Laozi Timeline

A seventh-century Taoist work, the Sandong Zhunang ('Pearly Bag of the Three Caverns'), presents Laozi as the perfect Taoist master and a character named Yinxi as the ideal Taoist student, cementing the devotional portrayal of the sage.

Image source: Laozi

Throughout the 20th century, textual criticism by historians led to theories questioning Laozi's timing or even his existence, positing that the received Dào Dé Jīng was composed much later than traditionally believed and by multiple hands.

Image source: Laozi

By the mid-twentieth century, consensus had emerged among Western scholars that the historicity of a person known as Laozi is doubtful and that the Dào Dé Jīng is 'a compilation of Taoist sayings by many hands', with an author being invented afterwards.

Philosopher Roderick Long argues that libertarian themes in Taoist thought are actually borrowed from earlier Confucian writers, complicating the narrative of Laozi as the sole fountainhead of anti-authoritarian ideas in Chinese philosophy.

Image source: John Roderick (musician)

In his 1910 article for the Encyclopædia Britannica, Peter Kropotkin noted that Laozi was among the earliest proponents of essentially anarchist concepts, linking ancient Taoist thought to modern anarchist philosophy.

Image source: Peter Kropotkin

Anarcho-syndicalist writer and activist Rudolf Rocker praised Laozi's 'gentle wisdom' and his understanding of the opposition between political power and the cultural activities of the people and community in his 1937 book Nationalism and Culture.

Image source: Rudolf Rocker

Dorn agreed that Laozi, like many 18th-century liberals, 'argued that minimizing the role of government and letting individuals develop spontaneously would best achieve social and economic harmony,' framing the sage as an intellectual ancestor of liberal economic thought.

In his principal book of poetry, the Bhogar 7000, Bhogar tells of his travels to China to spread his ideas on spirituality, specifically on sublimating sexual energies and using them to become self-realised with a spiritually-minded partner.

Image source: Bogar

The Cato Institute's David Boaz included passages from the Dào Dé Jīng in his 1997 book The Libertarian Reader and noted in an Encyclopædia Britannica article that Laozi advocated for rulers to 'do nothing' because 'without law or compulsion, men would dwell in harmony.'

Image source: David Boaz

The archaeological excavation at Guodian unearthed bamboo slips containing portions of the Dào Dé Jīng dating to the late 4th century BC — as of 2024 still the oldest manuscript containing text from the work, reshaping scholarly understanding of its transmission.

Image source: Bamboo Texts of Guodian