While the Tao Te Ching has been translated and commented on countless times, interpretations are seldom based on systematic theoretical treatment of the problems of interpretive method posed by this enigmatic classic. Beginning with a critical discussion of modern hermeneutics including treatments of Hirsch, Gadamer, and Derrida, this book applies methods developed in biblical studies to the Tao Te Ching. The following chapters discuss systematically four areas necessary to recovering the Tao Te Ching 's original meaning: its social background; the semantic structure of the brief aphorisms contained in the book; the concrete background of the more cosmic sayings; and the origin and genre of the 81 chapters of the Tao Te Ching. These essays propose relatively new theories in each of these areas, leading to a new approach to the interpretation of the text. This approach is illustrated in the translation and the detailed commentary on each chapter.

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgments Introduction Part I: Hermeneutics Introduction 1. Interpretation and Meaning: Two Histories Hermeneutics The Ontology of Meaning: A History and a Proposal 2. Philosophical Foundations for Interpretive Method Philosophical Foundations Language and Reality The Idea of Competence This Hermeneutics Comared and Contrasted with Recent Trends in Hermeneutics Part II: Sociohistorical Background Introduction 3. The Self Understanding of Warring States Shih China in the Late Warring States Period Cho-yun Hsu on the Rise of the Shih Shih Idealists How did Shih-Idealists Gain Recognition? The Shih-School as an Environment for Idealism 4. Mencius on the Role of the Shih-Idealist Doctrinal Wolrdviews vs. the Mencian Worldview Mencius Stakes Out an Expanded Role for Shih-Idealists Other Shih-Schools 5. Mencius on Virtue The Content of Mencius' Instruction to Kings Self-Cultivation Conclusion: The Mencian Shih vs. the Modern Philosopher Mencius and the Tao Te Ching Part III: Verbal Form and the Structure of Laoist Thought Introduction 6. The Semantic Structure of Aphorisms The Proverb as a Special Genre of Speech Conversational Implicature Speech Acts The Target of Proverbs The Attitude Expressed and the Value-Orientation Motivating It 7. Understanding Laoist Polemic Aphorisms Definiteness Making Sense of the Paradoxical Style of Laoist Aphorisms The Problem of Coherence The Unifying Basis for Laoist Thought: A Concern for Organic Harmony Appendix: Sayings About Nature, Heaven, and the Ancients 8. Sayings and Self-Cultivation Introduction The Nei Yeh Some Parallels Between the Tao Te Ching and the Nei Yeh 9. The Vocabulary of Self-Cultivation in the Chuang Tzu and the Tao Te Ching Self-Cultivation Vocabulary in the Chuang Tzu The Vocabulary of Self-Cultivation in the Tao Te Ching 10. The Wonderful and Cosmic Tao "Softness Overcomes Hardness" Sayings Linking One Quality to Another Normative Descriptions Sayings Describing the Wonderful Benefits of the Qualities Laoists Cultivate Cosmic Sayings: A General Thesis "Stillness is the Norm of the World" Cosmogonies Contradictions and Non-Literal Understanding 11. A Pluralist but Critical Theory of Worldviews The Dilemmas of Ethnocentrism and Diversity A Broadened Thoery of "The Good" as an Irreducible Ontological Category Conversion and the Transformation of the Lebenswelt Transcendence Subject's View and Outsider's View The Laoist "System" Some Comments on Contemporary Relevance 12. The Art of the Sayings Collage Indirect External Evidence Internal Evidence That the Tao Te Ching is Composed of Sayings from an Oral Tradition Internal Evidence for Deliberate and Artful Composition of the Chapters Substative Associations of the Composers Part IV: Translation, Commentary, and Topical Glossary Introduction Translation and Commentary Additional Textual Notes Topical Glossary Notes References Subject Index Author Index Index of Passages Discussed List of Chapters in the Traditional Arrangement