Rudolf Wagner and Wang Bi
Rudolf Wagner spent at least twenty-three years studying the commentary on the Laozi by Wang Bi (226–249), as long as Wang Bi had lived. In his chapter “Wang Bi’s Political Philosophy,” Wagner states that “Wang Bi claimed that the Laozi’s entire teaching could be ‘summed up in [this] one phrase’”: 崇本以息末，守母以存子. On the basis of this phrase, Wagner claims that Wang Bi was a critic of the Wei court’s Legalism, and proposed what might best be described as a Confucian humanism in its stead. Against this perspective, in this review, I suggest that Wang Bi positively advocated for the Wei court’s Huang-Lao 黃老 (i.e., Legalist) policies, and that he was a resolute supporter of the emperor. In closing, I quote Willard Peterson: “Although I am not persuaded at many stages in the course of Wagner’s reading of Wang Bi, I am persuaded that he has significantly raised the level of discussion about Wang Bi’s philosophy.”
Copyright (c) 2022 Edward L. Shaughnessy
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Copyright (c) 2022 Edward L. Shaughnessy
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
- Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access).
