道德真經註 (王弼)

Dàodé zhēn jīng zhù 道德真經註 (Wáng Bì)

Commentary on the True Scripture of the Way and Its Virtue — Wáng Bì

by 王弼 (Wáng Bì; zì Fǔsì 輔嗣; 226–249 CE) — the Three-Kingdoms Wèi 魏 xuánxué 玄學 philosopher, author of the foundational commentaries on both the Dàodé jīng and the Zhōu yì 周易

The other of the two foundational received commentaries on the Dàodé jīng — rival in philosophical authority to the Héshàng gōng (KR5c0065, DZ 682) but strictly later (mid-third century CE, on the basis of Wáng Bì’s documented dates 226–249). Composed by Wáng Bì 王弼 at the age of eighteen to twenty-three, the commentary articulates the foundational xuánxué 玄學 (“Dark Learning”) reading of the Lǎozǐ that dominated mediaeval Chinese philosophy and shaped subsequent Chinese metaphysics into the modern era. Preserved in the Zhèngtǒng Dàozàng as DZ 690 / CT 690 (Dòngshén bù, Yù jué lèi 洞神部玉訣類) in four juàn, and independently in the Wén yuān gé Sìkù quánshū 文淵閣四庫全書 as Lǎozǐ Dàodé jīng 老子道德經. Wáng Bì’s complementary essay Lǎozǐ wēi zhǐ lì lüè 老子微旨例略 (“Some Examples of Lǎozǐ Hermeneutics”) is preserved separately as DZ 1255.

About the work

Isabelle Robinet’s notice (with an addendum by Franciscus Verellen) in Schipper & Verellen eds., The Taoist Canon (2004, 1:77–78, DZ 690) gives the authoritative modern framing.

Editorial-textual features

The Daozang DZ 690 witness is followed by two colophons: one by Cháo Yuèzhī 晁說之 dated 1115 (Northern Sòng), and another by Xióng Kè 熊克 dated 1170 (Southern Sòng). These colophons attest to the Sòng-era transmission and authenticate the text against rival variants. The DZ 690 text shows a number of variants with respect to other received versions (see Lóu Yǔliè 樓宇烈, Wáng Bì jí jiào shì 王弼集校釋, the standard modern critical edition, for the collation).

A distinctive feature of DZ 690: the taboo for the character xuán 玄 is not observed — whereas most Qīng-era editions of the commentary (including the Wén yuān gé Sìkù quánshū under the Kāngxī 康熙 emperor) systematically avoid xuán (the personal name of the Kāngxī emperor Xuányè 玄燁). The DZ 690 is therefore a textually purer witness than Qīng-era prints. The text is divided into four juàn without the Héshàng gōng upper/lower DàoDé division; chapter numbers and chapter titles are also absent — reflecting Wáng Bì’s own editorial preferences.

Philosophical character and the xuánxué reading

Rudolph Wagner’s landmark studies (The Craft of a Chinese Commentator, 2000; Language, Ontology, and Political Philosophy in China, 2003; A Chinese Reading of the Daodejing, 2003) have illuminated the philosophical-rhetorical logic of the commentary. Key features:

• The epistemological value of the Lǎozǐ’s language. The original text of the Lǎozǐ stresses the ineffability of the Dào and the incapacity of language to express ultimate truth (dào kě dào, fēi cháng dào 道可道，非常道, etc.). Wáng Bì does not dispute this thesis, but he argues that the structure of the text’s composition (wén 文) — and in particular its complex patterns of parallelism, which Wagner termed “interlocking parallel style” — is itself the key to establishing the text’s unambiguous meaning. Parallel prose is not a mere rhetorical ornament but the vehicle of philosophical argument.

• Wáng Bì’s own rhetorical practice. Wáng Bì himself adopted what he understood to be Lǎozǐ’s rhetorical technique for his own analytical and argumentative purposes. His commentary is written in intricate parallel prose that mirrors and elaborates the parallel prose of the base text. Through this mirroring, the commentary becomes a continuation of the text’s philosophical discourse rather than an external gloss.

• The doctrine of wú 無 (“non-being”) as the ontological ground. Wáng Bì argues — against the Héshàng gōng tradition’s more religious-practical reading — that the Dàodé jīng’s central metaphysical assertion is that non-being (wú) is the ground of being (yǒu). The běnmò 本末 (“root-branch”) structure of Wáng Bì’s cosmology places wú as the běn (root) and yǒu as the mò (branches that proceed from the root). This ontological reading — influential on subsequent Buddhist-Daoist interactions, on the Chóngxuán school, on ChéngZhū Neo-Confucianism, and through them on the whole subsequent metaphysical-philosophical tradition — is Wáng Bì’s most consequential philosophical achievement.

• Intricate parallel prose as the hallmark of xuánxué 玄學. Wáng Bì’s own rhetorical-philosophical style became the paradigm for the mature xuánxué tradition: Hé Yàn 何晏 (d. 249), Xiàng Xiù 向秀 (c. 227–272), 郭象 Guō Xiàng (d. 312), and later xuánxué philosophers all work within the stylistic paradigm that Wáng Bì established.

Wáng Bì’s view of Confucius, Lǎozǐ, and the canon

A distinctive feature of Wáng Bì’s reading: he considered the Dàodé jīng to be the coherent work of a single author, the historical sage Lǎozǐ. (This is a significant claim: by the mid-Hàn, the unity of the Lǎozǐ and the historicity of its author had become contested; Wáng Bì restores both.) After several centuries of rival claims about the relative status of Lǎozǐ and Confucius, and with Hàn imperial patronage vacillating between Confucian learning and the emerging cult of Tàishàng Lǎojūn, Wáng Bì and his intellectual circle regarded Confucius as the supreme sage, followed directly by Lǎozǐ. In this scheme, the Dàodé jīng together with the Lúnyǔ 論語 and the Yì jīng 易經 constituted a set of fundamental classics encapsulating the metaphysical teaching of the ancients, embodied most perfectly by Confucius. Wáng Bì’s famous remark (reported in Shìshuō xīnyǔ) — that Confucius was greater than Lǎozǐ precisely because Confucius did not speak of the Dào whereas Lǎozǐ constantly spoke of it (Confucius embodied the ineffable Dào directly; Lǎozǐ only gestured towards it through words) — is the classic expression of this position.

Prefaces

No separate preface is transmitted with DZ 690. The two colophons (Cháo Yuèzhī 1115, Xióng Kè 1170) stand at the end and are Sòng-era testaments to the text’s transmission.

Abstract

Wáng Bì’s commentary is — alongside Héshàng gōng’s (KR5c0065) — the single most influential commentary on the Dàodé jīng in Chinese history. Where the Héshàng gōng tradition established the 81-chapter division, the chapter titles, and the religious-physiological reading of the text, the Wáng Bì tradition established the philosophical-metaphysical reading that dominates elite (literati-scholarly) interpretation from the WèiJìn period through to the modern era. The two commentaries have coexisted in creative tension for seventeen centuries, with the Wáng Bì reading dominating philosophical-academic discourse and the Héshàng gōng reading dominating religious-Daoist practice.

Dating. Wáng Bì’s lifedates (226–249) set the outer bounds. He completed the Dàodé jīng zhù and the Zhōu yì zhù before his death at age 23 (an astonishing precocity). The commentary was probably composed in the late 240s. Per the project’s dating rule, the frontmatter gives 240–249 as the composition window. Dynasty 三國魏.

Translations and research

• Schipper, Kristofer, and Franciscus Verellen, eds. The Taoist Canon: A Historical Companion to the Daozang. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004, 1:77–78 (DZ 690, I. Robinet with F. Verellen). Primary reference.
• Wagner, Rudolf G. The Craft of a Chinese Commentator: Wang Bi on the Laozi. Albany: SUNY Press, 2000. The definitive modern monograph on Wáng Bì’s commentarial technique.
• Wagner, Rudolf G. Language, Ontology, and Political Philosophy in China: Wang Bi’s Scholarly Exploration of the Dark (Xuanxue). Albany: SUNY Press, 2003.
• Wagner, Rudolf G. A Chinese Reading of the Daodejing: Wang Bi’s Commentary on the Laozi with Critical Text and Translation. Albany: SUNY Press, 2003. The standard modern English translation with critical Chinese text.
• Rump, Ariane, and Chan Wing-tsit. Commentary on the Lao Tzu by Wang Pi. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1979. Earlier English translation.
• Lóu Yǔliè 樓宇烈. Wáng Bì jí jiào shì 王弼集校釋. Běijīng: Zhōnghuá, 1980. The standard modern critical edition of Wáng Bì’s complete works.
• Chan, Alan K. L. Two Visions of the Way: A Study of the Wang Pi and the Ho-shang Kung Commentaries on the Lao-tzu. Albany: SUNY Press, 1991. Classic comparative study.
• Lynn, Richard John. The Classic of the Way and Virtue: A New Translation of the Tao-te ching of Laozi as Interpreted by Wang Bi. New York: Columbia University Press, 1999. Another standard translation.
• Wagner, Rudolf G. “Wang Bi’s Recension of the Laozi.” Early China 14 (1989): 27–54.
• Sān guó zhì 三國志 28 (Wèi shū 魏書). Biographical notice on Wáng Bì.

Other points of interest

The commentary was composed when Wáng Bì was an exceptionally young man — between the ages of about 18 and 23. Together with his Zhōu yì zhù 周易註, it constitutes one of the most philosophically precocious bodies of work in world thought. The received biographies (Sān guó zhì 28; Shìshuō xīnyǔ passim) describe Wáng Bì as a prodigy of qīng tán 清談 (“pure conversation”) debate, defeating older opponents in philosophical argument from his teens.

Wáng Bì also composed a short philosophical essay, Lǎozǐ wēi zhǐ lì lüè 老子微旨例略 (“Some Examples of Lǎozǐ Hermeneutics”), preserved as DZ 1255 and listed by Lù Démíng 陸德明 (556–627) in Jīng diǎn shì wén 經典釋文. This essay articulates the general hermeneutical framework of his Dàodé jīng commentary. The two texts together constitute Wáng Bì’s complete surviving Lǎozǐ scholarship.

The commentary’s dominance in philosophical-academic discourse is striking. When modern Chinese philosophical scholarship (Fung Yu-lan 馮友蘭, Tāng Yòngtóng 湯用彤, Mou Zongsan 牟宗三) treats the Dàodé jīng, it is generally Wáng Bì’s reading that provides the interpretive frame. Most Western academic translations (Wing-tsit Chan, D. C. Lau, Roger Ames & David Hall, P. J. Ivanhoe, Brook Ziporyn) similarly work within the Wáng Bì hermeneutical tradition. The Héshàng gōng reading, by contrast, has dominated religious-practice contexts — nèi dān 內丹 alchemical interpretation, monastic recitation, devotional contexts.

Links

• Kanseki Repository KR5c0073
• Schipper & Verellen, The Taoist Canon (2004), 1:77–78 — DZ 690 entry (I. Robinet with F. Verellen).
• ctext.org: 道德真經注 (王弼) — with searchable text.
• Wikipedia: Wang Bi