School
Neo-Daoism
Also known as Xuanxue, Learning in the Profound, Neo-Taoism
The main current of Chinese philosophy after the fall of the Han, which sought the meaning of the Dao in the Laozi, the Zhuangzi and the Classic of Changes.
Chinese sources call this movement Xuanxue, “Learning in the Profound”, after the Laozi’s description of the Dao as dark and hidden (xuan). It arose in the third century CE, when the fall of the Han dynasty left intellectuals looking for a new basis for order, and ran roughly until the sixth. Its core texts were the Yijing (Classic of Changes), the Laozi and the Zhuangzi, known together as the “Three Profound” works, with commentaries on them.
Despite its English name, it was not a partisan Daoist school and did not set out to overturn the teachings of Confucius. Its thinkers, among them He Yan, Wang Bi and Guo Xiang, held a wide range of views. Many sought the meaning of the Dao in the concept of nothingness (wu), but understood it in different ways; they also and debated human nature, capacity and naturalness (ziran).
- Tradition
- Chinese
Philosophers
Terms on this page
- Xuanxue
- “Learning in the Profound” (玄學), the Chinese name for the movement called Neo-Daoism in English, which centred on the Classic of Changes, the Laozi and the Zhuangzi.
- xuan
- Dark, hidden or profound (玄); the word names a black tinged with dark red. The Laozi uses it of the Dao, too deep to describe, and the Neo-Daoist movement took its name, Xuanxue, from it.
- wu
- Nonbeing or nothingness (無), literally “not having”. The Laozi says that being is born of nonbeing and speaks of the Dao itself as nonbeing; Wang Bi and He Yan held that nothingness is the root of all beings.
- ziran
- Naturalness, literally being “self so” (自然): how things are when they follow their own course. The Laozi uses it to describe the workings of the Dao, and Guo Xiang held that social roles too arise naturally.
Sources
- Alan Chan, Neo-Daoism, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy