![]() ![]() Only appearing three times in the second (more contemplative) half of the Zhuangzi, early Daoists may have avoided the term for its association with Legalism before ultimately co-opting its governmental sense as well. The Zhuangzi itself can be associated more with the second half of the Warring States period, ridiculing moralizing use of the historical genre, e.g. This "conception of the ruler's role as a supreme arbiter, who keeps the essential power firmly in his grasp" while leaving details to ministers, has a "deep influence on the theory and practice of Chinese monarchy", and played a "crucial role in the promotion of the autocratic tradition of the Chinese polity", ensuring the ruler's power and the stability of the polity. Called "rule by non-activity" and strongly advocated by Han Fei, during the Han dynasty until the reign of Han Wudi, rulers confined their activity "chiefly to the appointment and dismissal of his high officials", a plainly Legalist practice inherited from the Qin dynasty. 337 BCE) as Daoists became more interested in the exercise of power by the ruler. ![]() The Zhuangzi does not seem to indicate a definitive philosophical idea, simply that the sage "does not occupy himself with the affairs of the world".Ĭreel believed the second sense to have been imported from the earlier governmental thought of Legalist Shen Buhai (400 BCE – c. Creel believed that "contemplative Daoism" came first, and "purposive Daoism" second.ĭescribed as a source of serenity in Daoist thought, only rarely do Daoist texts suggest that ordinary people could gain political power through wu wei. The first is quite in line with the contemplative Daoism of the Zhuangzi.
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