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Laozi

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Laozi (), also romanized as Lao Tzu among other ways, was a legendary Chinese philosopher and author of the ''Tao Te Ching'' (''Laozi''), one of the foundational texts of Taoism alongside the ''Zhuangzi''. The name, literally meaning 'Old Master', was likely intended to portray an archaic anonymity that could converse with Confucianism. Modern scholarship generally regards his biographical details as later inventions, and his opus a collaboration. Traditional accounts addend him as , born in the 6th-centuryBC state of Chu during China's Spring and Autumn period (). Serving as the royal archivist for the Zhou court at Wangcheng (modern Luoyang), he met and impressed Confucius () on one occasion, composing the ''Tao Te Ching'' in a single session before retiring into the western wilderness.

A central figure in Chinese culture, Laozi is generally considered the founder of Taoism. He was claimed and revered as the ancestor of the Tang dynasty (618–907) and is similarly honored in modern China as the progenitor of the popular surname Li. In some sects of Taoism, Chinese Buddhism, Confucianism, and Chinese folk religion, it is held that he then became an immortal hermit. Certain Taoist devotees held that the ''Tao Te Ching'' was the avatarembodied as a bookof the god Laojun, one of the Three Pure Ones of the Taoist pantheon, though few philosophers believe this.

The ''Tao Te Ching'' had a profound influence on Chinese religious movements and on subsequent Chinese philosophers, who annotated, commended, and criticized the texts extensively. In the 20th century, textual criticism by historians led to theories questioning Laozi's timing or even existence, positing that the received text of the ''Tao Te Ching'' was not composed until the Warring States period (221 BC), and was the product of multiple authors.

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