Das Bambus-Wenzi

Before the excavation of Dingxian in Hebei Province (1973), the work Wenzi, which was already mentioned in the Hanshu bibliography (around 90 AD) and attributed to a student of the legendary Daoism founder Laozi (6th century BC), had long been disputed in terms of its authenticity. The question of its genuineness was mostly determined by comparing it with the Huainanzi, a philosophical work from the Early Han period, to which almost four-fifths of the traditional Wenzi has parallels. The manuscript of the Wenzi, unearthed in Dingxian and referred to as the Bamboo Wenzi due to its writing medium, not only sheds light on the relationship between the traditional Wenzi and the Huainanzi in a nuanced way, thereby undermining blanket judgments, but also provides many insights into the philosophical foundations of the Wenzi, even before its significant editorial revision into the transmitted form. This work represents an attempt to provide as comprehensive a picture as possible of the philosophy of the Bamboo Wenzi, as well as to answer the intriguing questions regarding the identity of its protagonists, its argumentative structure, and the time and place of its origin.