Zappulli, Davide Andrea: Is Dao God?

_Topoi_. forthcomingSome interpreters claim that the Daodejing 道德經 is an atheistic text. This proposition can be contextualized within a broader tendency in the study of Chinese and Asian thought, which is that of denying that supposedly Western categories like “God,” “creation,” and “soteriology” are applicable outside the Western context. This paper makes the case that there is a viable reading of the Daodejing as containing a form of theism. I begin by offering some general methodological con