12/10/2025
The Taoist Tradition:
An Introduction to Teachings, Schools, and Practices.
Fabrizio Pregadio. Golden Elixir Press, 2025.
Uusi taolaista perinnettä käsittelevä englanninkielinen yleisteos. Lainaan tähän koko johdannon, jonka sisältöä jokaiseen aihepiiristä kiinnostuneen tulisi tarkoin punnita mielessään. Se osoittaa aikaa kestäneen ja yhä vallitsevan perusvirheen koskien taolaisuuden luonnetta.
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"There could be no better introduction to this book than the following passage, quoted from one of the main Western scholarly works on Taoism (or Daoism):
'It has become a sinological dogma to distinguish between the so-called Taoist school (daojia), said to have produced the classical mystical texts . . . and the so-called Taoist religion (daojiao), often said to have begun in the Later Han period [i.e., the first-second centuries CE]. The successive Daozang [Taoist Canons] never made this distinction. When we look at the way the terms daojia and daojiao occur in the texts preserved in the Ming Canon [published in 1445], we see that they are practically synonymous and interchangeable.' (Kristofer Schipper, in Schipper and Verellen, eds., The Taoist Canon: A Historical Companion to the Daozang.)
The two terms mentioned in this passage, daojia and daojiao, are usually translated (or rather, interpreted) in Western-language studies as “Taoist philosophy” and “Taoist religion,” or as “philosophical Taoism” and “religious Taoism.” Taoist texts, however, do not speak of “philosophy” or “religion,” two terms and concepts that do not even exist in the premodern Chinese language. They speak, instead, of what they call the “house,” “family” or “lineage of the Dao” (daojia, also translatable in the plural), and the “teachings of the Dao” or “on the Dao” (daojiao). Taoists, who obviously have understood these terms in their literal senses, have seen them as definitions closely related to one another: there cannot be “teaching” (jiao) without “lineage” (jia), and vice versa.
With regard to the Western definitions, it is not clear, in particular, which entity the term “religious Taoism” should define: different scholars might explain its meaning in different ways. If “religion” should include all of Taoism except for its thought, this would probably exclude the doctrines of the Daode jing (Book of the Way and Its Virtue; see Chapter 1), which Taoists have seen as an integral part—in fact, as the source—of their tradition. Defining Taoism by omitting these doctrines would be in a way analogous to writing a survey of Christianity that intentionally neglects to consider the thought of the theologians, or even one of the founding texts. If, instead, “religion” should only include ritual—with the related pantheons of gods on the one hand, and the priestly and monastic institutions on the other—one should exclude meditation, alchemy, and other individual practices that Taoists have seen as major components of their tradition.
Taoism is a tradition as complex and heterogeneous as Buddhism, Islam, Judaism, or Christianity. The modern categories of philosophy and religion can help to comprehend its “otherness” compared to better-known traditions, by interpreting its different manifestations according to frameworks generally shared by those who use them. Yet, the use of these categories could also lead one to look only at the aspects of the tradition that fit one’s chosen framework, and only within the terms and limits of that framework. This may result in creating distinctions—such as the one between philosophy and religion—that do not exist within the tradition itself. In the worst case, the whole issue might simply consist in imposing one cultural model over a different one.
This book attempts to take into account the Western scholarly views on Taoism as well as the Taoists’ views of their own tradition. While it presents, in a synthetic way, Taoist thought and religion, it does not make any fundamental distinction between them, and especially does not give priority to either, attempting instead, despite its limits, to point out whenever possible the close ties between them. As a consequence, this book is based on a definition as broad as possible of what we might call Taoist religion (a term that should replace the odd “religious Taoism”), and also includes views that pertain to what we might call Taoist philosophy (or Taoist thought, a term more appropriate than “philosophical Taoism”)."
Complete or selected translations of sixteen major works belonging to the Taoist tradition of Neidan, or Internal Alchemy.
