Isabelle Robinet贺碧来

Style & Daoist names

Isabelle Robinet, Robinet (Isabelle Robinet)

Period

Modern

Dates

1932 — 2000

Role

SinologistDaoist Scholars

Birthplace

France

Life

Isabelle Robinet, a French sinologist and professor at the University of Provence, was a central member of the French school of Daoist studies. A student of Max Kaltenmark, she was renowned for her research on the Shangqing scriptures and internal alchemy: her two-volume La révélation du Shangqing dans l'histoire du taoïsme (1984) systematically examines the formation and thought of the Shangqing scriptures, and her Méditation taoïste (1979) expounds the Shangqing methods of visualization; her Introduction à l'alchimie intérieure taoïste (1995) and numerous papers were among the earliest Western works to study internal alchemy theory in depth. Her Histoire du taoïsme des origines au XIVe siècle (1991; English translation Taoism: Growth of a Religion) is a widely used general history of Daoism in the West, and she also wrote on the history of commentary on the Daodejing and on interpretations of the Zhuangzi.

Contributions & Influence

• Systematically studied the Shangqing scriptures and methods of visualization
• Pioneered Western research on internal alchemy
• Wrote Taoism: Growth of a Religion, a standard general history of Daoism in the West

Works

• La révélation du Shangqing dans l'histoire du taoïsme
• Méditation taoïste (Taoist Meditation)
• Histoire du taoïsme (Taoism: Growth of a Religion)
• Introduction à l'alchimie intérieure taoïste
• The World Upside Down: Essays on Taoist Internal Alchemy