typical work of the many that arrogant scholars, without any meditative practice and experience are producing on Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu. It is pitiful and ironic that ego-inflated western scholars, most of them from "reputed" universities and therefore totally committed to academic correctedness (which is totally anti-Tao) attempt to interpret works that were written in a hightened state of conscioussness by Tao-men that had turned their backs to the sterile intellectuality of the status quo of their days.
Don't waste your money on books produced by the new "Taoist scholarship" mafia, that come up with fanciful rationalistic theories only to impress their collegues and justify their salaries.