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It's not too surprising that the reviewer describes the setting as "Taoist". Ursula Le Guin has even published a translation of the Tao Te Ching. (I agree with
by Smaug123 3y ago
It's not too surprising that the reviewer describes the setting as "Taoist". Ursula Le Guin has even published a translation of the Tao Te Ching.
(I agree with everything in this review, and will probably grab my old and battered copy of the Quartet from my parents this weekend.)
- macrael 3y agoNit, it's not a translation since she did not speak Chinese. That said I adore her Tao and have read it a few times.
- dudinax 3y agoIronically Earthsea is almost exactly anti-Taoist. One of the key ideas in Taoism, that incidentally sets it way beyond Platonism, is the name that can be spoken is not the true name. LeGuin asks, "what if we could speak it?"
- mostlylurks 3y agoThere's a section in the Parmenides which addresses this particular idea, though as a part of a larger argument on the nature of the one. Later platonist / neoplatonist thinkers also occasionally had similar notions. It would be incorrect to say that this idea is absent from platonism.
- dudinax 3y agoBut it wouldn't be incorrect to say the idea was contrary to Platonism.
- jacknobody 3y agoThen we would have transcended earthbound, mortal illusion, and would also have transcended the need for speech... ??
- Smaug123 3y agoAh, I stand entirely corrected - cute framing!