The Daodejing
by Laozi
The Daodejing or 道德經 is one of the classics of Chinese philosophy. In English editions, it’s sometimes still called the Tao Te Ching, which is an older system of romanizing the same Chinese characters. ‘Dao’ can be roughly translated as ‘the Way,’ ‘De’ tends to mean virtue in modern Chinese, but probably meant something more like ‘power’ in old Chinese. ‘Jing’ denotes that this book, which is around two-and-a-half millennia old, is one of the classics.
Recommendations from our site
“For me, the Tao Te Ching is something that’s been monumental in understanding the nuances of human nature. It expresses in 81 principles very complicated beautiful zen prose about life and human nature.” Read more...
“Daoism is a body of thinking that comes from the text of the Laozi…It is simply a series of extremely paradoxical-sounding statements, very gnomic, very difficult to decipher, and yet extraordinarily powerful once you work through and get a sense of what the underlying philosophy is.” Read more...
The best books on Chinese Philosophy
Michael Puett, Historian
“Ivanhoe not only presents an accessible translation of the Daodejing, he also gives, in his introduction, an erudite and concise history of Laozi and the Daodejing. For those unfamiliar with Daoist thought, Ivanhoe’s introduction places the scripture in the context of the classical Chinese world as well as its application in today’s world.”
Commentary