Wang Bi

Chinese Philosopher

• Born: 226
• Birthplace: Jiaozuo, Henan, China
• Died: 249
• Place of death: China

Wang Bi was a major creative force behind the most important philosophical school of his day, and his commentaries on some of the most revered Chinese classics still help shape their interpretation.

Early Life

Wang Bi (wahng bee) died at the age of twenty-three. It is therefore difficult to separate the story of his early life from that of his mature period of productivity. A further handicap to the student of Wang Bi is the fact that very little is actually known about the details of his life. In an uncharacteristic omission, the Chinese dynastic histories do not even contain a biography for him.

Most of what is known about Wang Bi comes from a few short paragraphs appended as footnotes to the biography of another man and incorporated into a history called the San guo zhi (third century; San Kuo: Or, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, 1925). Wang Bi’s thought, however, survives in the commentaries he wrote to three Chinese classics: the Yijing (eighth to third century b.c.e.; English translation, 1876; also known as Book of Changes, 1986), the Dao De Jing (possibly sixth century b.c.e., probably compiled late third century b.c.e.; The Speculations on Metaphysics, Polity, and Morality of “the Old Philosopher, Lau-Tsze,” 1868; better known as the Dao De Jing), and Confucius’s Lunyu (late sixth or early fifth century b.c.e.; The Analects, 1861).

Wang Bi was a precocious child, and he soon proved himself remarkably adept at conversation—a skill that was much in vogue among the elite of third century China and that accounts for much of his contemporary reputation. He was a thorough master of the polite arts of the day, but, in keeping with his image as enfant terrible, he also was not quite sensitive enough to others’ feelings and offended many of his acquaintances with his overly clever manner. He served in the relatively minor post of departmental secretary, which had also been his father’s job, but failed to reach higher office because his patron, Ho Yen (He Yan; 190-249 c.e.), was outmaneuvered at court in his efforts to have Wang appointed. However, Wang was not really interested in administration anyway and preferred to devote his time and energy to philosophical speculation.

Wang flourished in the era of the Zhengshi reign (Cheng-shih; 240-249 c.e.), which is often cited as the high point of the so-called Neo-Daoist movement in China. This period came to an abrupt end in 249 c.e., when a coup d’état stripped real power away from the ruling family of the Wei state in northern China, where Wang lived, and placed it in the hands of a military dictator. Ho Yen perished in the wake of this coup, and Wang himself was dismissed from office; he died later that same year of unknown natural causes.

Life’s Work

Wang Bi and his patron, Ho Yen, are traditionally credited with founding the movement known in the West as Neo-Daoism. This name is misleading, however, since the movement really grew as much out of Confucianism as it did out of Daoism. It began with studies of the Confucian classic the Book of Changes, was enthusiastically discussed with reference to the Daoist Dao De Jing and Zhuangzi (traditionally c. 300 b.c.e., probably compiled c. 285-160 b.c.e.; The Divine Classic of Nan-hua, 1881; also known as The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu, 1968; commonly known as Zhuangzi, 1991) in the later third century, and in the fourth century finally merged into a newly triumphant Mahāyāna Buddhism. The movement is probably most accurately known by its Chinese name: xuanxue (mysterious learning).

Wang himself stands accused of trying to interpret a Confucian classic, the Book of Changes, in Daoist terms, and, in the single most famous episode in Wang’s life, of praising Confucius as the supreme Daoist because he knew better than to try and say anything about the ineffable Dao. The truth is that Wang was not much concerned with—indeed, he completely rejected—labels such as “Confucian” and “Daoist” and instead strove to unearth the ultimate truths concealed in each.

During the waning years of the Han Dynasty (206-220 c.e.), various thinkers, notably the great Wang Chong (Wang Ch’ung, 27-c. 100 c.e.), had become increasingly disillusioned with standard Confucian metaphysics, which in the mid-Han era had emphasized elaborate systems of correspondences between Heaven, Earth, and Man, cycles of the so-called Five Elements, and attempts to predict the future based on these. The desire to understand the basic principles of the universe was not lost, nor were the basic ideas entirely rejected, but the simplistic excesses—the teleology and the easy belief that Heaven was regular, purposeful, and concerned with humankind—were shaved away. At the same time, the so-called New Text versions of the Confucian classics that had supported the elaborate Han cosmological systems lost their standing and gradually were replaced by versions of the texts purporting to be older. These “Old Texts” did not fit neatly into vast cosmological systems and left a cosmological void in Confucian thought. By the end of the Han, the great pattern of the universe had seemingly dissolved into chaos.

In the third century, xuanxue emerged to fill this metaphysical vacuum. Xuanxue is predicated on the belief that the infinite phenomena of this universe are random, transitory, and without any meaningful pattern. Yet they all must, it was reasoned, be generated by one single, eternal verity. That was the “original nothingness” (benwu), or “nonbeing” (wu), the origin of all being.

Because of this emphasis on nonbeing as the root of all things, xuanxue thinkers have sometimes been dismissed as nihilistic. This casual dismissal is reinforced by the explanation that they were escapist Neo-Daoists, who turned from the traditional social concerns of Confucianism because of political repression, the collapse of the established Han world order, or aristocratic indifference. In fact, xuanxue was far more than mere escapism and represents an impassioned search for meaning in the universe by highly refined and critical intellects. The idea that nonbeing is the ontological foundation of the universe is similarly more than mere nihilism, since, in xuanxue thought, nonbeing becomes the positive principle that renders the universe intelligible.

Being and nonbeing coexist and are fundamentally indivisible. This great unity of being and nonbeing is “The Mystery” (xuan), also known as Dao, or the Way. It is the unifying principle of the universe, called a “mystery” because any name would be inadequate: It is absolute, and even to call it a mystery is to impose false and misleading limitations on it—better not to call it anything (but to call it “nothing” is not quite satisfactory either).

Wang’s thought focused on this critical xuanxue relationship between being and nonbeing. His work took the form of exegesis, an attempt to achieve an understanding of the classics of China’s formative age. Wang’s scholarship was solidly in the tradition of the Jingzhou (Ching-chou) school, a place in central China that had been a late Han center for Old Text scholarship and that was particularly famous for its study of the Daixuan Jing (c. 4 b.c.e.; The T’ai Hsüan Ching: The Hidden Classic, 1983). This book, in turn, was largely just an amplification of ideas to be found in the more venerable Book of Changes, and it was to the Book of Changes that Wang turned his principal interest.

Working with an Old Text edition of the Book of Changes, Wang rejected the Han tradition of interpreting it in terms of astrological symbols and numerology and sought instead to return to what he thought was the original meaning of the text. The Book of Changes consists of the set of all sixty-four possible combinations of six broken and unbroken lines; the resulting hexagrams were then assigned oracular values and used in divination. Later, a set of “wings,” or commentaries, was added that recast this fortune-teller’s manual into a kind of cosmological blueprint of the universe. Although Wang rejected the neat teleology of Han Confucianism, he was still searching for some abstract principle that would reconcile the apparent diversity and disorder of the material universe, and he found in the Book of Changes exactly the kind of cosmic diagram for which he was looking.

The Book of Changes spoke of a Great Ultimate (taiji) that gives rise to the twin poles, yin and yang, which in turn generate the multitude of phenomena in the world. This schema is the primordial unity that in the third century was called The Mystery. Unlike the elaborate systems and cycles of earlier Han cosmology, this principle is spontaneous and unpremeditated. Heaven and Earth move without obvious purpose, yet naturally accord with the Dao. This system is a truth beyond words that must be looked at holistically; any attempt at analytical description violates its absolute quality. Consequently, in a typically Daoist paradox, the subject of Wang’s intense investigations was beyond the power of his words to describe.

Wang belonged to the side of a raging third century debate that believed in the inadequacy of language. Characteristically, this idea harked back to a passage in the Book of Changes that said that “words cannot exhaustively [convey] meaning” (yan bu jin yi). Wang argued, therefore, that one should pay attention not to symbols or words but to their underlying, and more abstract, meanings. When one understands the meaning of a passage, one should forget the words.

Although the cosmic principle, or Dao, is unitary, it also has a binary extension—the dialectic between being and nonbeing. From these two, then, come the many. Wang liked to view the universe in terms of the interaction between a fundamental “substance” (ti), and its “applications” (yong) in the phenomenal world. This schema is reminiscent of the fourth century b.c.e. Greek philosopher Plato’s famous duality between ideals and physical appearances, but, more important, it also resembles the later Neo-Confucian duality between “principle” (li) and “matter” (qi). Wang, in fact, appears to have been one of the first Chinese thinkers to use li in essentially this sense, and, although he cannot be given credit for fully conceiving these ideas, he clearly contributed to the ongoing development of an important theme in later Chinese thought.

Significance

In his short life, Wang Bi exerted a tremendous impact on philosophy. Xuanxue was the dominant mode of thought for some two centuries, and Wang’s commentaries on the Book of Changes and the Dao De Jing, together with the commentary on the Zhuangzi by Guo Xiang (Kuo Hsiang; d. 312) and Xiang Xiu (Hsiang Hsiu; c. 230-c. 280), were the central texts of xuanxue. Later xuanxue thinkers and conversationalists measured themselves against Wang.

Wang’s scholarship, if not xuanxue thought itself, also affects scholars even in modern times. It is well known that the Dao De Jing has been the most translated of all Chinese books, and, of the literally hundreds of Chinese commentaries on the Dao De Jing, that of Wang is considered to be the very best that still remains. Most translations of the Dao De Jing are therefore based on Wang’s edition of the text and commentary. To be sure, Wang profoundly influenced his own time, but he also exerts an influence on modern scholarship, as the Dao De Jing, one of the most important books of all time, continues to be viewed partly through his eyes.

Bibliography

Fêng, Yu-lan. The Period of Classical Learning. Vol. 2 in A History of Chinese Philosophy. Translated by Derk Bodde. 1953. Reprint. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1983. Although somewhat dated, and not without flaws, this work remains a classic. It is virtually the only English language study of some of the lesser known Chinese thinkers, such as Wang Bi.

Kohn, Livia, and Michael Lafargue, eds. Lao-tzu and the Tao-Te-Ching. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998. This collection of essays on the wide range of approaches to the Dao De Jing includes one essay on Wang Bi in particular. As a whole, the collection helps to illuminate Wang Bi’s similarities with and differences from other Daoist interpretations.

Lin, Paul J. A Translation of Lao Tzu’s “Tao-te Ching” and Wang Bi’s Commentary. Ann Arbor: Center for Chinese Studies, University of Michigan, 1977. This book examines Wang’s contribution to the study of the Dao De Jing. It includes a complete translation of a brief third century biography of Wang.

Wagner, Rudolf G. The Craft of a Chinese Commentator: Wang Bi on the “Laozi.” Albany: State University of New York Press, 2000. This systematic study of Wang Bi’s commentary on the Laozi both illuminates his scholarship and illustrates the differences between Chinese and Western interpretations of the classic.

Wagner, Rudolf G. Language, Ontology, and Political Philosophy in China: Wang Bi’s Scholarly Exploration of the Dark (Xuanxue). Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003. An advanced philosophical exploration of Wang Bi’s major contribution to Daoism.