Customer Reviews

The Teachings of Lao-Tzu: The Tao-Te Ching

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

 

 

To Paul Carus we owe much of the understanding of and enthusiasm for the literary pearl of Eastern philosophy, Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching. For that alone, this book is worth having in a library shelf of Tao Te Ching essentials. But better still would be Carus' verbatim translation, which includes the first English ideogram-to-English rendering, from which non-Chinese poets such as Stephen Mitchell and Ursula LeGuin drew their inspiration and practical reference. Though the verbatim translation of Carus has since been wonderfully exceeded by Jonathan Star's lucid and beautifully organized work, Carus still deserves reference from those of us who love Lao Tzu and are always reading and re-reading the Tao Te Ching, in both the Chinese and the many translated permutations of the TTC. However, the Carus verbatim text is probably difficult to find these days, so this work may have to do: when you allow for its flaws and often dated expression (as in referring to the Tao as "Reason"), there are a few gems still of insight and articulation that make Carus' rendering worth owning, but only for the most dedicated of Lao Tzu enthusiasts...

Honestly, while many consider this translation dated, I find it to be an unsurpassed take on Lao Tzu's masterpiece. In clear language that captures the mystical and poetic essence perfetcly, Carus does a great job of making this enlightening, rather than mystifying. The running commentary is of great help, as is the introduction. I reccomend you buy THIS before any other book, seriously.

I have never seen Carus' original verbatim translation, but such a work, if it provides detailed and thorough analyses of the Chinese ideograms, would be very useful as a guide to understanding the Dao De Jing. We need to know at least as much as any child in school in China might expect to learn about the vocabulary used in the original Chinese text--especially the history and development of the meanings associated with these characters.

As for Carus' choice of "Reason" for "Tao" or "Dao," it does have some merit, in that it ties this concept over somewhat to similar concepts of divine "Reason" or the Absolute in Western philosophy. In this way, this edition gives the reader the correct impression that the Tao is not something specifically Chinese, but rather a universal entity.

This edition can be read along with other scholarly translations. Carus' translation does have artistic and poetic value in its own right and therefore deserves to remain always in print.

Tao is frequently translated as 'reason' in this translation and I personally believe that this is a folly and a fatal flaw. Tao can be reason, following tao is a reasonable thing to do. However Tao can also be instinct which is almost the opposite of reason. Most translations do not attempt to replace the word Tao with another, Tao is the indescribable, the formless, the nameless - to try to define it with a restrictive English word such as 'reason' is ill advised. Clearly defining Tao takes 81 chapters of philosophy and common sense, it cannot be abbreviated into two syllables.