The Laozi 老子 and the “Cosmogonic Turn” in Chinese Philosophy

The archeological discoveries of the past several decades have radically expanded our knowledge of the Laozi and its context. Most obviously, these discoveries have given us more evidence about the development and editing of the text itself.Footnote ¹ We now know that a complete Laozi similar to the received text was in circulation early in the Western Han. This was established by the discovery of two Laozi silk manuscripts found at Mawangdui 馬王堆. These were entombed in 168 b.c.e., but the A manuscript uses the character bang 邦, indicating that it was written down before the death of the emperor Liu Bang 劉邦 in 195 b.c.e. More recently, a version of the Laozi written on bamboo strips was donated to Peking University. While the materials are unprovenanced, they are estimated to have been written down sometime in the latter half of the reign of Han Wudi 漢武帝 (141–87 b.c.e.).Footnote ² A more significant discovery came in 1993 when bamboo strips containing parts of the Laozi were found in tomb 1 at Guodian 郭店. These are thought to have been buried around 300 b.c.e. The strips were divided into three bundles, written by different hands on different-sized strips. Altogether, they contain passages from thirty-one chapters of the received text. Some of these chapters are partial, though, and their wording frequently differs from later manuscript and received versions. The order of chapters bears no relationship to that of the Mawangdui manuscripts or the received text.

Aside from copies of the text itself, there is another way in which archeological evidence has changed our knowledge of the context of the Laozi: the discovery of several other cosmogonic texts dated to around the same time as the Guodian materials. So far, three such texts have been published. One was found along with some of the Laozi materials in the same tomb at Guodian and is known as the Taiyi shengshui 太一生水 (Great One Generates Water).Footnote ³ The other two texts were purchased by the Shanghai Museum in 1994. Since these texts were looted, their precise date and original location are unknown, but based on similarities with the Guodian bamboo strips and the fact that they appeared soon after the Guodian materials were excavated, the consensus is that they originate from roughly the same time and place. One of these texts, known as the Heng xian 恆先 (Constancy First), was published in volume III.Footnote ⁴ The other is titled Fanwu liuxing 凡物流形 (All Things Flow into Form) and was published in volume VII.Footnote ⁵ The Shanghai museum bamboo strips include two manuscript versions of Fanwu liuxing.

Scholars often approach these newly discovered texts through the philosophy and vocabulary of the Laozi, but each text clearly presents a distinct position. The most obvious difference is in the ways they label whatever they take to be ultimate. The “great one” (taiyi 太一) appears only in Taiyi shengshui, which is also the only text to give a significant cosmological role to water. If we consider only the materials that have been excavated (rather than the Laozi as a whole), the “one” (yi 一) appears only in Fanwu liuxing. Only Heng xian labels the origin as “constancy” (heng 恆), and the second term in that cosmogony is so unprecedented that no one is certain what it should be (strip 1). The character itself is huo 或, which would mean a vague “something.” That usage is so unfamiliar, though, that many commentators take it instead as yu 域, which would mean something like spatiality. Unfortunately, there is little precedent for that concept in early Chinese cosmologies either. The Guodian Laozi materials call this origin dao 道, the way, but also say that all things ultimately arise from wu 無, no-being. Only the Guodian Laozi materials give any role to de 德 (potency/virtue).

The differences go beyond the label given to the ultimate, since each text includes a different number of intermediary stages between the ultimate and the myriad things. There is no way to reconcile them by simply changing the labels. That these cosmogonies represent more or less distinct discourses is further supported by differences in the traces of concepts that later came to dominate Chinese cosmological thinking. Yin 陰 and yang 陽 appear in Fanwu liuxing (strip 2) and in Taiyi shengshui (strips 1–2), but in the latter they are not the primordial duality. They are produced after the pairs of heaven and earth and the numinous and perspicacious (shenming 神明). Qi 氣 appears in each text, but only Heng xian explicitly presents a thorough qi cosmology. Qi is said to exist before there are things (strips 1–2), and heaven and earth are explicitly analyzed as modalities of qi (strip 4). The cosmogony of the Taiyi shengshui gives no place to qi, but the passage following it (which is usually taken to be part of the same text) explains heaven as qi but earth as soil, tu 土, showing that it takes qi not as the fundamental stuff composing all things but as merely one of several elements (strip 10). Qi appears in a passage in the Guodian Laozi A materials that became chapter 55 (strip 35), but there it seems to refer to breath. Fanwu liuxing mentions the interaction of the five qi, on a list between the five measures (wudu 五度) and the five notes (wuyin 五音) (or possibly, five doctrines, wuyan 五言) (strip 4). The number five plays no role in any of the other materials (although groupings of five are used in Laozi chapter 12, which was not found in Guodian).

The differences between these cosmogonies make it very unlikely that they would represent a single school or lineage, but their commonalities also are remarkable, particularly when contrasted with the philosophical background preceding them in China or with the forms taken by cosmogonies in other cultures. The basic commonality is their shared concern with the ultimate origin and ground of things, with cosmogony in a broad sense. This marks a radical shift from the concern only with the origins of human civilization or culture that one finds among the Mohists and Ru. The cosmogonies themselves share common points as well. All attempt to ground the multiplicity of the concrete world in a more fundamental unity (rather than an ultimate dualism or fundamental multiplicity). None appeal to anything like intentionality or design. The Fanwu liuxing and Taiyi shengshui use the term for growth, birth, or generation (sheng 生), while Heng xian and the Guodian Laozi materials go further in explicitly claiming that the differentiated world ultimately arises spontaneously or of itself (using phrases with zi 自). All of the texts more or less displace the role of tian 天, heaven, both by pairing it with earth (di 地) and by explicitly making it derivative of a more fundamental force. Each text claims that one can derive power and efficacy directly from the originary principle, which implies that it remains immanent in the world. This immanent source for effective action differs from either following divine commands or picking out and acting according to natural patterns, both of which dominated earlier philosophical discussions.

Taking into account the commonalities between the texts and their disagreements, they might be best characterized as representing a “cosmogonic turn.” The term “turn” encompasses a wide diversity of positions (as the “linguistic turn” can include both Heidegger and Russell) and conveys the fact that while these concerns first appear in a limited context, they ultimately had to be addressed by Chinese philosophers of any orientation.Footnote ⁶ Given the differences between the cosmogonies, there is no justification—either textual or archeological—for assuming the dominance of the views and terms found in the Laozi. Thus we must be attuned to subtle differences on issues ranging from cosmogony to conceptions of action to forms of self-cultivation, avoiding the common practice of assuming anything that sounds vaguely like the Laozi must be saying the same thing in different words. One complication for maintaining the distinctness of the texts is the similarities mentioned above. We can say, for example, that dao and taiyi play analogous roles as labeling the ultimate, but that should not erode the differences between them. Instead, it should prompt us to ask why different concepts would be given that same role, and what was at stake in this difference. Doing otherwise is like saying that water and air are the same, because they both play the role of first principle (arche) in pre-Socratic philosophy. A further challenge is that the framework from the Laozi did eventually become dominant and Chinese cosmogonic thinking more or less consolidated around dao as its key term. Eventually, terms like dao, yi, and taiyi were sometimes used interchangeably, and one might even be defined in terms of the other, but we must be cautious in using such evidence. Such claims more likely reflect this process of consolidation rather than the original meanings of terms in discourses written by the late fourth century b.c.e.

This article will examine an early instance of this process of consolidation, focusing on the relationship between the Fanwu liuxing and passages in the Laozi that discuss the one. My argument relies on evidence of two kinds. On one side are the similarities in ideas or phrases that appear in both Fanwu liuxing and the Laozi. I take these not as evidence for a direct connection between the two texts but as evidence for some common source material. On the other side, there are tensions internal to the Laozi itself, particularly between the subordination of the one to the dao in chapter 42 and the apparent equation of the one and the dao in other chapters (particularly chapter 39). I will argue that these tensions are best explained by reading those passages as incorporating and responding to a discourse of the one that appears in Fanwu liuxing. Before turning to that argument, though, several methodological issues must be discussed.

Methodological Considerations

The most obvious problem for any attempt to reconstruct dialogue in the Warring States Period is how to deal with the limits of available evidence. It is almost certain that we have only a small portion of the texts that circulated during the Warring States Period, that we have at most a few of what were probably many versions of any given text, and that what was written down is dwarfed by what was transmitted and discussed orally. We cannot tell the story of Warring States intellectual history as if we had all of the relevant parts. Regarding excavated texts, this first of all means that we cannot simply identify texts with the positions that happen to be known, whether that is determining that the author was Zisi 子思 or Shi Shuo 世碩, that a discovered text is really from the Zisizi 子思子 or Huangdi sijing 黃帝四經, or even that a text is “Daoist,” “Confucian,” or “Huang-Lao.” Second, we have no way to know that an idea or position originated with the first text in which we encounter it. In other words, the chronological order of texts containing certain ideas cannot be equated with the order in which those ideas appeared. To give just one example, the view of the heart as commanding the other organs was thought to have originated with Xunzi but is now known to have been written down before 300 b.c.e., as it is expressed in the Wu xing 五行 text found at Guodian.Footnote ⁷ To assume that this idea was original with the Wu xing, though, would simply repeat the same mistake. These two points together make it practically impossible to trace dialogues between specific texts, passages, or people. We have no way to know if a text is addressing the text we happen to have or a similar text that has since been lost or even a conversation with someone expressing that view. The situation is only slightly better when people are identified by name—Xunzi tells us that he is arguing against Mengzi, but we do not know to what degree the materials through which he encountered the philosophy of Mengzi resembled the Mengzi we now read.

While these comments may sound discouraging, it is important not to overstate their significance or to ignore the complexity they introduce. If two texts put forward similar positions or arguments, or use specific phrases in common, that constitutes evidence for a connection between them. What we cannot conclude is that this connection is direct, since the ideas may have been transmitted in a multitude of ways (orally, through an earlier mother text, through texts written by disciples, and so on). Texts expressing similar views might still shed light on each other, but in a more complex way. We cannot take them as two versions of the same view but rather as variations on a theme, with their degree of similarity and difference determined by the textual evidence itself. The same results hold for cases in which one text criticizes or responds to ideas appearing in another. That does not mean the author of the first knew about the second (or vice versa), but it still constitutes evidence for a link between the texts, whether direct or indirect, and it still allows the use of one text to help clarify the ideas in the other.

To say that these “count as evidence” is not, of course, to say that they constitute decisive proof. Here it is necessary to consider an even broader methodological issue—the locus for the burden of proof. In situations lacking decisive evidence, assumptions about the burden of proof frequently determine one's conclusions. For example, one cannot decisively prove either that the Laozi was composed as a coherent text by one author or that it brings together several different viewpoints. Thus if one assumes that the traditional view of single authorship is true unless proven otherwise, putting the burden of proof on those who would oppose it, then the traditional view will stand. The reverse is true as well: if the burden of proof is put on those claiming single authorship, they will fail. In fact, neither view should be taken as the default, which means that we should go with whichever view has the preponderance of evidence. That might seem obvious, but it means that showing weaknesses or gaps in a position is not enough. The issue is not to show that a view might be wrong but to show that it is less plausible than other alternatives.

These methodological points must be applied to the degree to which we should read texts in (indirect) dialogue. We do know some general points that support the assumption of dialogue and debate in general. We know that the tombs included texts that circulated and ended up in multiple tombs or in transmitted texts. That is, they were not exclusively private texts. We know that the tombs with philosophical texts included a wide range of perspectives, as is the case at Guodian, Mawangdui, and wherever the Shanghai museum texts came from. The fact that none of these tomb occupants could be identified with a particular “school” or “lineage,” let alone a specific philosophical position, suggests that readers at the time engaged with a diverse range of texts. One would assume that writers did the same. Regarding these cosmogonic texts, our evidence is more specific. The Taiyi shengshui was not only buried in the same tomb as the Laozi materials but was copied along with some of them (in what is known as bundle C). Thus at least someone read them both. Similarly, the Heng xian comes from the same collection as the two copies of Fanwu liuxing, once again showing that at least someone was reading these different cosmogonic texts together. Of course, we know from received texts that there were widespread debates in which people articulated and defended competing views, while also incorporating each other's ideas. Thus while some people may have been simply interested in surveying different opinions, many were concerned with advocating particular positions against others. None of these conclusions is beyond doubt, but they follow as the most likely conclusions from the limited evidence we have. The problem is moving from these general points to any specific instance of influence. We cannot assume that any given text was widely known, that an author would have been aware of any given contrary viewpoint, or that a specific author advocated positions meant to compete with others. At the same time, we should not beg the question by assuming the opposite either. We must simply follow the preponderance of the evidence in specific cases.

I will here argue that the preponderance of evidence supports reading certain parts of the Laozi as critically incorporating ideas that appear in Fanwu liuxing. My claim is not that that author of those parts of the Laozi had access to the text itself. That is possible, and the fact that Fanwu liuxing was found in two copies suggests it was a significant text. Even so, there is no way to know what texts the author(s) of the Laozi passages had access to, and no way to know how widely the ideas appearing in Fanwu liuxing were available in other texts (or even in conversations). In fact, Fanwu liuxing prefaces each section by saying, “It has been heard that … ” (wen zhi yue 聞之曰), suggesting that the ideas are not original with it.Footnote ⁸ Whether the authors of the relevant Laozi passages had access to Fanwu liuxing or to an earlier text (or oral tradition) from which Fanwu liuxing draws its ideas makes no difference for my argument.

The final methodological point that must be made regards the text of the Laozi. For convenience, I use “the Laozi” as a generic term for the text found in various versions, whether transmitted or excavated. The materials found at Guodian are too limited to be considered a version of the Laozi and I refer to them instead as “the Guodian Laozi materials.” With one exception, the chapters that I will discuss in relation to Fanwu liuxing are absent in the Guodian materials, so those materials are of little direct relevance here. Nonetheless, since my argument has implications for the composition of the Laozi, it is worth briefly mentioning how the Guodian materials relate to that issue. The Guodian Laozi materials were found on three distinct bundles of bamboo strips, known in English as A, B, and C. Bundles A and B contain no repetitions, and all of the materials in them appear in the received text. Bundle C is distinctive, both because it shares one passage (which became the final part of Laozi chapter 64) with bundle A, and because it includes materials not found in the Laozi. There is some debate whether those materials form one text—the Taiyi shengshui discussed above—or if the cosmogony section should be taken as distinct from the passage on naming that follows it. Most scholars take it as one text, but the evidence is not decisive and my argument in no way presupposes one view or the other.Footnote ⁹ On the face of it, the finding of only a portion of the Laozi buried around 300 b.c.e. would suggest that the Laozi itself did not yet exist at that time. The Guodian materials would either represent a collection of materials that were later grouped with others to form the Laozi, or a completed text to which other passages were later added. Even so, we must avoid the error of assuming we have all of the texts. It is quite possible that the Laozi did exist and the Guodian materials represent selections from it. My argument is compatible with any of these views and I make no presuppositions about the ultimate origins of the text.

I have so far used “the Laozi” as a generic term for the text found in various versions, but of course it is necessary to argue based on some specific version. One of the ways in which the Laozi evolved over time was toward consistency, so later versions will tend to obscure tensions that may have originally been present. The best windows we have into early forms of the Laozi are the two manuscripts found at Mawangdui. While the A manuscript is older, it is too heavily damaged to use as a base text. I thus rely on the Mawangdui B manuscript. Even so, the manuscript is damaged in many places, so we do not have what was originally written down in certain parts. For those places in which the text is unclear, our best option is to supplement Mawangdui B with the earliest evidence with have, whether that is the A manuscript, the recently discovered Peking university manuscript (Beida Laozi), or one of the received texts. There are problems with this approach. It is unlikely that we would fill in the gaps in just the way they were in the original manuscript, and if one goal is to show how the text might have changed over time, there are obvious dangers with using later versions. Even so, this method gets us closer to the original Mawangdui B manuscript than simply leaving the damaged places unfilled. We do not know for sure what the missing characters should be, but we do know that they said something. In reconstructing the text, I have followed Gao Ming unless otherwise noted, marking those places where gaps have been filled in from other sources.Footnote ¹⁰ Variations between versions are discussed explicitly only when they are relevant to my argument.

“All Things Flow into Form”

Before turning to the Laozi, it is necessary to briefly introduce Fanwu liuxing.Footnote ¹¹ The first part of the text consists of a long series of questions covering a range of issues. The second part answers the questions, not item by item but rather through an integrated account of yi 一, “the one,” “oneness,” or “unity.” The text begins by asking how the basic constituents of the world take form and become stable:

It then applies a similar line of questioning more specifically to human beings:

While asking questions rather than making claims, the seamless progression from human beings taking form to the configuring of vital energy suggests that the emergence of norms from heaven is seen as similarly natural. In fact, the question assumes the existence of norms derived from heaven, asking only how they should be applied in practice.

The text next raises a series of questions relating to the relationship between human beings and ghosts as it pertains to sacrifices. While these may be questions about how sacrifices are possible, they seem to express some skepticism. For example, they ask why, if ghosts are made from human beings, they are more numinous and perspicacious (shenming 神明), or how, since ghosts lack material bodies, their insight can operate in the world (strip 5). These questions lead into concerns about how to rule:

After these questions, the list turns to specific aspects of the natural world, like the sun and moon, and to questions of the divine. That latter part is worth quoting:

Although some of the above questions give priority to heaven, they also seek something more fundamental, something that would explain heaven itself. Moreover, none of the answers in the second part of the text appeals to heaven, gods, or ghosts. This turn from theistic explanations aligns Fanwu liuxing with the other cosmogonic texts discussed above. It should be noted, though, that the bases for action in strips 7–8 (attaining the perspicacity of heaven, sacrificing to the numinous power of ghosts, and perfecting the wisdom of the early kings) do not seem “Daoist” and differ considerably from the Laozi, or at least the parts of the Laozi found at Guodian.

These questions are not directly answered but are addressed through a discussion of the one, yi 一. We can consider a few passages here; others will be discussed in relation to the Laozi in the next section. The most direct answer to the list of questions follows a claim that all things are ultimately generated from the one:

Aside from a single use of the phrase “the way of heaven” (tianzhidao 天之道), the term dao appears only twice in Fanwu liuxing (in strip 22 here and in strip 14). In both cases it is used as in this passage, referring to what one must grasp (zhi 執) in order to succeed.Footnote ¹⁸ Dao is never used to explain the functioning or arising of things in the world; in those contexts, only yi is used. Thus the two terms are kept distinct and cosmological priority is given to yi. It is quite possible that dao is used only in its ordinary sense, to refer to the proper way of acting rather than to an aspect of the world.Footnote ¹⁹

Grasping the one is the way to succeed in the world, bringing an almost magical power:

Grasping the one is the key to political success. Gaining this power by grasping the one, though, depends on internal cultivation, in particular, cultivating the heart. One passage says that if the heart does not overcome or conquer the heart (xin busheng xin 心不勝心) then there will be great chaos; if the heart can overcome the heart, then one will have penetrating insight (strips 26, 18). This process is ultimately grounded in the one:

This linkage between political power, the heart, and the one, has several similarities with the “Nei ye” 内業 chapter of the Guanzi 管子, which also presents self-cultivation in terms of a heart within the heart.Footnote ²⁰

While many terms and phrases in Fanwu liuxing remain too obscure to interpret reliably, its basic position is fairly clear. All things arise from the one. The one remains immanent in the world, functioning as the support for all the processes of nature. As immanent, the one is accessible to cultivated rulers, allowing them to easily unite and bring order to the realm. To gain this power, the ruler must engage in self-cultivation, by aligning or uniting the heart with the one, and thereby allowing the heart to overcome the heart.

The One in the Laozi

The one appears with some philosophical significance in five passages of the Laozi: chapters 10, 14, 22, 39, and 42.Footnote ²¹ These passages suggest that the one plays a key role in the philosophy of the Laozi, and the one is usually taken as an alternate name for the ultimate source tentatively but more consistently referred to as dao. These passages have not traditionally been singled out as particularly problematic, but they do raise several challenges for reading the Laozi as expressing a single coherent viewpoint. Chapters 39 and 42 each seems particularly incoherent, divided into two parts that have no apparent connection. The deeper problem is that while chapters 10, 14, 22, and 39 all seem to take the one as the ultimate (and thus as equivalent to dao), chapter 42 clearly distinguishes the two, claiming that dao generates the one. The contradiction between the role of the one in chapters 42 and 39 is only heightened by a striking connection: the same lines claiming that those in high positions take names conveying lowliness appear in both chapters, and nowhere else in the Laozi. The fact that none of these chapters appears in the Guodian materials also is suspicious—given that the Guodian materials include parts of thirty-one out of eighty-one chapters (38 percent of the chapters), one would expect the inclusion of at least one or two of the five chapters on the one.Footnote ²² These difficulties and anomalies can be explained if we take these passages as borrowing and incorporating ideas that originated in another cosmogonic system, in particular, a system centering on the one as the ultimate. I will discuss each of the five passages below.

Chapter 10 consists primarily of a list of questions that seem to concern a specific program of internal cultivation. It begins:

While it is likely that embracing the one refers either to unifying something internal or to uniting with the one as an ultimate force, the context is insufficient to determine its precise meaning.Footnote ²³ These questions have some resemblance to Fanwu liuxing, which asks:

This phrasing, though, is shared by several texts and Fanwu liuxing is even closer to questions appearing in the “Nei ye”:

Similarly, the “Ming xing” 名刑 section of the Shi da jing 十大經 text found at Mawangdui says:

It is likely that all of these quotations reflect some common source or saying but there are no grounds for determining where that may have appeared first.

Of all the chapters in the Laozi, chapter 39 gives the most central role to the one. The first part of the chapter says:

The position described here is practically identical to that in Fanwu liuxing, both in saying that the natural world functions by attaining the one and in claiming that the one allows kings to be successful. While not close enough to prove direct textual borrowing, the form of expression, in each case saying that what must be attained (de 得) is the one, is too similar to be dismissed as coincidence. Since what this passage says about the one fits what the Laozi generally says about dao, it is common to assume the terms are here used interchangeably.Footnote ²⁶ This equation is supported by the fact that dao is left out of the chapter—if the one is not dao, then how does dao fit in? Because of this tendency to simply read the one as dao, the chapter does not appear odd in the broader context of the Laozi. I will return to this passage, but first we should consider the passage that disrupts this equation of dao with the one.

Perhaps the most famous statement of cosmogony in the Laozi appears at the start of chapter 42:

The passage makes it clear that the “way” and the “one” are not two names for the same thing and that the one cannot be taken as the ultimate. Thus if we read the one as the ultimate in chapter 39, we cannot avoid concluding that the text uses the term inconsistently.Footnote ²⁸ That is possible, but it would require either multiple authors or a profound level of carelessness in dealing with terms of central importance in both the Laozi and in cosmogonic discussions more broadly. The apparently contradictory use of the one is the biggest problem with reading this passage with the rest of the Laozi, but it is not the only problem. The passage presents a familiar type of cosmogony as a form of progressive differentiation in which a unitary source proceeds by steps to divide into two and then into further multiplicities. The cosmogony in the Taiyi shengshui has different steps but takes a similar approach. The problem is that other chapters of the Laozi work on a different model. For example, chapter 40 says:

The emphasis in this passage is not on progressive differentiation but on the movement from undifferentiated non-being (wu 無/无) to something (you 有) and then directly to the myriad things. Another account appears in chapter 51, which begins:

While this passage describes the way individual things gradually take on a specific form, the seeds of multiplicity are in the dao itself. There is no evidence for a cosmogony that moves from one to two to the multitude. Given that the Laozi has been read as a coherent whole for two millennia, there are many ways to reconcile the cosmogony of chapter 42 with those in 40 and 51. Nonetheless, it is implausible that a single author would make such different statements without also making some attempt to reconcile them.

Evidence from Fanwu liuxing now makes it very unlikely that the cosmogony that begins chapter 42 was original with the Laozi. Consider the most prominent statement of cosmogony in Fanwu liuxing:

It is clear in the passage that the one generates a duality and then further multiplicities. The details of the last two steps are less certain.Footnote ²⁹ The term cheng 成 is frequently associated with things taking their final forms, and it is often juxtaposed with sheng 生, to generate or give birth. Jie 結 literally means to bind or tie. Here it probably means coalescing into a concrete form, corresponding to the stage at which the bodies of things are completed (chengti 成體) (strips 1, 3). There is a general consensus that the character between “three” and “bonds” is nü 女, which means woman or daughter, translated here as “the feminine.”Footnote ³⁰ While Cao Feng reads it as is, the Fudan reading group suggests nü should be read as mu 母, mother, a reading supported by Qin Hualin 秦樺林 and followed tentatively by Wang Zhongjiang.Footnote ³¹ In either case, the meaning would be similar. While a role for the feminine in the process of generation is not unusual, it is striking that the mother is derivative of the ultimate origin. This would contrast descriptions in the Laozi of the ultimate itself as the mother (for example Laozi 25), but it might fit chapter one, which distinguishes the nameless (wuming 無名) as the beginning (shi 始) of the myriad things from the named (youming 有名) as their mother (mu 母).Footnote ³²

Given uncertainties within the line from Fanwu liuxing, it is impossible to determine the relationship between the later steps and those in the version appearing in chapter 42 of the Laozi, but the crucial contrast is in the first steps. In the Laozi, the one is clearly distinguished from and subordinated to dao. In fact, if the progression from the one is borrowed from another source, then the placement of dao before it would be the focus of the line, revealing a key point of dispute between the views. The Laozi does not simply reject the one, though. It admits the discourse of the one while explicitly making it derivative of dao.Footnote ³³ The phrasing of the first line is too close to Fanwu liuxing to be coincidence, although it is quite possible that both use a common saying or text. Nonetheless, the fact that the Laozi critiques the claim rather than simply reproducing it suggests that the Laozi is incorporating lines from another source rather than vice versa. In other words, it is more plausible that dao was added to the line in the Laozi passage rather than that dao was cut out in Fanwu liuxing. If this passage was written primarily as a comment on an alternate cosmogony, then it makes sense that it would sit uneasily with cosmogonic statements elsewhere in the text. With that context, chapter 42 can be read as an attempt to situate a cosmogony based on the progressive differentiation of the one within a more fundamental account in which things emerge from dao or no-being (wu). In other words, the priority of dao over the one is a version of the priority of no-being (wu) over being (you).

From the perspective of the Laozi, a cosmogony that begins with the one does not go back far enough. There is something even more primordial. It is not obvious why this matters or what is really at stake, but one possibility is suggested in a passage on the one in the “Qi wu lun” 齊物論 chapter of the Zhuangzi—

Once we label the ultimate origin as the “one,” we have already brought it into the realm of human concepts and discourse. We have already moved from wu, a state of non-differentiated existence, to the state of you, beings. The ultimate origin, the common support that unites the world, cannot be spoken of in itself. Aside from the progression from one to two to three, there is no evidence connecting this Zhuangzi passage to the Laozi, but some Laozi chapters present a similar view.Footnote ³⁵ As chapter one says, once any way is grasped as a way, it is no longer a constant way. Chapter 2 says that when one side of an opposition is recognized, its opposite necessarily appears as well. Chapter 32 directly links the claim that the dao itself cannot be named or characterized to the need for limits in the use of names: one will have names but must also know when to stop. In positing a dao that is more primordial than the one, the Laozi places greater emphasis on the limits of language, the interdependence of opposites, and the importance of paradox. None of those concerns appears in Fanwu liuxing.

If we place the priority of dao over the one in this broader philosophical context, we can make sense of the last half of chapter 42, which otherwise contains several puzzling lines with no connection to the initial cosmogonic progression.Footnote ³⁶ The remainder of chapter 42 reads:

The Mawangdui B manuscript is too damaged to use for this part of the chapter, so I here use the A manuscript, which is taken to be slightly older.Footnote ³⁸ The received text differs on several points, but the most significant is that, instead of yi 議, to comment on or evaluate, later versions of the text have wo 我 (I). In that case, the line reads simply: “Thus what other people teach, I also teach to other people.” While that makes sense grammatically, it is difficult to see what it could possibly mean—the Laozi is clearly not just teaching what everyone else teaches. Wang Bi and Heshanggong both read the line as contrasting what the speaker teaches with what other people teach, but the received text clearly says the opposite.Footnote ³⁹ Hans-Georg Moeller takes this part of the chapter as consisting of “largely unrelated sayings,” and says that this particular line “sounds quite Confucian.”Footnote ⁴⁰ Given these difficulties, following the Mawangdui A text seems more promising, and if we take the first part of the passage as a critical incorporation of ideas from another source, then the remainder of the passage follows. The author states explicitly that he uses what other people have taught, but evaluates it or selects what is appropriate (yi 議).Footnote ⁴¹ The term yi can mean simply to discuss or consider, but it also means “to evaluate” or “judge,” as in a passage from the “Qi wu lun” chapter of the Zhuangzi, which places yi in a progression between lun 論 (to discuss or categorize) and bian 辯 (to argue or debate).Footnote ⁴² Without knowing that the first lines of the chapter incorporate and modify another position, the statement about evaluating and using the teachings of others would lose its meaning. This would explain why later editors of the text might seek alternate readings of the line, leading to the various versions of the received text.Footnote ⁴³ The final line refers to the xuefu 學父, where xue means “study” or “studies” and fu is an honorific for a male person one generation older than oneself (or possibly, father).Footnote ⁴⁴ Its meaning is perplexing on any reading, but if we take it as referring to one's immediate teacher, then the author claims to privilege a principle of avoiding excessive strength over any particular master or text. If this line is a coherent part of the overall passage, I might mean that by grounding one's philosophy in a principle, one can then evaluate other texts and positions.

The link to the interdependence of opposites in this chapter can be further understood by returning to chapter 39, which—if we follow the version in the Mawangdui manuscripts—can be seen not just as incorporating a common view of the one but again as correcting or contextualizing it. The remainder of the chapter says:

While the chapter begins like Fanwu liuxing in stating that things attain their strengths by attaining the one, the remainder of the chapter radically qualifies these claims. The virtue of heaven is its clarity, but if it were to be always only clear, it would collapse. The same applies to earth, spirits, and so on. As a consequence, kings must avoid being always elevated and honored if they wish to sustain their positions: the noble takes the ignoble as root, the high takes the low as foundation. This explains why those in high positions would take names conveying lowliness, a claim that appears in chapter 42 as well.

The passage reads most naturally as a critique not just of one-sidedly valuing the positive but of the one itself. If grasping the one leads to the positive side (clarity, fullness, etc.), how do we also embrace the negative? The obvious answer would be through dao, which avoids this one-sidedness precisely because it exceeds any specific labels. That answer, though, is unavailable if we identify dao and the one, as is commonly done. This difficulty may explain why the passage was eventually modified so as to obscure the critical element. Rather than “without cease” (wuyi 毋已), all versions of the received text have “without that by which” (wuyi 無以).Footnote ⁴⁶ With that alteration, the second half of the passage reinforces the first half, explaining the negative consequences of not attaining the one. By eliminating the critical element, the passage can be read as equating the one with the way, even though that leaves no way to explain the transition to the claim that the high must take the low as root and throws it into contradiction with chapter 42. The evolution of chapter 39 provides an excellent example of how diversity in the origins of the Laozi became more and more obscure through the editing of the text into a coherent whole.

The nature of the disagreement between the Laozi and the position centering on the one can be further clarified through two other places where the Laozi seems to incorporate and subordinate claims that appear in Fanwu liuxing. We can again begin with the key passage from Fanwu liuxing, on cultivating the heart:

The passage seems to include several technical terms whose meaning is now obscure. This is the case with the phrases translated as “penetrating the essentials” (shaoche 少徹) and “subtle accomplishment” (chaocheng 訬成). Che 徹 means to penetrate or extend through and may have had some technical meaning, as a dialogue in the “Dazongshi” 大宗師 chapter of the Zhuangzi presents zhaoche 朝徹 (“penetrating like the light of dawn”) as a stage of cultivation between setting aside life (waisheng 外生) and seeing singularity (jiandu 見獨).Footnote ⁴⁷ I follow Wang Zhongjiang's 王中江 suggestion that shao 少 should be read as is, with the meaning of what is essential.Footnote ⁴⁸ The character modifying cheng 成, accomplishment, is previously unknown, written as shao 少 over kǒu 口. I follow Cao Feng in taking it as chao 訬, read as either miao 眇 or miao 妙.Footnote ⁴⁹

The meaning of bai 白, which I have translated very literally as “white,” should refer to some kind of purity. A term that would literally be “white heart” (bai xin 白心) is given as the title of one chapter of the Guanzi, where “white” seems to be a verb meaning “to clean or purify.”Footnote ⁵⁰ The same phrase is given in a summary of the philosophies of Song Xing 宋鈃 and Yin Wen 尹文 in the “Tianxia” 天下 chapter of the Zhuangzi.Footnote ⁵¹ Another excavated text known as Peng Zu 彭祖 recommends cultivating the self by: “staying far from deliberation and using simplicity, making the heart white and the body relaxed” (遠虑用素，心白身釋).Footnote ⁵² The “Renjianshi” 人間世 chapter of the Zhuangzi elaborates the fasting of the mind with the phrase, “empty the room and generate white” (xushi shengbai 虛室生白).Footnote ⁵³ These citations suggest that a focus on some kind of whiteness as purity was common and thus not necessarily unique to Fanwu liuxing. What is striking, though, is how the specific phrase, “know the white,” is used in chapter 28 of the Laozi:

Once again, the Laozi allows for the position appearing in Fanwu liuxing but shows it to be limited: you should indeed know the white, but you must also preserve its opposite, the shameful (ru 辱) or dark (hei 黑). On one level, the Laozi rejects the one-sided focus on purity. Seeking purity is ultimately destructive if not balanced by embracing its opposite. This point is quite similar to that made in chapter 39, that heaven cannot be incessantly clear. On another level, the whiteness of the Fanwu liuxing comes from embodying the one, which is done by controlling the heart. The one-sidedness of the values follows from the conception of the one. In contrast, placing the ultimate in a dao that cannot be named or characterized renders all imperatives ambiguous and one-sided. The use of the phrase “know their white” in both texts cannot be coincidence. The fact that the phrase appears alone in Fanwu liuxing and is critiqued and qualified in the Laozi once again suggests that the Laozi passage critically incorporates an earlier position.

While its reference to the one is brief, chapter 22 of the Laozi can also be read in this context. It says:

As in Fanwu liuxing, the key to success is grasping the one (執一),Footnote ⁵⁶ but the only way to grasp the one is to realize the interdependence of opposites. That requires recognition that the ultimate transcends labels and one-sided values.

The next link supports this same general contrast, but places it on the level of the ultimate. According to Fanwu liuxing, the one is accessible to the senses:

The Laozi directly denies this point, most clearly in chapter 14, another of the passages that discuss the one:

The precise point of dispute between the two texts is not obvious, as it is difficult to determine what Fanwu liuxing means in saying that we can taste and see the one. Since the one is not a concrete object of sensory perception, it most likely means that the one is grasped in the things we experience. The underlying point is that there is nothing mysterious about the one. It is simply the unity we experience in the world itself, and thus it is graspable.Footnote ⁵⁹ That is precisely what the Laozi denies, most often in terms of the dao, which is mysterious and ungraspable. While the last half describes the one in terms that could apply just as well to dao, the chapter also gives an explanation of how the idea of the one arises. The ultimate is taken as one because of the confusion that follows from our inability to see, hear, and touch it. What the senses cannot discriminate is thus taken as one. This explanation contrasts the description of dao as a label, in chapter 25. In that chapter, dao is explicitly recognized as an inadequate label for something that in itself is ungraspable. In chapter 14, the one is mistakenly taken for that ultimate reality.

For the sake of a complete comparison, two other links should be mentioned, although they do not involve clear points of opposition. Several passages in Fanwu liuxing discuss knowing at a distance. For example, one says:

This line has some resemblance to chapter 47 of the Laozi:

While I have been emphasizing points of conflict between the Laozi and Fanwu liuxing, in the broader context of early Chinese thought, they are quite close in their basic orientation and concerns. These two passages could simply express one of the many points the texts share. Certainly the chapter does not appear strange in the broader context of the Laozi. The passage, though, does not mention dao itself, and it is one of the only passages in the Laozi (outside the last fifteen chapters) that centers on the way of heaven (tiandao) rather than dao itself. That might suggest some borrowing from a different source.

The final connection is also the most specific. Fanwu liuxing contains the line:

This is quite close to the famous lines in chapter 64 of the Laozi:

It is difficult to know the significance of this connection, since the shared lines could easily be a common saying with little philosophical significance (as they have become in English).Footnote ⁶² In Fanwu liuxing, the saying appears without context, the only claim inserted in the midst of the list of questions in the first part of the text. The first half of the Laozi chapter contains only common sense practical advice, with nothing distinctive of its philosophy. While the remainder of chapter 64 could be taken as integrating this practical advice with a view of wuwei 無爲, non-action, the two halves of the chapter are not connected in the Guodian materials, and they are marked as separate chapters in the Beida Laozi.Footnote ⁶³