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Carmichael Daode Jing As American Scripture 2017

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Carmichael Daode Jing As American Scripture 2017 THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO THE DAODE JING AS AMERICAN SCRIPTURE: TEXT, TRADITION, AND TRANSLATION A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE DIVINITY SCHOOL IN CANDIDACY FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY BY LUCAS CARMICHAEL CHICAGO, ILLINOIS JUNE 2017 ABSTRACT The understandings most Americans have of the Daode jing 道德經 (Tao Te Ching) and Daoism (Taoism) have been deeply conditioned by the reception of this text in its most circulated English forms: popular translations. Because of their acute reliance on previous interpretations and emphasis on relevancy to their own historical contexts, popular translations are a valuable, underutilized resource for understanding both the specifics of this text’s reception and more universal processes of textual transmission. To propose “The Daode jing as American scripture” is to consider both the Americanization of this text and the interpretation of all texts received as “classics” or “scriptures.” To do so, this dissertation first critiques assumptions contributing to the academic neglect of popular translations and proposes the utility of Hans-Georg Gadamer’s reconfiguration of the concept of “text” not as a historical object to be recovered but as a “traditionary text” or “text-tradition” that operates in history through an ongoing dialogue with its interpreters. To Gadamer’s thought, this dissertation suggests a new attention to translations as records of previous interpretations intersecting with new contexts and affecting subsequent transmission. Subsequent chapters summarize the transmission of the Daode jing in China and survey its early European reception before focusing on the translations of Herbert Giles (1886), Paul Carus (1898), Witter Bynner (1944), and Gia-fu Feng (1972). These translations document the development of five popular conceptions about the Daode jing that have conditioned the general features of its otherwise diverse reception in America. They emerged chronologically and continue to influence popular translation and understanding today: 1) the Daode jing is the principal scripture of Daoism; 2) its wisdom is universal and timeless; 3) its meaning is ii accessible through a populist hermeneutic heavily influenced by lay Bible reading; 4) its teachings can correct and ameliorate contemporary American problems; and 5) it can contribute to a more complete “Way of Life.” This examination advances existing scholarship by providing a more comprehensive and detailed analysis of paradigmatic texts and dominant trends in the American popular reception of the Daode jing, by suggesting implications for related fields, and by proposing that the reception of this text evidences a hermeneutic that is more universal than unique in the historical transmission of canonical texts. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION: The Echo Chambers of Popular Translation ........................................... 1 Section 1: The Problem ............................................................................................................... 1 Section 2: Argument and Implication ....................................................................................... 10 Section 3: Chapter outline ......................................................................................................... 18 CHAPTER 1: Popular Translation in Practice and in Theory .............................................. 28 Section 1: The Marks of a Text-Based Understanding ............................................................. 28 Section 2: The Elite and the Popular ......................................................................................... 34 Section 3: The Historical and the Scriptural ............................................................................. 40 Section 4: Traditionary Texts and Effective History ................................................................ 46 CHAPTER 2: Early Encounters & Herbert Giles, The Remains of Lao Tzu: Retranslated . 56 Section 1: The Daode jing in China and the Daoist Canon ...................................................... 57 Section 2: Jesuit Figurists ......................................................................................................... 64 Section 3: The Founding of French Sinology ........................................................................... 67 Section 4: Protestant Missionaries ............................................................................................ 73 Section 5: Early Popular Translators ........................................................................................ 82 Section 6: An Outlier ................................................................................................................ 87 Section 7: The Birth of British Sinology .................................................................................. 90 Section 8: Historical Effects, Trajectories, and Traditions ....................................................... 98 CHAPTER 3: Paul Carus, The Canon of Reason and Virtue ................................................ 104 Section 1: Monism, Meliorism, and the Religion of Science ................................................. 105 Section 2: The Parliament of Religions .................................................................................. 110 Section 3: The Canon of Reason and Virtue ........................................................................... 118 iv Section 4: Monism and Pluralism ........................................................................................... 125 CHAPTER 4: Witter Bynner, The Way of Life According to Laotzu: An American Version .................................................................................................................................................... 132 Section 1: Social Contexts ...................................................................................................... 134 Section 2: Bynner’s Jade Mountain and Pound’s Cathay ...................................................... 143 Section 3: Assembling The Way of Life ................................................................................. 155 Section 4: The Spirit of the Chinese People ........................................................................... 160 Section 5: American Populist Hermeneutics .......................................................................... 166 Section 6: Pseudo-Translations and Popular Reception ......................................................... 170 CHAPTER 5: Gia-Fu Feng, Tao Te Ching: A New Translation ........................................... 178 Section 1: Immigration Reform .............................................................................................. 181 Section 2: The American Daoist Master ................................................................................. 183 Section 3: The Dragon’s Mouth ............................................................................................. 189 Section 4: Stillpoint and the Daode jing ................................................................................. 197 Section 5: A Literal Daoist Sage ............................................................................................. 203 CONCLUSION: The Daode jing as American Scripture ...................................................... 206 APPENDIX A: 380 English Versions of the Daode jing Chronologically Arranged .......... 215 APPENDIX B: 380 English Versions of the Daode jing Alphabetically Arranged ............. 250 BIBLIOGRAPHY ..................................................................................................................... 276 v INTRODUCTION: The Echo Chambers of Popular Translation Section 1: The Problem In October 1971, a newlywed couple arrived at Alfred A. Knopf Publishers in New York City without an appointment. They carried the manuscript of yet another translation of the Daode jing 道德經 (Tao Te Ching),1 a short canonical text of Daoism (Taoism) that had already been rendered nearly sixty times into English.2 The couple’s new translation was the product of their small international community of religious seekers called Stillpoint, which had for the prior year embraced the collaborative daily activity of translating verses from the Daode jing in relation to their eclectic interests in Taijiquan 太極拳 (T’ai-chi ch’uan), dietetics, the Human Potential Movement, ancient Chinese thought, and Gestalt psychotherapy.3 That autumn, they were in the process of relocating from the hills above the Esalen Institute in California, from which they had split in 1966, to the base of Pikes Peak in Colorado, where they would remain active until the death of their leader, Gia-fu Feng 馮家福 in 1985. By that time, Feng would be well established as a Taijiquan teacher, an author, and a “Taoist Master”—all roles that he came to occupy long after an early career as a banker in Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist China and a post-Second- World-War journey to America for a graduate degree in international finance.4 1 This dissertation uses the Pinyin Chinese Romanization standard developed in the 1950s and adopted by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) in 1982, rather than the older Wade-Giles system, except in the case of direct quotations, published titles, and the self-chosen Anglicization of personal names. For clarification, traditional Chinese characters are generally included, and well-known Wade-Giles Romanizations appear in parenthesis when a Pinyin
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