This essay explores the core Daoist concept of ziran (commonly translated as spontaneity, naturalness, or self-so) and its relationship to authenticity and authority. Modern scholarship has often followed the interpretation of Guo Xiang (d. 312) in taking ziran as spontaneous individual authenticity completely unreliant on any external authority. This form of Daoism emphasizes natural transformations and egalitarian society. Here, the author draws on Heshanggong’s Commentary on the Daodejing to reveal a drastically dissimilar ziran conception based on the authority of the transcendent Way. The logic of this contrasting view of classical Daoism results not only in a vision of hierarchical society, but one where the ultimate state of human ziran becomes immortality. Expanding our sense of the Daodejing, this cosmology of authority helps unearths greater continuity of the text with Daoism’s later religious forms.

Mainstream scholarship on the Laozi or Daodejing generally focuses on the “original” text and its “original” meaning. However, the Chinese study of Laoxue 老學 (translated here with the author’s neologism “Laozegetics”) offers a valuable alternative, as it shifts focus to the hermeneutical and historical value of the 2185 Chinese, 430 Japanese, and 91 Korean relevant interpretations and commentaries on the classic. The inclusive perspective of Laozegetics has further inspired the author’s creation of the term “Global Laozegetics.” This even broader topic assumes both Laozi commentaries and translations (all 2051 in 97 languages) belong within a single field of research. To better introduce the study of Global Laozegetics to an English-language readership, this article will explore the history of the term Laoxue, review contemporary related research, and present the content and significance of applying the notion of Laozegetics to the globalized Laozi.

Many scholars view translations of the Chinese classics as inevitably lacking fidelity to the “original,” asserting language difference as a fundamental impediment to cross-cultural understanding. The present study disputes this viewpoint by employing the perspective of Global Laozegetics. This notion affirms a fundamental continuity between the native Laozi or Daodejing commentarial tradition and its corresponding foreign translation tradition. Specifically, I will investigate a range of interpretations of the term ziran found in Laozi Chapter 25, including 16 traditional and modern Chinese readings and 67 translations in 26 languages. My broad investigation of this narrow topic will reveal a rich historical development of interpretation and translation, highlight the philosophical ramifications of different exegetical choices, deepen our understanding of the core Daoist concept ziran, and assist in confirming the basic premise of Global Laozegetics that language, even the original language of Chinese, is secondary to interpretive strategy when engaging with classical works.

In the study of Chinese thought, the products of the Han dynasty have historically been identified as those most antithetical to Western rationalism. In many of these narratives, the commentarial tradition and systems of complementary yin and yang receive the most attention. The present work draws on Mawangdui texts (Guan, Cheng, andCixiong jie), the writings of Dong Zhongshu, theHuainanzi, and ultimatelyHeshanggong's Commentary on the Daodejingto complexify this view. Within these examples one discovers divergent philosophies of opposites and yin and yang that confound the notion of a monolithic and solely holistic Han cosmology. Ultimately, this paper seeks to promoteHeshanggong's Commentaryas an exemplar of Eastern Han Daoist yin-yang theory that subdivides these two principles into mode and substance. Such an interpretive move explains the commentary's valorization of yin modes (non-action, weakness) but not yin substances (cold, corpses), and yang substances (spirit, essential qi, living beings) but not yang modes (action, aggression, violence). Furthermore, this approach unveils new insights about the relationship of the Dao and Heaven, the history of Daoism, and the varieties of correlative cosmologies in the Han.

A fundamental question when comparing Western and Chinese traditions is what if any similarities exist between the key metaphysical concepts Being and Non-Being and you 有 and wu 無. We find an inspired solution in the oldest preserved translation of the Laozi, the “Liber Sinicus Táo Tě Kīm inscriptus, in Latinum idioma Versus.” This 18th c. Latin translation by a Jesuit Figurist makes a particularly fascinating argument for the equation of Being and you 有 and Non-Being and wu 無. Essential to this is recognizing Non-Being as a type of Being that more closely matches the Laozi’s term wu 無. From this starting point, the translator fuses the three cosmogonies of chapters 1, 40, and 42 to reveal a Daoism-inflected trinitarian theology where Non-Being (wu) and Being (you) become terms to express the complex relationship of the three divine Persons. This effort to connect Daoism and Catholicism both has great historical value and also may serve as a resource for articulating East Asian forms of theology.