Neo-Daoism

Chinese sources call this movement Xuanxue, “Learning in the Profound”, after the Laozi’s description of the Dao as dark and hidden (xuan). It arose in the third century CE, when the fall of the Han dynasty left intellectuals looking for a new basis for order, and ran roughly until the sixth. Its core texts were the Yijing (Classic of Changes), the Laozi and the Zhuangzi, known together as the “Three Profound” works, with commentaries on them.

Despite its English name, it was not a partisan Daoist school and did not set out to overturn the teachings of Confucius. Its thinkers, among them He Yan, Wang Bi and Guo Xiang, held a wide range of views. Many sought the meaning of the Dao in the concept of nothingness (wu), but understood it in different ways; they also and debated human nature, capacity and naturalness (ziran).