Laozi’s Conception of Justice in the Daodejing: Distinguishing the Constant Dao from the Dao of Heaven

Abstract

Throughout the pages of the Daodejing, Laozi reveals a complex conception of justice. Understanding it demands that we strictly distinguish the four central notions around which it is structured: the Constant Dao, the Dao of Humans, the Dao of Heaven, and Heaven and Earth. After situating Laozi’s conception of justice in the opening section, this study then examines the ancient ritual background from which he injected innovative content into these four notions before moving on to a textual analysis of their deployment throughout the Daodejing. In contrast to other modern Western analyses of the text’s philosophy that focus on the naturalism of the Constant Dao while disregarding the theism of the Dao of Heaven, this study attempts to re-envision the text’s complementarity of the religious and the philosophical.