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The Tao of the West: Western Transformations of Taoist Thought

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The Tao of the West: Western Transformations of Taoist Thought THE TAO OF THE WEST In this book, J.J. Clarke shows us how Taoist texts, ideas and practices have been assimilated within a whole range of Western interests and agendas. We see how Chinese thinkers such as Lao-tzu and Chuang tzu, along with practices such as feng- shui and tai chi, have been used as key Western inspirations in religion, philosophy, ethics, politics, ecology and health. The Tao of the West not only provides a fascinating introduction to Taoism, but it offers a timely insight into the history of the West’s encounter with this ancient tradition and into the issues arising from inter-cultural dialogue. Anyone interested in understanding Taoism and the influence it has had on the West will welcome and embrace this book. J.J. Clarke has taught philosophy at McGill University, Montreal, and at the University of Singapore, and is currently Reader in History of Ideas at Kingston University, UK. He is the author of In Search of Jung, Jung and Eastern Thought and Oriental Enlightenment: The Encounter Between Asian and Western Thought, all published by Routledge. THE TAO OF THE WEST Western transformations of Taoist thought J.J. Clarke London and New York First published 2000 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2002. © 2000 J.J. Clarke All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN 0-415-20619-7 (hbk) ISBN 0-415-20620-0 (pbk) ISBN 0-203-13234-3 Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0-203-17666-9 (Glassbook Format) TO J.B. WHO ACCOMPANIED ME ALONG THE WAY CONTENTS Preface ix 1 ‘The Way that can be told’: introduction 1 Orientations and disorientations 1 Ways and means 9 The way to the West 12 2 ‘The meaning is not the meaning’: on the nature of Daoism 16 What is Daoism? 16 The ‘Three Teachings’ 22 Historical origins 28 3 ‘Cramped scholars’: Western interpretations of Daoism 37 Daoism under Western gaze 37 Reading Daoism 50 4 ‘The Great Clod’: Daoist natural philosophy 63 Order out of chaos 63 Cosmology: the standard picture 69 Science: a new paradigm? 74 Environmentalism: new ways? 81 5 ‘Going rambling without destination’: moral explorations 90 Daoist moral vision 90 The ethics of self-cultivation 95 The politics of anarchism 103 Women and gender 111 vii CONTENTS 6‘The transformation of things’: the alchemy of life, sex and health 117 The Way of immortality 117 The Way of inner cultivation 122 The Way of sexuality 128 The Way of good health 136 7 ‘The Way is incommunicable’: transcendence 140 Mysticism 140 Mysticism made visible: landscape painting 149 Transcendence 159 8 ‘The twitter of birds’: philosophical themes 166 Thinking differences 166 Scepticism, relativism and irrationalism 175 Postmodernism 184 9 ‘Journey to the West’: by way of concluding 194 Beyond orientalism 194 Beyond Daoism 203 Appendix I: Chinese dynastic chronology 212 Appendix II: Wade–Giles/Pinyin conversion table 213 Notes 214 Bibliography 234 Name index 259 Subject index 265 viii PREFACE What is needed is...new philosophers. The moral earth, too, is round. The moral earth, too, has its antipodes. The antipodes, too, have the right to exist. There is another world to discover – and more than one! On board ship, philosophers!...the sea lies open again; perhaps there has never yet been such an ‘open sea’. (Nietzsche: The Gay Science) Western scholars have in fact not needed much encouragement to explore this ‘open sea’. Over the past five hundred years we have witnessed, not only a huge expansion of European power and culture across the whole face of the globe, but at the same time an intense effort of investigation, translation and analysis which has opened to the European mind the great intellectual and religious traditions of Asia, and which in all sorts of ways has entered into Western thought and imagination. This extraordinary expansion of horizons, perhaps unprecedented in human history, has in recent years begun to be the object of close and highly contested scrutiny in the shape of orientalist and postcolonial studies. These latter explorations have often perceived the ‘open sea’ as having been an arena for conquest, for the imposition of Nietzsche’s ‘will to power’, and have interpreted the West’s understanding of the East as a form of ‘colonised’ knowledge, an expropriation which has served to enhance the power of the West over Asia. While my own explorations have made use of this compass, I have charted a somewhat different course. Though taking full account of the fact of empire and colonial expropriation as the necessary underpinning of any such investigations, I have at the same time given much greater attention to the ways in which Western philosophical and religious thinking has been shaped by ideas emanating from the East. It has become almost a convention ix PREFACE to see the West’s understanding of the East – even this very distinction – as a European construct, and indeed the process of construction and reconstruction constitutes a central focus of this work, but what is not always given full attention is the pervasive impact of this on the Western tradition and on the multifarious ways in which the Orient, albeit often gravely misrepresented, has become woven into and helped to shape the fabric of European thought and culture. This study is an investigation within the field of history of ideas, specifically of Western ideas. It constitutes the third part of a trilogy of works. Oriental Enlightenment traced the history of orientalist ideas in broad terms and examined both their place within the Western intellectual tradition and the issues cast up by the encounter between East and West. In Jung and Eastern Thought, I focussed attention on the orientalist writings of one individual thinker whose work has been the source of much influence and controversy. In the present book I have concentrated on one single tradition, namely Daoism, in its relationship with Western thought. Here, as in other Asian traditions, the full extent of its impact on the West has not always been adequately acknowledged within the various disciplines, and as with Buddhism and Hinduism before it, its recent emergence into European consciousness has a history which demands fuller exploration. At the present time, Daoism is experiencing something of a renaissance in the West similar to that experienced earlier by Buddhism and Hinduism, an extraordinary burst of orientalist enthusiasm which ranges from the scholarly to the popular, from the close study of texts and traditions which have been half-hidden to the world outside China until recently, to the rapidly growing interest in Daoist meditation, health and sexual practices. The chapter headings reflect, therefore, not so much the structure of Daoist thought as such but rather the areas of interest that spring from the West’s own reflections on Daoism, built around such familiar categories as science, ethics, religion, mysticism and philosophy. Even Chapter 2, which includes a brief summary of the history of Daoism in China, raises the question ‘what is Daoism?’ from within a specifically European problematic. Chapter 3 offers a survey of the history of Western interpretations of Daoist teachings and texts. And the final chapter reflects back on the critical issues raised in the preceding text, and looks forward speculatively to Daoism’s role in the global culture of the twenty-first century. x PREFACE Although this book takes Western thought as the focus of its study, it also seeks to convey to the reader something of the nature and style of Daoism, its history and philosophy, its writings and spiritual practices. At the same time it does not seek to disguise my own admiration for this ancient Chinese philosophy of life. I have long been attracted by its attitude of oneness between the human and natural worlds, and its affirmation of life, good health and vitality, and have been drawn to its sense of stillness and silence, its sense of spontaneous simplicity and its gentle anarchism. I hope that readers will gain in understanding of and come to share my respect for this unique ancient tradition. In the course of my research, I have also come to appreciate the extent to which Daoism has begun to penetrate different aspects of modern life, from lofty spiritual quest to everyday matters of health and diet, its relevance to contemporary concerns about the environment, peace and war, gender issues and life in modern societies. Whether it offers anything like a complete philosophy of life or a new religious cult for our spiritually hungry world I do not know, but increasingly in all sorts of ways it speaks to our world, while yet remaining obdurately and compellingly distinct. I have approached the West’s own enthusiasm for this tradition in a critical and scholarly spirit, laying before the reader a wide historical panorama of ideas and texts, and drawing out the serious debates and critical differences which this particular form of intercultural dialogue has inevitably spawned. There is no place in such a study as this for blissful adulation of the ‘mystical Orient’, therefore, although at the same time such orientalist attitudes will themselves be the objects of our attention.
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