For the title of the book, Mr. Ren has this explanation:' Yi' has the meaning of elucidation, annotation and extension. Every translation of Laozi is accompanied by my understanding and interpretation. Therefore, the fourth translation of Lao Zi is called' Reading Lao Zi Yi'. From here, I can appreciate Mr. Ren's rigorous academic spirit. I like reading Mr. Ren's article because it is full of philosophy. The theory of philosophy is the spiritual product of highly abstract thinking, which doesn't seem to be so close to real life. But the more highly abstract philosophy is, the more deeply rooted it is in the soil of China. Philosophical thinking, specifically, Laozi's philosophical thinking is related to the history of the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period. Only in this way can we see Lao Zi's great contribution in the history of China's theoretical thought. Mr. Ren elaborated on this in the preface to Laozi's Interpretation of Literature. His main point of view is that Laozi is rich in words and meanings, and has many subtle opinions, which are worth studying. There are many schools of philosophy circulating in China with a civilization of 5,000 years. In fact, there are only two schools, one is Confucianism and the other is Taoism.
Laozi school takes the vast number of small farmers as its social foundation. He also said: Laozi expresses profound thoughts in the language of poetry, is good at irony, and is good at explaining profound truth with simple metaphors. In Reading Laozi, Mr. Ren analyzed the source of Laozi's thought. He believes that Laozi's thoughts come from three sources: one is to inherit the characteristics of Jingchu culture, which is simple and natural and anti-carving; The second is to absorb the ancient cultural heritage and sum up the previous experience. In the Eastern Zhou Dynasty, he managed imperial books in order to accept and examine his previous cultural achievements. Third, it comes from social reality. Born in the late Spring and Autumn Period, he witnessed social chaos, the destruction of old etiquette and the hypocrisy of benevolence and righteousness slogans. Mr. Ren also analyzed the great influence of Laozi's thought on later generations. One is the influence of dialectical thought. Laozi put forward beauty and ugliness, difficulty, length, competition, existence, profit and loss, strength, misfortune, intelligence, size, life and death. The unity of opposites between motion and stillness, etc. Another is that Laozi has a far-reaching influence on religious thought. Taoism, which originated in the mid-Eastern Han Dynasty, respects Laozi as the ancestor and takes Laozi as the main classic, and makes a religious explanation of this, preaching that people can make their spirit and body twin and become immortals through certain cultivation. We should also see the influence of Laozi's thoughts on China's ancient politics. In order to restore the social economy, the feudal dynasty adopted a policy of solidarity. Most of its guiding ideology comes from Laozi. Laozi is also closely related to China's ancient military thought. In a word, Lao Zi is the first philosopher in China, a thinker who has made great contributions in the history of China, and the founder of the Taoist school which influenced the development of traditional culture in China. Mr. Ren translated Laozi into modern Chinese, paying attention to accuracy and readability. Of course, some points are negotiable, but on the whole, it is true. Names, nicknames, unusual names. Unknown, the beginning of heaven and earth: name, the mother of all things. So, there is always nothing, you want to observe its wonder, but there is always something, you want to observe it. They are the same, but they have different names. They are all called mysterious, mysterious and mysterious, the door to all miracles.
Today, Mr. Ren's translation, please see: Tao, if it can be said, it is not an eternal Tao; A name, if it can be called, is not an eternal name. Unknown is the primitive man of heaven and earth; Fame is the foundation of everything. So we often know each other from places where there is no image.
The subtlety of Tao (nameless) is often understood from the image. These two things (tangible and intangible) say the same thing, but they have different names. Both of them can be said to have far-reaching influence, far and deep, and they are the masters of all nuances. Mr. Ren's translation is very good, but there is still room for discussion. In my humble opinion, it seems that the sentence can be broken like this: Yes, the mother of all things. So there is often no, so I want to see its wonders; Many times, I want to observe it. Both have the same name and different names, also known as mystery. The mystery is the mysterious door. Are not the beginning of heaven and earth. Yes, the mother of all things seems to be translated as: nothing is the beginning of heaven and earth, and everything is the beginning. I wonder whether Laozi Yidu combines the profound academic connotation of ancient humanistic classics with the popularity needed by ordinary readers today, including preface, translation examples, translation and index. The index is divided into two parts: important noun index and content classification index, which provides readers with extremely convenient retrieval conditions. The book has appendices, one is Lao Zi's interpretation, the silk script of Mawangdui Han Tomb, the other is Lao Zi's bamboo slips of Guodian Chu Tomb, the third is the origin of old learning, the fourth is the change of my understanding of Lao Zi, and the fifth is the change of Lao Zi. It helps readers to understand Laozi. In recent years, how to combine the academic research of China ancient humanistic classics with the popularization of these classics has become a problem that needs to be solved through practice. Obviously, popularization is inseparable from profound academic research. There are many aspects of academic research, which can focus on philology, exegetics and historical philology, all in order to accurately understand the contents of ancient humanistic classics and dig their inner meanings; Only righteousness can transcend time and space and inspire the wisdom of modern people. This wisdom is not only a reflection of primitive ancient thoughts, but also suitable for today's understanding. The connection between the two can be well combined and expressed by studying people's profound research, which is beneficial to people today. In this way, the popularization of ancient humanistic classics is not an easy task, which requires hard mental work. Ren's Reading Laozi