Abstract
This chapter discusses the philosophy of the Wenzi. Traditionally seen as the creation of a disciple of Laozi in the sixth century BCE, the text was demonstrably created much later, between the third and fifth centuries CE. That said, it does contain older material, as evidence by the discovery of a Wenzi manuscript in a Han Dynasty tomb. The manuscript, which consists of hundreds of inscribed bamboo strips, in combination with related passages in the received text, are evidence of an early form of the Wenzi: the proto-Wenzi. This chapter analyzes the proto-Wenzi, with a focus on its intricate relationship with the Laozi. It shows that the proto-Wenzi advocates a philosophy of quietude, not only in terms of its content, but also through its rhetoric. Much more than the Laozi, its main source of inspiration, the proto-Wenzi promotes a harmonious synthesis of diverse, and at times even incompatible, ideas.
This article is a revised and expanded version of van Els 2005, and was prepared under the financial support of an Innovational Research Incentives Scheme grant from the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO).
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Notes
- 1.
See Cultural Relics (文物) 1976 no. 7 for a description of the tomb and its discovery, Cultural Relics 1981 no. 8 for a brief report of the excavation, and Cultural Relics 1995 no. 12 for a description and transcription of the Wenzi manuscript.
- 2.
The four-digit numbers, such as 2262, refer to the transcription of the Wenzi manuscript in Cultural Relics. The bamboo strips of Dingzhou were found in disorder and the research team assigned a sequential number to each strip before arranging them into texts, which explains why Wenzi strips are not numbered consecutively. Square brackets enclosing Chinese graphs indicate that these graphs were present on the bamboo strips, but are no longer legible after the Tangshan earthquake caused further damage to them. These graphs are now available in transcription only, on note cards made prior to the quake. Graphs between round brackets are readings suggested by the editors of the transcription. For example, 販(敗) means that the graph 販 on the bamboo strip should be read as 敗bai‘to ruin.’ Modern punctuation in the Chinese text has been added by the editors of the transcription. The □ mark in the transcription represents an illegible graph. Occasionally, when the meaning of illegible graphs, or graphs that do not appear on the bamboo strip, can be inferred from the context or from the parallel in the transmitted text, I have inserted such inferences in my translation, between square brackets. Finally, the ∥ symbol represents traces of silk thread that were used to bundle the text.
- 3.
Liu Xiaogan (1994: 4–16) demonstrates that the Dao and Virtue first began to circulate in mutual conjunction in late Warring States texts. The combined mention of the two terms as a binominal compound on the bamboo strips is one of the indications of the proto-Wenzi’s late provenance.
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van Els, P. (2015). The Philosophy of the Proto-Wenzi . In: Liu, X. (eds) Dao Companion to Daoist Philosophy. Dao Companions to Chinese Philosophy, vol 6. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-2927-0_14
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