Tao and Method

Michael LaFargue is the author of Language and Gnosis and teaches at the University of Massachusetts in Boston.

"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." — Roger T. Ames, University of Hawaii"More than any other classical Chinese work, perhaps, the Tao Te Ching has been ripped from its historical, cultural 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 responses to which open the text in a new way." — David L. Hall, The University of Texas

• Acknowledgments IntroductionPart I: Hermeneutics Introduction 1. Interpretation and Meaning: Two Histories HermeneuticsThe Ontology of Meaning: A History and a Proposal 2. Philosophical Foundations for Interpretive Method Philosophical FoundationsLanguage and RealityThe Idea of CompetenceThis Hermeneutics Comared and Contrasted with Recent Trends in HermeneuticsPart II: Sociohistorical Background Introduction 3. The Self Understanding of Warring States Shih China in the Late Warring States PeriodCho-yun Hsu on the Rise of the ShihShih IdealistsHow did Shih-Idealists Gain Recognition?The Shih-School as an Environment for Idealism 4. Mencius on the Role of the Shih-Idealist Doctrinal Wolrdviews vs. the Mencian WorldviewMencius Stakes Out an Expanded Role for Shih-IdealistsOther Shih-Schools 5. Mencius on Virtue The Content of Mencius' Instruction to KingsSelf-CultivationConclusion: The Mencian Shih vs. the Modern PhilosopherMencius and the Tao Te ChingPart III: Verbal Form and the Structure of Laoist Thought Introduction 6. The Semantic Structure of Aphorisms The Proverb as a Special Genre of SpeechConversational ImplicatureSpeech ActsThe Target of ProverbsThe Attitude Expressed and the Value-Orientation Motivating It 7. Understanding Laoist Polemic Aphorisms DefinitenessMaking Sense of the Paradoxical Style of Laoist AphorismsThe Problem of CoherenceThe Unifying Basis for Laoist Thought: A Concern for Organic HarmonyAppendix: Sayings About Nature, Heaven, and the Ancients 8. Sayings and Self-Cultivation IntroductionThe Nei YehSome Parallels Between the Tao Te Ching and the Nei Yeh 9. The Vocabulary of Self-Cultivation in the Chuang Tzu and the Tao Te Ching Self-Cultivation Vocabulary in the Chuang TzuThe Vocabulary of Self-Cultivation in the Tao Te Ching 10. The Wonderful and Cosmic Tao "Softness Overcomes Hardness"Sayings Linking One Quality to AnotherNormative DescriptionsSayings Describing the Wonderful Benefits of the Qualities Laoists CultivateCosmic Sayings: A General Thesis"Stillness is the Norm of the World"CosmogoniesContradictions and Non-Literal Understanding 11. A Pluralist but Critical Theory of Worldviews The Dilemmas of Ethnocentrism and DiversityA Broadened Thoery of "The Good" as an Irreducible Ontological CategoryConversion and the Transformation of the LebensweltTranscendenceSubject's View and Outsider's ViewThe Laoist "System"Some Comments on Contemporary Relevance 12. The Art of the Sayings Collage Indirect External EvidenceInternal Evidence That the Tao Te Ching is Composed of Sayings from an Oral TraditionInternal Evidence for Deliberate and Artful Composition of the ChaptersSubstative Associations of the ComposersPart IV: Translation, Commentary, and Topical Glossary Introduction Translation and Commentary Additional Textual Notes Topical Glossary Notes References Subject Index Author Index Index of Passages Discussed List of Chapters in the Traditional Arrangement