The Origin of the Integration of the Yijing and the Laozi: Yan Zun’s Laozi Zhigui and Its Philosophical Construction and Historical Impact

Yan Zun’s Laozi Zhigui is the earliest surviving commentary that systematically interprets the Laozi through the lens of the Yijing. It holds pioneering significance in the history of Laozi studies and intellectual history. This paper systematically examines its ways of quoting the Yijing—explicit citation, implicit appropriation, and in-depth infiltration—to reveal Yan Zun’s interpretive strategy of reconstructing the ideological system of the Laozi through the philosophical principles of the Yijing. This study finds that the Yijing learning not only provided Yan Zun with a cosmogonic model of “Spirit Illumination—Supreme Harmony—Qi’s Transformation and Separation”, thereby resolving the ambiguity of the Laozi’s cosmology, but also prompted him to construct a view of heaven that integrates “vigorous creativity” and “softness and non-action”. By incorporating such concepts from the Yijing as “cultivating both virtue and achievement”, he formed an orderly political philosophy of “abiding by one’s proper place” to attain “Supreme Harmony”. Abandoning the image-number Yi learning of the Han Dynasty, Yan Zun returned to the philosophical tradition of the Yijing. His synthesis of the Yijing and the Laozi not only influenced Yang Xiong’s Taixuan and Eastern Han classical learning but also served as a crucial intellectual precursor to Wei-Jin Xuanxue and exerted a lasting impact on the theoretical framework of Daoist religious thought.