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bluejayreads's review against another edition
informative
reflective
slow-paced
3.5
In retrospect, I should have done more research before picking a translation, and also I'm not sure how good of a version this was to read.
To start with, I didn't realize this had commentary with it. (I honestly don't know how I missed that, but I did.) Secondly, this translation and commentary was done by a white guy in the 1920s. Charles Johnston, according to his Wikipedia page, was really into the occult and "Oriental studies" despite his only experience with non-European people being assisting with the British colonization of India until he caught malaria. So despite the commentary being interesting, I don't know how trustworthy or accurate it actually is.
To give Charles a little credit, he does cite several actual Chinese sources and quote Chinese commentators in a bunch of his commentary bits. But he also occasionally cites them and then says he thinks that's wrong and here's what he thinks, so take that with a grain of salt. He also draws a lot of comparisons between the Tao Te Ching, the Bhagavad Gita, and the Bible, seemingly trying to make the point that "see? all this ancient wisdom stuff has the same ideas!" so that was a little weird.
The translation seemed pretty solid to me, from my extremely limited perspective. I'm not sure how much I trust the commentary, though. The actual text of the Tao Te Ching was interesting and I'm glad I read it, but I want to do some more research and maybe check out some other, less colonialist sources before I make a judgement on the commentary.
Content Warnings
Minor: Racial slurs
Outdated racial terminology
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