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A systematic study of Wang Bi's (226-249) commentary on the Laozi, this book provides the first systematic study of a Chinese commentator's scholarly craft and introduces a highly sophisticated Chinese way of reading the Taoist classic, one that differs greatly from Western interpretations. The Laozi has been translated into Western languages hundreds of times over the past two hundred years. It has become the book of Chinese philosophy most widely appreciated for its philosophical depth and lyrical form. Nevertheless, very little attention has been paid to the way in which this book was read in China. This book introduces the reader to a highly sophisticated Chinese way of reading this Taoist classic, a way that differs greatly from the many translations of the Laozi available in the West. The most famous among the Chinese commentators on the Laozi—a man appreciated even by his opponents for the sheer brilliance of his analysis—is Wang Bi (226–249). Born into a short period of intellectual ferment and freedom after the collapse of the Han dynasty, this self-assured genius, in the short twenty-three years of his life, dashed off two of the most enduring works of Chinese philosophy, a commentary on the Laozi and another on the Book of Changes. By carefully reconstructing Wang Bi’s Laozi text as well as his commentary, this book explores Wang Bi’s craft as a scholarly commentator who is also a philosopher in his own right. By situating his work within the context of other competing commentaries and extracting their way of reading the Laozi, this book shows how the Laozi has been approached in many different ways, ranging from a philosophical underpinning for a particular theory of political rule to a guide to techniques of life-prolongation. Amidst his competitors, however, Wang Bi stands out through a literary and philosophical analysis of the Laozi that manages to “use the Laozi to explain the Laozi,” rather than imposing an agenda on the text. Through a critical adaptation of several hundred years of commentaries on the classics, Wang Bi reaches a scholarly level in the art of understanding that is unmatched anywhere else in the world.

The Laozi has been translated into Western languages hundreds of times over the past two hundred years. It has become the book of Chinese philosophy most widely appreciated for its philosophical depth and lyrical form. Nevertheless, very little attention has been paid to the way in which this book was read in China. This book introduces the reader to a highly sophisticated Chinese way of reading this Taoist classic, a way that differs greatly from the many translations of the Laozi available in the West. The most famous among the Chinese commentators on the Laozi—a man appreciated even by his opponents for the sheer brilliance of his analysis—is Wang Bi (226–249). Born into a short period of intellectual ferment and freedom after the collapse of the Han dynasty, this self-assured genius, in the short twenty-three years of his life, dashed off two of the most enduring works of Chinese philosophy, a commentary on the Laozi and another on the Book of Changes. By carefully reconstructing Wang Bi's Laozi text as well as his commentary, this book explores Wang Bi's craft as a scholarly commentator who is also a philosopher in his own right. By situating his work within the context of other competing commentaries and extracting their way of reading the Laozi, this book shows how the Laozi has been approached in many different ways, ranging from a philosophical underpinning for a particular theory of political rule to a guide to techniques of life-prolongation. Amidst his competitors, however, Wang Bi stands out through a literary and philosophical analysis of the Laozi that manages to \"use the Laozi to explain the Laozi,\" rather than imposing an agenda on the text. Through a critical adaptation of several hundred years of commentaries on the classics, Wang Bi reaches a scholarly level in the art of understanding that is unmatched anywhere else in the world.

When it comes to Chinese transformational leadership behavior, the focus seems to be Confucian work value; nonetheless, it represents only one of the Chinese traditions. In order to have a better understanding the relationship between Chinese traditional values and transformational leadership behavior, Taoist work value should also be taken into consideration. Thus, this study firstly develops Confucian and Taoist work value scale (study 1) and then applies this scale to examine its relationship with transformational leadership (study 2). The results show that while Confucian work value is the most consistent predictor of core transformational leader behavior and high-performance expectations, Taoist work value is the most consistent predictor of intellectual stimulation.

Ancient Chinese classics embody and transmit the intellectual heritage of China across generations. These texts, rich in enduring ideas, narratives, and insights, have been passed down through a lengthy historical process. While digital modeling of cultural heritage has advanced, research that integrates both the unique characteristics of these classics and their transmission processes remains limited. This study introduces ClaOnto, an ontology specifically designed for ancient Chinese classics. It captures the various versions of these texts and their interrelations, contents, related individuals, locations, periods, and languages. It also emphasizes the processes and evaluations involved in their transmission. This contributes to a more nuanced understanding and increased awareness of preserving ancient classics. ClaOnto comprises three modules: Basic Information, Transmission Information, and Evaluation Information. Its development involved adapting and enhancing existing mature ontologies, as well as designing new concepts and relationships to articulate the knowledge and intangible values transmitted through these classics across generations. Additionally, by employing methods such as data mining, text analysis, and data visualization, this study outlines a workflow for implementing this ontology-based knowledge graph, demonstrated using the Tao Te Ching as a case study. The methodological enhancement enriches the analysis of how the intangible value in classics manifests through transmission.

Modules in ethics have become astonishingly popular at the University of the Western Cape. This could reflect students' concern about morality, but the saying by Lafargue in Tao te ching in the title suggests that moral discourse flourishes when moral behaviour is languishing. This article reflects on some 15 years of teaching ethical theory to third-year students. Three trends are identified: (1) Students' responses to the theories are unpredictable and surprising. Nietzsche and Kant are very popular, although some modern 'contextual' theories draw less support. (2) Students who can be extremely moralistic in class are sometimes amoral in their practices and offhand pronouncements. (3) Students are hampered by their poor conceptual skills and rely excessively on memorising. The last two trends raise questions about our teaching of ethics and the ethics of our teaching. Although many students embrace character-based theories, to some 'a good character' apparently means 'what makes me feel good about myself' and to others 'what makes me look good to my group'. Thus, they effectively embrace either individual relativism or group relativism, which is understandable when theories are presented without the backing of at least a rudimentary philosophical anthropology. Questions of indoctrination become acute in the teaching of ethics. Are we, in the name of moral formation, teaching students to parrot current dogmas presented without arguments? If so, our practice may be both morally dubious and counterproductive. The best students rebel against such manipulation. The article calls for more reflection on how and to what ends we teach ethics.

When originally independent pragmatic texts were included in larger early Chinese compilations, this entailed a recontextualization that potentially transformed the meaning of those texts significantly. Focusing on examples from theAnalectsand the Zengzi chapters inDa Dai Liji, this paper demonstrates that some didactic precepts which have come to be appreciated as generalRumoral and political philosophy are probably rooted in concrete and more modest applications. The texts discussed are in part based on a discourse accompanying the establishment of meritocratic administrative structures in the early to mid Warring States period. These pragmatic discourses inspired didactic texts that reflectedshistatus anxiety. Members of theshiclass not only composed texts for the edification of their rulers and the education of their princes. They also directed admonitions at their own peers, formulating standards by which they could manifest their claim to elevated social status. The further these texts became removed over time from their original historical context, the more they came to be read asRuethics in the sense of universally applicable standards.

This article questions the traditional beliefs that the seven \"inner chapters\" constitute the earliest stratum of the Zhuangzi, that they already formed a coherent unit in the Warring States, and that they came from a single hand. After reviewing what is known about the early history of the Zhuangzi text, various arguments that have been made in support of early, coherent inner chapters, are examined. Taking the Shiji portrait of the Zhuangzi as the starting point, it is shown that Sima Qian's description and use of the Zhuangzi already gives us reason to question the importance, or even existence, of the inner chapters in the Western Han. It is then shown that pre-Han and Han references to Zhuang Zhou, and parallels with the Zhuangzi text, do not necessarily even require (or support) the existence of most inner chapters, and certainly give no evidence that they were coherent and had any kind of canonical status. Though this does not constitute proof, it does give us reason to rethink the traditional beliefs about the authorship and structure of the early Zhuangzi text. In closing, the possibility of a Huainan Zhuangzi, and the role Liu An and his court might have played in the compilation of the inner chapters, is considered. Cet article met en question les conceptions traditionnelles suivant lesquelles les sept \"chapitres intérieurs\" constituent la strate la plus ancienne du Zhuangzi, formaient déjà un ensemble cohérent à l'époque des Royaumes Combattants, et étaient de la même main. Ce qu'on connaît de l'histoire ancienne du texte du Zhuangzi est passé en revue, puis sont examinés les divers arguments qui ont été avancés en faveur de l'ancienneté et de la cohérence des chapitres intérieurs. Partant du portrait du Zhuangzi dans le Shiji, il est démontré que déjà la description et l'usage du texte par Sima Qian nous invitent à nous poser des questions sur l'importance, voire l'existence, des chapitres intérieurs à l'époque des Han occidentaux. Puis il est constaté que les références à Zhuang Zhou sous les Han et avant, ainsi que les parallèles avec le texte du Zhuangzi, ne supposent pas nécessairement (ni ne confortent) l'existence de la plupart des chapitres intérieurs, et ne suggèrent certainement pas que ceux-ci formaient un ensemble cohérent et avaient un quelconque statut canonique. Si ces faits n'ont pas valeur de preuve, ils invitent à s'interroger sur les conceptions traditionnelles concernant l'auteur et la structure du texte primitif du Zhuangzi. En conclusion sont considérés la possibilité d'un Zhuangzi originaire de Huainan ainsi que le rôle qu'auraient pu jouer Liu An et sa cour dans la compilation des chapitres intérieurs.

Martin Heidegger has made uncovering the truth of being his life’s work. He ultimately came to locate this truth at the site of the clearing (lichtung), which allowed him to sweep away the traditional formulation of the question of being and begin anew with being. This second beginning, as Heidegger called it, stood apart from the original in that he saw fit to cloak being in nothingness. This paper explores Heidegger’s use of nothingness and his claim that in order to overcome the divide between the two beginnings, we must leap into the abyss of the clearing. Given Heidegger’s interest in East Asian philosophy, his use of nothingness appears to resemble that of Daoism. Despite this outward similarity, however, this paper argues that Heidegger’s doctrine of nothingness failed to grasp the cosmological significance of the clearing for he saw it only in terms of symbolizing the existential play of being. Thus while Heidegger argues that the clearing marks the unconcealement of being, Daoism uses the clearing to point us to the root of being in nothingness. The leap into the clearing is, for Heidegger, but a single transformational moment whereas Daoism holds that returning to Dao, the truth of all beings, ensures that the clearing always remains at hand. In this way, nothingness grounds us while serving as the cosmogonist milieu through which the creative processes of the universe unfold.

Shusterman explores the importance of body consciousness to performance, dance in particular. He compares Eastern and Western views of such heightened awareness.

In the past several decades, our understanding of the Laozi has been revolutionized by the discovery of new textual materials. While research has focused on various manuscript copies, the discovery of other cosmogonic texts dated to the late fourth century BC indicate that the Laozi was not as unique as it once seemed. Taken together, these texts show a radical shift in philosophical orientation occurring by the late 4th century BC, a change toward concerns with cosmogony and accounts of human beings as merely one part of the natural world. The goal of this paper is to analyze the various elements of this shift, using the Taiyi Sheng Shui 太一生水 (Great One Generates Water), Hengxian 恆先 (Constancy First), and Fan Wu Liu Xing 凡物流形 (All Things Flow into Form), along with the Laozi bamboo strips found at Guodian. The first section examines the commonalities between the various cosmogonies; the second places cosmogony in the context of other distinctive concerns that the texts share, turning toward the implications of the cosmogonies for human action. The final section examines one of the fundamental points on which the texts disagree.