Laozi, Zhuangzi, and the Philosophical Dao

Laozi, traditionally credited as the founder of Taoist thought, is a figure whose very historicity is debated among scholars. The historian Sima Qian, writing in the first century BCE, presented Laozi as an older contemporary of Confucius who served as an archivist at the Zhou court before departing westward and, at a mountain pass, dictating the text that bears his name to a gatekeeper. Most modern scholars regard this biography as legendary and consider the text itself a composite work assembled over several centuries rather than the product of a single author. Laozi’s status as founding figure took on organized religious form centuries later, when Zhang Daoling, in 142 CE in Sichuan province, founded the Way of the Celestial Masters (Tianshi Dao), the first organized Taoist religious movement, which revered a divinized Laozi as a manifestation of the Dao itself.