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Thinker · 226 CE–249 CE

Wang Bi

王弼 · 王輔嗣 · Wáng Bì

A precocious scholar who died at twenty-three, Wang Bi, along with He Yan, was a chief architect of Xuanxue ("Learning of the Mysterious"), often called Neo-Daoism, which reread the "Laozi" and the "Yijing" through the concept of wu ("non-being" or "nothingness") as the metaphysical root of all things, reconciling Daoist and Confucian vocabularies within Wei-dynasty elite intellectual culture.

Intellectual setting

Wang Bi belonged to the elite salon culture of "pure conversation" (qingtan) in the Wei capital Luoyang, under the patronage of the reformist minister Cao Shuang and his associate He Yan. When the Sima family seized power in the coup of 249 CE, He Yan and Cao Shuang were executed; Wang Bi, though not politically purged, died of illness later that same year.

Key ideas

Wu (nothingness) as the root of being

In his "Laozi" commentary, Wang Bi argued that the myriad things (wanwu) all arise from and depend upon wu, a formless non-being prior to and generative of the differentiated world of being (you); grasping this root allows the sage to respond to change without being enslaved to particular things.

Forgetting the words to grasp the meaning

In his "Zhouyi Lüeli" and "Yijing" commentary, Wang Bi argued that the images and words of the Book of Changes are instruments for grasping meaning (yi) and should be discarded once that meaning is attained, a hermeneutic principle that shaped Chinese textual interpretation for centuries afterward.

Legacy

Wang Bi's commentaries on the "Laozi" and the "Yijing" became the standard editions of both classics for the rest of Chinese history, foundational to Xuanxue and later absorbed into Song-dynasty Neo-Confucian metaphysics; his hermeneutic distinction between words, images, and meaning influenced Chinese philosophy, literary theory, and Buddhist exegesis alike.