Laozi · Daodejing · 第二章

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第二章 · 160 characters
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READING NOTE · r062Structure / Predication

天下皆知美之為美

Everyone under heaven recognizes beauty as beauty.

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A route through this passage

60 Han characters · 40 distinct forms · 12 units separated by the witness’s punctuation

  1. Establish the frame. Read the surrounding chapter. Who speaks, what is being discussed, and which earlier words supply the context?
  2. Test one unit. 天下皆知美之為美, Mark a possible predicate and its participants. Record what you have supplied rather than found explicitly in the text.
  3. Reconstruct the argument. Connect the units in your own words. Where does a description, question, contrast, or consequence depend on your interpretation?
Investigate 7 written forms in this passage

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Watch recurrence: 相 × 6 之 × 4 為 × 3 善 × 3 下 × 2 皆 × 2. Repetition of a graph need not mean repetition of a sense.

Computed from this exact witness · 1 contextual editorial excerpt also available. The guide is a set of reading prompts, not a translation. Sources & methods

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What larger verb takes the embedded expression as its object?

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知.

zimai editorial draft · not independently reviewed. Applies to 天下皆知美之為美.

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Shared wording

Computed exact phrases in the pinned witnesses. These links do not assign a sense or assert borrowing.

莊子 · 胠篋第十天下皆知

故天下每每大亂,罪在於好知。故天下皆知求其所不知而莫知求其所已知者,皆知非其所不善而莫知非其所已善者,是以大亂。故上悖日月

莊子 · 知北遊第二十二行不言之

不近也。夫知者不言,言者不知,故聖人行不言之教。道不可致,德不可至。仁可為也,義可虧也,禮相偽也。

莊子 · 德充符第五不言之教

固有不言之教,无形而心成者邪?是何人也?」仲尼曰:「夫子,聖人也,丘也直後而未往耳。丘將以為師,

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論語 · Distinguish doing, being, and acting for禮之用,和為貴論語 · Put a clause inside a larger sentence不患人之不己知論語 · Distinguish doing, being, and acting for為政以德論語 · Distinguish doing, being, and acting for溫故而知新,可以為師矣
Edition, source, and reuse
Work
老子 · Laozi · Daodejing
Attribution
Traditionally attributed to Laozi; composition and textual history are debated.
Digital witness
Kanseki Repository · KR5c0057 · base edition tls
Contributors
Kanseki Repository (Kanripo) contributors; upstream base-edition labels retained in each original file.
Source position
KR5c0057_002.txt, lines 14–25. LAO 2.1; tr. D.C. Lau 19i2: 5; here tr. Karlgren 1975
Version
8f585085ff4ef2580eeb0f4376a763a62bcc7a95
Reuse
CC BY-SA 4.0. Text extraction and teaching additions share this licence.
Text policy
Source spelling and punctuation retained. Encoding headers, page markers, paragraph markers, whitespace, and leading section numbers are removed from the reading view. No silent script conversion or textual correction.
Teaching
zimai · AI-assisted editorial notes. English renderings are excerpt-level reading aids, not a full published translation. Editorial pilot · not independently reviewed.
Exact source lines ↗ · Original UTF-8 file · Passage + annotation data

Source-file SHA-256: 6e49b493568945b1a148132ec30df9173a376021d762ab136ceaa6dd153fc675. A source comment that cites a translator is an upstream reference, not the attribution of a translation imported here.