Daoism and Chinese Culture.
Author | Campany, Robert Ford |
Position | Reviews of Books - Book Review |
Daoism and Chinese Culture. By LIVIA KOHN. Cambridge, Mass.: THREE PINES PRESS, 2001. Pp. 228. $14.95 (paper).
This book is intended as a textbook for students. Textbooks on Daoism are few, so--for those persuaded of their pedagogical value (I remain unconvinced)--this one will rise to prominence by default. Kohn is a leader in the field, and this book is admirably ambitious in scope (since either "Daoism" or "Chinese culture" taken singly would be a tall order for 228 pages), but some words of caution are in order.
The presentation is organized both chronologically and thematically, avoiding the potential monotony of a strictly chronological layout. One strength of the book is that it includes a bit of attention to alternative philosophies (such as "Confucianism") and practices to which Daoist texts and figures were responding, rather than presenting Daoism in isolation. Another is its relatively balanced treatment of periods and movements, although one could wish that Kohn had spent a bit more time on the truly formative early medieval movements and textual traditions.
Among the general problems evident in the book is its personification and reification of "Daoism" throughout, combined with the author's simplistic insistence on the strict and organic unity of this tradition. For Kohn, "the Daoist religion ... began ... around 400 B.C.E." (p. 3) despite the absence until half a millennium thereafter of any evidence of revealed scriptures, of a central role for gods or spirits, or of a gathered community of believer-practitioners with a priesthood. Another general problem is Kohn's indiscriminate use of the language of "schools" when discussing phenomena--such as the "three caverns" (sandong) of the canon, the Lingbao scriptures, and the Twofold Mystery texts of the Tang period--more accurately seen as retrospectively applied classificatory rubrics; unsuspecting students (and some teachers) will understandably but erroneously infer from this language a corresponding social, institutional reality that did not, in fact, exist. A third problem is the frequent presentation of conflicting scholarly views side by side, with no critical attempt to adjudicate between them, and the simplistic glossing over of complex issues (such as the bare mention of Zhuangzi's "skepticism" and "relativism" with no mention of the fact that the philosophical meaning of these very terms and their applicability to Zhuangzi's texts have been the subject of much recent...
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