Huangdi Sijing - Philosophical Significance

Philosophical Significance

The Huangdi sijing reveals some complex connections within Chinese philosophy. Take, for example, the first lines in "The Constancy of Laws":

The Way generates standards. Standards serve as marking cords to demarcate success and failure and are what clarify the crooked and the straight. Therefore, those who hold fast to the Way generate standards and do not to dare to violate them; having established standards, they do not dare to discard them. Only after you are able to serve as your own marking cord, will you look at and know all-under-Heaven and not be deluded. (Dao fa, 1.1, tr. De Bary and Lufrano 2001:243)

This passage echoes concepts from several rival philosophies, Daoism, Legalism, Mohism, Confucianism, and School of Names. De Bary and Lufrano (2001:242) describe Huangdi sijing philosophy as "a syncretism that is grounded in a cosmology of the Way and an ethos of self-cultivation".

"Prior to the Mawangdui discovery," says Peerenboom (1993:1), "sinologists were more confused than clear about the school of thought known as Huang-Lao." Sima Qian's Records of the Grand Historian says many early Han thinkers and politicians favored Huang-Lao doctrines during the reigns (202-157 BCE) of Emperor Wen, Emperor Jing, and Emperess Dou. Sima cites Han Fei, Shen Buhai, and Shen Dao as representative Huang-Lao philosophers, advocates that sagely rulers should use wu wei to organize their government and society. However, after Emperor Wu of Han (r. 141-87 BCE) declared Confucianism the official state philosophy, Huang-Lao followers dwindled and their texts largely vanished.

The Huangdi sijing texts provide newfound answers to questions about how Chinese philosophy originated. Carrozza (2002:49) explains that, "For a long time, the focal point in the study of early Chinese thought has been the interpretation of a rather limited set of texts, each attributed to a 'Master' and to one of the so-called 'Hundred Schools'." For instance, tradition says Mozi founded Mohism and his students compiled the Mozi text. Conversely, Mawangdui textual syncretism reveals "the majority of the ancient texts" are not written by individual authors, "but rather collections of works of different origins."