Rudolf Wagner and Wang Bi

Edward L. Shaughnessy

I first met Rudolf Wagner in the spring of 1985. If I recall correctly, it was at
the suggestion of David Keightley that Rudolf and I had coffee together late
one afternoon at the Student Union on the Berkeley campus. I know that I recall
correctly that I was immediately met with a torrent of conversation topics,
bouncing from Hong Xiuquan 洪秀全 and the Heavenly Kingdom of Great
Peace (Taiping tianguo 太平天國), to Chinese science fiction in the 1950s, to
the British navy steaming up the Yangzi, to the correspondence between Hui
Yuan 慧遠 and Kumārajīva 鳩摩羅什, before it finally settled on the work of
Wang Bi 王弼, especially his commentary on the Laozi 老子, something about
which I finally knew at least a little bit. But what little bit I knew didn’t prepare
me for Rudolf’s two major arguments about Wang Bi. First, he insisted that the
Laozi text that has circulated for about 1500 years over the top of Wang Bi’s
commentary is not the text that was known to Wang Bi himself, but was rather
a substitute text—probably in the lineage of Heshang Gong 河上公—put there
sometime before the Tang dynasty. Second, he also suggested that Wang Bi
read the Laozi itself as a commentary on the Lunyu 論語, and that whenever
Wang Bi referred to the term “sage” (shengren 聖人) it can only be understood
as a direct reference to Confucius. I am not someone who is easily impressed,
but I do not mind confessing that I was totally dazzled by Rudolf. I recognized
at once that if these two arguments about Wang Bi’s Laozi commentary could
be substantiated, they would have far-reaching consequences for both textual
criticism in general and for our understanding of Chinese intellectual history
more specifically.
During the next year, I began teaching at the University of Chicago, where I
was able to renew my acquaintance with Rudolf—an interesting item missing from
his curriculum vitae and probably known to very few colleagues. It so happened
that in that year we had a position open for traditional Chinese intellectual history.
I encouraged Rudolf to apply, which he did—and did so successfully. Indeed,
he was appointed to our faculty as a non-tenured Associate Professor beginning
in the autumn term of 1986, which he readily accepted. However, he asked to
take the first term off to put his affairs in order, and Chicago was happy to grant
this leave. Unfortunately for Chicago, but probably fortunately for the world of
sinology, and especially for that of German sinology, before that first term ended
Rudolf was offered the chair in sinology at Heidelberg. Chicago was history, and
Rudolf went on to make history.
Shortly thereafter, I took over as editor of the journal Early China. One of
the first things I did was to encourage Rudolf to submit his work on the textual
2 Rudolf Wagner and Wang Bi

history of the Wang Bi Laozi, one of the topics related to Wang Bi that he had
told me about that fateful first afternoon in Berkeley. His article—“The Wang
Bi Recension of the Laozi”—was published in the first issue that I edited.1 The
article is a technical study of textual transmission involving several different
early recensions of the Laozi, not to mention occasional quotations in other
sources. Comparison of these different texts shows beyond any doubt the point
that Rudolf had made to me at Berkeley: that the Laozi text written over the
top of the Wang Bi commentary in all received editions is not the text that
Wang Bi himself had used. In an appendix to the article, Rudolf listed seventy-
nine differences between the readings of the received text and the Wang Bi
commentary, and another thirty-seven differences between the received text
and the “Old Manuscript” (guben 古本) of Fan Yingyuan 范應元 (fl. 1246),
which Rudolf argued either was, or was similar to, Wang Bi’s original text. True,
most of these differences are minor, usually just the addition or omission of a
particle here or there, or occasionally a different character, or the transposition
of a character or two. However, the significance does not lie in the individual
differences, but rather in what this says for the textual history of the Laozi and
especially of Wang Bi’s commentary. For too long, sinologists—and especially
Western sinologists—had been content to accept whatever text they found
in a modern edition as the text of the author, and did not undertake the hard
work of traditional textual criticism to establish the original reading of that
text. This was even more true of commentaries, when they bothered to take the
commentaries seriously at all.
What is more, it is not the case that all of the variants are philosophically
uninteresting. Rudolf ended his analysis with one very important variant,
which is worth reviewing both for his methodology and for the significance
it might have for Wang Bi’s philosophy. It comes in chapter fifty-seven of
the Laozi, and involves comparison between the received text and ten other
textual exemplars. His presentation deserves to be quoted in full.
One doxographically important passage may be discussed last to show
some of the problems in reconstructing the Wang Bi Laozi Urtext.

Laozi zhang 57

Wang Bi Laozi Receptus: 人多伎巧奇物滋起法令滋彰

Heshang Gong: ’’ ’’ ’’ ’’ ’’ ’’ ’’ ’’ 物 ’’ ’’ ’’

Huainanzi: ’’ 法令滋彰

1 Rudolf G. Wagner, “The Wang Bi Recension of the Laozi,” Early China 14 (1989): 27–54.
 The Journal of Transcultural Studies, Supplement (2021) 3

Shiji: ’’ ’’ ’’ ’’

Wenzi: ’’ ’’ ’’ ’’ ’’ ’’ ’’ ’’

Yan Zun: ’’ ’’ ’’ ’’ ’’ ’’ ’’ ’’ ’’ ’’ ’’ ’’

Old Mss. (Fu and Fan): 民 ’’ 智慧而衷事 ’’ ’’ ’’ ’’章

Mawangdui A: 人 ’’ ’’ ’’ 何物 ’’ ’’ 物 ’’ ’’

Mawangdui B: 民 ’’ ’’ ’’ 何物 ’’ ’’ 物 ’’ ’’

Wang Bi comm. ad loc: ’’ ’’ ’’ ’’ 則巧偽生巧偽生則邪事起

Wang Bi in Laozi zhilüe 息淫在乎去華不在滋章

The reading fa ling 法令, shared by the versions given in the Huainanzi,
Shiji, and Wenzi, directly attacks the Legalists. The Mawangdui
manuscripts come from a Legalist milieu and thus do not transmit this
version. Wang Bi, however, attacked the Legalism of the Wei court.
Thus, even though we have no explicit statement by Wang Bi himself, the
reading of the two “Old Manuscripts” must be that of his Urtext, which
would have read 民多智慧而邪事滋起法令滋章.2

This is an argument the significance of which should be readily apparent, and

would serve as powerful testimony to another argument concerning textual
transmission. However, it is less compelling than Rudolf’s other cases since
it is based only on indirect evidence, or even on no evidence at all, since the
reading that he proposes is not that of the “Old Manuscripts,” despite what he
claims about it. Besides, I do not see any difference—certainly no doxographic
difference—between the Wang Bi Laozi Receptus and the reading that he
suggests for the Urtext.
More important, I think the major claim that Wang Bi “attacked the
Legalism of the Wei court” is open to question. This claim goes hand in hand
with the second argument that Rudolf made to me that first day we met: that

2 Wagner, “The Wang Bi Recension of the Laozi,” 47. The exemplars illustrated in this chart are
the Laozi text transmitted over the top of the Wang Bi commentary (Laozi Receptus); the Laozi text
transmitted over the top of the Heshang gong 河上公 commentary; a quotation in the Huainanzi 淮南子;
a quotation in the Shiji 史記; a quotation in the Wenzi 文子; a quotation of the Laozi zhu 老子注 by Yan
Zun 嚴遵; the “Old Manuscripts” cited in Fu Yi 傅奕, Daodejing guben 道德經古本 and Fan Yingyuan
范應元, Laozi Daodejing jizhu 老子道德經集注; the two manuscripts discovered at Mawangdui 馬王
堆, Changsha 長沙, Hunan in 1974; Wang Bi’s own commentary in chapter fifty-seven; and a reading
given in Laozi weizhi lüeli 老子微指略例 (Laozi zhilüe), which is attributed to Wang Bi.
4 Rudolf Wagner and Wang Bi

when Wang Bi referred to the “sage” (shengren 聖人), he intended specifically

Confucius. I suspect that most readers will find this claim to be of more interest
than the replacement of the Laozi text transmitted over the top of Wang Bi’s
commentary, and so I will consider it in rather greater detail. The discussion
will involve close readings of a few texts that Rudolf claimed were central to
Wang Bi’s political philosophy, and will almost unavoidably turn on matters
of translation. I beg the reader’s forbearance in this, but I hope it will be the
type of discussion that Rudolf himself cherished, even if my argument will be
critical at places.
The claim that when Wang Bi referred to the shengren he intended
specifically Confucius, and that Wang Bi regarded Confucius to be the highest
sage, one grade higher than Laozi, is found, at least implicitly, in the first
volume of Rudolf’s trilogy on Wang Bi’s commentary on the Laozi: The
Craft of a Chinese Commentator: Wang Bi on the Laozi,3 and Rudolf made
a reasonable philosophical argument there in support of it. This is consistent
with the story about Wang Bi in the Shi shuo xin yu 世說新語 and in the
biography of Wang Bi by He Shao 何劭.4 However, in Rudolf’s most mature
statement concerning Wang Bi’s Laozi commentary, the 2003 book Language,
Ontology, and Political Philosophy in China: Wang Bi’s Exploration of the
Dark (Xuanxue), he seems to have changed his understanding at least of the
referent for Wang Bi’s shengren, from Confucius to the ruler,5 though this
seems not to have entailed any radical change in his understanding of Wang
Bi’s philosophy. The final chapter of this book is entitled “Wang Bi’s Political
Philosophy.” It is a lengthy and very dense argument, which I am not at all
confident that I understand in its entirety. It is only in the last three pages of
the chapter that Rudolf considers the actual political situation at the time Wang
Bi was writing, but then he dismisses this, saying, “little is explained by the
reference to the particular historic circumstances of Wang Bi’s philosophy.”6
Unfortunately, if my understanding—both of Rudolf’s presentation and also
Wang Bi’s commentaries not only on the Laozi but also on the Zhou Yi 周
易—is right, I have to think those “particular historic circumstances” ought
not to be so lightly dismissed, and that Rudolf did not get Wang’s political

3 Rudolf G. Wagner, The Craft of a Chinese Commentator: Wang Bi on the Laozi (Albany, NY:
SUNY Press, 2000), 120–139.
4 See Yu Jiaxi 余嘉錫, Shi shuo xin yu jianshu 世說新語箋疏 [New account of tales of the world,
with commentary and notes] (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1993), vol. 4, 199; Chen Shou 陳
壽, Sanguo zhi 三國志 [Records of the Three Kingdoms], quoted in the commentary by Pei Songzhi
裴松之 (372–451) (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1959), 795.
5 Rudolf G. Wagner, Language, Ontology, and Political Philosophy in China: Wang Bi’s
Exploration of the Dark (Xuanxue) (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2003).
6 Wagner, “Wang Bi’s Political Philosophy,” 215.
 The Journal of Transcultural Studies, Supplement (2021) 5

philosophy entirely right. A full consideration of this question would require

more space than the editors of The Journal of Transcultural Studies could
possibly give to me, so I will move directly to Rudolf’s conclusion.
Toward the end of his chapter, Rudolf wrote:
Eventually, Wang Bi claimed that the Laozi’s entire teaching could be
“summed up in one phrase” in the manner that Kongzi had claimed for the
Shijing. But as opposed to Kongzi’s summary, which most commentators
read as straight moral advice (“do not have any heterodox thoughts”),
Wang Bi’s summary of the Laozi comes as the highly condensed paradox
of the law of the negative opposite:
崇本息末而已矣.
Emulating the root [by way] of bringing to rest the stem and
branches [growing from it]—that is all!
This tersest of possible summaries makes quite clear the ultimate political
purpose of the Laozi’s philosophy in Wang Bi’s reading, namely, xi mo 息
末, “to bring to rest the root’s outgrowth.” The term mo 末 describes all
that grows out of the root, such as the stem and branches of a tree. They
receive their origin and continuous support from this root but are in fact
the visible world whose regulation is the purpose of government. The
entire analytic and philosophic enterprise of Wang Bi, and his reading of
Laozi, remains tied to the ultimate purpose of bringing rest and order to
the world, and his main discovery in this respect is the law of the negative
opposite, which encapsulates and theorizes observations on the dynamics
of the body politic that can be found to this day in sources ranging from
proverbial lore about cunning political strategies, such as the Chinese 36
stratagems, to structuralist analyses of political power.7

This is a big claim, and I am not at all sure that Rudolf’s translation of the key
phrase gets the nuance right.8 The discussion turns on points of etymology and

7 Wagner, “Wang Bi’s Political Philosophy,” 211–212.

8 In a review of Wagner’s book, Language, Ontology, and Political Philosophy in China: Wang
Bi’s Exploration of the Dark (Xuanxue), Willard J. Peterson quotes the main sentence of this passage,
and then adds (enigmatically, I might add): “As Wagner acknowledges, that statement by Wang Bi is
enigmatic, and so may be Wagner’s framing of it.” Peterson goes on to note that Richard John Lynn
has also translated this sentence, giving “It does nothing more than encourage growth at the branch
tips by enhancing the roots,” and then adds:
I cite Lynn’s translation not because they (sic) make more sense than
Wagner’s—they do not—but to remind us that the meanings of Wang Bi’s
sentences are not transparent. Neither translators’ renderings, particularly
when taken out of context, provide readers as much help as they deserve,
6 Rudolf Wagner and Wang Bi

grammar, as much as on philosophical consistency. Rudolf cited the sentence

as found in the text Laozi weizhi lilüe 老子微旨例略 (The Structure of the
Laozi’s Pointers), an otherwise unattributed text which he accepts—reasonably
enough—as being by Wang Bi, though, as we will see below, more or less the
same wording is found in Wang Bi’s commentaries to Laozi chapters 38 and
57.9 Earlier he had offered at least two other translations of the same sentence
or at least its main clause:
To venerate the root in order to soothe the branches;10
Ah, exalting the root to soothe the branches, that is all!11

In his comments on the sentence in the quotation above, he explained only the
term “branches” (mo 末). The metaphor of the “root” (ben 本) and “branches”
is probably unproblematic for most readers, though it is worth pointing out in
the context of Wang Bi’s political philosophy that the “root” corresponds to the
“One” (yi 一), which is to say the “king” or “emperor,” and the “branches” to
the “many” (duo 多), which is either his ministers or the people in general. I
would have welcomed comment on the two main verbs: chong 崇, which he
translated variously as “to venerate,” “to exalt,” and finally as “to emulate,” and
xi 息, for which he offered either “to soothe” or “to bring to rest,” or even, earlier
in the same chapter of Language, Ontology, and Political Philosophy, “to calm
down.”12 I can certainly understand how in the course of a long engagement with
a text, differences such as this could creep into one’s translations. However, I

but here I am leaving aside translation issues. My point is that we must bear
in mind in evaluating Rudolf Wagner’s Language, Ontology, and Political
Philosophy that we are dealing with three co-existing layers: selections
of Chinese text, with variants, ascribed to Wang Bi; disputable English
translations of those selected pieces; and Wagner’s inferences based on and
applied to his reading and translating those pieces.
While Peterson left aside translation issues, I will not. Willard J. Peterson, review of Language,
Ontology, and Political Philosophy in China: Wang Bi’s Scholarly Exploration of the Dark (Xuanxue),
by Rudolf G. Wagner, Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 66, no. 1 (2006): 279–289; 281, 282.
9 Fragments of this work are included in the Daozang 道藏, assigned number #1255 in Kristofer
Schipper and Franciscus Verellen ed., The Daoist Canon: A Historical Companion to the Daozang
(Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2004), 78–79. The attribution to Wang Bi was first
demonstrated by Wang Weicheng 王維誠, “Wei Wang Bi zhuan Laozi zhi lüe yiwen zhi faxian” 魏王
弼撰《老子指略》佚文之發現 [The discovery that Wang Bi of the Wei wrote the unattributed text
Laozi’s Pointers], Guoxue jikan 國學季刊 7, no. 3 (1951): 367–376. Wagner first wrote about it as
“Wang Bi: ‘The Structure of the Laozi’s Pointers’ (‘Laozi weizhi lilüe’): A Philological Translation
and Study,” T’oung Pao 72, no. 1/3 (1986): 92–129.
10 Wagner, “The Structure of the Laozi’s Pointers,” 111.
11 Wagner, “The Structure of the Laozi’s Pointers,” 124.
12 Wagner, “Wang Bi’s Political Philosophy,” 163.
 The Journal of Transcultural Studies, Supplement (2021) 7

have no idea how he settled on “to emulate” for chong 崇, which basically means
“high” or “to raise on high.” Rudolf would have been far better served with either
of his earlier choices: “to venerate” or especially “to exalt,” the latter of which
would be my choice. “To emulate” is simply wrong, both etymologically and
philosophically; after all, the ruler is literally unique, not someone that the many
can emulate. Rudolf’s choices for xi 息 are also problematic. Xi 息 is often a
problem in Chinese philosophical texts because it has two almost contradictory
senses: “to stop” or “to extirpate,” as seen in the Laozi weizhi lilüe quotation of
Laozi chapter 57 analyzed in the first part of this essay: 息淫在乎去華不在滋
章 “stopping licentiousness lies in getting rid of ornamentation; it does not lie
in multiplying versions”; and “to grow” or “to increase” (as, for instance, the
opposite of “to decrease, to erase”: xiao 消). Rudolf’s various offerings—“to
bring to rest,” “to soothe,” “to calm down”—all strike me as ambiguous at best;
both “to soothe” and “to calm down” can certainly mean to bring about peace
(which he said was the “ultimate purpose” of Wang Bi’s philosophical enterprise),
but they might also suggest suppression. The standard meaning “to stop” is often
extended to mean “to rest,” but I do not know that it can be used transitively in the
sense “to bring others to rest.” Finally, Rudolf’s understanding of the relationship
between the two verb-object constructions was also inconsistent and perhaps
ambiguous. Although the sentence quoted above simply lists these constructions
consecutively, chong ben xi mo 崇本息末, Wang Bi elsewhere inserted an yi 以,
sometimes “by way of,” sometimes “in order to,” between them, and Rudolf
relied on that in all of his translations of the sentence. In 2003, he settled on
translating it as “[by way] of,” whereas in 1986 he had given “in order to” or
just “to.” I suppose either one of these readings is possible (though my own
preference would be for either of the 1986 readings), but they completely reverse
the ultimate purpose: is the purpose to “exalt the root” (chong ben 崇本) or to xi
mo 息末, whatever that may mean?
The difficulty in understanding xi mo 息末 may well be that, despite
what Rudolf always argued, Wang Bi was not the most consistent writer that
we might wish for. Elsewhere in the Laozi weizhi lilüe, the same clause is
paralleled by another that seems to show at least that the sense of “stop” is not
pertinent. The line reads, together with Rudolf’s 2003 translation:
崇本以息末，守母以存子。
To emulate the root by way of bringing to rest its [the root’s] outgrowth;
to keep to the mother by way of maintaining [her] offspring.13
“Maintaining [her] offspring” (cun zi 存子) is certainly something positive,
and so it stands to reason that xi mo 息末 should also be positive, whence

13 Rudolf G. Wagner, A Chinese Reading of the Daodejing: Wang Bi’s Commentary on the Laozi
with Critical Text and Translation (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2003), 90.
8 Rudolf Wagner and Wang Bi

Rudolf’s “bringing to rest its outgrowth” would seem to be entirely

appropriate. On the other hand, in his commentary to chapter thirty-eight of
the Laozi, Wang Bi employed the same parallel, though in a negative sense.
This seems to show an antagonistic relationship between the ben 本 and mo
末.14 I again cite Rudolf’s translation (employing also his spacing and italics,
but adding the original Chinese).15
本在無為, 母在無名。
The root lies in non-interference. The mother lies in the Nameless
By
棄本而適其末， 舍母而用其子，
discarding the root but going rejecting the mother but
along with the branches making use of the offspring of
[growing out of the root]– [the mother]–
功雖大焉，必有不濟。 名雖美焉，偽亦必生。
there will by necessity, even if there will by necessity, beautiful
the achievements be great, some though the name may be,
[things] remain unachieved. falsehood be also born.16

Here it is clear that exalting the root, the opposite of “discarding the root” (qi
ben 棄本), is the ultimate purpose, and that “going along with the branches”
(shi mo 適末, which might also be rendered as “adapting to the branches”) is
a less desirable strategy.
I apologize again for this extended consideration of etymology and
grammar. However, the reason it matters is because if Rudolf was right that
“Wang Bi claimed that the Laozi’s entire teaching could be ‘summed up in
[this] one phrase,’” then its interpretation is crucial. Rudolf has argued that
Wang Bi was a critic of the Wei court’s Legalism, proposing in its stead what
might best be described as a Confucian humanism, which took “bringing to
rest” the branches, i.e., “bringing rest and order to the world,” as its purpose.

14 In his review of Wagner’s Language, Ontology, and Political Philosophy in China, Jean Lévi
notes a deliberate intention (volonté délibérée) in Wagner’s work to close his eyes to the contradictions
within Wang Bi’s writings; Jean Lévi, review of Language, Ontology, and Political philosophy in
China: Wang Bi’s Scholarly Exploration of the Dark (Xuanxue), by Rudolf G. Wagner, Bulletin de
l’École française d’Extrême-Orient 90/91 (2003–2004): 560–567; 566.
15 Wagner, A Chinese Reading of the Daodejing, 244.
16 Wagner, A Chinese Reading of the Daodejing, 244.
 The Journal of Transcultural Studies, Supplement (2021) 9

I suspect that at least nominally most political philosophies would maintain

that “bringing rest and order to the world” is their purpose. I have argued, on
the other hand, that Wang Bi positively advocated for the Cao court’s Huang-
Lao 黃老 (i.e., Legalist) policies, such that the focus of his philosophy was
resolutely on “exalting the root”; i.e., supporting the emperor.17 Elsewhere
in his final chapter “Wang Bi’s Political Philosophy,” Rudolf attempted to
synthesize this distinction between Confucian and Legalist approaches:
As Liu Zehua has pointed out in his fine paper on Wang Bi’s political
philosophy, Wang Bi does not accept the rigid separation, present for
example in the Zhuangzi as well as in many texts associated with the Ru
and “Legalists,” between the innate nature of entities and external social
regulations and controls. Quite the contrary, he deduces the mechanism
of social regulation normally associated with the Han dynasty Mingjiao
名教 school directly from the notion of ziran, from the notion of the
entities’ That-which-is-of-itself-what-it-is.18 The seemingly unavoidable
bifurcation between the two realms of “root,” ben 本, and “outgrowth,”
mo 末, with the ensuing bifurcation between the Daojia 道家, which is
focusing on the “root,” and the Mingjiao 名教, which is focusing on the
“outgrowth,” is thus overcome in favor of a system of philosophy that
establishes ontology and politology on the very same fundaments.19

There is no doubt that Wang Bi was concerned with both “ontology and
politology,” but how the bifurcation between them can be overcome seems to
have been even more the concern of Rudolf.20

17 For a full discussion of this point, see Edward L. Shaughnessy, “Commentary, Philosophy, and
Translation: Reading Wang Bi’s Commentary to the Yi Jing in a New Way,” Early China 22 (1997):
229–241. This came in a review article concerning Richard John Lynn, The Classic of Changes: A
New Translation of the I Ching as Interpreted by Wang Bi (New York: Columbia University Press,
1994). Although Lynn’s translation appears in the bibliographies of both A Chinese Reading of the
Daodejing and Language, Ontology, and Political Philosophy in China, I am sorry to say that my
review article does not, even though it was available six years before these two books were published.
18 Original note: “Liu Zehua, ‘Wang Bi mingjiao chu yu ziran de zhengzhi zhexue he wenhe
de junzhu zhuanzhi sixiang’ (Wang Bi’s Political Philosophy of Social Regulations Emerging out
of That-which-is-of-itself-what-it-is and His Thinking of a Moderate Autocracy), Nankai xuebao
4:24 (1993).” I agree that this paper by Liu Zehua 劉澤華 was a fine study of Wang Bi’s political
philosophy, but here too I have a different interpretation of it than that of Rudolf. Liu explicitly argued
that Wang Bi’s philosophy should be seen as supportive of the Mingjiao 名教 of his time, which he
termed a “dictatorship of the ruler” (junzhu zhuanzhi 君主專制), which is a very different notion from
an “autocracy,” benign though it may have been.
19 Wagner, “Wang Bi’s Political Philosophy,” 198.
20 In this regard, in his review of Wagner’s Language, Ontology, and Political Philosophy in
China, Lévi has made the following observation:
10 Rudolf Wagner and Wang Bi

I was asked by the editors of The Journal of Transcultural Studies to

consider the influence of Rudolf’s scholarship on the understanding of Wang
Bi in sinology. Rudolf used to joke that his study of Wang Bi had taken
twenty-three years, as long as Wang Bi had lived.21 It is now almost another
twenty-three years (give or take a few years) since the last of his books
were published. I regret to say that it is my impression that they have not
exerted the influence that they should have on the understanding of Wang
Bi in sinology. It is perhaps paradoxical that about the time that Rudolf was
undertaking his study,22 there was something of a boom in Wang Bi studies.
First, in the late 1970s, there was a pair of translations of Wang Bi’s Laozi
commentary.23 Then in 1985, Howard Goodman completed his doctoral
dissertation “Exegetes and Exegeses of the Book of Changes in the Third
Century AD: Historical and Scholastic Contexts for Wang Pi.”24 The next

Mais peut-être le véritable intérêt de l’ouvrage est-il ailleurs. Il tient, à mon

sens, à la sympathie—au sens étymologique du terme—que R. G. Wagner
éprouve à l’égard de l’auteur qu’il étudie. Wagner embrasse le mouvement
de la pensée de Wang Bi, il suit pas à pas ses développements et comprend
de l’intérieur sa démarche. Cette adhésion, ou mieux cette adhérence, nous
vaut des analyses d’une grande pertinence où les mécanismes mis en œuvre
sont d’autant mieux compris qu’ils ont été repris à leur compte par celui qui
les étudie. Rudolf G. Wagner ne nous montre pas des notions sorties tout
armées de la tête de Wang Bi, mais s’attache, par une critique linguistique
rigoureuse, à découvrir le processus de leur élaboration. Toutefois ce respect
du texte, cet amour même pour l’objet d’études a un coût.

I would agree, as Lévi’s last line states, that Wagner’s love for the object of his study has a cost; Lévi,
review of Language, Ontology, and Political philosophy in China, 564.
21 For a published statement of this joke, see Wagner, Language, Ontology, and Political Philosophy,
vii. In fact, based on the narrative provided there, Wagner’s study of Wang Bi actually extended over
the course of more than thirty years; according to the narrative published in Language, Ontology, and
Political Philosophy, Rudolf finished his first translation in 1971, and in a 2014 interview reflecting
on his life and work, he says the work actually began in 1969; “Comparative Epistemologies for
Thinking China,” The Research & Educational Center for China Studies and Cross-Taiwan Strait
Relations, Department of Political Science, National Taiwan University,” Oral History of Chinese
Studies Interview with Prof. Rudolf G. Wagner, Interviewed and Transcribed by Marina Rudyak,
July 7, 2014; August 25, 2014; December 15, 2014; 23, accessed August 9, 2022, http://www.china-
studies.taipei/comm2/Rudolf%20G.%20Wagner.pdf.
22 Rudolf G. Wagner, “Philologie, Philosophie und Politik in der Zhengshi-Ära (240–249): Die
Laozi-Schriften des Philosophen Wang Bi [Philology, Philosophy and Politics in the Zhengshi Era
(240–249): The Laozi Writings of the Philosopher Wang Bi]” (Habilitation thesis: Freie Universität
Berlin, 1980).
23 Paul J. Lin, A Translation of Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching and Wang Pi’s Commentary (Ann Arbor:
University of Michigan Press, 1977); and Ariane Rump and Wing-tsit Chan tr., Commentary on the
Lao Tzu by Wang Pi (Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 1979).
24 Howard Lazar Goodman, “Exegetes and Exegeses of the Book of Changes in the Third Century
AD: Historical and Scholastic Contexts for Wang Pi” (PhD diss., Princeton University, 1985).
 The Journal of Transcultural Studies, Supplement (2021) 11

year brought Ina-Marie Bergeron’s Wang Bi: Philosophe du Non-Avoir,25 and

five years later Alan K. L. Chan published a monographic study entitled Two
Visions of the Way: A Study of the Wang Bi and Ho-shang Kung Commentaries
on the Lao-Tzu.26 Over the next several years, Richard John Lynn published
first a translation of Wang Bi’s commentary on the Zhou Yi,27 and then one on
that of the Laozi.28 Rudolf’s three books appeared too late to have influenced
most of these studies. The bibliography of Lynn’s translation of the Laozi did
dutifully include the three journal articles Rudolf published in the 1980s,29 but
his text cited only the Early China article discussed at the beginning of this
essay, and only to dismiss it as either irrelevant or simply wrong.
If JSTOR is a reliable guide (though I am prepared to believe that it is not
such a reliable guide), the three books The Craft of Chinese Commentator:
A Chinese Reading of the Daodejing, and Language, Ontology, and Political
Philosophy in China received only five reviews in total, four of them more or
less suggesting points of disagreement.30 A review by Willard Peterson in the
Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies concludes with several telling criticisms,
but it also includes an appreciation for what Rudolf did accomplish.
In Language, Ontology, and Political Philosophy Wagner is more
interested in ahistorical ideas than intellectual history. He concentrates
on Wang Bi’s work with the Laozi and marginalizes Wang Bi’s equally
influential work on the Zhou yi. Wagner gives scant attention to other

25 Ina-Marie Bergeron, Wang Bi: Philosophe du Non-Avoir (Taipei: Institut Ricci, 1986).
26 Alan K. L. Chan, Two Visions of the Way: A Study of the Wang Bi and Ho-shang Kung
Commentaries on the Lao-Tzu (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1991).
27 Richard John Lynn, The Classic of Changes: A New Translation of the I Ching as Interpreted by
Wang Bi (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994).
28 Richard John Lynn, The Classic of the Way and Virtue: A New Translation of the Tao-te-ching of
Laozi as Interpreted by Wang Bi (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999).
29 Rudolf G. Wagner, “Interlocking Parallel Style: Laozi and Wang Bi,” Asiatische Studien /
Études Asiatiques 34, no. 1 (1980): 18–58; “The Structure of the Laozi’s Pointers”; and “The Wang
Bi Recension of the Laozi.”
30 These reviews are Lévi, review of Language, Ontology, and Political philosophy in China,
560–567; Tze-ki Hon, review of Language, Ontology, and Political Philosophy in China: Wang Bi’s
Scholarly Exploration of the Dark (Xuanxue), by Rudolf G. Wagner, The Journal of Asian Studies 63,
no. 4 (2004): 1114–1116; Peterson, review of Language, Ontology, and Political Philosophy in China,
279–289; Yuet Keung Lo, review of A Chinese Reading of the Daodejing: Wang Bi’s Commentary on
the Laozi with Critical Text and Translation, by Rudolf G. Wagner, Monumenta Serica 54 (2006):
524–530; and Jay Goulding, review of The Craft of a Chinese Commentator: Wang Bi on the Laozi,
and: A Chinese Reading of the Daodejing: Wang Bi’s Commentary on the Laozi with Critical Text
and Translation; and Language, Ontology, and Political Philosophy in China: Wang Bi’s Scholarly
Exploration of the Dark (Xuanxue), by Rudolf G. Wagner, China Review International 14, no. 1
(2007): 61–67.
12 Rudolf Wagner and Wang Bi

thinkers and the rich, complex textual heritage that was fundamental to
the third-century intellectual scene. Wagner stretches our understanding
of how language “ordinarily” worked in third-century Chinese and, in
some cases, twenty-first century English. All of these complaints are
consequences of choices Wagner made in writing the book that he wanted
to present to his readers. Readers can recognize those choices without
wholly condoning them. I am wholly sympathetic to Wagner’s stance that
the meaning in Wang Bi’s writings is not simply revealed in what the
words appear to say. Wagner seeks to go behind the words. 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.31

As I have argued above, I too think the criticism is warranted. However, I

also think that the appreciation is entirely appropriate. What JSTOR cannot
capture is the unpublished influence. I for one have insisted that my students
read A Chinese Reading of the Daodejing, not so much for what they will
learn of Wang Bi’s philosophy itself, but more importantly for the seriousness
with which Rudolf took Wang Bi’s commentary as a medium for expressing
philosophy. More recently, in the context of my writing these remarks, Jean
Lévi has shared with me the observation that Rudolf’s work opened to him
perspectives for understanding Wang Bi, but perhaps even more so for
understanding the Laozi, and that this understanding very much informs his
recent Médaille Stanislas Julien-winning book Les Deux Arbres de la Voie:
Les Entretiens de Confucius, Le Livre de Lao-tseu.32
The foregoing discussion of Rudolf Wagner’s studies of Wang Bi may
well strike readers of this volume of The Journal of Transcultural Studies,
the journal that Rudolf founded, as inappropriately critical. However, in my
experience, Rudolf enjoyed spirited debate. He would have wanted nothing
less. In a wide-ranging interview done in Taiwan in 2014, Rudolf recalled an
occasion when he had been invited to a conference to discuss the achievements
of Guo Moruo 郭沫若 (1892–1978) and gave a talk that was critical of Guo’s
scholarship. He was pleased that his hosts welcomed his comments. Reflecting
on this, he said:
I think it also comes with the responsibility not to play the opportunistic
game of avoiding to say things that might grate the ears of the authorities,

31 Peterson, review of Language, Ontology, and Political Philosophy in China, 289.

32 Jean Lévi, personal communication, February 29, 2020, referring to Jean Lévi, Les Deux Arbres
de la Voie: Les Entretiens de Confucius, Le Livre de Lao-tseu [The two trees of the way: the talks of
Confucius, the book of Laozi] (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2018). I am very grateful to Professor Lévi
for a stimulating discussion of Rudolf Wagner’s work in this communication.
 The Journal of Transcultural Studies, Supplement (2021) 13

but show that intellectuals can take a stand and say what they think clearly
and politely, but also without compromises.33

I hope I have been clear and polite. Rudolf’s work on Wang Bi is challenging
in the very best senses of that word, and does not require any validation from
me; it will surely take its place beside Wang Bi’s own writings as a topic of
scholarship for much more than twenty-three years to come.

33 Wagner, Interviewed and Transcribed by Marina Rudyak, 62.