Talk:Tao Te Ching

One thing that's pretty cool about Taoism is the fact that it's never shied away from criticising the powerful, vis:

“People hate to think of themselves as “orphan,” “lowly,” or “unworthy” Yet the kings call themselves by these names.”

It's never afraid of a bit of a laugh, either. --Kels 13:34, 27 July 2007 (CDT)

This is wholly, completely, and spectacularly incorrect. The Daodejing is the first book of government in Chinese history to endorse systematic lying to the people being ruled. It advocates reducing them to illiteracy, bamboozling them, and ruling them in ways that they cannot detect or understand. Confucian and Legalist (fajia) thinkers at least allowed the people to learn the unfair rules of their society; the Legalists even toyed with the idea of allowing inferiors to sue superiors who broke those rules. Daoism, on the other hand, works on the mushroom principle: Keep the people in the dark and bury them in bullshit.

On top of that, most translations of the Daodejing, especially the older ones, depend on the creative imagination of the translator as much or more than the actual Chinese text. It is not as obscure as some of its fans think it to be. The grammar of Classical Chinese is fairly well understood, though there remain points of dispute. Too bad some translators never bother to learn it. Maelen (talk) 19:12, 9 February 2022 (UTC)

What's with the "?" marks before the furrin words? Aren't those used on WP to link to accurate furrin language spellings or something? human 21:45, 16 April 2008 (EDT)

You probably don't have foreign characters installed on your puter like some of us. 我的名字叫傅大维!Researcher 11:54, 5 July 2008 (EDT)

I will reference some additions, but need to learn "referencing syntax" Purebread (talk) 04:33, 28 June 2016 (UTC)

Revision

I have a proposed revision of the text of this article which can be found in Drafts at present. https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Draft:Daodejing

It is, I think, solidly based on the text of the work in question (I read, and indeed have taught, Classical Chinese, which is quite different from modern spoken or written Chinese) but even if one agrees with my translations, different interpretations might be possible. I have taken the text to be primarily concerned with political matters, and have followed modern scholarship in considering it a work of propaganda consciously crafted to appear earlier than it really is. These viewpoints again might be disputed by scholars; they would certainly be disputed by the woo-woo industry that buzzes around the Daodejing like flies around carrion. Maelen (talk) 15:12, 3 May 2022 (UTC)