Laozi's Daodejing

980 Words4 Pages

Truth to be told, I have never been an expert or a big fan of Chinese classic philosophy. Growing up abroad, I have studied more about Plato or Aristotle rather than Confucius or Laozi. Still, I was not truly excited about taking humanity courses at the university since almost everything sounded too profound for me. But when I was browsing the courses description, something captured my attention: Laozi. Although China seems to be a popular keyword in the news nowadays, seeing a Chinese name in a course description is something new to me. Because of curiosity, I chose this course and here I am writing about my final essay about the masterpiece Daodejing by Laozi.

Daodejing constituted one of the main pillars of Chinese classical thinking. …show more content…

The first character Dao has many meaning in Chinese: the way or the direction; law of nature; morality,etc. The second De commonly means virtue and Jing means book. Translated into English, the title Daodejing can be understood as the book of ways and virtues. This essay is going to focus mainly on the concept of Dao and to compare it with other Western philosophical and religious ideas. At the same time, the essay will discuss how the modern society should behave according to these old …show more content…

It is the origin where everything started. “The Way generates the Unique; The Unique generates the Double; the Double generates the Triple; The Triple generates the myriad things” (Chapter 42). The chapter 14 also indicates that the complete Dao can be understood as the union of Dao itself and every object that emerge from Dao. “Its upper side does not dazzle like strong light. Its under side does not dim like darkness.” The upper side alludes to Dao itself, which has no lights; the under side refers the objects that come from Dao, which are visible and touchable. Dao itself cannot be seen, but every object in this world can be seen because of Dao. Dao itself has no shape, but it can turn into any shape that an object might

Open Document