The reversals in Laozi

This quarter I am teaching again an introduction to Classical Asian thought. Really looking forward to it! So I’ve been preparing my notes, reading some new books and translations (such as Paul Goldin’s The Art of Chinese Philosophy) and going back to old materials. Challenge: make the original texts significant to students in the humanities without previous background in Chinese culture. So I underlined, for instance, this passage in A. C. Graham’s Disputers of the Tao:

The reversals in Laozi have a modern parallel in Jacques Derrida’s project of deconstructing the chains of oppositions underlying the logocentric tradition of the West. The parallel is indeed so striking that there is danger of missing the differences.