About the first chapter of the Daodejing (Ariel and Raz)

In this essay we argue that the first chapter was consciously composed as an introduction to the Daojing, and that the author or redactor of the chapter in fact responded to the very deep questions concerning the possibility of discussing the Dao. This response is encoded in the first chapter.

The authorship and redaction of the Laozi is complex and beyond the scope of this essay. The early history of the Laozi remains unclear. The complexities have become even more evident since the discovery of the Guodian manuscripts. Nevertheless, D.C. Lau's early assessment that the Laozi was compiled from a diversity of ancient sources still stands, and his description of the Laozi as an anthology, which is "no more than a collection of passages with only a common tendency in thought', remains apposite. While Lau is certainly correct regarding the early compilation of the text, Liu Xiaogan's explorations of redaction strategies and patterns of editorial work beginning with the earliest recensions reveal distinct editorial intentionality, in the formation of the text, from the Guodian bamboo slips to the Mawangdui silk manuscripts, and through the various recensions that appeared in the following centuries. Whether a "complete" Laozi text circulated prior to the Guodian texts is still debated. There is, however, a general consensus that a complete Laozi that was a source of the Mawangdui versions as well as of the Heshang Gong and Wang Bi recensions took form during the late fourth century B.C.E. We argue that it was at this stage that the first chapter was composed or edited by the redactor of the text to serve as an introduction to the Daojing, and was maintained at that position in later recensions when the Daojing was placed at the head of the Dejing.

In the following pages we argue that the common understanding of this chapter as referring solely to the Dao is misleading. We demonstrate that this opening chapter should be read simultaneously as an introduction to the Daodejing, one which provides the initiated reader with a coded reading guide. We suggest that the redactor of this chapter consciously composed it to be read in two distinct ways. Thus, while on one level the chapter is a metaphysical exposition of the Dao, it simultaneously serves to explicate the problems inherent to talking, or writing, about the Dao (lines 1-4). The chapter then introduces two cognitive approaches to grasping the Dao as well as to reading the text (lines 5-6) and signals that the literary, esthetic, symbolic, and metaphoric depictions of the Dao are in fact simultaneously depictions of the text itself (lines 7-8). This chapter is thus an esoteric introduction to the entire book, providing a guide to reading and understanding the paradoxes inherent to linguistic discussion of the Dao that are reiterated throughout the Daodejing. (from "Anaphors or Cataphors? A discussion of the two Qi graphs in the first chapter of the Daodejing", by Yoav Ariel and Gil Razo, in Philosophy East and West, July 2010)