The Hierarchy of Authorship in the Hermeneutics of the Daodejing

Abstract

The question of the authorship of the Daodejing, otherwise known as the Laozi, is a hotly contested debate, and one’s stance on the existence and role of the author can have potential implications for one’s interpretation of the text. This paper explores how notions of authorship of a text influence, often unconsciously, a reader’s interpretation such that the possible meaning generated within that text becomes limited, reduced, or terminated. Three hermeneutic frameworks, Authorial intentionalism, reader-oriented readings, and intention of the text, are problematized, revealing both how they contribute to the production of meaning, but more importantly how a lack of critical awareness of one’s own hermeneutic stance regarding authorship might terminate potential significance. These hermeneutic frameworks are applied to the work of contemporary scholars and translators of the Laozi in order to assess how implicit notions of authorship contribute to strengths and weaknesses in interpretations of the Laozi as it regards the production of meaning and significance. Being critical in nature, this paper is meant only to reveal how the reader’s unreflexive engagement with their attitude toward authorship can lead to problematic results in interpretation and translation of any work in general and the Laozi in particular.

Reception History and Early Chinese Classics

“…For a discussion of the same hermeneutic phenomenon, see the section "Authorial Intentionialism and Its Limits" in(Sarafinas 2022).3 I use the term biography in relation to books since it reflects the idea that a text goes through different stages of existence, like human beings. The same vision is reflected in Princeton University Press' series "Lives of Great Religious Books."…”