Who Was Laozi? Tradition, History, and the Dao De Ching
If you begin reading about Daoism, it will not take long before you meet Laozi.
He is traditionally described as an ancient Chinese sage, an older contemporary of Confucius, and the author of the Dao De Ching. In paintings, you may see him as an elderly scholar with a long beard, sometimes riding an ox toward the western frontier.
The difficulty is that we do not know how much of that picture belongs to history and how much belongs to tradition.
That does not make Laozi unimportant. It makes him more interesting.
At Dragon Phoenix, when we study the Dao De Ching, I think it is helpful to understand both sides of the story. We can respect the traditional account of Laozi without pretending that modern scholarship has confirmed every detail. We can also recognize the historical uncertainty without assuming that it somehow makes the teachings less worth considering.
Sometimes knowing what we do not know is an important part of studying an old text carefully.
What Does the Name Laozi Mean?
The Chinese name Laozi (老子) is usually understood as “Old Master.”
The older Wade-Giles romanization writes the same name as Lao-tzu, so you will encounter both spellings in English-language books.
“Laozi” may not originally have functioned as an ordinary personal name in the way we think of one today. It is an honorific title, and scholars have long debated exactly how the figure called Laozi relates to people named Lao Dan, Li Er, and others mentioned in early Chinese sources. The latest Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy discussion emphasizes that although Chinese tradition treats Laozi as a sixth-century BCE thinker, his precise historical identity remains uncertain.
Already, we have a useful distinction.
There is Laozi the traditional sage.
There is Laozi as a possible historical person.
And there is the Laozi, another name for the text later known as the Dao De Ching.
Those three are connected.
They are not necessarily identical questions.
The Traditional Story of Laozi
Much of the familiar biography comes from Sima Qian, the great Han dynasty historian who lived around 145–86 BCE.
In his Shiji, or Records of the Grand Historian, Sima Qian tells us that Laozi came from the state of Chu. His family name was Li, his given name was Er, and he was also known as Dan. He supposedly worked as a keeper of archival records at the Zhou royal court.
According to the story, Confucius consulted Laozi about ritual.
That meeting became especially important in later tradition because it positioned Laozi as the older sage. Versions of encounters between Confucius and Lao Dan also appear in other early Chinese literature, including the Zhuangzi.
Then comes the most famous part of the story.
Laozi saw that the Zhou world was declining and decided to leave civilization behind. Traveling west, he reached a frontier pass. The official there, Yin Xi, recognized him and asked him to record his teachings before disappearing.
Laozi then wrote a work of roughly 5,000 Chinese characters discussing Dao and de.
That work became the Dao De Ching.
Then Laozi continued west.
According to Sima Qian, no one knew where he went.
It is a wonderful story.
It is also very difficult to verify historically.
Did Laozi Really Meet Confucius?
Maybe.
But we cannot responsibly say that we know he did.
Tradition places Laozi in the sixth century BCE, making him roughly contemporary with or somewhat older than Confucius, who lived from 551 to 479 BCE. Sima Qian's account, however, was written centuries after the period it describes.
Modern scholars therefore approach the meeting cautiously.
Stories of Confucius consulting Laozi may preserve memories of older traditions surrounding a figure called Lao Dan. They may also have developed as literary stories in which one philosophical perspective is used to question another.
That possibility matters because ancient Chinese philosophical works frequently teach through conversations that are not necessarily intended as transcripts of historical events.
Imagine a story in which Confucius meets someone who challenges one of his assumptions.
The philosophical question raised by the conversation may remain interesting even if we cannot prove that the conversation happened.
History asks:
Did these two men actually meet?
Philosophy can ask:
What is this story trying to make us consider?
Those are different questions.
We do not have to choose only one of them.
Did Laozi Write the Dao De Ching?
This is where modern research becomes especially interesting.
The traditional answer is simple:
Yes. Laozi wrote the Dao De Ching.
Modern textual scholarship suggests a more complicated history.
The current Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy account describes the Laozi as probably developing through collections of sayings committed to writing over time. Different collections with overlapping material seem to have circulated before gradually being consolidated, with something approaching a stable form probably emerging by around the middle of the third century BCE.
Livia Kohn similarly describes the Dao De Ching as traditionally associated with Laozi while emphasizing its long textual development. The book consists largely of sayings and aphoristic verse, and surviving ancient manuscripts demonstrate that different forms of its material circulated.
This makes it difficult to picture one man sitting down at the western gate one afternoon and writing precisely the 81 chapters found in a modern paperback.
That does not prove there was never a Laozi.
It does suggest that the history of the text is probably more complicated than the traditional story of its composition.
What Did Archaeologists Discover?
Two discoveries have been particularly important for understanding the early history of the Dao De Ching.
The Guodian bamboo manuscripts, dating to around 300 BCE, contain material corresponding to roughly one-third of the later received text.
The Mawangdui silk manuscripts, placed in a tomb sealed in 168 BCE, preserve complete versions of the work, although their ordering and wording differ from the standard version familiar today.
These manuscripts show us that the Dao De Ching had a real textual history.
It circulated.
It changed.
Material appeared in different arrangements.
Versions were copied and transmitted.
Eventually, editions and commentaries helped establish the form that later generations came to regard as standard. Kohn notes that the received tradition was influenced especially strongly by the edition and commentary associated with Wang Bi, the third-century CE philosopher whose interpretation continues to shape the way the book is read.
The archaeological evidence therefore gives us something more interesting than a simple choice between:
“Laozi wrote it.”
or
“Laozi did not write it.”
We can instead ask how a body of teachings became a book.
Was Laozi a Real Person?
There is no universally accepted answer.
Some scholars regard Laozi as essentially legendary. Others allow for the possibility that a historical teacher called Lao Dan or Laozi stood somewhere behind the later traditions, even if the biography attached to him cannot be verified.
The stronger conclusion is that we cannot securely reconstruct the Laozi of tradition as a historical individual who personally authored the entire received Dao De Ching. Recent scholarship generally treats the text as composite and the traditional biography with considerable caution.
There is an important difference between saying:
“We cannot confirm the traditional biography.”
and saying:
“We have proved that no person behind the tradition ever existed.”
Historical evidence often does not give us that kind of certainty.
Sometimes the most accurate answer is simply that the evidence does not allow us to know.
That may feel unsatisfying.
It is also intellectually useful.
Does It Matter Who Wrote the Dao De Ching?
Yes and no.
Authorship matters if we are trying to understand when the text developed, what historical problems its authors were responding to, and how different strands of early Chinese thought influenced one another.
Those are important questions.
But authorship is not the only question.
Suppose we somehow discovered tomorrow that one particular person wrote every line.
Would Chapter 11 suddenly become more useful?
Would an image of water mean something different?
Would the questions about desire, simplicity, leadership, force, or knowing when enough is enough disappear?
Probably not.
Now imagine the opposite.
Suppose we could establish beyond doubt that the book developed through generations of teachers and editors.
Would that automatically make its ideas worthless?
Again, probably not.
Knowing where an idea came from can help us understand it.
But the identity of the person who first expressed an idea does not decide whether that idea deserves our attention.
We still have to think.
Laozi and the Rise of Daoism
There is another complication.
Calling Laozi simply “the founder of Daoism” can be useful for a beginner, but historically it can also be misleading.
The Dao De Ching and Zhuangzi became foundational to what later scholars identified as a Daoist philosophical tradition. Organized religious Daoist communities, however, arose much later.
By the second century CE, Laozi had taken on an explicitly divine role. The early Celestial Master tradition traced its authority to a revelation from the deified Laozi—known as the Most High Lord Lao—to Zhang Daoling.
Laozi therefore occupies several roles across Chinese history.
He is a sage.
A supposed author.
A philosophical symbol.
A legendary figure.
And, in religious Daoist traditions, a divine being.
Those roles developed over time and should not simply be collapsed into one another.
At Dragon Phoenix, our study is primarily concerned with the philosophical teachings associated with Laozi and the Dao De Ching. That is different from religious instruction, though understanding the larger history helps us avoid pretending that philosophical Daoism represents the entirety of the Daoist tradition.
Why Would the Story of Laozi Survive?
Perhaps there is another question worth asking.
Why did generations of people continue telling this particular story?
An old scholar sees society declining.
Rather than pursuing more status, he leaves.
At the border, he is asked to put his understanding into words.
He writes a short book.
Then he disappears.
Whether every detail happened exactly that way is a historical question.
But the character of the story fits remarkably well with themes later readers find in the Dao De Ching: humility, withdrawal from fame, suspicion of excessive ambition, simplicity, and the limitations of trying to hold too tightly to things.
The story itself began to teach.
That does not make it factual.
It means traditions can communicate values through the way they remember a person.
We still need to distinguish history from legend.
But legend can be worth studying too.
What Can Laozi Teach Us If We Are Not Sure Who He Was?
Perhaps the uncertainty is appropriate.
The Dao De Ching repeatedly asks us to be cautious about names, categories, certainty, and the belief that our description of something is the thing itself.
Then we encounter its supposed author and discover that we cannot put him neatly into a box either.
Was Laozi one person?
A title?
A memory of Lao Dan?
A literary figure built around older teachings?
A name eventually attached to a collection of traditions?
Perhaps some combination?
We may never know.
But we can still read the text.
We can ask what it means.
We can disagree with it.
We can compare interpretations.
We can notice where an ancient idea illuminates something in our experience and where it does not.
The historical question and the philosophical question can sit beside one another.
Neither has to eliminate the other.
Studying Laozi and the Dao De Ching at Dragon Phoenix
The Dragon Phoenix Dao Philosophy Membership, part of the Dragon Phoenix Online Academy, provides a place to explore the Dao De Ching and related Daoist texts in this spirit.
The purpose is not for me to tell you which interpretation you have to accept. We use readings, explanations, stories, and questions to examine an idea from different directions and give you room to develop your own understanding.
The membership currently includes immediate access to approximately 100 short video lectures, generally 4–15 minutes each, covering the Dao De Ching, Lieh Tzu, I-Ching, Internal Alchemy, and related subjects. New teachings are normally added at around two per week. There is no required viewing order, prerequisite knowledge, quiz, assessment, or martial arts training.
Optional discussions provide a friendly place to compare interpretations and reflect on the material with other students. I contribute from time to time, but participation is never required. Quiet study is just as welcome. The membership is currently $15 per month or $150 per year, and Online Academy members whose existing membership includes Dao Philosophy already have access.
So, Who Was Laozi?
Tradition gives us an answer.
Laozi was the Old Master: an ancient sage, keeper of the Zhou archives, teacher consulted by Confucius, and author of the Dao De Ching before disappearing into the West.
History gives us a more cautious answer.
There may have been a historical figure behind these traditions, but the familiar biography cannot be independently confirmed, and the Dao De Ching probably developed through a longer process involving collections of teachings and multiple stages of transmission.
We do not have to discard either perspective.
We only need to remember which is which.
Then we can return to the question that has kept Laozi relevant for more than two thousand years:
What do the teachings attributed to him ask us to see differently?
Scholarly Sources and Further Reading
Alan K. L. Chan, “Laozi,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, substantially revised 2025. A detailed examination of the Laozi tradition, historical questions, textual development, and interpretation.
Livia Kohn, The Daode Jing: A Guide. Oxford University Press, 2019. A scholarly introduction to the text's authorship, manuscripts, historical development, concepts, and reception.
Franciscus Verellen, “Laozi,” in Finding Wisdom in East Asian Classics. Columbia University Press, 2011. Discusses the ancient Laozi legend and the text's development in early Chinese thought and religion.
Gil Raz, “What Is Daoism and Who Is Its Founder?” in Varieties of Religious Invention: Founders and Their Functions in History. Oxford University Press, 2015. Examines Laozi's relationship to the later development of organized Daoist religion.