Wenzi xin lun, and: Wenzi ziliao tansuo, and: Huainanzi yu Wenzi kaobian (review)

Through the ages, only a small number of scholars have ventured a study of the Wenzi, a politico-philosophical text ascribed to a disciple of Laozi . The Wenzi, composed more than two thousand years ago, underwent major revisions in the third or fourth century C.E., after which the original version was no longer transmitted. Much of the content of the revised and transmitted version can be found in other texts, most notably in the Huainanzi. In fact, almost 80 percent of the transmitted Wenzi corresponds to the Huainanzi. From the eighth century onward, this unusual phenomenon made the vast majority of scholars, who favored the historical priority of the latter, reject the former on account of its alleged plagiarism. However, general scholarly disinterest in the Wenzi abruptly ended in 1973, when a fragmentary bamboo copy of the original text was discovered in a Han dynasty tomb (dated 56 B.C.E.) in Dingzhou , Hebei Province. This spectacular archeological discovery sparked renewed interest in the Wenzi, mainly among Chinese and Japanese scholars—a trend that is clear from a recent bibliography of contemporary research on Han philosophers, which lists more than forty articles on the Wenzi published in the past two decades alone (Chen 1998, pp. 449-452). Each of these articles, however, focuses on one aspect of the Wenzi only. Aware of the need for an overarching study, Fu Jen University professor Ding Yuanzhi embarked on his Wenzi project in 1995. Less than five years later, the project was concluded with the publication of three books, totaling over sixteen hundred pages. These three volumes are interdependent, and yet each one has a distinct focus; they can be read as separate entities, and they will be reviewed accordingly.

Wenzi xin lun (New perspectives on the Wenzi)

The first of the three volumes—their preferred order indicated by Ding Yuanzhi himself in the Preface—is an in-depth study of the Wenzi, in five chapters.

In chapter 1, Ding discusses Wenzi the philosopher and Wenzi the text. He first quotes several ancient works that mention a certain "Wenzi," and then summarizes speculations by scholars of the past on the historical identity of this wise man. One of his conclusions is that Wenzi was indeed a disciple, or at least a later follower, of Laozi, and that he played an important role in the development of Laozi's thought. As to the text, Ding discusses issues such as the status of the bamboo manuscript of the Wenzi, the transmission of the received Wenzi, and the relationship between the transmitted Wenzi and the Huainanzi.

Chapter 2 is devoted to the Dingzhou Wenzi manuscript, which, unlike the transmitted Wenzi, appears to have consisted entirely of dialogues. Ding first outlines the relationship between the bamboo fragments and the received text, then elaborates on the philosophy of the original Wenzi, that is, of the hypothetical Urtext of the Wenzi of which the Dingzhou manuscript is the only surviving copy to date...