ABSTRACT
Laozi 老子, literally the “Old Master”, was the founder of the Taoist School of thought. A thinker in the Spring and Autumn Period (770–476 BCE), his surname was Li 李 and his personal name Er 耳, and he came from a family in what is now Henan Province. He was court librarian for a time. It was said that Kongzi 孔子 (generally known in the West as Confucius) once sought him out to ask for his views on rites. When the Eastern Zhou Dynasty (c. 770–256 BCE) went into decline, Laozi was said to have headed west through the Hangu Gate of the Great Wall, and wasnever heard of again. He was said to have authored Laozi 老子, a work bearing his name and known in later times also as 道德經 (The Book of Dao and De, or, in the Wade-Giles transliteration used by Victorian sinologists, Tao-te-ching). 2 Comprising just over five thousand characters, the work embodies the idea that Tao 道 (the Way) 3 is the basis of all things in the universe and the Way that all things in the universe operate. The Way of the moral life is not to strive afterany one virtue or virtues, but to be at peace, serene and not aggressively assertive; to be contentand not contentious; and to return in harmony to the harmony of nature. With a profound, thoughsimple, dialectical philosophy, the work also propagates the idea that counter movement is the Tao (the Way) in motion, and that all movement and change are relative.
