748 Journal ofthe American Oriental Society (2008)

Transcription

1 748 Journal ofthe American Oriental Society (2008) have also forced him to reconsider his framework, which relies upon notions of Confucianism and Confucian orthodoxy. No doubt, some scholars will question his reliance on such a framework. Over the last decade, historians have questioned the value of labeling thinkers and texts in the Han as "Confucian" or "orthodox," arguing that such labels explain little about the complexities of political and intellectual life. These quibbles aside, the manifest virtues of Clark's work are clear. It provides us with a sophisticated approach to the study of ancient history. In addition, it has shown us a far more nuanced and varied political landscape than we normally see. In these ways, he has paved the way for future studies of Chinese political culture and historiography, and for this we are indebted to him, MIRANDA BROWN UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN Teaching Confucianism. Edited by JEFFREY L, RICHEY, American Academy of Religions, Teaching Religious Studies Series, New York: OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2008, Pp, xiv + 230, $60, Teaching the Daodejing. Edited by GARY D, DEANGELIS and WARREN G, FRISINA, American Academy of Religions, Teaching Religious Studies Series, New York: OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2008, Pp, xviii + 206, $65, These two volumes in the "Teaching Religious Studies Series," sponsored by the American Academy of Religion and published by Oxford University Press, both appeared in 2008 and address some of the most commonly taught subjects in collegiate Chinese religion courses. According to the AAR website, the purpose of this series is to focus on "a key topic" and "raise challenging questions about its role in teaching and in the field more generally," My strongest impression after reading them is how egregiously American colleges and universities have failed to represent the Chinese humanities on their faculties, with the consequence that the most crucial texts are relegated to instructors with little or no Chinese competence too many of whom contributed to these books. But this observation also necessitates an appreciation of Berea College, in the heart of Appalachia, which can boast of two thoughtful and knowledgeable specialists in Confucian philosophy and intellectual history: Jeffrey L, Richey, who edited Teaching Confucianism, and Robert W, Foster, who supplied a chapter for it. Most other American colleges do not even have one, A recurring problem in both books is that some of the contributors spend more time talking about themselves than they do about the texts at hand. This is especially noticeable among the writers without any particular expertise in Chinese, such as David L, Hall ("The Daode jing and Comparative Philosophy," Teaching the Daodejing) and John J, Furlong ("Reenchanting Confucius: A Western-Trained Philosopher Teaches the Analects," Teaching Confucianism), who gratuitously display their accomplishments in their own fields, presumably in order to make up for their admission that they are not trained to read the original Chinese texts. Similarly, Gary D, DeAngelis ("Mysticism in the Daode jing," Teaching the Daodejing) and Norman J, Girardot ("My Way: Teaching the Daodejing at the Beginning of a New Millenium [sic]," Teaching the Daodejing) both manage to work in statements that they have taught for many years. Such blatant examples of argumentum ad verecundiam would be out of place in any academic setting, and are especially unbecoming in books about teaching students how to think critically. Specialist readers are reminded repeatedly that they are perusing the work of dilettantes. Teaching the Daode jing is riddled with romanization errors that any undergraduate student in Chinese studies would be able to catch, DeAngelis and his co-editor. Warren G, Frisina, should have had them corrected before the manuscript went to press. Furlong, meanwhile, describes one segment of the Confucian Analects as a response to "the influx of xie (new men, men of worth)" {Teaching Confucianism, p, 195), One can only guess at what he means. Perhaps xian R?' 1, Part of the problem may be that Furlong relies on E, Bruce Brooks and A, Taeko Brooks, The Original Analects: Sayings of Confucius and His Successors (New York: Columbia Univ, Press, 1998), which employs an idio-

2 Reviews of Books 749 Teaching Confucianism is the more successful of the two books in part because the editor is more competent (no romanization errors here). If I have one quibble, it is that the term "Confucianism" is nowhere problematized. The introduction, co-authored by Richey and John H, Berthrong ("Teaching Confucianism as a Religious Tradition," pp, 3-24), asks the familiar question of whether Confucianism can be considered a religion, ^ but not what we mean by "Confucianism" in the first place. This is a conspicuous oversight in a scholarly environment that has begun to question the usefulness of that category, 3 But the eflfect is minimized by the editor's judicious choice of contributors, who ably illustrate the many forms that Confucianism can take, Foster's chapter ("Understanding the Ethical Universe of Neo-Confucianism," pp, ) is one of the most succinct and readable surveys in any language of the animating concerns of Neo-Confucian ethics, including the various theories and metaphysics engendered by Neo-Confucian debate. If an undergraduate ever asks "What is Neo- Confucianism?" Foster's essay may now be the most suitable work to assign as an answer. Similarly, Joseph A, Adler covers much more ground in his chapter than his title ("Divination and Sacrifice in Song Neo-Confucianism," pp, 55-82) might imply, Adler's main interest here is Zhu Xi's ^M understanding of the Yijing # 11, but in order to prepare the reader, he opens with a wide-ranging yet coherent and well-informed survey of Chinese divination from the Bronze Age onward. Moreover, it is particularly helpful for readers of Foster's chapter to be exposed to the reasons why Neo- Confucians were concerned with the Yijing, which, on the surface, might not appear to modem readers as a fruitful philosophical text. Lastly, it should be noted that the contributors to Richey's volume who focus on specific aspects of Confucianism never take the false step of writing as though they were addressing the only aspect of Confucianism worthy of consideration, (This is in marked contradistinction to the majority of contributors to Teaching the Daode jing, as we shall see,) Thus Keith N, Knapp explains the value and significance of traditional filial-piety stories without suggesting that the popular understanding of Confucianism reflected in such materials should outweigh the canonical Confucianism of the literati or even that filial piety is necessarily the most important Confucian doctrine ("Learning Confucianism through Filial Sons, Loyal Retainers, and Chaste Wives," e,g,, pp, 41-42, 50f,), In sum. Teaching Confucianism is a useful and thought-provoking collection that should remind all classes of readers of the healthy diversity of Confucian philosophy and practice. The major defect of Teaching the Daode jing is surprising in today's hermeneutic climate and warrants more extensive discussion: too many of the contributors want the text to mean just one thing. Surely one reason for the text's amazing popularity and longevity is that its lapidary language speaks to people of diverse backgrounds and convictions but DeAngelis, far from accepting this feature as a starting point for interpretation, bemoans the lack of "an authoritative exegesis of this rather enigmatic text" (p, 65), (I would respond that the swiftest way to kill a living scripture is to shackle it with "an authoritative exegesis,") Even specialists among the contributors fall into this trap, Michael LaFargue, for example, promotes a naive historicism: in reading the Daode jing (or any other ancient text, for that matter), our assumptions should "match [those] that the original authors and audience brought to the text" ("Hermeneutics and Pedagogy: Gimme That Old-Time Historicism," p, 168), While it is praiseworthy in a book of syncratic and notoriously confusing romanization system. Furlong seems to be aware that the reconstruction offered in 77!«Original Analects is controversial, but announces that he does "not worry overmuch about taking a position on all of the disputed dates" (p, 195), 2, The very question has, incidentally, always struck me as a reflection of a Eurocentric category mistake; it is methodologically equivalent to asking whether Jesus was ajunzi S?- 3, E,g,, Benjamin A, Elman, "Rethinking 'Confucianism' and 'Neo-Confucianism' in Modem Chinese History," in Rethinking Confucianism: Past and Present in China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam, ed, Elman et al, (Los Angeles: UCLA Asian Paciflc Monograph Series, 2002), ; and Michael Nylan, The Five "Confucian" Classics (New Haven: Yale Univ, Press, 2001), esp, 2ff,

3 750 Journal of the American Oriental Society (2008) this type for a contributor to remind readers that authors and audiences of the past did not necessarily share our modem world-view, one cannot deny that twentieth-century critics such as Gadamer, Ricoeur, and Derrida whose hermeneutics LaFargue freely grants are opposed to his own compellingly demonstrated the limitations of a narrowly historicist approach. How can we be sure that we know the assumptions of the original authors and their audience? And even if we could somehow obtain perfect knowledge of their assumptions, how does it follow that their understanding of the text is binding on us today? It is one thing to defend the merits of historically informed reading; it is quite another to contend that reconstructing the author's original intent is the modem reader's only legitimate concem. Texts that survive through the ages do so because people continually find new meaning in them. Texts that die, by contrast, are ones that have to be read as though we were all living in the third century B.c. In delineating his historicism, LaFargue appeals to what can only be considered a false dilemma: I believe that either one is trying as best one can to reconstruct what the Daodejing meant to its original authors and audience, or one is not. If one is not, then there is no basis for placing any limits to what can be considered a legitimate interpretation, (p. 170) The weakness of that argument is apparent if one tries to apply it to jurisprudence. Lawyers would hardly agree that the only two alternatives in constitutional law are to reconstruct the Constitution as it would have been understood by its original authors and audience, or to disavow any limits to what can be considered a legitimate interpretation. Harold D. Roth takes LaFargue's "old-time historicism" even further by rereading the Daodejing as an ancient treatise of what he calls "apophatic inner cultivation techniques" ("Third-Person and First-Person Approaches to the Study of the Laozi," p. 21). He analyzes chapter 56 of the Daodejing as a model of how this putative mystical tradition can unlock "the hidden meaning in some of its more obscure passages": 1. One who knows does not speak; one who speaks does not know.... 2a. Block the openings; 2b. Shut the doors. 3a. Blunt the sharpness; 3b. Untangle the knots; 3c. Soften the glare; 4. Let your wheels move only along old ruts. 5. This is known as the Profound Meaning {xuan tong). Reading this passage in the context of the apophatic inner cultivation techniques of reducing sensory stimulation (2a+b), perceptual distinctions (3a), emotional bonds (3b), and intellectual activity (3c) that leads to relaxed breathing (4) and eventual union with the Dao, the first two lines take on a very different meaning. They indicate that what follows is an esoteric teaching that must be leamed through personal instruction from an adept and can be truly understood only through the experience of inner cultivation, (p. 21) There are two serious problems with this mode of interpretation. First, glossing the pregnant line "Let your wheels move only along old ruts" as nothing more than "relaxed breathing" should be a signal that a large part of the text's power is disregarded by Roth's rigid interpretive program. In reading virtually any complex metaphor as a veiled reference to meditation and controlled breathing. Roth succeeds only in reducing the text, not explaining any "hidden meaning" that others have missed.'' If the Daode jing could be plausibly characterized as an esoteric treatise of "apophatic inner cultivation techniques," it would hardly have enjoyed its remarkably wide readership; and we must count it against Roth's interpretation that no traditional Chinese commentaries (including Daoist ones, such as the Xiang'er commentary i WSi) ever understood the text as such. Indeed, the earliest comment U"ies 4. Roth had an identical approaeh in his earlier work on the Neiye P3l^ (Original Tao: Inward Training and the Foundations oftaoist Mysticism [New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1999]), whieh I criticized on the same grounds in my review in Sino-Platonic Papers 98 (2000):

4 Reviews of Books 751 that have been handed down, namely the "Jie-Lao" M^ and "Yu-Lao" ÍÉ^ chapters of the Han Feizi #ï^, read it unambiguously as a political text, not a manual of meditation. It takes a certain amount of hubris to presume that we today know more about the audience of the Daodejing than the ancient author of those commentaries (whether or not it was Han Fei himself),^ In other words. Roth's apophatic cultivation looks suspiciously like an invented tradition, and that brings us to the second problem: his comment that the supposed esoteric teachings "must be learned through personal instruction from an adept" forces one to ask how Roth learned them. The answer is that he devised them himself: Based on these assumptions, I have developed a series of reconstructive meditations for students linked to passages in the Daode jing... : Bellows Breathing The space between heaven and earth, is it not like a bellows? Empty it out and it is not exhausted; Active it and it continues to come forth, Laozi 5 speaks of the space between heaven and earth being like a bellows. Early Chinese physiological hygiene texts linked this bellows to the natural movements of the diaphragm as it inhales and exhales. Instructions: Sitting upright in a comfortable position and with eyes closed (remember: "The Five Colors blind men's eyes"; Laozi 12), imagine your diaphragm to be a bellows and simply follow its movements as you inhale and exhale. Do this for ten (or more, depending on prior experience of students) minutes, then stop, (p, 25) Even if it is true that the bellows analogy is supposed to refer to controlled breathing (and the fact that the text alludes to such techniques does not mean that it must be inviting readers to practice them),* these instructions represent merely Roth's apophatic technique, not anything justified with references to primary Daoist sources. And it is telling that Roth cannot relate his invented exercises to Laozi 5 without amputating the most important line of all, namely the unforgettable opening statement: Heaven and Earth are not humane; they treat the Myriad Creatures like straw dogs. The Sage is not humane; he treats the Hundred Clans like straw dogs. What are we teaching students if we tell them that it is acceptable to interpret a profound text by ignoring the most difficult lines, and that we can understand the "hidden meaning" of a passage beginning with the explosive phrase "Heaven and Earth are not humane" by paying attention to our diaphragms while we breathe for ten minutes (or more, if we are "experienced")? The majority of contributors to Teaching the Daodejing seem convinced that it is a work of mysticism; DeAngelis, the more visible of the two co-editors, sets the tone by stating: "I personally consider the case for the Daode jing as a mystical text to be self-evident" (p, 65), The case having been declared self-evident, many of the contributors proceed to incorporate meditation in their classes according to their own whims and preferences. Roth, as we have seen, invents his own exercises, DeAngelis brings in "a Qi Gong master and a Daoist meditation instructor" (p, 72) without asking what connection (if any) their practices have with the Daode jing. Eva Wong, a "practitioner of the Daoist arts" ("The Daodejing in Practice," p, 75), also teaches students to mind their diaphragms: 5, For the problems of attribution, see Bertil Lundahl, Han Fei Zi: The Man and the Work (Stockholm: Stockholm Univ,, Institute of Oriental Languages, 1992), ; and esp, Zheng Liangshu SPS1S, Han Fei zi zhushu 71 imang ^^il^mts. if. (Taipei: Xuesheng sbuju, 1993), , 6, Donald Harper, "The Bellows Analogy in Laozi V and Warring States Macrobiotic Hygiene," Early China 20 (1995): , remains the fullest study of this connection between the text of the Daodejing and contemporary physical self-cultivation literature; his conclusions are much more circumspect than Roth's,

5 752 Journal ofthe American Oriental Society (2008) The Daodejing (Chapter 55) States, "If the mind were to control the breath, this would be forcing things." When we can breathe like an infant, energy in the body will be replenished and we will be rejuvenated. Abdominal breathing itself is deep breathing. In this form of breathing, the air is allowed to sink into the belly before it is exhaled. Abdominal breathing requires much diaphragmatic action and the internal organs must be pliable enough to move out of the way when the diaphragm presses down during inhalation, (p. 83) Wong's chapter is completely unencumbered by footnotes, so it is impossible to tell the source of her detailed meditative prescriptions; since she is introduced as an initiate in the Xiantian wuji 5fe^ MM and Wu-Liu ffiw sects (p. xvii), perhaps we are expected to recognize her as a Daoist authority in her own right, who is thus not obliged to cite any documentary sources. Of all the contributors to Teaching the Daodejing who advise the use of meditation in class, only Livia Kohn takes any pains to show that her exercises are based on real Daoist meditation texts ("The Reception of Laozi," p. 136). Two chapters in Teaching the Daodejing stand out for questioning the consensus that "the case for the Daode jing as a mystical text" is self-evident and for resisting the temptation to simplify this intricate and multi-faceted work. These are Girardot's witty essay, "My Way," which emphasizes the need to come to grips "with the intertextual and cross-cultural multiplicity of translations, readings, and interpretations" (pp. 113f.), and especially Russell Kirkland's "Hermeneutics and Pedagogy: Methodological Issues in Teaching the Daode jing" which most of the other contributors would have done well to read and consider carefully: In earlier generations, interpreters (in this case. Western, Chinese, and Japanese interpreters) went about their task on the basis of assumptions rooted securely in their own traditions. When Westerners encountered the religious and intellectual traditions of Asia, they went about making sense of those traditions by comparing and contrasting what they saw in them with what they "knew" from their own tradition.... Chinese traditions, including the Daode jing, therefore came to be interpreted according to a variety of Western agendas, and any historical or textual facts that could not be made to fit into the interpreter's agenda were simply ignored or explained way. The extreme of that thrust continues today, as hundreds of Westerners continue to assume that they are entitled to decide for themselves what the Daode jing says, ignoring not only two thousand years of Chinese interpreters, but even the text itself, thereby reducing it to epiphenomenalism. I attempt to induce productive shock in my students by teaching them these facts and urging them not to colonize the Daodejing. (pp ) "How [do] we know," Kirkland continues, "that the Daode jing represents, as many have claimed, a work of 'mysticism'?" Sadly, most of the approaches laid out in the other chapters of this book, whether LaFargue's "old-time historicism," Roth's "apophatic inner cultivation," or the repeated presumption that the Daodejing is a book about meditation are all examples of what Kirkland aptly dubs "colonizing the Daode jing!' But we may find some solace in Laozi's own pronouncement that those who try to take the place of the master carpenter end up injuring their own hands (chapter 74). It is a safe bet that the Daode jing will be read for as long as human beings remain on this planet. No colonization of the text will be nearly as enduring. PAUL R. GOLDIN UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA

6 Copyright of Journal of the American Oriental Society is the property of American Oriental Society and its content may not be copied or ed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or articles for individual use.