The Department of Philosophy will organize the "Roundtable on Brook Ziporyn’s Translation of the Daodejing" on 6 October 2023 (Fri). Prof. Brook Ziporyn’s translation of Laozi’s Daodejing is the newest in a long line of such works. Known for his now-classic translation of the Zhuangzi, Ziporyn’s rendering of the Daodejing both shows his mastery of the Chinese language and Daoist philosophy, and how the two are intertwined. Of particular note, and the secondary focus of this workshop, is Ziporyn’s supplemental online essay in which he analyzes the Daodejing’s normative structure. The two poles of conventional valuations, as Ziporyn calls them, involve things or states that are either “valued and sought” or “disvalued and avoided” yet the Daodejing inverts their presumed hierarchy, favoring the disvalued while shunning the valued. In addition to discussing Ziporyn’s translation, this roundtable will also explore the reasons for and consequences of this inversion of values.
Speaker
Prof. Brook Ziporyn
Prof. Alan K. L. Chan
Prof. Qingjie Wang
Prof. Lai Shi-san
Prof. Cheng Chung-yi
Prof. Chris Fraser
Prof. Fabian Heubel