Taoism and the Arts of China

“This is a super cool book about art and Daoist aesthetics. Even though this is a book-centered interview, I wanted to articulate dimensions of the Daoist tradition that aren’t just literary. It’s one of these fallacies that’s been baked into the Western reception of Daoism, that it’s somehow about books. The earliest sinologists engaging with these Daoist texts were Protestant missionaries who brought all of their Protestant baggage, the sola scriptura, with them: ‘Where is the Bible of Daoism? Once we have its Bible, then we can understand it.’ But, as I said, that fundamentally does not map onto the reality of the chaos of Daoist history.” Read more...

The best books on Taoism

Simon Cox, Historian