this post was submitted on 15 Oct 2023
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chapotraphouse

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[–] Nacarbac@hexbear.net 2 points 2 years ago

Best way would be to just read the Dao De Jing (essentially a short collection of poetic philosophical points), which is the core text, and then the Zhuangzi (a larger text created over centuries, expanding on the topic with various characters - quite humorous). With the latter, being the product of dozens of authors, in a few chapters you can feel the philosophy being bent towards "actually, political hierarchies and wealth disparity are natural law and therefore cool", but they rather stand out.

Ursula Le Guin's translation is my favorite, but the differences between translations are interesting - both texts have a lot of fun with the ambiguity of language.