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Tao Te Ching, by 6th-century Chinese sage Laozi, is a fundamental read for philosophical Taoism. It is a highly influential book, having inspired generations of writers, poets, painters, calligraphers and even gardeners across China, East Asia and the rest of the world. Although Tao Te Ching is one of the most translated works in literature, many have misunderstood the book due to its highly condensed and complex writing style. As Holmes Welch, American scholar and author of Taoism: The Parting of the Way (1965), notes, the written text "has no active or passive, no singular or plural, no case, no person, no tense, no mood" - not to mention punctuation - and is therefore "a famous puzzle which everyone would like to feel he had solved". Indeed, as Dr Mingte Liu, author of Understanding Laozi's Tao Te Ching observes, so many people have misinterpreted and misrepresented Laozi that it is necessary to clarify what the book is truly about.
In Understanding Laozi's Tao Te Ching, Dr Liu provides a detailed analysis of the book's written text and compares his interpretation with those of other scholars. In his view, the book is all about success, but not in a material sense. instead, it is about being successful in life, in one's understanding of oneself, in one's pursuit of excellence and self-fulfilment, and in one's achieving a harmonious relationship with the world. In discussing the eternal value of Tao Te Ching as a philosophical text, Dr Liu helps readers understand why this ancient text remains relevant to our contemporary life and beyond. To better comprehend Laozi's Tao Te Ching, this book is a must-read.
About the author
Based in Taiwan, Dr Mingte Liu has a PhD in Political Science from the Freie Universität Berlin. As a result of his deep reading and discussion of the ancient Chinese books such as Laozi's Tao Te Ching and The Analects of Confucius, Dr Liu decided to compose a series of books in order to help his graduate students better understand these Chinese philosophers and his legacies.
