Book Review An Introduction to Daoist Philosophies

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This bibliography is mainly addressed to students of my courses on Daoism. The earliest version dates from 1998. From time to time I update it, adding new materials and omitting a few of the older ones. The present version contains works dating to 2016.

Journal of Daoist Studies

This paper examines the creation of Daoism in its earliest, pre-Eastern Han period. After an examination of the critical terms "scholar/master" (zi 子) and "author/school" (jia 家), I argue that, given the paucity of evidence, Sima Tan and Liu Xin should be credited with creating this tradition. The body of this article considers the definitions of Daoism given by these two scholars and all of the extant texts that Liu Xin classified as "Daoist." Based on these texts, I then suggest an amended definition of Daoism. In the conclusion, I address the recent claim that the daojia 道家/daojiao 道教 dichotomy is false, speculating that disagreement over this claim arises from context in which Daoism is considered: among the other pre-Qin "schools of thought" or among other world religions. Daoism is of fundamental importance to East Asian intellectual history, its influence pervasive across a broad spectrum of cultural endeavors, from cosmogony and art to politics and health. For two and a half millennia, it has never been far from the collective mind of China's long line of scholars. It would follow, then, that the history of Daoism would more or less be set in stone. But in recent decades some Western scholars have described early, "philosophical" Daoism in rather non-traditional ways that have left some of us puzzled. In this article, I describe the creation of Daoism, while arguing against some modern depictions and insinuations, and for a new definition (albeit based squarely on the old one). My intended audience consists, I hope, of peers, colleagues, and students, with the intention of facilitating a few friendly conversations on this sublime and robust philosophy. Among the great traditions studied in Western academia, I think "philosophical Daoism" has been relatively underappreciated, and still awaits its proper place in our ever-more-globalized

Dao companions to Chinese philosophy, 2015

While "philosophy" is a Western term, philosophy is not something exclusively Western. In this increasingly globalized world, the importance of non-Western philosophy is becoming more and more obvious. Among all the non-Western traditions, Chinese philosophy is certainly one of the richest. In a history of more than 2500 years, many extremely important classics, philosophers, and schools have emerged. As China is becoming an economic power today, it is only natural that more and more people are interested in learning about the cultural traditions, including the philosophical tradition, of China. The Dao Companions to Chinese Philosophy series aims to provide the most comprehensive and most up-to-date introduction to various aspects of Chinese philosophy as well as philosophical traditions heavily influenced by it. Each volume in this series focuses on an individual school, text, or person.

The Chinese character dao 道 (path, road, or Way) is comprised of a head (首) and a pair of feet (辶). It is no coincidence that in his introduction to the book under review, the editor David Chai makes a point of challenging the common assumption that the head controls foot movement (and everything else)-a metaphor for the Cartesian assumption that true knowledge can be derived through reason alone, and that material, mundane experiences, like walking, have no bearing on our understanding of reality. The Chinese graph and what for traditional Western metaphysics is a counter-intuitive image of "mindless," walking feet leading the sovereign mind, aptly capture not only the main enterprise of phenomenology at its most basic (drawing from experience to understand and analyze the data of experience), but also the main orientation of this volume. The book is comprised of twelve chapters split into four parts. Parts One, Two, and Three are arranged in a chronological order roughly following the development of the phenomenological movement. Accordingly, we find comparative studies with a particular focus on Hegel, Brentano, and Nietzsche in Part One; on Buber and Jaspers, with references to Husserl and Merleau-Ponty in Part Two; and on Heidegger, Gadamer, and Merleau-Ponty in Part Three. Part Four contains one contribution which centers on climate change and Heidegger. Chapter 1, "Daoism and Hegel: On Painting the Invisible Spirit: To Color or Not?" by David Chai, focuses on the spiritual dimension of color and monochrome in Western and Chinese painting. Chai takes a Daoist (Zhuangzian) perspective to read

Co-authored with Xun Liu, in David A. Palmer and Xun Liu, eds. Daoism in the Twentieth Century: Between Eternity and Modernity. Berkeley: University of California Press, pp. 1-22., 2012

For the mainstream of Chinese reformers, modernizers and revolutionaries, as well as for many Western scholars of China, the twentieth century was long seen as the twilight of Chinese religion in general and of its chief institutionalized indigenous form, Daoism, in particular. Dismissed as a crude assortment of superstitions, whatever remained of Daoism after the effects of modernization could only be the exotic remnants of an archaic Chinese past. And yet, as we begin a new century, and secularist ideologies are reevaluated and their utopian promises put into doubt, Daoism appears to be playing an increasingly significant role in a variety of social and cultural developments: as structuring much of the revival of popular religion in contemporary rural China; as providing a trove of symbols, concepts, and practices for the elaboration of new intellectual discourses and cultural movements aiming to revitalize Chinese tradition or to synthesize it with modernity; and as supplying many ingredients to the palette of spiritual and therapeutic resources popular in the West under the rubrics of “alternative medicine” and “Oriental spirituality”.

Routledge Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, 2024

Daoist philosophy can be thought of as articulating a lived understanding of the dao: the 'way' of the Cosmos (天道 tian dao), or the 'great way' (⼤道 da dao). The key philosophical concepts can be found in two representative texts of early Daoist thought: the Lao Zi and the Zhuang Zi. The approach that is distinctive of Daoist philosophy can be understood as emerging from a radical shift of perspective: from the limited humanist standpoint (⼈道 rendao) to the unlimited 'perspective' of the Cosmos itself. We could describe this as 'naturalistic', provided the natural is not defined in opposition to the spiritual: in the ancient Chinese worldview, spiritual phenomena are intrinsic to the natural world, not transcendent. This Cosmic shift in perspective has two aspects. First, there is an attempt to overcome the boundaries of our limited human standpoint by cultivating ever-expanding and inclusive perspectives. Second, there arises from this an inversion of values: what appears to be important from a human perspective becomes trivial in comparison with the all-encompassing Cosmos. This attempt to overcome the limitations of the human, in order to allow us to live from the 'perspective' of the unlimited realm of the Cosmos, results in paradoxes. This is in part because a perspective is situated at a limited point of view within the Cosmos, while the Cosmos in its entirety cannot be situated in such a position. Daoist paradoxes also arise out of the limitations of language, whose function is primarily pragmatic. We can describe the phenomena that we observe, their characteristics and particular origins; but when we attempt to express our understanding of the Cosmos as a whole, or its origins, we stretch language beyond its pragmatic conditions of meaningfulness. Further paradoxes arise as the Daoists attempt to respond to the humanist theories of government with their own understanding of social flourishing derived by observing the way in which a quasi-personified Nature 'governs' the myriad natural phenomena: ruling without ruling, and even governing an empire without acting.