Taoism: The Enduring Tradition (review)

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 produced by Western scholars in the twentieth century. And the reason for this is simple. 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 hundred years’ currency. The result is a narrative that will appear to be iconoclastic because 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 axiomatic 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 sometimes 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 (philosophical Daoism) and daojiao (religious Daoism), reminding us that any view that religious 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 hundreds 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 ancient 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