Taoism: The Enduring Tradition (review)

Ronnie Littlejohn

Philosophy East and West, Volume 57, Number 3, July 2007, pp. 389-392 (Review)

Published by University of Hawai'i Press

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/pew.2007.0034

For additional information about this article

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/217396

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BOOK REVIEWS

Taoism: The Enduring Tradition. By Russell Kirkland. New York and London:
Routledge/Taylor and Francis Group. Pp. xvii þ 282. Hardcover $105.00. Paper
$18.45.

Reviewed by Ronnie Littlejohn Belmont University

Those of us who have been waiting for a thoroughly undated introduction to Daoism
need wait no longer. Russell Kirkland, among America’s best known scholars of
Daoism, has offered us one in Taoism: The Enduring Tradition. To be sure, this
work will stand in sharp contrast to virtually all of the introductions to Daoism pro-
duced by Western scholars in the twentieth century. And the reason for this is sim-
ple. Kirkland has made a conscientious effort to use his knowledge of not only the
most recent work on Daoism but also the Daoist canon itself to provide correctives
and dispel misunderstandings that have enjoyed, in some cases, as much as a hun-
dred years’ currency. The result is a narrative that will appear to be iconoclastic be-
cause it tells the story of Daoism as we are presently able to reconstruct it, and this
story differs dramatically from that set forward by the previous two generations of
scholars and continues to be taught in most venues to the present day. Undertaking
such a project is a difficult task. This work is one of the very few (perhaps including
James Miller’s recent work) to plow through dozens of well-trodden and almost axi-
omatic assumptions about Daoism that are now known to be mistaken. Perhaps this
is one reason why even Norman Girardot, who wrote the foreword to this book, calls
attention to Kirkland’s ‘‘acerbic’’ style (p. ix). A careful reader will notice many
places in which matters could be put in a kinder and gentler manner—and perhaps
even more accurately (e.g., see Kirkland’s characterization of the exchange between
H. G. Creel and Henri Maspero in the previous generation, on pp. 182–183). Daoist
scholars will also perk up over some overstatements and sweeping generalizations
that typically seem to me to be designed to highlight a point of correction but some-
times go too far. But these matters should not distract us from the work’s major
accomplishments, which are considerable.
The first place where a reader will notice substantial correctives of the received
scholarship on Daoism is in Kirkland’s treatment of the definition of Daoism itself. At
the beginning he puts aside the ‘‘simplistic dichotomy’’ between daojia (philosoph-
ical Daoism) and daojiao (religious Daoism), reminding us that any view that reli-
gious Daoism was the province of the illiterate masses and philosophical Daoism
that of the educated elite can be set aside simply by directing attention to the hun-
dreds of Daoist texts in the Daozang (Daoist canon), many of which are explicitly
‘‘religious.’’ If we are to study Daoism, Kirkland says, then we cannot privilege an-
cient Daoism over medieval or modern; nor should we focus only on male Daoists
and not female ones; and we cannot reify any particular form of Daoism and regard
it as the essence of Daoism or as Daoism’s normative expression. He wants us to

Philosophy East & West Volume 57, Number 3 July 2007 389–392 389
> 2007 by University of Hawai‘i Press
 take as ‘‘Daoists’’ anyone who self-identifies as a Daoist. Historically, the writings
and practices of these persons are expressed in the Daozang. To study the data of
Daoism one must ‘‘study all that is revealed intentionally and unintentionally, by
the centuries of material preserved in the Tao-tsang and related collections’’ (p. 13).
When I first read this construction of Kirkland’s project, I had several reservations.
The principal one is that he appears to assume that the compilers of the Daozang
had no agenda of their own beyond that of collecting ‘‘everything Daoist.’’ This
seemed and still seems unlikely to me. I am also concerned that some voices and
traditions in Daoism, especially the Zhengyi stream of ritual practitioners, may be
underrepresented in the canon. But Kirkland does readily admit that some texts and
practices might not have survived in the canon and yet still be quite relevant to an
understanding of Daoism.
One way of getting to the impact of Kirkland’s work is to pay attention to his
chapter on ‘‘The Classical Legacy.’’ To do so is a somewhat dangerous undertaking,
because Kirkland is rightly very interested in dismantling the view that Daoism is
equivalent to the Dao De Jing and the Zhuangzi and that these texts say essentially
the same thing. Still, perhaps readers of this review will be most familiar with this
period of Daoist formation, so I will mention some of Kirkland’s main points in this
chapter. He argues not only that there was no such social entity or school of thought
as ‘‘Daoism’’ or ‘‘Classical Daoism’’ in pre-Qin China and that this taxonomy was
the creation of Han dynasty (206 B.C.E.– C.E. 221) thinkers, but also that there was
no set of coherent ideas or values that was ‘‘daoist’’ (p. 21). He thinks that what later
Daoists inherited from ‘‘classical’’ times was an assortment of behaviors and prac-
tices and a richly varied ‘‘matrix of interpretive frameworks.’’ We may wonder, how-
ever, whether this is not one of the overstatements that I mentioned earlier. While I
am not aware of any Daoist scholar now working who believes that there was a
Daoist school in the ‘‘classical’’ period, I also think that many agree that the lineages
that transmitted practices and frameworks communicated ideas and values that over-
lapped with each other and spread, creating a web of interlocking coherence over
time. So, even if Kirkland is right in saying that the first sociocultural group whose
participants consciously identified themselves as ‘‘Daoists’’ and began conceiving a
comprehensive collection of texts flourished during the fifth century C.E., we must be
cautious about saying that there was no set of coherent ideas or values being trans-
mitted in the ‘‘classical’’ period.
Kirkland’s discussion of the Zhuangzi is an important example of the way he
works in this text. As he says, there are no primary historical data for Zhuang Zhou
outside the Zhuangzi itself and a vague passage in the Shiji. And he is right that Guo
Xiang created the present text of the Zhuangzi in the third century C.E. But the key
word here is ‘‘created,’’ and this must not be confused with ‘‘authored.’’ When I first
read Kirkland’s book, I thought that he might not be making this distinction suffi-
ciently clear, but it is there in his book, and he certainly is aware of the literary crit-
icism on the Zhuangzi (p. 35), indicating that he knows that some strands with
which Guo Xiang worked clearly predated Guo Xiang, even if we do not know their
origin and date. It is distracting, though, when Kirkland says, ‘‘the contents of the

390 Philosophy East & West

Chuang-tzu are in certain key ways utterly at odds with the contents of both the Nei-
yeh and the Tao te ching’’ (p. 36). Again, he overstates the case. And sometimes
more than mere overstatement occurs, as in the statement ‘‘the Chuang-tzu does
not teach that the reader should ‘not do and nothing will be undone’—a theme oft
repeated in the Tao te ching’’ (p. 36). The Zhuangzi does teach such practice. From
the Laozi logia in the Zhuangzi alone, Kirkland’s claim is easily shown to be false
(e.g., see the Laozi passages in chapters 3, 7, 12, and 14).
At the same time, Taoism: The Enduring Tradition does a fine job of showing the
significance of the Neiye for the classical legacy of Daoism and in doing so reveals
that the formative period of Daoism consisted of much more than a Lao-Zhuang ges-
tation. Scholars may quibble over the particulars of Kirkland’s interpretations of
Neiye passages and his remarks about its relationship to the Dao De Jing, but not
over its significance to the story of Daoism’s evolution in this period. When speaking
of the Dao De Jing, Kirkland’s claim that Huan Yuan, who was associated with the
Qixia academy, may have been the Dao De Jing’s final redactor is intriguing and
deserves more study. Summing up his view of the classical legacy, Kirkland con-
cludes that Daoists of later periods modeled their lives on the teachings of the
Zhuangzi and Dao De Jing ‘‘to about the same extent that Christians from the time
of the crucifixion to the present day have modeled their lives on the teachings con-
tained in Jesus’ parables’’ (p. 69).
After the chapter on ‘‘The Classical Legacy,’’ the book offers an overarching his-
torical summary of forty-one pages on the development of Daoism from the Han pe-
riod (roughly the period of Liu An and the Huainanzi) to the present day. Kirkland
utilizes the metaphor of Daoism as a river, with currents, eddies, and branches.
This is a fine and readable summary that shows his command of the distinctions be-
tween Daoist traditions and also the so-called Northern and Southern currents of
Daoism. In my view, his account of Daoism in the Tang is especially helpful. Here
I should pause to mention that some readers will be impatient with Kirkland’s deci-
sion not to use the pinyin romanization system, as this seems most confusing when
dealing with historical personages. But this will be a minor distraction. Kirkland
keeps in view his overall premise to identify Daoism through its canon, and he offers
comments on several important canonical works and their influence. Kirkland’s
knowledge of current Daoist scholarship is right on target when he reminds us that
there are fruitful areas of study as yet unexplored throughout this period. For exam-
ple, he mentions specifically the fact that no one has yet examined the overlap of
concepts between the Neiye, Huainanzi, and Xiang’er.
In ‘‘The Socio-Political Matrix of Daoism’’ Kirkland reminds us that there were
Daoist literati in various periods of Chinese history and that not all Daoists were rec-
luses living in mountain sanctuaries. Each dynastic period is surveyed, with com-
ments on the role of Daoism during that time. Some Daoists were poets, historians,
scholars, and even well-connected members of the political elite who held govern-
ment offices or served as advisors to high officials. Kirkland shows that these literati
Daoists practiced inner alchemy, and he comments directly on the fact that they
practiced other Daoist arts and rituals as well and indeed often performed them for

Book Reviews 391

 and on behalf of ministers and emperors. Kirkland is right in saying that this means
also that it is not possible to say that all Daoists were drawn from one social class.
They came from diverse social backgrounds.
In discussing the social and political intricacies of Daoism, Kirkland makes a
very important contribution to Daoist studies. He offers a well-informed overview
of women in Daoist history and practice. In my view, the role of female Daoists is
one of the most neglected areas in Daoist studies. One could read pages 126–144
of this text and be confident in having gained an accurate view of the substantive
issues on this crucial subject. For example, Kirkland considers such key questions
as: What did the classical texts tell us about women practitioners? Were Daoists texts
and practices intended exclusively for men? When were women significant in Daoist
history, and who were the women who played important roles?
In ‘‘The Cultivated Life,’’ Kirkland devotes a chapter to what might be regarded
as the central issue of Daoist studies. What was the ultimate goal of Daoist teaching
and practice? Was it to obtain physical immortality? He places Ge Hong and the
Liezi in their contexts and shows the importance of the Shangqing and Lingbao rev-
elations to any understanding of this subject. He demonstrates that there were many
views about death in Daoism, and that not all Daoists pursued physical immortality.
He sets aside the idea that the reclusive mountain dweller using a burner to cook the
elixir of immortality is the one irreducible ideal in the practice of Daoism. And yet
he reminds us that a recurring goal was to attain an exalted state of transformed exis-
tence through diligent cultivation of the world’s deeper realities. Once reaching this
state, one will not be extinguished, even when the physical body ceases to be one’s
form. Kirkland often refers to this transformation in the book as biospiritual cultivation.
All in all, this work is a genuinely new introduction to Daoism that helps clear
away much of the dense underbrush of Daoist history and textual relations, and also
utilizes the most recent findings and conclusions of scholars of Daoism to set the
reader on a more solid path to understanding China’s most misunderstood and
underappreciated transformational tradition.

Going Forth: Visions of the Buddhist Vinaya. Edited by William M. Bodiford. Kuroda
Institute Studies in East Asian Buddhism 18. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press,
2005. Pp. x þ 317. Hardcover $48.00.
Reviewed by Mario Poceski University of Florida

Monasticism has been a central feature of Buddhism from its earliest inception in an-
cient India. Monastic ideals, practices, and institutions shaped virtually all aspects of
the religion in India and elsewhere, and in many places they still retain their tradi-
tional prominence. The Vinaya (monastic code of discipline) was accorded a place
of honor as one of the three main divisions of the Buddhist canon(s). As such, it
exerted a strong influence on basic Buddhist mores and institutions, not only codify-
ing issues of personal morality but also serving as an organizational charter or

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> 2007 by University of Hawai‘i Press