The Texts of Taoism, Part 2

What It's About

This volume completes Legge's presentation of the writings of Kwang-dze (Zhuangzi), covering Books XVIII to XXXIII, and adds the Thâi-Shang Tractate of Actions and Their Retributions. The Zhuangzi chapters are a mix of parables, dialogues and anecdotes about living in harmony with the Dao: accepting death as part of nature, valuing the useless, and escaping the narrow judgments of ordinary society. Among them are the account of Zhuangzi drumming on a basin after his wife's death, the sharp satire of the bandit Zhi lecturing Confucius, the Old Fisherman's teaching to a Confucian scholar, and a closing survey of the philosophical schools of the day. The Thâi-Shang Tractate is a short Taoist moral text that was widely circulated in China. It teaches that spirits record a person's good and bad deeds and lengthen or shorten life accordingly.

Key Concepts

Central ideas include the Dao as the underlying course of nature, wu wei (effortless, non-forced action), the relativity of human judgments of right and wrong, and the Taoist sage's detachment from fame, wealth and fear of death. The Tractate takes a more directly moral line, linking conduct to reward and punishment. Scholars have long debated how much of the later Zhuangzi chapters came from Zhuangzi himself, and the Tractate's popular moralism is quite different in tone from the earlier philosophical material.

About the Author

James Legge (1815–1897) was a Scottish scholar and Congregationalist missionary who spent decades in Hong Kong. He later became the first Professor of Chinese at the University of Oxford, and was one of the leading Western interpreters of Chinese thought in the Victorian era.

About This Edition

This is an 1891 translation by James Legge.