{"product_id":"dao-de-jing-isbn-9780345444196","title":"Dao De Jing","description":"In 1993, archaeologists unearthed a set of ancient bamboo scrolls that contained the earliest known version of the \u003ci\u003eDao de jing\u003c\/i\u003e. Composed more than two thousand years ago, this life-changing document offers a regimen of self-cultivation to attain personal excellence and revitalize moral behavior. Now in this luminous new translation, renowned China scholars Roger T. Ames and David L. Hall bring the timeless wisdom of the \u003ci\u003eDao de jing\u003c\/i\u003e into our contemporary world.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn this elegant volume, Ames and Hall feature the original Chinese texts of the \u003ci\u003eDao de jing \u003c\/i\u003eand translate them into crisp, chiseled English that reads like poetry. Each of the eighty-one brief chapters is followed by clear, thought-provoking commentary exploring the layers of meaning in the text. This new version of one of the world’s most influential documents will stand as both a compelling introduction to Daoist thought and as the classic modern English translation.“A NEW ENGLISH VERSION OF THE CLASSIC CHINESE \u003ci\u003eDAO DE JING\u003c\/i\u003e . . . Provoke[s] the reader to see the text with fresh eyes. \u003cbr\u003eThis is a valuable find for anyone who wants to reengage a foundational work.”\u003cbr\u003e—\u003ci\u003ePublishers Weekly\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cb\u003eRoger T. Ames\u003c\/b\u003e is a professor of Chinese philosophy at the University of Hawai’i. He is also editor of the journal \u003ci\u003ePhilosophy East \u0026amp; West\u003c\/i\u003e. He is the author of several interpretive studies of classical Confucianism, including \u003ci\u003eThinking Through Confucius\u003c\/i\u003e (with David L. Hall). His translation of \u003ci\u003eSun-tzu: The Art of Warfare\u003c\/i\u003e is recognized as a landmark of contemporary Chinese military and philosophical studies and his translation of \u003ci\u003eThe Analects of\u003c\/i\u003e \u003ci\u003eConfucius\u003c\/i\u003e (with Henry Rosemont, Jr.) has become a popular classroom text.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eDavid L. Hall\u003c\/b\u003e was a professor of Philosophy at the University of Texas at El Paso. His early research on A. N. Whitehead and American philosophy led him to rethink our understanding of both Daoism and classical Greek philosophy, and resulted in the publication of \u003ci\u003eThe Uncertain Phoenix\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eEros\u003c\/i\u003e \u003ci\u003eand Irony\u003c\/i\u003e. In addition to the interpretive studies of classical Chinese philosophy, he continued to publish in American philosophy with \u003ci\u003eRichard Rorty: Prophet and Poet of the New Pragmatism.\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003ci\u003ePreface and Acknowledgments\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe \u003ci\u003eDaodejing \u003c\/i\u003ehas probably been translated into the English language more often than any other piece of world literature.  Why translate it again?  An entirely reasonable question.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnd a reasonable question requires a reasonable answer.  Recent archaeological finds (Mawangdui 1973 and Guodian 1993) have provided us with textual materials that are physically more than a millennium earlier than previously available versions of \u003ci\u003eDaodejing\u003c\/i\u003e.  Such finds challenge the authority of existing translations to the extent that these new materials have increased our knowledge of the text and of the circumstances of its transmission.  And there is broad scholarly agreement that these early redactions of the \u003ci\u003eDaodejing\u003c\/i\u003e do indeed cast important new light on the structure and the meaning of this defining document in Daoist philosophy.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn addition to providing new insights into an old document, these archaeological finds have also provided us with textual materials that are importantly different from what has been available up until now, enabling us to resolve some persistent linguistic problems.  Undoubtedly the most substantial addition to the \u003ci\u003eDaodejing \u003c\/i\u003eare the fourteen strips–\u003ci\u003eThe Great One Gives Birth to the Waters\u003c\/i\u003e–that appear as an integral element within one of the Guodian versions of the text.  Beyond the seamless physical consistency of these strips with the rest of this early exemplar of the \u003ci\u003eDaodejing\u003c\/i\u003e, they contain a discussion of Daoist cosmology that not only uses the familiar \u003ci\u003eDaodejing\u003c\/i\u003e vocabulary, but further brings a clarity to this cosmology that enables us to understand other chapters of the \u003ci\u003eDaodejing\u003c\/i\u003e in a way that has not been possible before.  In deference to a continuing and yet inconclusive debate on the relationship between this exciting new portion of the text and the \u003ci\u003eDaodejing \u003c\/i\u003eitself, we have followed the practice of excerpting this new document and of giving it the title \u003ci\u003eThe Great One Gives Birth to the Waters\u003c\/i\u003e.  We have translated it, and have discussed it in some detail, in an appendix.  Whatever the ultimate status of these strips with respect to the \u003ci\u003eDaodejing \u003c\/i\u003eitself, their critical importance as a resource for illuminating the Daoist response to the cosmological question of the source and nature of creativity is nowhere in question.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHowever, beyond the archaeological finds there is, if possible, an even more compelling reason to take up the project of offering yet another English-language translation of the \u003ci\u003eDaodejing\u003c\/i\u003e.  The \u003ci\u003eDaodejing \u003c\/i\u003eis a profoundly “philosophical” text, and yet it has not been treated as such.  It has been translated and interpreted initially by missionaries, and more recently by sinologists.  That is to say that, to date, the \u003ci\u003eDaodejing \u003c\/i\u003ehas only incidentally and tangentially been engaged by philosophers.  This assertion is meant neither to impugn the usually good intentions of the missionaries nor to pretend that there is any substitute for the sophisticated philological, historical, literary, and cultural sensibilities that we associate with good sinology.  In fact, if there is an indictment to be made, it is to be directed against professional philosophy in our Western seats of learning that, in its own self-understanding, continues to insist that philosophy is exclusively an Anglo-European enterprise.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eGiven this marginalization of other philosophical traditions, philosophy as a discipline has an unfulfilled responsibility to our academy.  An essential occupation of philosophers is to identify and describe the generic traits of the human experience in order to locate problems within the broadest possible context.  And these defining generic characteristics are importantly different as we move from one cultural and epochal site to another.  Philosophers have the responsibility to seek out and to understand the uncommon assumptions that distinguish cultures as a preventative against cultural reductionism and the misconceptions such ethnocentrism entails.  Thus, the absence of philosophers in the interpretation of Chinese philosophy has come at a cost.  It has become a commonplace to acknowledge that, in the process of Western humanists attempting to make sense of the classical Chinese philosophical literature, many Western assumptions have inadvertently been insinuated into the understanding of these texts, and have colored the vocabulary through which this understanding has been articulated.  Chinese philosophy has been made familiar to Western readers by first “Christianizing” it, and then more recently by locating it within a poetical-mystical-occult worldview.  To the extent that Chinese philosophy has become the subject of Western philosophical interest at all, it has usually been analyzed within the framework of categories and philosophical problems not its own.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe recent recovery of new versions of existing texts and the further discovery of many that have been long lost has occasioned the retranslation of many of the classics, and has provided both a pretext and an opportunity for philosophers to step up and rethink our standard readings.  Most importantly, it has presented us with the challenges of trying, with imagination, to take these texts on their own terms by locating and interpreting them within their own worldview.  \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe happy collaboration of Hall and Ames has, over nearly a quarter of a century, been an attempt, however imperfect, to bring together both sinological and philosophical skills first in our interpretive studies of classical Chinese philosophy, and more recently, in our new translations of seminal texts.  In developing a strategy for our translations, benefiting enormously from the participation of Henry Rosemont Jr. in these efforts, we have developed a structure that includes a philosophical introduction, an evolving glossary of key philosophical terms, a self-consciously interpretive translation, and the inclusion of a critical Chinese text.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\"Making This Life Significant\" Featuring the recently discovered Bamboo Texts","brand":"Ballantine Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46299800600805,"sku":"NP9780345444196","price":17.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780345444196.jpg?v=1767724473","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/dao-de-jing-isbn-9780345444196","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}