Laozi (Lao Tzu)

Laozi, also spelled Lao Tzu, is a legendary Chinese philosopher and one of the central figures in Chinese culture. His name is not a personal name but an honorific title, meaning “old teacher” or “venerable master.” Traditional accounts identify him as Li Er, also called Lao Dan, born in the 6th-century BC state of Chu during China’s Spring and Autumn period. Modern scholarship is more cautious. Many scholars regard the details of his life as later inventions, and some doubt that a single historical person known as Laozi can be firmly identified.

He is generally considered the founder of Taoism and is traditionally credited with writing the Tao Te Ching, or Dào Dé Jīng, one of Taoism’s foundational texts. Traditional stories say he served as Keeper of the Archives for the royal Zhou court at Wangcheng, modern Luoyang, and that he met and impressed Confucius. Another account says that before retiring into the western wilderness, he wrote the Dào Dé Jīng in a single session at the request of the gatekeeper Yinxi.

The sources themselves preserve uncertainty. The earliest biographical reference to Laozi appears in Sima Qian’s 1st-century BC Records of the Grand Historian, which gives several accounts and expresses doubt about parts of them. In one, Laozi is a scholar with access to the works of the Yellow Emperor and other classics. In another, he appears as Lao Laizi, a teacher of the Tao who counsels his son to treat a defeated enemy with respect. In a third, he is Lao Dan, a court astrologer who grows weary of moral decay in Chengzhou and the decline of the kingdom, then goes west to live as a hermit.

Textual study has also complicated the old story of a single author. By the mid-20th century, many Western scholars viewed the Dào Dé Jīng as a compilation of Taoist sayings by many hands. The oldest manuscript containing text from it dates to the late 4th century BC and was found among the Guodian Chu bamboo slips; those passages make up roughly one third of the received text and are mixed with material not found in the transmitted version. Complete early manuscripts were later found at Mawangdui and date to the early 2nd century BC.

Whatever can be proved about the man, the name Laozi came to stand for a spare and searching way of thinking about the Tao, conduct, power, humility, and the limits of knowledge. The Dào Dé Jīng was widely annotated, praised, and criticized by later Chinese philosophers and shaped Chinese religious movements. A line often associated with him, “Knowledge is a treasure, but practice is the key to it,” fits the plain force of the tradition: wisdom is not only something to possess, but something to live.