Document Type
Article
Publication Date
11-1993
Publisher
University of Chicago Press
Abstract
Lao-tzu's sense of the mystery within the mystery, or the theory of a truer reality within the real that was elaborated by later Taoists, is an idea not all that far removed from the analytical quest to identify an essential unity under- lying some tantalizing set of diverse phenomena. Of course, no Taoist master has clarified how to determine whether the inner mystery or reality one has glimpsed is the mystery or the reality. Rather, they imply that yet another mys- tery always lurks within the ever-retreating heart of things. One might idly wonder whether this is the principle behind all nature, behind the processes of human perception, or just behind the social dynamics of creating knowledge. This ethos-and its attendant dilemmas-inform the two books under review here, Isabelle Robinet's Histoire du taoi'sme des origines au XIVe siecle and Livia Kohn's Taoist Mystical Philosophy: The Scripture of Western
Recommended Citation
Bell, C. M. (1993). In Search of the Tao in Taoism: New Questions of Unity and Multiplicity. History of Religions, 33(2), 187–201. https://doi.org/10.1086/463363
Comments
Copyright © 1984 The University of Chicago Press. Reprinted with permission.
https://doi.org/10.1086/463363