Stephen Mitchell’s Version of the Tao Te Ching: A Spiritual Interpretation

IF 0.2 4区哲学 0 LITERARY THEORY & CRITICISM

Literature and Theology Pub Date : 2020-12-10 DOI:10.1093/litthe/fraa023

Penghua Fan, Senlin Yu

引用次数: 0

Abstract

This article analyses Stephen Mitchell’s interpretation of the Taoist classic Tao Te Ching. With his adoption of the concepts from Zen Buddhism and his borrowing of ideas from Christianity, Mitchell’s version of the Tao Te Ching is not a scholarly faithful translation but rather a spiritual interpretation that is heavily improvised. The importance of this spiritual interpretation lies in the way Mitchell fuses the horizon of Chinese Taoism with his own Zen practice and the English-speaking reader's horizon of Christianity. However, this contribution is offset by the limitation of Mitchell’s work. His version of the Tao Te Ching risks estranging itself from the sociocultural context of the Chinese original, misleading English-speaking readers, and displacing Taoist thought with Buddhist and Christian teachings.

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斯蒂芬·米切尔版本的道德经:一种精神上的诠释

本文分析了米切尔对道教经典《道德经》的解读。米切尔的《道德经》采用了禅宗的概念，并借鉴了基督教的思想，因此他的译本并不是学术上忠实的翻译，而是一种即兴创作的精神诠释。这种精神解读的重要性在于米切尔将中国道教的视野与他自己的禅宗实践和英语读者的基督教视野融合在一起。然而，这一贡献被米切尔工作的局限性所抵消。他版本的《道德经》冒着脱离中国原著社会文化背景的风险，误导了说英语的读者，用佛教和基督教教义取代了道教思想。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Literature and Theology Multiple-

CiteScore

0.30

自引率

0.00%

发文量

期刊介绍： Literature and Theology, a quarterly peer-review journal, provides a critical non-confessional forum for both textual analysis and theoretical speculation, encouraging explorations of how religion is embedded in culture. Contributions should address questions pertinent to both literary study and theology broadly understood, and be consistent with the Journal"s overall aim: to engage with and reshape traditional discourses within the studies of literature and religion, and their cognate fields - biblical criticism, literary criticism, philosophy, politics, culture studies, gender studies, artistic theory/practice, and contemporary critical theory/practice.