| Laozi is the most precious treasure in the Chinese Culture. It is considered as the king of all bibles. Though has only 5000 words, its thoughts are so deep and broad that endless people tried to study and decipher Laozi in history. There are piles of Works about Laozi. Contemporary scholars are as fruitful in Laozi study. These researchers all have their own shining points. Today, Laozi's thoughts still leave us a lot to dig deep and discuss further.Now Chinese is at the age of renaissance of the Daode spirit and recover of our ethnic spirit, we are thirsty even than before to revisit our root from the origin of our culture. Laozi's thoughts embrace all culture heritage beforehand. Its also provides great spiritual nutrition for all schools afterwards. It is the source of our Chinese culture.Laozi and his book induced great debate and have suffered several times of distortion in history. Different versions of Laozi are different in sequence of sections and chapters, some are even different in crucial points. The popular version is the most influential version. The Mawangdui version is the most genuine version ever discovered. There are significant differences between these two. If we take into consideration of other versions, things will be even more "noisy". But lucky enough, these difference will not affect the basic ideas of Laozi,we can still take abundant nutrition from itThe two most crucial ideas of Laozi is Dao and De. People used to divide Laozi into Dao section and De section. In Laozi, the word "Dao" appears 69 times, the word "De" appears 43 times. From these points, we can find the importance of Dao and De. In this thesis, we will discuss its originality, self-fulfilling, regulatory and authenticity, sacrificing spirit, non-sensible, non-describable, meditatable and ultimate characteristics. "De" has ethic meaning of personality and philosophical meaning of "origin of all things". This is the energy side of "De". Meanwhile, De is lower than Dao in ethical level. From the originality, the Dao creates the De. "The appearance of the De follows the Dao."We enter the Dao from the De. This is a clear definition of relation of Dao and De.How to deal with the relationship between Dao, De all things and human? The popular version of Laozi's Chapter 51 says "Dao creates, De nurtures, all things forms and all trends develops. So all things respect the dao and value the De". This chapter related the Dao and the De in a smart way and elucidates their relation with all things. The meaning is that all things are created from empty Dao, nurtured by De. Formation of all things is all from Dao and De. The development of all things is to discipline oneself, nurture and practice Dao De. Therefore, "respect the Dao and value the De" is the center of Laozi.From the analysis of Dao and De, we believe "respect the Dao" means, we need to follow the rule of Dao ,work according to the law of nature(including the basic social larw and natural law).We must respect the equality of all beings. Do not differentiate others and myself, consider everything as a whole. Respect all existence; consider Dao as our ultimate home. "Value the De"means: we consider the De as the criteria of our thoughts and behavior. We must know the De,emphasize the De, follow the De, think in the way of the De, behave as the De; We must educate other people by the De, observe people by the De; We must develop ourselves by accumulating the De. Laozi says "we can conquer all by accumulating the De". Only if we can "accumulating the De", can we get close to the meaning of the Dao, can we grasp the rule of nature. This is the deficit of modern people.Let's go back and revisit some phenomena that against the Dao and the De. We will discover that, the biggest mistake of human being is to do everything they can to develop itself. Under the guidance of this ideology, people lose the respect and fear for the nature, they become extremely short-sighted under the drive of benefit. They don't know what is Dao and De, always break the restriction of nature and receive the revenge of nature. That is the nature punishment of cause-result chain. Laozi is a philosopher with great wisdom. Laozi's thoughts are based on people and for the development of people. Laozi discovers the natural way of survival which fits the universe and human nature best Laozi's discussion on Dao and De, is for the healthy development of human nature. The thoughts of Laozi will return to human, and elucidates the trends for human.Therefore, the core value of Laozi-"respect the Dao and value the De", should become the basic belief of all human and fundamental law of all things' harmonious development, both in ethic value and philosophical value.In social development, belief crisis is the root of instability. "Respect the Dao and value the De" is the natural belief of Chinese culture. To emphasize this, we can remedy current social crisis on belief, deficits in religion and emergency of exotic religions. This can help us set up righteous belief, promote Chinese spirit, and help the society to develop in a healthy and balanced way.Meanwhile, to promote the value of "respect the Dao and value the De", consider the "Dao and De" as parents, all confliction and fights will be greatly reduced. Just like we Chinese has the same heritage and mutual acknowledgement. All descendants of Dao and De should have the same heritage and intimacy. Therefore, thoughts of "respect the Dao and value the De"are the social foundation of harmonious society.I wish this thesis can help the social promotion of Laozi's thoughts. It can help normal people to understand the deep laozi's thoughts and apply them in their daily life.
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