01:840:211 Lecture Notes - Lecture 16: Tao Te Ching, Sima Qian, Ancient Greek Philosophy
19 Apr 2017
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Lecture 16 daoism (the teaching of the dao) The identification of a religion called daoism ( taouism ) appears for the first time in 19th century european writings about china. As we have seen, dao ( ) is a central concept in confucianism. There the term refers to the harmonious sociopolitical order of the ancient sage-kings, which was understood to represent the way of heaven on earth. Confucians such as kongzi and mengzi argued that through the cultivation of inherent potential virtue, aided by the rule of a benevolent king, humans could return to and again realize this heavenly dao. Probably sometime around the 3rd century bce another work on the dao, offering a rather different perspective, was written dao de jing (ddj) and attributed to an author named. This laozi ( old master or old child ) is regarded by later daoist tradition as the historical founder of the religion.
