Rob Patterson

I'm a bit confused with who is considered a Taoist writer and who isn't. Laozi and Zhuangzi fall squarely in the Taoist camp for me. But what about Wang Chung or Wang Bi. There' considered neoTaoists, but their writings isn't anything like Laozi or Zhuangzi. They often come totally different conclusions. How can they be considered Taoists? -Rob

How can neoTaoists like Wang Chung and Yang Zhu considered Taoist when their writings come to far different conclusions from the original Taoists? When I think of Taoism I think of Laozi and Zhuangzi, but I have a hard time thinking that the neoTaoist can fall into the same category. My Taoism professor wants to know how all the above mentioned writers can be considered Taoist, but I'm not sure they can be. Possibly from a historical perspective, they are Taoists, because they all called themselves Taoists. But doesn't that mean that Taoism loses all meaning meaning as a philosophy if there aren't any unifying themes? Thanks for your help. -Rob

hello everyone, As you have probably guessed I'm new the site. I am a photography student at university and I am minoring in East Asian Studies. I am currently in a Taoism class at school. I have to say that the teacher is terrible. Our readings mostly come from an e-book that he wrote which is about 50 pages. In the class we read Laozi and Zhuangzi as well as some readings by Wang Bi, Wang Chuang and others. It's an online class so I really don't get any kind of lectures to give me guidance on the readings. I hope I will get to share a love of Taoism with you all in the future.

In both the Taoteqing and Zhuangzi learning is identified as useless. Both Laozi and Zhuangzi are critical of scholarship and learning in general. However, they certainly did not find their own views as useless. How can their claims be defend since the appear to be self-contradictory?