Lao Tzu ("the Old Master", Laozi in pinyin transcription) is, according to Chinese tradition, the archivist of the royal court of the Chou to whom go back the founding of Taoism and the writing of the Tao Te Ching, a short treatise of a little over five thousand characters on the Way (Tao) and Virtue (Te)[1]. His life is known only through a late biography, written nearly four centuries after the age in which it places him, by the historian Sima Qian (Sseu-ma Ts'ien in French EFEO transcription, c. 145-86 BC)[2]. This biography itself blends three possible candidates for the identity of "Lao Tzu", to the point that leading sinologists, including Fung Yu-lan and then Angus C. Graham, have argued that the figure results from the progressive conflation of several distinct figures and legends[3].
This historiographical doubt does not, however, dissolve the Tao Te Ching itself: the text is attested, in a form already close to its received version, by two major archaeological discoveries — the bamboo slips of Guodian (c. 300 BC) and the silk manuscripts of Mawangdui (tomb sealed in 168 BC)[4][5]. Its doctrine of the elusive Tao, of non-action (wu wei) and of the hidden strength of weakness founded a philosophical current before becoming, from the 2nd century AD, the bedrock of an organised religion in which Lao Tzu himself is venerated as a divinity, Taishang Laojun[6].
For a Catholic reader, Lao Tzu raises a singular question: what is to be made of a wisdom that speaks with such accuracy of mystery, humility and the vanity of human pride, while knowing nothing of a personal God, grace and the promise of a resurrection? The Church has never named Taoism in her major conciliar texts, but the principles she applies to the other great religious traditions of humanity make it possible to appreciate, with exactness, its true greatness and its decisive limits.
This article presents first what history really knows — or does not know — of Lao Tzu, then the text of the Tao Te Ching and its formation, then his doctrine expounded honestly, then the birth of religious Taoism after him, and finally the Catholic view of this figure and of the considerable spiritual legacy he bequeathed to China.
What history really knows of Lao Tzu
Sima Qian's biography, the only ancient source
The entire biographical tradition on Lao Tzu goes back to a single ancient text: chapter LXIII of the Records of the Grand Historian (Shiji), written by the historian Sima Qian at the Han court, around 91 BC — some four centuries after the age in which tradition places Lao Tzu[7]. Sima Qian writes:
"Lao-tzu was born in the third year of Emperor Ting-wang, of the Chou dynasty." — Sima Qian, Records of the Grand Historian, book LXIII[8]
The account gives him the family name Li, the personal name Eul, and the office of keeper of the archives (shi) at the royal court of the Chou, at Lo-yang, on the Yellow River[9]. It was in this capacity that he is said to have received the visit of a young scholar come to question him on the rites: Confucius (551-479 BC)[10].
The meeting with Confucius and the elusive dragon
The account of this meeting is the most famous passage of the biography. Confucius questions Lao Tzu on the rites of the Ancients; Lao Tzu answers him with disillusioned severity on the vanity of honours:
"The men of whom you speak are no more; their bodies and their bones have long since crumbled away." — Lao Tzu, according to Sima Qian, Records of the Grand Historian, book LXIII[11]
Then he exhorts him: "Give up pride and the multitude of your desires"[12]. Confucius, disconcerted, confides to his disciples an impression that has remained famous throughout Chinese literature:
"Today I have seen Lao-tzu: he is like the dragon!" — Confucius, as reported by Sima Qian, Records of the Grand Historian, book LXIII[13]
The image says the essential: in Chinese cosmology, the dragon rises to the sky borne by wind and clouds, and none can say by what it may be seized — unlike the bird that flies, the fish that swims or the quadruped that runs, whose movement can be understood and captured[14]. Lao Tzu escapes, in the very eyes of Confucius, all ordinary intellectual grasp.
The departure to the west and the guardian of the pass
Seeing the decline of the Chou dynasty, Lao Tzu is said to have "devoted himself to the study of the Way and Virtue"[15], then to have left his office and set out westward. Arriving at the frontier pass of Han-kou (Hangu), the guardian of the pass, named according to tradition Yin Hi (Yin Xi), is said to have asked him to set down his teaching in writing before disappearing:
"Then Lao-tzu wrote a work in two parts containing a little over five thousand words, whose subject is the Way and Virtue." — Sima Qian, Records of the Grand Historian, book LXIII[16]
After which, the biography concludes, "none knows where he ended his days"[17]. This deliberate absence of a tomb, of a narrated death, of a posterity followed through time, contrasts strikingly with the far more circumstantial biography of Confucius written by the same historian — a sign, for modern scholarship, of the already largely legendary character of the figure at the time Sima Qian was writing.
Three candidates in a single name: the historiographical doubt
Sima Qian himself betrays his embarrassment: after recounting the life of "Lao Tzu", he adds that some identify him with a certain Lao Laizi, a contemporary of Confucius and author of fifteen writings, and that others still confuse him with a "Grand Historian Dan" (Taishi Dan), who is said to have lived more than a century after Confucius's death and to have met Duke Xian of Qin in 374 BC[18]. The philosopher Fung Yu-lan (1895-1990) argued, in his History of Chinese Philosophy, that Sima Qian had confused the legendary Lao Dan, Confucius's interlocutor, with a certain Li Er, a later thinker of the Warring States period — the true author, on this hypothesis, of the Tao Te Ching[19].
The British sinologist Angus C. Graham (1919-1991) went further still, showing that the narrative as we know it results from a progressive conflation of distinct legends, carried out over several centuries: a first stratum, attested as early as the 4th century BC, reports only the meeting between Confucius and a certain Lao Dan, attributing no writing to him; a later, second stratum turns Lao Dan into the founder of a distinct school of thought; finally, around 250 BC, the Tao Te Ching itself came to be attributed to Lao Dan by its author or its first editor, precisely so as to benefit from the prestigious authority attached to this already legendary name[20]. The reference entry of the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy soberly summarises the state of the debate: "according to some modern scholars, however, Laozi is entirely legendary; there was never a historical Laozi"[21].
Should he therefore be seen as mere legend?
This radical uncertainty does not warrant treating the question as definitively settled in favour of wholesale scepticism. The most widespread position among contemporary sinologists is not that Lao Tzu "never existed", but that sayings and maxims attributed to a sage named Lao Dan began to circulate and to be written down, in the form of separate collections, from the second half of the 5th century BC, stabilising into a form close to the received text around the middle of the 3rd century BC[22]. In other words: there very probably exists an ancient core of oral wisdom, attached to a master whose very name became, with time, a collective title ("the Old Master") rather than a verifiable civil identity — a situation not without analogy, all proportions kept, with the formation of other ancient wisdom corpora first transmitted orally before being fixed in writing.
The Tao Te Ching: one text, several states
The 5,000 characters in two parts
The Tao Te Ching — literally the "classic of the Way and Virtue" — consists, in its received form, of 81 chapters, very brief, often poetic and gnomic in style, divided into two books: the Tao Ching (chapters 1 to 37, devoted to the Way) and the Te Ching (chapters 38 to 81, devoted to the Virtue that proceeds from it)[23]. The text opens with a programmatic affirmation of the ineffability of its object:
"The way that can be spoken of is not the eternal Way." — Tao Te Ching, chapter I, trans. Stanislas Julien[24]
Some seven hundred commentaries have been devoted, over the course of Chinese history, to this text of barely five thousand characters — a sign of a hermeneutical fruitfulness rarely equalled in world literature[25].
The Guodian slips, the oldest witness
In 1993, the excavation of a tomb of the state of Chu, at the village of Guodian in Hubei, yielded a set of bamboo slips dated to about 300 BC[26] — the oldest material witness of the Tao Te Ching known to this day. These slips, divided into three bundles designated "A", "B" and "C", contain only about two thousand characters corresponding to just part of the present 81 chapters[27]. The occupant of the tomb, a high-ranking scholar who is thought to have been tutor to a crown prince of Chu, places the copy in a refined courtly context, at least eighty years earlier than the Mawangdui manuscripts[28].
Comparison between the Guodian version and the received text reveals doctrinally significant variants. Thus chapter 19 of the received text proclaims: "Reject benevolence, abandon justice" — a frontal attack on the cardinal Confucian virtues of ren (benevolence) and yi (justice/rectitude). The older Guodian version carries a noticeably different formula: "reject artifice, abandon cunning"[29]. The text thus seems to have become more radical over time in its explicit opposition to nascent Confucianism — a valuable clue for dating the polemic between the two schools.
The Mawangdui silk manuscripts
In December 1973, the excavation of tomb no. 3 at Mawangdui, near Changsha (Hunan), sealed in 168 BC, yielded two complete copies of the Tao Te Ching on silk, designated manuscripts "A" and "B"[30]. Manuscript A, in ancient seal script, is the older of the two; manuscript B, in later clerical script, probably derives from it[31]. Notably, both manuscripts reverse the order of the received text, placing the Te Ching (chapters 38-81) before the Tao Ching (chapters 1-37)[32] — an order confirmed, a generation later, by the so-called Beida manuscript, dated to the beginning of the Western Han period and counting 77 chapters instead of 81[33].
The following table summarises the comparative chronology of the main textual witnesses known today:
| Textual witness | Discovery | Dating | Extent | Distinctive feature |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Guodian slips | 1993, Hubei | c. 300 BC | ~2,000 characters, partial chapters | Oldest witness; attenuated anti-Confucian variants |
| Mawangdui manuscripts (A and B) | 1973, Hunan | Tomb sealed in 168 BC | Nearly complete text | Reversed order: Te Ching before Tao Ching |
| Beida manuscript | Collection, published 2012 | Early Western Han (c. 141-87 BC) | 77 chapters | Reversed order, confirms Mawangdui |
| Received version (Wang Bi) | Continuous transmission | 3rd-century AD commentary | 81 chapters | Basis of all classical Western translations |
This table shows one thing essential to encyclopaedic honesty: the Tao Te Ching read today by Western readers, in Stanislas Julien's translation or any other, rests on the edition commented by Wang Bi in the 3rd century AD — nearly seven centuries after the traditional dating of Lao Tzu himself[34].
The great Western translations
The first complete scholarly French translation of the Tao Te Ching, accompanied by the Chinese text and a running commentary, was the work of the sinologist Stanislas Julien (1797-1873), professor at the Collège de France, and appeared in Paris in 1842 under the title Le Livre de la Voie et de la Vertu[35]. A later translation, by Jules Besse, appeared with Ernest Leroux in 1909, preceded by a biographical notice reproducing the French translation of chapter LXIII of Sima Qian's Records of the Grand Historian[36]. In the 20th century, the reference translation in French became that of Liou Kia-hway, published by Gallimard in the Philosophes taoïstes volume of the Bibliothèque de la Pléiade (1980), alongside Tchouang-tseu (Zhuangzi) and Lie-tseu (Liezi).
The doctrine of the Tao
The Tao, ineffable principle before Heaven and Earth
Chapter XXV of the Tao Te Ching describes the Tao as a reality prior to all created things:
"There was something formed before Heaven and Earth." — Tao Te Ching, chapter XXV, trans. Stanislas Julien[37]
This first reality, which the text almost refuses to name, is described as silent, immaterial, and yet mother of all things. Chapter XLII draws from it the most famous cosmogony in all ancient Chinese thought:
"The Tao produced the One; the One produced the Two." — Tao Te Ching, chapter XLII, trans. Stanislas Julien[38]
The rest of the chapter, in the usual scholarly translations, continues the sequence: the Two produces the Three, and the Three produces the "ten thousand beings" — that is, the whole of the manifested world[39]. The Tao is therefore neither a personal god who speaks, legislates or addresses himself to man, nor a mere philosophical abstraction: it is the impersonal, unfathomable and generative principle from which proceeds, by degrees, the whole of reality.
Non-action, or the art of not thwarting the course of things
The most characteristic concept of Lao Tzu's thought is wu wei, literally "non-action". It is not an invitation to sheer inaction, but the refusal of all wilful, arrogant action contrary to the natural course of things — action "without forcing", stripped of the desire to dominate or to show off[40]. Lao Tzu illustrates this principle with the image of water, which he places above all virtues:
"Here below nothing is softer than water, and yet it overcomes the hardest stones." — Tao Te Ching, chapter LXXVIII, trans. Stanislas Julien[41]
The text draws from it a paradoxical principle, often summed up in the formula "the soft overcomes the hard, weakness overcomes strength"[42] — a deliberate inversion of ordinary hierarchies of power, inviting the sage to govern and to live by suppleness rather than constraint.
Virtue, spontaneity and the return to simplicity
Virtue (Te), the second term of the work's title, designates what each being has "received" from the Tao — not a moral quality in the Western sense, but the silent force by which a thing unfolds its own nature without artifice[43]. This force expresses itself through natural spontaneity (ziran, literally "of-itself-so"), which imitates and forces nothing external[44]. Chapter II, on pairs of opposites, gives its most elementary logic:
"Being and non-being are born from one another; the difficult and the easy produce each other." — Tao Te Ching, chapter II, trans. Stanislas Julien[45]
From this logic of contraries arises, in Lao Tzu, a constant distrust of learned civilisation, of the multiplication of laws, rites and proclaimed virtues, which he judges symptomatic of decadence rather than progress — a position frontally opposed to the moral and ritual enterprise of Confucius, as already recalled by the severity of his answer, reported by Sima Qian, on the vanity of pride and multiplied desires[46].
From sage archivist to god of the Celestial Masters
Zhuangzi and the school of the Tao
The second great founding text of philosophical Taoism, the Zhuangzi (Tchouang-tseu in French transcription), is attributed to a 4th-century BC thinker whose name it bears. Its relations with the Tao Te Ching remain debated among specialists: long regarded as a mere extension of Lao Tzu's thought, the Zhuangzi appears today, to part of the scholarship, as the witness of a distinct intellectual tradition, perhaps even earlier on some points than the text attributed to Lao Tzu[47]. Chinese posterity nevertheless fixed the two names into an inseparable pair, the Lao-Zhuang school, the common bedrock of philosophical Taoism (Tao-kia) distinguished, from the Han period on, from the other schools of thought[48].
Deification as Taishang Laojun
The decisive turning point that carries Lao Tzu from the status of philosophical sage to that of living god occurs in 142 AD, when Zhang Daoling, on Mount Heming (Sichuan), receives — according to Taoist religious tradition — a revelation from the deified Lao Tzu, now named Taishang Laojun ("the Most High Lord Lao")[49]. This revelation confers on him the title of Celestial Master (Tianshi) and founds the Way of the Celestial Masters (Tianshi Dao), the first structured Taoist religious movement, organised around hierarchised priests, healing and exorcism rituals, and a rice levy that would earn this movement the name of the "Way of the Five Pecks of Rice"[50].
The religious Taoism that develops from this foundation is no longer limited to the philosophical reading of the Tao Te Ching: it elaborates a vast pantheon, longevity practices and inner alchemy aimed at bodily immortality, as well as an immense scriptural corpus, fixed in 1445 in the Taoist Canon (Daozang) of the Zhengtong era, gathering some 1,487 texts[51]. The following table distinguishes the two strata, philosophical and religious, covered today by the word "Taoism":
| Dimension | Philosophical Taoism | Religious Taoism |
|---|---|---|
| Formative period | 5th-3rd century BC | From the 2nd century AD |
| Founding figures | Lao Tzu (semi-legendary), Zhuangzi | Zhang Daoling and his successors, the Celestial Masters |
| Reference texts | Tao Te Ching, Zhuangzi | Taoist Canon (Daozang, 1445), revealed scriptures |
| Central object | The Tao as metaphysical principle, non-action | Deified pantheon, rituals, quest for bodily immortality |
| Status of Lao Tzu | Semi-legendary sage-author | Living god, Taishang Laojun |
This distinction between the two strata, often presented as an opposition between a "pure" Taoism and a "degenerate" Taoism, is itself the product of a modern prejudice shaped in part by the 19th-century Western gaze on China, as will be seen below apropos the missionary reception of Taoism[52].
Taoism today
Taoism remains today largely confined to China, Taiwan and the Chinese diasporas of South-East Asia. Numerical estimates vary widely according to the method used: formal censuses count only a few tens of millions of declared adherents in mainland China, while hundreds of millions of people integrate, without exclusive confessional belonging, practices, festivals or representations of Taoist origin into their daily lives — the sign of a religion lived more as a shared culture than as an identity belonging in the Western sense[53].
The Catholic view of Lao Tzu and Taoism
What the Church can recognise
A Catholic can recognise, in the teaching attributed to Lao Tzu, several intuitions that genuinely overlap with truths received through biblical faith: the denunciation of pride and of the multiplication of desires, the acute awareness that human wisdom comes up against a mystery no words exhaust, and a certain distrust of the will to power which meets, by a very different path, the Gospel teaching on the last who shall be first. The Second Vatican Council states, in its declaration Nostra Aetate, the general principle that makes it possible to appreciate such convictions without rejecting them wholesale:
"The Catholic Church rejects nothing that is true and holy in these religions. She regards with sincere reverence those ways of conduct and of life, those rules and teachings which, though differing in many aspects from what she holds and sets forth, nonetheless often reflect a ray of that Truth which enlightens all men." — Second Vatican Council, declaration Nostra Aetate, 28 October 1965, § 2[54]
This magisterial openness meets the patristic doctrine of the "seeds of the Word" (semina Verbi), taken up by the 1965 decree Ad Gentes, according to which elements of truth and goodness may be found, sown by Providence, in the great religious traditions of humanity, called to be recognised, purified and fulfilled in Christ[55]. Taoism is named neither in Nostra Aetate nor in Ad Gentes — the conciliar text deals explicitly with Hinduism and Buddhism, but leaves the Chinese religious traditions in shadow, then less known to the Council Fathers than the great religions of the Indian subcontinent — yet the principle stated in paragraph 2 applies, by legitimate extension, to whatever in Lao Tzu's message reflects a ray of the Truth.
The missionary misunderstanding of living Taoism
The first Jesuit missionaries in China, beginning with Matteo Ricci (1552-1610), knew of the existence of Taoism through their conversations with Confucian scholars, but remained largely outside the living Taoist communities and do not seem to have grasped its true place in Chinese society and culture[56]. This distance produced a lasting, unbalanced judgement: the ancient Tao Te Ching, a philosophical text, was treated with relative respect, while lived religious Taoism — its priests, rituals and longevity practices — was long perceived by the missionaries as mere superstition, an amorphous set of magical practices in decay from its "philosophical" origins[57]. This prejudice, which fabricated an artificial distinction between a noble "philosophical" Taoism and a degraded "religious" Taoism, continues to influence some Western presentations of the subject today[58].
It was not until the 19th century that a scholarly, and not merely missionary, study of Taoism took shape in the West: Jean-Pierre Abel-Rémusat (1788-1832), first holder of the chair of Chinese at the Collège de France (1814), translated the Taoist treatise Taishang ganying pian as early as 1816; Stanislas Julien gave a new translation of it in 1835 under the title Livre des récompenses et des peines, before publishing his reference translation of the Tao Te Ching in 1842[59]. In the 20th century, the Dunhuang manuscripts gathered by Paul Pelliot (1878-1945) and the pioneering works of Henri Maspero (1883-1945) laid the foundations of modern sinology devoted to Taoism as a religious object of study in its own right[60].
The Chinese Rites Controversy: a separate dossier, already covered
The best-known episode in the relationship between the Catholic Church and the China of the scholars, the Chinese Rites Controversy, which ended with the condemnation of the rites by Pope Clement XI in the constitution Ex illa die of 19 March 1715[61], concerns principally the cult of ancestors and the honours paid to Confucius by Confucian scholars — not properly Taoist practices. This dossier, its actors (Matteo Ricci, Mgr Maigrot, the Kangxi Emperor) and its consequences down to the 20th century are set out in detail in the Ignispedia article devoted to Confucius, to which the reader is referred so as not to duplicate a history that belongs first to the Confucian dossier.
What separates irreducibly
The genuine esteem the Church bears for whatever in Lao Tzu's message reflects a ray of truth does not dispense with naming clearly what separates his doctrine from the Catholic faith decisively.
An impersonal principle, not a God who speaks and loves
Lao Tzu's Tao is a first principle, generator of all things, but impersonal: it does not speak, does not legislate, addresses itself to no one and makes no covenant. The God of biblical Revelation, by contrast, is a personal God, who speaks to the patriarchs, reveals himself to Moses by his Name, and becomes flesh in Jesus Christ. Where the Tao engenders the world through an impersonal process — the One, the Two, the Three, then the ten thousand beings — the Christian faith confesses a God who creates freely out of love and who becomes incarnate to dwell among men (Jn 1:14).
Non-action, or the insufficiency of a wisdom without grace
Wu wei teaches the sage to efface himself before the natural course of things, not to force, to imitate the suppleness of water. This wisdom contains a share of practical truth — the pride of the will to power is indeed a real evil — but it remains a wisdom of man alone, with no help from above. The Catholic faith teaches, on the contrary, an active cooperation of human freedom with divine grace: the Christian is not called to dissolve himself passively into the course of things, but to cooperate freely, through charity, in God's work in the world — which presupposes a God who effectively gives his grace, and not only an impersonal cosmic order not to be thwarted.
Bodily immortality sought, or resurrection given
Religious Taoism, in its development after Zhang Daoling, devoted treasures of ingenuity — external then inner alchemy, dietetics, breathing exercises — to the pursuit of a bodily immortality obtained by human effort[62]. The Catholic faith hopes, for its part, for a resurrection of the flesh which is not the fruit of a spiritual technique, but a free gift of divine omnipotence:
"God, in his almighty power, will definitively grant incorruptible life to our bodies by reuniting them with our souls, through the power of Jesus' Resurrection." — Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 997[63]
Between the Taoist quest for a body that would escape death through mastery of the inner breath and the Christian hope of a body given anew by grace, on the last day, the difference is not only one of method: it concerns the very nature of salvation — obtained by man, or received from God.
What the Christian can take away
Lao Tzu, whether he really existed as the solitary archivist described by Sima Qian or whether he condenses, as many historians think, several figures and several centuries of Chinese oral wisdom, remains one of the most considerable names in the spiritual history of humanity. His denunciation of pride, his distrust of sterile agitation, his image of water triumphing over stones by gentleness alone, question the Christian on a precise point: does he too know how to prefer the hidden strength of humility to the noisy agitation of his own works?
But where Lao Tzu teaches conformity, in silence, to a Tao that does not speak, the Christian receives from a God who speaks, loves and gives himself a hope of another order: not effacement into an impersonal order, but filial communion with a Father; not immortality conquered by technique, but resurrection given by grace; not a Way without a face, but Him who said: "I am the way, and the truth, and the life" (Jn 14:6).
Further reading
- Sima Qian, Records of the Grand Historian, book LXIII, translation reproduced in Lao-tseu, Tao-Té-King, trans. Jules Besse, Ernest Leroux, Paris, 1909 — the only ancient biography of Lao Tzu, available on Wikisource.
- Lao Tzu, Tao Te King, le Livre de la Voie et de la Vertu, trans. Stanislas Julien, Imprimerie royale, Paris, 1842 — the first complete scholarly French translation, with Chinese text and running commentary.
- Alan K. L. Chan, "Laozi", Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2001, rev. 2025 — the reference academic synthesis on historicity, manuscripts and doctrine.
- Isabelle Robinet, Histoire du taoïsme : des origines au XIVe siècle, Cerf, Paris, 1991 — the reference history in French.
- Kristofer Schipper, Le Corps taoïste : corps physique, corps social, Fayard, Paris, 1982 — a classic introduction to lived religious Taoism.
- Second Vatican Council, declaration Nostra Aetate (1965) and decree Ad Gentes (1965) — the magisterial framework of the Catholic view of non-Christian religions.
- See also the Ignispedia article on Confucius, for the Chinese Rites Controversy and the Confucian context.
Notes and References
Lao-tseu, Tao-Té-King, trans. Jules Besse, Ernest Leroux, Paris, 1909, Notice historique, pp. 1-5 (reproducing the French translation of chapter LXIII of Sima Qian's Records of the Grand Historian) — text available on Wikisource.
1 36Alan K. L. Chan, "Laozi", Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, published 15 December 2001, substantially revised 22 October 2025 (plato.stanford.edu/entries/laozi/).
2 7Angus C. Graham (1919-1991), thesis summarised and discussed in Alan K. L. Chan, "Laozi", Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2001/rev. 2025: Lao Tzu's biographical narrative results from a progressive conflation of distinct legends — meeting with Confucius attested as early as the 4th century BC, later recognition of Lao Dan as school founder, then attribution of the Tao Te Ching to this name around 250 BC.
3 20Alan K. L. Chan, "Laozi", Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2001/rev. 2025: Guodian bamboo slips (Jingmen, Hubei), unearthed in 1993, tomb dated to about 300 BC, about 2,000 characters corresponding to passages of the Tao Te Ching, divided into three bundles A, B, C.
4 26 27Alan K. L. Chan, "Laozi", Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2001/rev. 2025: Mawangdui silk manuscripts (Changsha, Hunan), tomb no. 3 sealed in 168 BC, two copies designated A (seal script, older) and B (clerical script), both reversing the order of the received text (Te Ching placed before Tao Ching).
5 30 31 32Encyclopaedia Britannica, "Taoism", section "Development of the Taoist religion from the 2nd to the 6th century", consulted in 2026 (britannica.com): revelation received by Zhang Daoling from the deified Lao Tzu (Taishang Laojun) on Mount Heming (Sichuan) in 142 AD, founding of the Way of the Celestial Masters (Tianshi Dao), the first organised Taoist religious movement; later development of alchemy and longevity practices aimed at bodily immortality.
6 49 50 62Sima Qian, Records of the Grand Historian, book LXIII, trans. quoted in Lao-tseu, Tao-Té-King, trans. Jules Besse, Ernest Leroux, 1909, Notice historique: family name Li, personal name Eul, office of keeper of the archives (shi) at the court of the Chou at Lo-yang, visit of Confucius come to question him on the rites.
8 9 10Sima Qian, Records of the Grand Historian, book LXIII, trans. quoted in Lao-tseu, Tao-Té-King, trans. Jules Besse, 1909, Notice historique. French text: "Les hommes dont vous parlez ne sont plus ; leurs corps et leurs os sont consumés depuis bien longtemps."
11Sima Qian, Records of the Grand Historian, book LXIII, trans. quoted in Lao-tseu, Tao-Té-King, trans. Jules Besse, 1909, Notice historique. French text: "Renoncez à l'orgueil et à la multitude de vos désirs."
12 46Sima Qian, Records of the Grand Historian, book LXIII, trans. quoted in Lao-tseu, Tao-Té-King, trans. Jules Besse, 1909, Notice historique. French text: "J'ai vu aujourd'hui Lao-tseu : il est comme le dragon !"
13Traditional reading of the dragon symbol in ancient Chinese cosmology: unlike the bird, the fish or the quadruped, whose mode of locomotion is observable and describable, the dragon rises to the sky borne by wind and clouds and none can say by what it may be seized — an image of the intellectual elusiveness attributed to Lao Tzu by Confucius in the traditional narrative.
14Sima Qian, Records of the Grand Historian, book LXIII, trans. quoted in Lao-tseu, Tao-Té-King, trans. Jules Besse, 1909, Notice historique: Lao Tzu "devoted himself to the study of the Way and Virtue", then, seeing the decline of the Chou dynasty, left his office and set out westward.
15Sima Qian, Records of the Grand Historian, book LXIII, trans. quoted in Lao-tseu, Tao-Té-King, trans. Jules Besse, 1909, Notice historique. French text: "Alors Lao-tseu écrivit un ouvrage en deux parties qui renferment un peu plus de cinq mille mots, et dont le sujet est la Voie et la Vertu."
16Sima Qian, Records of the Grand Historian, book LXIII, trans. quoted in Lao-tseu, Tao-Té-King, trans. Jules Besse, 1909, Notice historique. French text: "L'on ne sait où il finit ses jours."
17Alan K. L. Chan, "Laozi", Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2001/rev. 2025: Sima Qian himself reports competing traditions identifying Lao Tzu with Lao Laizi (a contemporary of Confucius, author of fifteen writings) or with "Grand Historian Dan" (Taishi Dan), said to have met Duke Xian of Qin in 374 BC, more than a century after Confucius's death.
18Fung Yu-lan (1895-1990), A History of Chinese Philosophy, quoted and discussed in Alan K. L. Chan, "Laozi", Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2001/rev. 2025: hypothesis of a confusion, by Sima Qian, between the legendary Lao Dan, Confucius's interlocutor, and Li Er, a later thinker of the Warring States period held to be the true author of the Tao Te Ching.
19Alan K. L. Chan, "Laozi", Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2001/rev. 2025. Original English text: "According to some modern scholars, however, Laozi is entirely legendary; there was never a historical Laozi."
21Alan K. L. Chan, "Laozi", Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2001/rev. 2025: probable formation of the text through oral strata from the second half of the 5th century BC, relative stabilisation around the middle of the 3rd century BC; structure in 81 chapters and two books (Tao Ching, chapters 1-37; Te Ching, chapters 38-81) in the reference edition commented by Wang Bi in the 3rd century AD.
22 23 34Lao Tzu, Tao Te King, le Livre de la Voie et de la Vertu, trans. Stanislas Julien, Imprimerie royale, Paris, 1842, chapter I. French text: "La voie qui peut être exprimée par la parole n'est pas la Voie éternelle."
24Alan K. L. Chan, "Laozi", Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2001/rev. 2025: more than seven hundred Chinese commentaries recorded on the Tao Te Ching over the course of history.
25Study of the Guodian site and its occupant, discussed notably in Sarah Allan and Crispin Williams (eds.), The Guodian Laozi: Proceedings of the International Conference, Dartmouth College, May 1998, Society for the Study of Early China, Berkeley, 2000: the tomb's occupant, a high-ranking scholar, is thought to have been tutor to the crown prince of the state of Chu, the future King Qingxiang; dating cross-checked with the capture of the capital Ying by the state of Qin in 278 BC.
28Alan K. L. Chan, "Laozi", Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2001/rev. 2025: comparison of chapter 19 of the received text ("reject benevolence [ren], abandon justice [yi]") with the Guodian version, bundle A ("reject artifice, abandon cunning"), a sign of an anti-Confucian polemic strengthened in the later strata of the text.
29Alan K. L. Chan, "Laozi", Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2001/rev. 2025: Beida manuscript, Peking University collection dated to the beginning of the Western Han period (c. 141-87 BC), 77 chapters, reversed order confirming that of the Mawangdui manuscripts.
33Lao Tzu, Tao Te King, le Livre de la Voie et de la Vertu par le philosophe Lao-Tseu, translated into French and published with the Chinese text and a running commentary by Stanislas Julien (1797-1873), member of the Institut, professor at the Collège de France, Imprimerie royale, Paris, 1842.
35Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, trans. Stanislas Julien, Imprimerie royale, Paris, 1842, chapter XXV. French text: "Il y avait quelque chose formé avant le Ciel et la Terre."
37Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, trans. Stanislas Julien, Imprimerie royale, Paris, 1842, chapter XLII. French text: "Le Tao a produit l'Un ; l'Un a produit le Deux."
38Alan K. L. Chan, "Laozi", Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2001/rev. 2025, on chapter 42 of the Tao Te Ching: cosmogonic sequence Tao-One-Two-Three-"ten thousand beings", designating the whole of the manifested world proceeding by degrees from the first principle.
39Alan K. L. Chan, "Laozi", Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2001/rev. 2025: wu wei (non-action) designates not total inaction but action freed from the desire to dominate or to show off, opposed to the aggressive measures (war, cruel punishments, excessive taxation) denounced by several chapters of the Tao Te Ching.
40Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, trans. Stanislas Julien, Imprimerie royale, Paris, 1842, chapter LXXVIII. French text: "Ici-bas rien de plus mou que l'eau, et pourtant elle vient à bout des pierres les plus dures [...]. Le mou vainc le dur, la faiblesse vainc la force."
41 42Alan K. L. Chan, "Laozi", Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2001/rev. 2025: te (virtue/power) designates what each being has "received" from the Tao, the authenticity or endowment proper by which it unfolds its nature without artifice.
43Alan K. L. Chan, "Laozi", Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2001/rev. 2025: ziran ("so-of-itself"), natural spontaneity not modelled on any external principle, reflecting the Tao's mode of operation in nature and human conduct.
44Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, trans. Stanislas Julien, Imprimerie royale, Paris, 1842, chapter II. French text: "L'être et le non-être naissent l'un de l'autre ; le difficile et le facile se produisent mutuellement."
45Encyclopédie Universalis, "Zhuangzi [Tchouang-tseu]", consulted in 2026 (universalis.fr): 4th-century BC thinker, composite text (inner, outer and mixed chapters) compiled from the late 4th to the late 3rd century BC, relations with the Tao Te Ching long read as an extension but today debated by part of the scholarship, which sees in it a distinct tradition.
47 48Taoist Canon (Daozang) of the Zhengtong era, completed in 1445 and printed in 1447 under the Ming dynasty, gathering some 1,487 texts in more than 5,300 fascicles, according to the usual academic counts (cf. Kristofer Schipper and Franciscus Verellen [eds.], The Taoist Canon: A Historical Companion to the Daozang, University of Chicago Press, 2004).
51"Le taoïsme : un contact ancien, mais une compréhension tardive", Patrimoines partagés France-Chine, Bibliothèque nationale de France, consulted in 2026 (heritage.bnf.fr/france-chine/taoisme-contact-ancien-mais-comprehension-tardive): missionary reception of Taoism from the 16th to the 18th century (Matteo Ricci and his successors), 19th-century scholarly translations (Abel-Rémusat 1816, Julien 1835), founding of modern sinology of Taoism (Pelliot, Maspero).
52 56 57 58 59 60Converging but methodologically disparate numerical estimates: Pew Research Center, The Global Religious Landscape, December 2012 (about 6% of the world population, more than 400 million people, practising folk or traditional religions including Chinese folk religions); formal censuses placing at a few tens of millions the number of declared Taoists in mainland China, against several hundred million people integrating practices of Taoist origin without exclusive confessional belonging.
53Second Vatican Council, declaration Nostra Aetate on the relations of the Church with non-Christian religions, 28 October 1965, § 2 — official text: vatican.va. Taoism is not named in it (the text deals explicitly with Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam and Judaism), but the general principle stated in §§ 1-2 applies by legitimate extension to every religious tradition reflecting a ray of truth.
54Second Vatican Council, decree Ad Gentes on the missionary activity of the Church, 7 December 1965, § 11 — restatement of the patristic doctrine of the "seeds of the Word" (semina Verbi), according to which elements of truth and goodness sown by Providence may be found in the religious traditions of humanity, to be purified and fulfilled in Christ.
55Clement XI, apostolic constitution Ex illa die, 19 March 1715, definitively condemning the Chinese rites (cult of ancestors and honours paid to Confucius) as incompatible with the Christian faith — a decision followed by the Kangxi Emperor's 1721 edict forbidding the preaching of Christianity in China. This dossier, distinct from properly Taoist practices, is covered in detail in the Ignispedia article on Confucius.
61Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 997: "What is 'rising again'? In death, the separation of soul and body, man's body falls into corruption, while his soul goes to meet God, while awaiting its reunion with its glorified body. God, in his almighty power, will definitively grant incorruptible life to our bodies by reuniting them with our souls, through the power of Jesus' Resurrection."
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