Philosophers · 哲學家 · China
Laozi 老子 · 李耳 Li Er, 老聃 Lao Dan
An archivist who may never have existed, credited with five thousand characters on the Way that have been translated more often than any other Chinese book.
一位也許從來不曾存在的史官；人們把談「道」的五千個字歸在他名下，而這五千字被翻譯的次數，超過任何一本中文書。
- Born 出生
- By tradition the 6th century BCE, in Ku county in the state of Chu
- Died 去世
- Unknown. Sima Qian: “no one knows where he ended”
- Names 姓名
- Li Er 李耳, courtesy name Dan 聃. Laozi means “the Old Master”
- Post 職位
- Keeper of the archives at the Zhou court
- The book 著作
- Daodejing 道德經, about 5,000 characters in 81 chapters
- Oldest copies 最早的抄本
- Guodian bamboo slips (c. 300 BCE); Mawangdui silk manuscripts (before 168 BCE)
中文翻譯Every paragraph has a Chinese translation. Tap 中譯▾ under a paragraph to open that one, or use Show Chinese · 顯示中譯 at the top to open them all. 每一段都有中譯：點段落下方的「中譯」只開那一段，或按上方的「顯示中譯」一次全部打開。
Life · 生平
A life in three scenes 三幕人生
The archivist and the dragon 史官與龍
Almost everything said about Laozi’s life comes from one page written by the historian Sima Qian about 100 BCE, and Sima Qian was not sure of it himself. According to that page, Laozi was a man of Chu named Li Er who served as keeper of the archives at the court of Zhou. Confucius traveled to Zhou to ask him about ritual. The old man was not encouraging. The people you talk about, he said, have rotted along with their bones, and only their words remain. “Get rid of your proud airs and your many desires, your fine manner and your excessive ambitions. None of them is of any use to you. That is all I have to tell you.”
關於老子生平的說法，幾乎全部來自史家司馬遷在大約公元前 100 年寫下的一頁；而司馬遷自己對它也沒有把握。照那一頁的說法，老子是楚國人，名叫李耳，在周的朝廷擔任守藏室之史。孔子到周去向他問禮。老人並沒有鼓勵他。他說：「子所言者，其人與骨皆已朽矣，獨其言在耳。……去子之驕氣與多欲，態色與淫志，是皆無益於子之身。吾所以告子，若是而已。」
Confucius went back and told his disciples: “Birds, I know, can fly. Fish can swim. Animals can run. For what runs there are nets, for what swims there are lines, for what flies there are arrows. But the dragon I cannot understand. It rides the wind and the clouds and rises into the sky. Today I have seen Laozi, and he is like a dragon.” The story is almost certainly a later invention, and it was told with relish by Daoists because it shows the founder of the rival school at a loss.
孔子回去之後，對弟子們說：「鳥，吾知其能飛；魚，吾知其能游；獸，吾知其能走。走者可以為罔，游者可以為綸，飛者可以為矰。至於龍，吾不能知其乘風雲而上天。吾今日見老子，其猶龍邪！」這個故事幾乎可以確定是後來編的；道家講得津津有味，因為它讓對手學派的創始人不知所措。
The pass 出關
Sima Qian goes on. Laozi cultivated the Way and its power, and “his teaching aimed at self-concealment and namelessness.” After living long in Zhou he saw that the dynasty was in decline and left. At the western pass the keeper, Yin Xi, stopped him and said: “You are about to withdraw from the world. Force yourself to write a book for me.” So Laozi wrote a book in two parts, setting out the meaning of the Way and its power in something over five thousand characters, and departed. “No one knows where he ended.”
司馬遷接著說：老子修道德，「其學以自隱無名為務」。他在周住了很久，見到周的衰落，就離開了。到了西邊的關口，關令尹喜攔住他說：「子將隱矣，彊為我著書。」於是老子寫了上下兩篇的書，「言道德之意五千餘言而去，莫知其所終」。
The scene has been painted for two thousand years: an old man on an ox, leaving civilization behind and handing a manuscript to a border guard. It suits the book so well that it is hard to believe. A man who taught that those who know do not speak is made to write by a customs officer, and then vanishes before anyone can ask him what he meant.
這個場景被畫了兩千年：一個老人騎在牛背上，把文明留在身後，把一份手稿交給一位守邊的官吏。它跟那本書配得太好，好到令人難以相信。一個教人「知者不言」的人，被一位關吏逼著寫作；然後在任何人來得及問他是什麼意思之前，就消失了。
A book without an author 一本沒有作者的書
Sima Qian then does something unusual for a biographer. He admits that he does not know who his subject was. Some say, he reports, that Laozi was a certain Lao Laizi, also of Chu. Some say he was Dan, a Zhou historian who visited the court of Qin one hundred and twenty-nine years after Confucius died. Some say he lived to be more than a hundred and sixty. “No one in the world knows whether this is so or not. Laozi was a gentleman in hiding.”
接著，司馬遷做了一件對傳記作者來說很不尋常的事。他承認自己不知道傳主是誰。他記載：有人說，老子就是某位也是楚人的老萊子。有人說，他就是周太史儋，在孔子死後一百二十九年見過秦獻公。有人說，他活了一百六十多歲。「世莫知其然否。老子，隱君子也。」
Modern scholars mostly think that the book grew over time from a body of sayings and took something like its present form in the fourth or third century BCE. Two finds changed the discussion. In 1973 two silk copies were recovered from a tomb at Mawangdui sealed in 168 BCE. They place the second half of the book, on de, before the first, on dao. In 1993 bamboo slips from a tomb at Guodian, closed about 300 BCE, were found to contain about a third of the text in a different order, which shows that much of it was already circulating by then. In later centuries Laozi became a god. The Tang emperors, who shared his surname Li, claimed him as their ancestor.
現代學者大多認為：這本書是從一批格言隨著時間長成的，在公元前四世紀或三世紀有了大致接近今天的樣子。有兩次出土改變了這個討論。1973 年，從公元前 168 年封閉的馬王堆墓裡，取出了兩份帛書抄本。它們把書的後半（談「德」）放在前半（談「道」）之前。1993 年，在大約公元前 300 年封閉的郭店墓裡發現的竹簡，含有大約三分之一的文本，順序也不同；這顯示其中許多內容當時已經在流傳了。在後來的世紀裡，老子成了神。唐代的皇帝與他同姓李，尊他為祖先。
- 6th c. BCETraditional date of Laozi, an older contemporary of Confucius傳統上老子的年代；比孔子年長的同時代人
- c. 300 BCEGuodian bamboo slips buried with about a third of the text郭店竹簡下葬，含約三分之一的文本
- 3rd c. BCEHan Fei writes the first surviving commentary on parts of the book韓非寫下現存最早對此書部分章節的解說
- 168 BCEMawangdui tomb sealed with two silk copies馬王堆墓封閉，內有兩份帛書
- c. 100 BCESima Qian writes the biography司馬遷寫下傳記
- c. 240 CEWang Bi’s commentary fixes the received text王弼的注確立了通行本
- 666The Tang emperor Gaozong gives Laozi an imperial title唐高宗為老子上尊號
- 1973, 1993The Mawangdui and Guodian manuscripts are found馬王堆帛書與郭店竹簡出土
The central idea · 核心觀念
The way of water 水的道
The book begins by warning the reader about books: “The way that can be spoken of is not the constant Way.” The Dao is the source and pattern of everything. It cannot be defined, since any definition marks off one thing from another, and the Dao is prior to all such divisions. What can be done is to observe how it works. It works without effort and without claiming credit: it “gives birth and does not possess, acts and does not presume.” Its movement is reversal. Whatever is pushed to an extreme turns into its opposite, so that “misfortune is what fortune leans on, and fortune is where misfortune hides.”
這本書一開頭就警告讀者提防書本：「道可道，非常道。」道是一切事物的源頭與模式。它無法被定義；因為任何定義都是把一樣東西從另一樣東西劃分出來，而道先於所有這樣的劃分。能做的，是觀察它怎麼運作。它運作起來不費力，也不居功：「生而不有，為而不恃」。它的運動是「反」。任何被推到極端的東西，都會轉成它的反面；所以「禍兮福之所倚，福兮禍之所伏」。
From this Laozi draws a way of acting that he calls wuwei, non-action. It does not mean doing nothing. It means not forcing: “The pursuit of learning adds something every day. The pursuit of the Way takes something away every day. Take away and take away again, until you reach non-action. Do nothing, and nothing is left undone.” His favorite image is water, which is soft, seeks the low places everyone else avoids, and wears down rock. His second image is emptiness. Thirty spokes meet at a hub, and the cart is useful because the hub has a hole in it. A pot is useful because it is hollow. The same holds for a ruler. The best ruler is one whose people barely know that he exists, and when his work is done, they say, “We did it ourselves.”
由此，老子引出了一種行動的方式，他稱之為「無為」。它的意思不是什麼都不做。它的意思是不強求：「為學日益，為道日損。損之又損，以至於無為。無為而無不為。」他最愛的意象是水：柔弱，往人人都避開的低處去，卻能磨穿石頭。他的第二個意象是空。三十根輻條共用一個轂；車之所以有用，是因為轂的中間是空的。陶器之所以有用，是因為它是中空的。統治者也一樣。最好的統治者，人民幾乎不知道有他；等到事情辦成了，百姓都說：「我自然。」
The highest good is like water. Water benefits the ten thousand things and does not contend. It stays in the places that people dislike, and so it is close to the Way.上善若水。水善利萬物而不爭，處眾人之所惡，故幾於道。
Chapter 78 completes the thought: nothing in the world is softer or weaker than water, and nothing is better at attacking what is hard and strong. 第七十八章把這個想法說完：「天下莫柔弱於水，而攻堅強者，莫之能勝。」
The strongest objection · 最強的反駁
Yielding as a weapon 把退讓當武器
The book can be read as a manual of manipulation. “If you want to shrink something, you must first stretch it. If you want to weaken something, you must first strengthen it. If you want to take, you must first give.” The Legalist Han Fei, who wrote the earliest surviving commentary on it, took such lines as advice to a ruler on how to conceal his intentions and let his rivals overreach. On this reading softness is a tactic and the sage a patient schemer. The chapters on government give the reading some support. The ruler is to keep the people’s minds empty and their bellies full, and the ancients who “did not enlighten the people but kept them simple” are praised.
這本書可以被讀成一本操縱術的手冊。「將欲歙之，必固張之；將欲弱之，必固強之……將欲奪之，必固與之。」法家的韓非寫了現存最早的一部解說；他把這樣的句子，當作給統治者的建議：如何隱藏自己的意圖，讓對手自己做過頭。照這種讀法，柔弱是一種戰術，而聖人是一個有耐心的謀略家。談治國的幾章，給了這種讀法一些支持。統治者要讓人民「虛其心，實其腹」；而「非以明民，將以愚之」的古人，受到了稱讚。
Xunzi made a different complaint: “Laozi saw the value of bending and did not see the value of stretching out.” A doctrine that always advises retreat has nothing to say to someone who must build a dam or resist an invader. Defenders reply that the book is a correction addressed to rulers who were doing far too much, and was never meant as a complete ethics, and that the simplicity it praises is freedom from artificial desires, which it does not confuse with stupidity. The text is brief enough and dark enough that both sides can quote it.
荀子的抱怨不一樣：「老子有見於詘，無見於信。」（他看到了「屈」的價值，沒有看到「伸」的價值。）一個總是勸人後退的學說，對一個必須築壩或抵抗侵略的人，無話可說。辯護者回答：這本書是對「做得太多太多」的統治者的矯正，從來就不打算是一套完整的倫理學；而它所稱讚的「樸」，是擺脫人為造作的欲望，它並沒有把這個跟愚笨混為一談。這個文本夠短，也夠隱晦，雙方都能引用它。
How we know · 史料
Eighty-one chapters, hundreds of books 八十一章，幾百本書
Classical Chinese marks neither tense nor number and often leaves out the subject, and the Daodejing uses these freedoms more than any other early text. Its first line has six characters, three of which are the same word used as noun and verb. A translator has to supply what the original leaves open, and each one supplies something different. There are several hundred versions in English alone. Some of the best known were made by writers who could not read Chinese and worked from earlier translations. A reader with no Chinese should compare at least two versions by scholars and should distrust any that reads too smoothly.
文言文既不標示時態，也不標示單複數，還常常省略主詞；而《道德經》比任何其他的早期文本，都更充分地利用了這些自由。它的第一句有六個字，其中三個是同一個字，分別當名詞與動詞用。譯者必須補上原文留白的東西；而每一位補的都不一樣。光是英文就有好幾百個版本。其中最出名的幾個，出自不能讀中文、只是根據更早的譯本來改寫的作家之手。不懂中文的讀者，至少應該比較兩個出自學者之手的版本；而且應該對任何讀起來太順的版本保持懷疑。
The manuscripts add a further difficulty. The received text, fixed by the commentator Wang Bi in the third century CE, differs in many places from the Mawangdui and Guodian copies. In chapter 17 Wang Bi’s text says of the best ruler that those below “know that he exists.” Other versions read “do not know that he exists.” One character separates a ruler who is discreet from one who is invisible. There is no original to appeal to. The Daodejing, like its author, exists as a family of versions.
抄本又添了一層困難。通行本是由注釋者王弼在公元三世紀確定的；它在許多地方與馬王堆、郭店的抄本不同。在第十七章，王弼本說到最好的統治者時是「下知有之」。別的版本作「不知有之」。一字之差，分開了一位低調的統治者，與一位看不見的統治者。沒有一個「原本」可以訴諸。《道德經》就像它的作者一樣，是以一整個家族的版本存在的。
Dharma and the West · 佛法與西方哲學
Laozi and the Buddha 老子與佛陀
When Buddhism reached China in the first centuries CE, its translators borrowed Laozi’s vocabulary because they had no other. Dharma and bodhi were rendered as dao. Nirvana was rendered as wuwei. The practice of explaining Buddhist ideas through Daoist ones was called “matching meanings,” and later translators worked hard to undo it. A legend even grew up that Laozi, after leaving through the pass, had traveled to India and become the Buddha. The borrowing was not arbitrary. Both teachers distrust words, since the Way that can be spoken of is not the constant Way and nirvana is said to be beyond description. Both locate the trouble in desire. And both recommend letting go where the world recommends holding on: “the sage does not grasp, and so does not lose.”
佛教在公元最初的幾個世紀傳到中國時，譯者借用了老子的詞彙，因為他們沒有別的可用。Dharma 與 bodhi 被譯成「道」。Nirvāṇa 被譯成「無為」。用道家的觀念來解釋佛教觀念的做法，叫做「格義」；後來的譯者花了很大的力氣才把它解開。甚至還長出了一個傳說：老子出關之後，到了印度，成了佛陀。這種借用並不是任意的。兩位老師都不信任語言：可以說出來的道不是常道；而涅槃被說成是言語道斷的。兩人都把毛病定位在欲望。而在世人勸人抓緊的地方，兩人都勸人放手：「聖人……無執故無失。」
The differences were just as real, and Chinese Buddhists came to insist on them. Laozi’s Dao is a source from which the ten thousand things are born and to which they return. The Buddha taught dependent arising, in which there is no first source at all. Laozi advises having few desires and returning to simplicity, and his goal is a long, unharmed life in accord with nature. The Buddha’s goal is the complete ending of craving and release from the round of birth, which he did not regard as a home to return to. And Laozi has no path: no precepts, no stages of meditation, no account of how the mind is trained. Chan Buddhism is often described as what happened when the two met, with its distrust of scripture taken from one side and its discipline from the other (Dharma and Western Philosophy D18, D25).
差異也同樣真實；而中國的佛教徒後來堅持這些差異。老子的道是一個源頭：萬物由它而生，又回到它那裡。佛陀教的是緣起；其中根本沒有第一個源頭。老子勸人「少私寡欲」、「見素抱樸」；他的目標是順應自然、長久而不受傷害的一生。佛陀的目標是渴愛的完全止息，以及從生死輪迴裡解脫；他並不把那個輪迴看成一個該回去的家。此外，老子沒有道次第：沒有戒，沒有禪定的階段，也沒有說明心是怎麼訓練的。禪宗常被描述為這兩者相遇之後發生的事：對經典的不信任取自一邊，修行的紀律取自另一邊（佛法與西方哲學 D18、D25）。
Terms of art · 哲學術語
Words that come with him 跟著他一起來的詞
Ch. 道 dào
The source and pattern of all things, which cannot be named.
萬物的源頭與模式；無法命名。
Ch. 德 dé
The Way as it is present and effective in a particular thing or person.
道在某一個具體的事物或人身上的呈現與作用。
Ch. 無為 wúwéi
Acting without forcing or contending.
不強求、不爭的行動方式。
Ch. 自然 zìrán
What is so of itself, without being made so from outside.
自己如此，不是由外面使它如此。
Ch. 樸 pǔ
Simplicity, the state of a thing before it has been cut into shape.
素樸；一樣東西還沒有被削成形狀之前的狀態。
Ch. 反 fǎn
The tendency of anything pushed to an extreme to turn into its opposite.
任何被推到極端的東西轉成其反面的傾向。
Reading check · 理解測驗
Did it land? 讀懂了嗎
1. What does wuwei mean in the Daodejing?
2. Why does Laozi praise water?
3. What did the Mawangdui and Guodian finds show?
Go further · 延伸
Where he appears 他出現在哪幾課
- 《道德經》（王弼本），中國哲學書電子化計劃 ↗The received Chinese text with an older English translation alongside. 通行本中文原文，旁附一個較早的英譯。
- 《史記・老子韓非列傳》 ↗Sima Qian’s page on Laozi, doubts included. 司馬遷寫老子的那一頁，連同他的疑問。
- D. C. Lau, Tao Te Ching (Penguin Classics, 1963) ↗A sober scholarly translation with a good introduction. 一個持重的學術譯本，導論很好。
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Laozi” ↗On the dating, the manuscripts, and the main lines of interpretation. 談年代、抄本，以及主要的幾條詮釋路線。