A Chinese Reading of the Daodejing: Wang Bi's Commentary on the Laozi with Critical Text and Translation (Chinese Philosophy Culture)

SUNY series in Chinese Philosophy and Culture

by Rudolf G. Wagner, Lao Tzu

Many of the brightest Chinese minds have used the form of the commentary to open the terse and poetic chapters of the Laozi to their readers and also to develop a philosophy of their own. None has been more sophisticated, philosophically probing, and influential in the endeavor than a young genius of the third century C.E., Wang Bi (126-249). In this book, Rudolf G. Wagner provides a full translation of the Laozi that extracts from Wang Bi's Commentary the manner in which he read the text, as well as a full translation of Wang Bi's Commentary and his essay on the "subtle pointers" of the Laozi. The result is a Chinese reading of the Laozi that will surprise and delight Western readers familiar with some of the many translations of the work.

Genres: Philosophy, Theology, China

540 pages, Hardcover

First published September 1, 2003

About the author

Rudolf G. Wagner (3 November 1941 — 25 October 2019) was a German sinologist. He was Senior Professor at the Department of Chinese Studies at the Heidelberg University and Co-Director of the Cluster of Excellence "Asia and Europe in a Global Context: Shifting Asymmetries in Cultural Flows".

Reviews

[Paul Gibson · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a technical work of interest mainly to translators, and it is more about Wang Pi than about Laozi. If you have no background in Chinese, this book won't help much and is probably not for you, but it is fascinating if you're so inclined.
The main thrust of the book is the mystery that surrounds the fact that the Wang Pi version of the Tao Te Ching (Daodejing) that comes down to us along with his commentary is not the version (Wang Bi) is commenting on. If you've ever tried your hand at translating the Tao Te Ching while reading his commentary, you must be aware of this problem.
Perhaps my favorite part is that it includes much of the LZWZLL, the Laozi weizhi lueli; an unattributed work sometimes attributed to Wang Pi. Many of these materials are have been long lost to the world of academia and its nice to have them resurface (still, since 2003) available again to mass markets.
The author, being a fine scholar, kept his Wang Bi hat on quite well while attempting to express Wang Pi's comments on the version that Wang Pi used, while letting the text live within this framework without a tendency for Mr Wagner to rewrite or overwrite his own readings (as far as such a thing can be helped). An honest, interesting book.
The author does his best to alter the transmitted text so as to match the commentary. He even had to alter the commentary in a place or two in order to match the text.

[Sol 솔 · Rating 3 out of 5]

This may be the best translation of Wang Bi's commentary on the Dao De Jing. Unfortunately, due to the completely unreadable format, I've got to deduct two full stars. This is an extremely academic work, not for ordinary readers but perhaps only for translators. However, I wonder why, at this point of complexity, we would not just read it in the original Classical Chinese?

[Ring Chime · Rating 5 out of 5]

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[Chimezie Ogbuji · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very detailed, scholarly analysis and cross reference of the Tao Te Ching and Wang Bi's very insightful commentary on the text