Wang Bi

Wang Bi (226–249) was a Chinese philosopher and politician who lived during the Three Kingdoms period, in the state of Cao Wei. He belongs to the Xuanxue, or "Learning of the Mysterious," a movement that reread the Daoist and Confucian classics through a metaphysical lens. His career was brief, yet his commentaries are among the most influential works of later Chinese thought.

He came from a family of scholars: his grandfather was related to Wang Can, one of the Seven Scholars of Jian'an, and his father inherited Wang Can's library of roughly 10,000 volumes. Wang Bi held a minor administrative post and died of an epidemic at the age of 23.

His principal works are commentaries on the Tao Te Ching and the I Ching. In them he argues that the origin of things is non-being, a formless and nameless reality that underlies everything that exists, and that wisdom means grasping this base and acting in harmony with it rather than imposing artifice. In his reading of the I Ching, the meaning of a hexagram lies in the relations among its lines and the intention that joins them, more than in its images or predictions. His commentary on the Tao Te Ching preserved a text of the classic that was prized until the Mawangdui manuscripts were found in 1973. A commentary on the Analects of Confucius is also known, surviving only in quotations.

His influence proved lasting: his interpretations shaped how both classics were read in China afterward, and they are still studied and translated today.