Kristofer Marinus Schipper, who was often known as Rik, was born on Oct. 23 1934, in Schardam, a rural city north of Amsterdam. His father, Klaas Abe Schipper, was a Mennonite pastor, and his mom, Johanna (Kuiper) Schipper, was a religious believer. Their non secular convictions impressed the couple to cover Jews throughout the German occupation of Holland in World War II.
His father was detained and interrogated twice, every time for a number of months. His mom fled to Amsterdam, taking younger Rik and several other Jewish kids to cover in secure houses.
The household survived the conflict, however his father’s well being suffered, and he died in 1949 at 42. (For their efforts on behalf of persecuted Jews, the couple had been later declared “Righteous Among the Nations” by Israel’s Yad Vashem Holocaust remembrance middle.)
The wartime expertise had a profound impact on Professor Schipper.
“This really shaped his worldview, both his hatred of nationalism and his deeply humanistic preference for local democracy instead of great national narratives,” mentioned Professor Goossaert, who teaches non secular research at the École Pratique des Hautes Études in Paris. “That’s how he read Taoism.”
Professor Schipper got here to that realization slowly. He moved to Paris to check with the French Sinologist Max Kaltenmark, considered one of a collection of French students who took Taoism severely. Most lecturers, nonetheless, targeted on the extra conventional philological examine of deciphering often-obscure Taoist texts.
In 1962, Professor Schipper went to Taiwan to check at the Academia Sinica and, in keeping with a narrative he preferred to inform his college students, was advised that Taoism didn’t exist as a faith.
