Dao and Ziran in Heshanggong’s Commentary on the Daodejing

Abstract

The original Daodejing presents us with a collection of aphoristic fragments that on their own remain ambiguous and opaque. That is to say, Daoist philosophy only really begins when the earliest aphoristic records like the Daodejing achieve order in subsequent more architectonic works. When looking at the later stages of Daoist thought (i.e., Xuanxue), we must recognize the key role commentaries play in reconceptualizing and developing the nascent ideas of the “classic.” This chapter focuses on one such commentary, Heshanggong’s Commentary on the Daodejing, to reveal an important development in Daoist articulations of the concepts Dao and ziran.