Laozi
Laozi 老子: the traditional author of the Daodejing — what the Shiji biography says, what it admits it does not know, and the deification of the Old Master in religious Daoism.
Direct answer: Laozi (老子, “the Old Master”) is the traditional author of the Daodejing and the foundational figure of Daoism. Everything known about him comes from traditions recorded centuries after his supposed lifetime — chiefly the Shiji biography (c. 100 BCE), which itself admits uncertainty about who he was. The biography is therefore read as a document of how the Han period imagined the figure, not as verified history. In religious Daoism Laozi was deified as Taishang Laojun (太上老君, Most High Lord Lao), and most later “Laozi-spoken” scriptures (Qingjing Jing, Neiguan Jing) are attributed to this divine form.
What the Shiji says
- Name: Li Er (李耳), style Dan (聃), from Quren Village, Li Township, Ku County, in the state of Chu.
- Office: archivist of the Zhou court (守藏室之史).
- The Confucius encounter: Confucius, visiting Zhou to ask about ritual, is told to drop his pride, desires, and ambitions. Confucius reports to his disciples: “Birds — I know they can fly; fish — I know they can swim… But as for the dragon, I cannot know how it rides wind and cloud into the sky. Today I have seen Laozi — he is like a dragon!” (其猶龍邪).
- The book: seeing Zhou’s decline, Laozi left; at the pass, the keeper Yin Xi asked him to write down his teaching, “so he wrote a book in two parts, expressing the meaning of Dao and De in five thousand and some characters, and departed; no one knows where he ended” (著書上下篇，言道德之意五千餘言而去，莫知其所終).
What the Shiji itself flags as unknown
The biography candidly records rival identifications and legendary claims:
- “Some say” he was Lao Laizi, a Chu author of fifteen chapters; “some say” he was the Zhou historian Dan who met Duke Xian of Qin — “whether Dan was Laozi or not, the world does not know” (或曰儋即老子，或曰非也，世莫知其然否).
- The ages claimed (160 or 200+ years) are explained by his “cultivating the Dao and nourishing longevity” — a hagiographic motif, not a biographical datum.
- The genealogy given (descendants holding office down to the Han) contradicts the supposed sixth-century date on its face; scholars treat it as a later family’s claim.
Conclusion of the source itself: “Laozi was a hidden gentleman” (老子，隱君子也) — an admission that the person resists documentation.
From philosopher to god
- Warring States–Han: “Laozi” is one name among several (Lao Dan, Lao Laizi) attached to the emerging Way-and-Virtue teaching; Sima Qian pairs him with Zhuang Zhou as a school.
- Eastern Han: Laozi begins to be worshipped; the Laozi bianhua jing (Scripture of the Transformations of Laozi) presents him as a cosmic being appearing in successive ages.
- Later Daoism: as Taishang Laojun he becomes one of the Three Pure Ones (Sanqing) — the highest triad of the Daoist pantheon — and the patron of scripture. The Qingjing Jing and Neiguan Jing are framed as his teachings.
Why the distinction matters for this knowledge base
Attributions to “Laozi” in contemplative literature are ascriptions of authority, not evidence of authorship. When a Tang text says “Laojun said,” the claim being made is about the teaching’s divine source — a religious claim, labeled as such. The historical question (who composed the Daodejing) is separate: the earliest manuscripts (Guodian, pre-300 BCE) already show a compiled, layered text (see the daodejing page).
Editorial synthesis
Laozi is best treated as two figures kept deliberately separate: the historical person, about whom the earliest source confesses ignorance; and the traditional/deified figure, whose authority structures two millennia of Daoist scripture. Mixing them — presenting the dragon story as biography, or the archivist as the author of Tang scriptures — is the single most common error in popular writing about Daoism, and this site documents the separation explicitly.
Uncertainty is preserved: whether a single historical person named Li Er existed, and whether he composed any part of the Daodejing, cannot be established from surviving evidence.
The earliest surviving biographical notice is Shiji Biographies of Laozi and Zhuang Zhou (c. 100 BCE).
Sources
- Shiji (Records of the Grand Historian), ch. 63, 'Laozi Han Fei liezhuan' (c. 100 BCE). Wikisource: https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/史記/卷063
- Kohn, Livia. God of the Dao: Lord Lao in History and Myth. Center for Chinese Studies, University of Michigan, 1998