We kind of got off track didn't we....


DC

Actually, I would be interested in knowing about how much the translations can change the meaning of the religion/philosophy---

It would echo back to Bill's initital complant about 'having to learn the original language' in order to study it correctly.

I would love to follow it--- just not here...

(as always, NSIMC)

Even if you learned the original language, the "translation" problem would remain. The Chinese of the Dao De Qing is old. Ancient Chinese is probably the most laconic written language ever. A sentence like "The King of Zhou attacked in the the state of Li in the spring" might be written just with just four characters, "Zhou Li Attack Spring" leaving it for the reader to puzzle out the reference. Unless you know the history, you have no idea who attacked who.

The Dao de Qing is even worse, because it does not straightforwardly record history, but playfully connects ideas, many which are encoded in obstruse, allusive and highly symbolic language. When you "learn the original" you are actually learning what scholars think "the original" is. You are still translating, but now you know what the expert opinion is. Ancient Chinese is a dead language. You can't learn it.

Same for the OT. There are 1500 words, most concrete nouns, out of the 8000 used in the OT (or so I recall reading) that are simply unknown to scholars; all they can do is make educated guesses.

Thus, even when you "learn the original" you are still translating.

Michael

To get back to the original question, the Chinese believed that we were our brother's jailor. It was in China that the pao-chia (india - punchayet, Japan gomin-guni) system of grouping people in fives and making them collectively responsible for the behavior of any individual in the group. For families, if anyone in the family commits a crime, the whole family is liable.

Brother's keeper, with a vengeance!

The Mohists, who had worked out a ethical system that had an ideal of universal love, had a positive brother's keeper ideal. They flourished about 500 years before Christ. They were also really into logic, and (of all things) the military arts. Much Mohist thinking remains obscure, however, because of textual transmission problems. Chinese society eventually went in the human-centered Confucian direction, which emphasized social order over redemptive love, and eventually degenerated into an overarching authoritarianism.

Michael

I would love to discuss all of this but all of my reference materials are in storage.

As I recall the Mohists used logic but did not treat logic as a subject in and of itself like Western Philosophers do.

DC