He Yan’s “Essay on Dao” and “Essay on the Nameless”

He Yan is often considered the first of the so-called Wei-Jin Xuanxue scholars. In the fragments of his writings we can see, perhaps for the first time, philosophical elaborations on Laozi’s dao (Way, method). In particular, He Yan focuses on the relationship between dao and things, as well as dao, things, and naming. Interestingly, while the vocabulary employed by He Yan perfectly matches the Laozi, his descriptions seem to flip Laozi’s arguments on their head. This is made especially clear in He Yan’s discussion of the famous sage-ruler Yao, whom he uses as an analogy for understanding the namelessness of dao. He Yan references Lunyu 8.19, where Yao is taken to be too complete to be named, to discuss the ineffability of dao. This seems at odds with Laozi’s constant appeal to the emptiness of dao. More importantly, however, it demonstrates an important new trend in philosophical scholarship—namely, the conflation of arguments in the Lunyu and Laozi’s Daodejing.