The Way and the Natural Virtue by the Old Master道德经Daodejing

 As a small collection of teachings and definitions of the two terms "dao" 道 and "de" 德, this book is as a Han time composition not the oldest Daoist writing, but purports to be the oldest, written by a 6th century philosopher named Li Dan 李聃, called the "old Master" Laozi 老子, who was forced to lay down his thoughts as a book when he left China to the West, disappointed of his contemporarians. His philosophy is full of riddle-like similes and parables to explain what is meant by dao and de. In a time of neverending war, chaos and of social changes, the Taoist thinkers tried to find a principle of constancy and invariability and found it in nature and cosmos. Man, like all the "ten thousand beings" (wanwu 萬物), are tied up in a universal context that is founded upon a principle called dao 道 (a word otherwise meaning "way, street"). Dao is a not-being (wu 无) that determines being and disappearing, change and steadyness of all things within the cosmos. It is originator of a evolutionary-quantitative growing of all things. Unlike the greek philosophers, Taoism does not see a special matter like air or fire as the ground material for all existing things. The magical influence of dao on every single thing is called de 德 (a word that in its Confucian sense means "virtue, good manners"). Taoist philosophy does not resolve the dialectical problem of the unitiy and quietness of dao and the diversity of the everchanging beings, but instead does accept that everything develops into its counterpart, being connected in a continual unity. The quietness of the universe is only achieved when man himself behaves quietly, does not study nor desire nor act (wuwei 无为) in order not to endanger the stability of a self-moving universal stability. The ideal society in this state is the innocent village community.

The earliest and and one of the most important commentaries is that of Wang Bi 王弼 (d. 249).