郭店楚簡 『老子』의 ‘自然’ 思想과 그 展開

Abstract

Ziran 自然 is a core concept in Chinese thought, and it was first established as a philosophical concept by thinkers known as daojia 道家 or "Daoists." There are several works deriving from the daojia, and in this article I take up for consideration the Laozi 老子. Some light has been shed on concrete aspects of the formation of the Laozi as a result of the discovery of the Mawangdui 馬王堆 silk-manuscript and Guodian 郭店 bamboo-slip texts of the Laozi, and the notion of ziran as found in the current text of the Laozi did not emerge in its present form within a short period, but gradually evolved with the passage of time. In the Guodian text, which preserves a comparatively early form of the Laozi, the "non-action" (wuwei 無爲) of the subjective agent in the form of dao 道 or the sage is the cause, and this results in or guarantees the ziran-i.e., autogeny, autonomy, and spontaneity-of objective entities in the form of the myriad things and people. At the same time, from the very beginning there existed two dilemmatic and contradictory standpoints such that if either objective ziran or subjective function or capacity was overly emphasized or affirmed, its opposite would be weakened or negated. From the late Warring States period through to the start of the Former Han 漢 greater emphasis came to be given to the latter standpoint, and this coincided with moves to establish on firm philosophical foundations contemporary demands for the strengthening of the ruler's power and the establishment of unitary rule at a time of transition from the later Warring States period to the unified empire of the Qin 秦 and Han. When considered thus from the vantage point of the history of intellectual thought, the Laozi is, I believe, of great significance in that it was the first work in the pre-Qin period to recognize the autogeny, autonomy, and spontaneity of all things.