I took it as a noun actually. "The Way may be the Way, but it is not the Eternal Way."
Where the Way represents not only a translation of just any old path, but also the natural order of things, and also the socio-political concept of "good government". We had a very, very long class discussion about the Warring States period that I do not recall much of this many years later.
Laoshi also spent a good chunk of class time hashing out the difference between 非 常道 and 非常 道, and why the latter was a false cognate from modern Mandarin. What confused me more at the time was that the dictionary entry for 可 is べし, and I had no idea how to make that work because I couldn't fathom 非 as a "verb". In modern Japanese, at least, it's exclusively a bound morpheme. What I was missing was that 非 is shorthand for 有らず. I still disagree with the rendering of 可 as べし, but for example's sake, I'll include it:
道は道なるべかれど常なる道非ず
Neither the Chinese nor Japanese department professors ever answered my questions about 漢文訓読, no matter how many times I inquired. I only understand now how many layers of unnecessary ladder translation that is, due to having finally sat down with a tutorial meant for Japanese high school teachers, and hashed it all out myself.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2025-04-21 07:03 pm (UTC)Where the Way represents not only a translation of just any old path, but also the natural order of things, and also the socio-political concept of "good government". We had a very, very long class discussion about the Warring States period that I do not recall much of this many years later.
Laoshi also spent a good chunk of class time hashing out the difference between 非 常道 and 非常 道, and why the latter was a false cognate from modern Mandarin.
What confused me more at the time was that the dictionary entry for 可 is べし, and I had no idea how to make that work because I couldn't fathom 非 as a "verb". In modern Japanese, at least, it's exclusively a bound morpheme. What I was missing was that 非 is shorthand for 有らず. I still disagree with the rendering of 可 as べし, but for example's sake, I'll include it:
道は道なるべかれど常なる道非ず
Neither the Chinese nor Japanese department professors ever answered my questions about 漢文訓読, no matter how many times I inquired. I only understand now how many layers of unnecessary ladder translation that is, due to having finally sat down with a tutorial meant for Japanese high school teachers, and hashed it all out myself.