Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching on the Harmony of Nature and Society

The author of the Tao Te Ching was an ancient Chinese philosopher of the 6th-4th centuries B. C., one of the founders of Taoism, Lao Tzu. Lao Tzu's followers, the Taoists, reject Confucian teaching. "The Tao Te Ching is among the philosophical works that make up the treasury of world culture. The multivalence of concepts expressed by the signs of Chinese writing - hieroglyphs, the brevity of statements, the depth of content, lead to an essentially ambiguous interpretation of it, and encourage researchers to refer to the primary source again and again. The philosophy of Lao Tzu is usually referred to as "dark", inaccessible to the uninitiated, set out in an unusual cryptic style and with many interpretations. On the contrary, the translation published here presents the Tao Te Ching as a work that adheres entirely to the mainstream of traditional Chinese literature, containing justifications and descriptions of the best order of society. The wisdom of the thinker and humanist Lao Tzu is such that the way he proposed, namely, observing the requirements of the law of preservation of life, is relevant even in our troubled times. This book is intended for those interested in Eastern philosophy and culture, as well as the problem of the health of the Earth - ecology.