Michael LaFargue is former Senior Lecturer in Philosophy, Religious Studies, and Asian Studies at the University of Massachusetts Boston. His books include The Tao of the Tao Te Ching: A Translation and Commentary; Tao and Method: A Reasoned Approach to the Tao Te Ching; and Lao-tzu and the Tao-te-ching, all published by SUNY Press.

"This translation and commentary takes a novel, even controversial approach to the Tao Te Ching, presenting the reader with a full-blown culturological understanding of this core Taoist classic. In its resolute attention to the detail of historical context, it is engaging, plausible, and for those close to the text, importantly revealing. LaFargue, taking full advantage of recent archaeological finds to inform his reading, is very contemporary. Here at last we have a translation which combines philological responsibility with the imagination necessary to unfold this powerful text." — Roger T. Ames, University of Hawaii"I want to urge straight away that this is one of the very best books I have ever read on Chinese philosophy and culture. LaFargue's book is the work of a refined, well-informed, sensible, straightforward, honest, candidly self-confident (yet somehow unassuming), imaginatively independent and, yes, wise individual who—largely because these gifts are exploited by an extremely well-trained mind—manages to say persistently fresh and evocative things about a much abused text and the vision it informs."More than any other classical Chinese work, perhaps, the Tao Te Ching has been ripped from its historical, culture and concretely experiential context and employed (like a set of transcultural Rorschach images) to tickle the meditative fancies of Mystical Everyman. LaFargue's worry about the origin and evolution of the text, its intended audience and the 'purpose' of its aphorisms allows him to ask relevant hermeneutical questions the response to which opens the text in a new way. In place of near-sighted readings of the Tao Te Ching which find it to be simply another comforting example of philosophia perennis, LaFargue's method is to dispense with the corrective lenses of philosophical semantics and to bring the text into focus by holding it at arms' length. By thus distancing the text from its contemporary readers, LaFargue, paradoxically, makes possible a much more intimate relationship to the Tao Te Ching than has heretofore been possible to Western readers." — David L. Hall, The University of Texas-El Paso

• Introduction Translation and Commentary 1. Excellence That Is Not Outstanding2. Stillness and Contentment3. Self-Cultivation4. Knowledge, Learning, and Teaching5. Majesty That Is Not Awesome6. The Soft Way7. Against Disquieting "Improvements"Additional Textual NotesHermeneutics: A Reasoned Approach to Interpreting the Tao Te Ching Social BackgroundThe Composition of the Tao Te Ching: What Kind of Writing Is It?Analyzing Laoist Sayings: Nonliteral InterpretationThe Laoist "System"A Note on Translation Topical Glossary Notes References List of Chapters in the Traditional Order