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SUNY series in Chinese Philosophy and Culture
The Annotated Laozi: A New Translation of the Daodejing
Paul Fischer is Professor of Asian Religions and Cultures at Western Kentucky University. He is the author of Self-Cultivation in Early China (also published by SUNY Press) and the translator and editor of China's First Syncretist .
320 pages, Paperback
Published February 2, 2024
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
December 8, 2024
I have given this book two stars in the faint hope that it will not be another Daodejing translation that deserves one star, or less. Unfortunately, a first reading does not offer up much hope for that. Fischer muffs most of the more problematic passages that I cited in my review of the disaster by Komjathy; the English of his translation is far more fluent and fluid than that of Komjathy, but he falls into the same traps again and again. The problem, as with so many other translations, is that Fischer tries to bend the meaning of the text into some of the more popular later constructions of the Daodejing, without telling us what layer of the text he is basing himself on.
The Daodejing has been many things to many different groups. It is possible to recognize this and be honest about it -- for instance, Lynn's translation (1999), which follows the commentary of Wang Bi -- but if not told differently, we naturally understand a translation to be trying to represent the earliest meaning of the text. If that was Fischer's intention, he has done a very questionable job of it.
The errors are a dreary and familiar list. To begin with, he translates min "commoners" as "people," which is not correct. It means "commoners," not "people" in general, and while I don't obsess over class angles, there is a difference that should be preserved here. He translates the jiang yi yu zhi of Verse 65 as "keep them ignorant (of contrivance)," where yu does not simply mean "ignorant" but rather "rustic, incurious" and the "(of contrivance)" is an unwarranted addition. It is not "ignorance" that the author is suggesting be forced on the common people here; it is rustic stupidity, passive unresponsiveness. To be blunt, he doesn't want the peasantry getting uppity.
In Verse 50, Fisher joins Komjathy in completely misunderstanding the verse because for some reason he has never bothered to look up the term si di "death ground." If he had, he would realize that it is taken from the Sunzi Bingfa and explained there: it is one of the jiu di “Nine Tactical Situations,” the military term for a highly unfavorable situation where you have no chance to do anything but fight hard and hope for luck: 疾戰則存，不疾戰則亡者，為死地。…無所往者，死地也。“death ground is where you will survive if you fight with desperation and are lost if you do not… death ground means being trapped.” If students of Daoism begin by assuming that their texts never touch on vulgar things like military affairs, they will inevitably fall into error.
In Verse 25, Fischer does not make the same mess of the text as Komjathy did, but he still misconstrues it. He translates dao fa zi ran as "and the Way complies with itself," which is incomprehensible. After all, zi ran "the self-so" is a common enough phrase for nature, the self-ordered things of the world; it is not a reflexive. It would be far better here to ditch the awkward "complies" for fa as well, and translate "the Way models on how things are of themselves."
And in Verse 80, Fischer allows his preconceptions full reign, changing the "implied subject" of the first lines half-way through because he thinks that otherwise, the passage is too "dictatorial." This is anachronism on stilts and the quintessence of fluffy-bunny Daoism. We have no business rewriting the text to make it nicer by our modern standards. The sage of the Daodejing is an absolute ruler whose powers are only constrained by practical reflections on how easy it is to go too far and lose everything. "Dictatorial" is a word that has no meaning here. This passage proposes forcing the commoners (it's the min again who are getting it in the neck) back into illiteracy and robbing them of their freedom of association and movement. It is simply fatuous to state that the final lines are "simply a picture of rural contentment," unless you really believe that the ancient Chinese peasantry were lobotomized lumps who would spend their whole lives without even wandering over to the next village for a visit. But then again, turn back to Verse 65 -- this is what the author of the text wanted.
The Daodejing has been many things to many different groups. It is possible to recognize this and be honest about it -- for instance, Lynn's translation (1999), which follows the commentary of Wang Bi -- but if not told differently, we naturally understand a translation to be trying to represent the earliest meaning of the text. If that was Fischer's intention, he has done a very questionable job of it.
The errors are a dreary and familiar list. To begin with, he translates min "commoners" as "people," which is not correct. It means "commoners," not "people" in general, and while I don't obsess over class angles, there is a difference that should be preserved here. He translates the jiang yi yu zhi of Verse 65 as "keep them ignorant (of contrivance)," where yu does not simply mean "ignorant" but rather "rustic, incurious" and the "(of contrivance)" is an unwarranted addition. It is not "ignorance" that the author is suggesting be forced on the common people here; it is rustic stupidity, passive unresponsiveness. To be blunt, he doesn't want the peasantry getting uppity.
In Verse 50, Fisher joins Komjathy in completely misunderstanding the verse because for some reason he has never bothered to look up the term si di "death ground." If he had, he would realize that it is taken from the Sunzi Bingfa and explained there: it is one of the jiu di “Nine Tactical Situations,” the military term for a highly unfavorable situation where you have no chance to do anything but fight hard and hope for luck: 疾戰則存，不疾戰則亡者，為死地。…無所往者，死地也。“death ground is where you will survive if you fight with desperation and are lost if you do not… death ground means being trapped.” If students of Daoism begin by assuming that their texts never touch on vulgar things like military affairs, they will inevitably fall into error.
In Verse 25, Fischer does not make the same mess of the text as Komjathy did, but he still misconstrues it. He translates dao fa zi ran as "and the Way complies with itself," which is incomprehensible. After all, zi ran "the self-so" is a common enough phrase for nature, the self-ordered things of the world; it is not a reflexive. It would be far better here to ditch the awkward "complies" for fa as well, and translate "the Way models on how things are of themselves."
And in Verse 80, Fischer allows his preconceptions full reign, changing the "implied subject" of the first lines half-way through because he thinks that otherwise, the passage is too "dictatorial." This is anachronism on stilts and the quintessence of fluffy-bunny Daoism. We have no business rewriting the text to make it nicer by our modern standards. The sage of the Daodejing is an absolute ruler whose powers are only constrained by practical reflections on how easy it is to go too far and lose everything. "Dictatorial" is a word that has no meaning here. This passage proposes forcing the commoners (it's the min again who are getting it in the neck) back into illiteracy and robbing them of their freedom of association and movement. It is simply fatuous to state that the final lines are "simply a picture of rural contentment," unless you really believe that the ancient Chinese peasantry were lobotomized lumps who would spend their whole lives without even wandering over to the next village for a visit. But then again, turn back to Verse 65 -- this is what the author of the text wanted.
May 25, 2025
this book puts an interesting perspective on the work. the author clearly worked very hard on this, and I could easily see it used as the basis of a higher level university class in the subject. all the poetry has been stripped from the text, and the words have all been assigned very formal definitions to avoid any ambiguity. the references and explanations are vast and thorough. I think that this book is very valuable to the academic study of the Tao, but I didn't find joy in reading this translation the way I have with others. great addition to curriculum or your theology section at home.
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