Chinese Empire

Lao Tzu and the Tao Te Ching

The Tao Te Ching (道德经, Dao De Jing), in English usually translated as the Tao Te Ching or the Book of the Way and Its Virtue, is one of the most translated and most influential books in the history of world philosophy. A short work of about five thousand Chinese characters organized into eighty-one brief chapters, it has been read, memorized, and argued over for more than two thousand years. Its legendary author, Lao Tzu (老子, Laozi, “the Old Master”), is a figure of myth and speculation rather than of documented history, but the text attributed to him became the foundational scripture of Daoism and one of the great classics of Chinese philosophy. The broader context is set by the overview of Chinese philosophy and religion, and the three teachings place Daoism alongside Confucianism and Buddhism. The philosophical Confucian counterpart is Confucianism, and the Daoist critique of the Confucian order is a central theme of the text.

The Legendary Lao Tzu

The historical Lao Tzu, if he existed, is unknown. The standard biography, recorded by Sima Qian in the Shiji (Records of the Grand Historian, c. 100 BCE), is brief and uncertain. According to Sima Qian, Lao Tzu was a contemporary of Confucius, a native of the state of Chu in the south, and a keeper of the archives of the Zhou court. The story continues that Confucius once visited him to inquire about the rites, and that Lao Tzu reproved him for his pride and his obsession with the ancient ways. Lao Tzu eventually grew disillusioned with the decline of the Zhou and rode a water buffalo to the western border, where the gatekeeper Yin Xi persuaded him to write down his teachings before he disappeared into the wilderness. The result was the Tao Te Ching.

This story is almost certainly legendary. The Tao Te Ching in its received form is a product of the Warring States period (c. fourth century BCE), and it is more likely a compilation of materials by several hands than the work of a single author. The figure of Lao Tzu became increasingly important in later centuries, however, and the Daoist religion eventually treated him as a divine figure, sometimes as a manifestation of the Dao itself. The Tang emperors claimed descent from Lao Tzu, and the cult of Lao Tzu was incorporated into the imperial state cult of the Tang and the Song.

The Idea of the Tao

The central concept of the Tao Te Ching is the Dao (道, the Way). The opening chapter famously declares: “The Dao that can be spoken is not the eternal Dao. The name that can be named is not the eternal name.” The Dao is, in other words, beyond language and beyond definition. It is the source and the underlying principle of all that is, the way things are and the way things come to be. It is not a personal god, not a creator, not a moral lawgiver; it is, rather, the spontaneous order of the natural world.

The Tao Te Ching uses a wide range of images and metaphors to evoke the Dao. It is the “uncarved block” (pu), the undifferentiated potential of all things. It is water, which is soft and yielding but which wears away the hardest stone. It is the valley, the low place, the empty space, the place where things begin. It is the mother of all things, the dark, the female, the receptive. It is the way of the infant, the unlearned, the natural, the unforced.

The second key concept is de (德, often translated as “virtue” or “the virtue of the Dao”). The de is the manifestation of the Dao in particular things, the way the Dao expresses itself in each thing. The sage (shengren) is the one whose de is in harmony with the Dao, who acts without forcing, who responds to the world without imposing himself on it. The sage is, in the Tao Te Ching’s formulation, “a model for the empire,” not because he is the most powerful or the most clever, but because he is the most in tune with the Dao.

Wu Wei and the Philosophy of Nature

The most famous practical concept of the Tao Te Ching is wu wei (无为), often translated as “non-action” or “non-coercive action.” The term does not mean inaction in the ordinary sense; it means, rather, action that is in harmony with the Dao, action that does not impose the will of the actor on the world.

The Tao Te Ching develops the implications of wu wei in many directions. The good ruler is the one who governs by wu wei — who does not impose, who does not regulate, who does not interfere. The famous formulation is “governing a large state is like cooking a small fish”: too much meddling will ruin the dish. The good warrior wins without fighting. The good person, in sum, acts without forcing, responds without grasping, and accomplishes without claiming credit.

The philosophy of nature that emerges from the Tao Te Ching is one of profound respect for the natural order and a deep suspicion of human artifice. The text repeatedly contrasts the natural with the artificial, the simple with the complex, the soft with the hard, the feminine with the masculine. It praises the infant, the uncarved block, the undeveloped, the unspecialized. It warns against the over-extension of the empire, the over-population of the cities, the over-elaboration of the rites.

The Political Teaching: A Critique of the Confucian Order

The political teaching of the Tao Te Ching is, in some sense, a direct critique of the Confucian political order. Where the Confucians emphasized the rectification of names, the elaboration of the rites, the moral education of the ruler, and the hierarchical ordering of the social relations, the Tao Te Ching emphasized the spontaneous order of the Dao, the futility of the moral and political artifice, and the wisdom of the simple and the natural.

The contrast is most pointed in the chapters that deal with the rites, the laws, and the moral distinctions. The Confucians made the rites (li) the foundation of social order; the Tao Te Ching dismissed them as the beginning of confusion: “When the great Dao is abandoned, there are the rites and the moral duties.” The Confucians prized the accumulation of knowledge; the Tao Te Ching dismissed it: “The more you know, the less you understand.” The Confucians prized the moral distinctions between good and evil, useful and useless; the Tao Te Ching dissolved them: “The sage manages affairs without action, spreads doctrines without words.”

The political teaching is, at one level, deeply conservative. It praises the small, the simple, the agrarian, the local. It warns against the empire, the city, the army, the bureaucracy, the law, the written code. It dreams of a return to the small village, the simple life, the unwritten customs, the natural rhythms of the agricultural year. It is, in this sense, a deeply rural philosophy, in tension with the urban, bureaucratic, and imperial order of the Warring States and the imperial dynasties that followed.

At another level, however, the political teaching is more subversive than conservative. The Tao Te Ching was, in its time, a powerful critique of the over-elaboration of the political order, the over-extension of state power, the over-emphasis on rules and regulations, and the over-confidence of the rulers in their ability to shape the world. The text became, in later centuries, a source of political quietism, a foundation of the Daoist religious tradition, and a guide for the cultivated man who wished to navigate the dangers of the imperial court without losing his own integrity.

See Also