Wang Bi王弼

Style & Daoist names

style name Fusi

Period

Three Kingdoms (Wei)

Dates

226 — 249

School

Lao–Zhuang School (Pre-Qin Daoist Philosophy), Chongxuan (Twofold Mystery) School

Role

Scholar of Xuanxue (Learning of the Mysterious)Scripture CommentatorDaoist Philosopher

Birthplace

Gaoping, Shanyang (present-day Weishan, Shandong)

Life

Wang Bi, styled Fusi, a native of Gaoping, Shanyang, in the Wei kingdom of the Three Kingdoms period, was the representative figure of Zhengshi-era Xuanxue (Neo-Daoist Learning), and died at the age of twenty-four. His works — the Commentary on the Laozi, the Laozi zhilüe (General Pointers to the Laozi), the Commentary on the Book of Changes, and the Zhouyi lüeli (General Remarks on the Book of Changes) — take "taking Nothingness as the root" and "forgetting the words once the meaning is grasped" as their guiding principles, lifting the Laozi out of the Han-dynasty context of Huang–Lao statecraft and life-nourishing techniques and reconstructing it as a system of ontological philosophy: the myriad things take "Nothingness" (wu) as their root, "Being" (you) is born from "Nothingness," and the sage embodies Nothingness in responding to things, and thus can achieve "non-action, yet leave nothing undone." He further proposed "honoring the root and stilling the branches" and "holding to the One to govern the many," using these to unify the Laozi, the Book of Changes, and the Analects, and inaugurating the vogue of Wei–Jin Xuanxue. Since the Tang dynasty, Wang Bi's Commentary on the Laozi has become one of the most widely circulated commentaries and base texts for the transmitted Daodejing; its chapter divisions and wording directly determined the form in which later readers encountered the Laozi. Although within Daoism the Heshanggong Commentary is regarded as orthodox for cultivation, the Chongxuan (Twofold Mystery) School — Cheng Xuanying, Li Rong, and others — also drew heavily on Wang Bi's ontology and view of language. Wang Bi himself was not a Daoist; he was a Xuanxue philosopher rather than a Daoist priest, but his philosophical interpretation of the Daoist classics profoundly shaped the speculative dimension of Daoist doctrine.

Contributions & Influence

• Wrote the Commentary on the Laozi and the Laozi zhilüe, establishing the ontological interpretation of "taking Nothingness as the root"
• His commentary became one of the most widely circulated base texts of the transmitted Daodejing
• Proposed "forgetting the words once the meaning is grasped," influencing the methodology of the Chongxuan School and later Daoist doctrinal scholarship
• Unified Confucianism and Daoism through Xuanxue, inaugurating the intellectual current of the Zhengshi era

Works

• Commentary on the Laozi (Laozi Daodejing Zhu)
• Laozi Zhilüe (General Pointers on the Laozi)
• Commentary on the Zhouyi (Book of Changes)
• Zhouyi Lüeli (General Remarks on the Zhouyi)
• Lunyu Shiyi (Resolving Doubts on the Analects, fragmentary)