Laozi Through the Lens of the White Rose: Resonance or Dissonance?

A surprising feature of the White Rose anti-Nazi resistance pamphlets is their appeal to a foundational classical Chinese text, the Laozi (otherwise known as the Daodejing), to buttress their critique of fascism and authoritarianism. I argue that from the perspective of a 1942 educated readership, the act of quoting the Laozi functioned as a subtle and pointed nod to anti-fascist intellectuals in pre-war Germany, many of whom had interpreted the Laozi as an anti-authoritarian and pacifist text. To a sympathetic reader, the Laozi therefore constituted an apt reference point for critiquing National Socialism. I then introduce a complication for this wartime reading of the Laozi from the perspective of its ambiguous reception in ancient Chinese political thought. I more specifically discuss an ancient line of interpretation of the Laozi that points in the direction of authoritarianism — in stark tension with the White Rose message of passive resistance and popular revolt.


INTRODUCTION
Between 27 June and 12 July 1942, two medical students at the University of Munich, Hans Scholl and Alexander Schmorell, began disseminating the first four pamphlets of the White Rose resistance movement, calling on Germans to resist Hitler.A striking feature of these pamphlets is their lengthy quotations of a wide range of philosophical and literary texts.Of the passages quoted, the two attributed to Laozi ('Lao-tse') in the second pamphlet stand out as a surprising choice.These quotations are translations of stanzas 58 and 29 of a foundational text of the classical Chinese philosophical tradition, the Daodejing 道德經 ('Classic of the Way and Virtue'), otherwise known as the Laozi 老子, after its legendary author.Exactly how or where the young students first came across this seminal Daoist text is unclear.It may be nothing more than mere coincidence that the amateur Laozi enthusiast whose 1927 translation the White Rose students used, John Gustav Weiß (1857-1943), was mayor of a town not far from where Hans Scholl and his sister Sophie grew up. 1 At any rate, we know that the students had opportunities to access several significant library collections, 2 some of which included volumes pertaining to non-European thought and religions. 3he first of the White Rose pamphlets had called on each individual to fight back against the state 'als Mitglied der christlichen und abendländischen Kultur'. 4 In light of this, it is striking that the second pamphletproduced within days of the firstshould have included two long quotations from a glaringly non-European and non-Christian text, casting it in a distinctly positive light.Indeed, the quotations of the Laozi evidently served to buttress the critique of fascism and dictatorship that is so strongly voiced across the pamphlets.
This article seeks to elucidate the reasons why the Laozi might have seemed an attractive choice for inclusion in the second pamphlet, bearing in mind that the first four pamphlets particularly targeted the German educated elite. 5The positive appeal to a philosophical text belonging to a culture firmly outside the remit of what the National Socialists called the Volksgemeinschaft or 'Aryan' civilization might in itself be seen as a calculated act of subversion, undermining Nazi ethnocentric nationalism. 6I suggest that there is more to the story, however.In particular, the act of quoting the Laozi in a 1942 resistance pamphlet can be understood as a subtle and pointed nod to anti-fascist intellectuals who had engaged with the Laozi in the early twentieth century.They had turned to the Laozi as a basis for denouncing the perceived decadence of European societies and values, often taking the text to offer a model for anti-authoritarianism and pacifism.Moreover, many of these intellectuals had done so through the prism of mysticism and religious existentialism (in both Christian and Jewish variations)a consideration which might further inform the White Rose students' favourable appraisal of the text. 7 then introduce a complication for the second pamphlet's use of the Laozi from the perspective of its ambivalent standing in ancient Chinese political thought.The Laozi is a notoriously difficult text to translate and interpret; and its political message is, as a result, deeply ambiguous.Complicating matters further, the ancient texts to which it bears conceptual, terminological, and historical links display radically different political visions.Consequently, the question whether the Laozi ultimately resonates with the White Rose message of passive resistance and popular revolt, or in fact undermines it, is one to which there is no easy answer.

THE WHITE ROSE IN CONTEXT: GERMAN RECEPTIONS OF THE LAOZI
Ever since the seventeenth century, Jesuit missionaries and European thinkers had compared, and even conflated, aspects of the Laozi with elements of Christian doctrinea tendency which would continue to shape the German collective imagination regarding the Laozi well into the twentieth century. 8An influential 1823 partial translation (in Latin and French) by the Sinologist Jean-Pierre Abel-Rémusat (1788-1832) advanced the bizarre thesis that the Hebrew consonants signifying the Jewish God [ ‫י‬ ‫ה‬ ‫ו‬ ‫ה‬ ] are designated by three Chinese characters in the opening lines of stanza 14 (yi 夷, xi 希, wei 微), and compared the Daoist concept of Dao to the Christian concept of Logos. 9Despite being challenged by his more philologically competent student, Stanislas Julien (1797-1873), Abel-Rémusat had a long-lasting influence on German receptions of the Laozi throughout the nineteenth century.In a classic 1870 translation of the Laozi that would greatly influence the 1927 translation used by the White Rose students, the German poet Victor von Strauss (1809-1899) seriously entertained Abel-Rémusat's thesis, even claiming that Laozi's conception of Dao may have been influenced by a notion of the Jewish Godowing to the alleged presence of Jews in China during the Han dynasty (206/202 BCE-220 CE). 10 The German Sinologist Richard Wilhelm (1873-1930)who in 1911 produced one of the most influential translations of the Laozi of the twentieth centurysimilarly interpreted Dao as Logos/Word/Sense (Sinn), alluding to the beginning of St John's Gospel. 11A tendency to read the Laozi as reflecting a putative Judaeo-Christian influence or as bearing witness to Christian revelation subsided in the first half of the twentieth century, though many prominent European scholars continued to hold that the Laozi was a mystical text, offering instruction on how to enter into union with a mysterious entity, Dao. 12 Even so, in the 1920s and 1930s, the text continued to be associated with Christianity in certain intellectual milieus, including that of a core member of the White Rose entourage: Theodor Haecker (1879-1945).The latter acted as a mentor to Hans Scholl and Alexander Schmorell between 1941 and 1943, and strongly influenced the religious and existentialist undertones of the first four pamphlets. 13He moved in the same intellectual circles as the Austrian philosopher Carl Dallago  (1869-1949), who advocated a form of Lebensphilosophie predicated on a kind of anti-ecclesiastical Christianity and centrally drew on both Kierkegaard and Laozi. 14Dallago's work relating Christian existentialism and mysticism to the Laozi was well known to Haecker. 15In fact, in 1921, they had a falling out over the privileged role which Dallago was prepared to grant Eastern figures like Laozi in his philosophico-religious framework. 16Significantly, however, in 1932 Haecker was willing to countenance that Laozi might be counted as a natural precursor of Christianity in the 'Morgenland' [Orient]. 17t the same time, in tandem with the growing presence of Chinese Studies in German universities throughout the 1910s and 1920s, 18 amateurish interest in Daoism among artists and philosophers soared.As Knut Walf has put it, echoing Karl-Heinz Pohl, 'A true Dao-fever erupted in Germany' in the wake of the ravages and destruction of the First World War. 19Interest in Daoism often went hand in hand with anti-nationalism and critiques of Eurocentric parochialism, 20 and informed the works of numerous German-speaking philosophers and writers of the interwar period, many of whom faced persecution under National Socialism on account of their Jewish heritage and/or their hostility to the regime. 21wo figures driving the surge in interest in Daoism shortly before, during, and after the First World War are particularly important: Richard Wilhelm, the pioneering Sinologist whom we encountered above, and the Austrian Jewish philosopher Martin Buber (1878-1965).Their translations of Daoist Classics in the 1910s22 set the stage for Alfred Döblin's (1878-1957) influential 1915 novel, Die drei Sprünge des Wang-lun, which displayed Daoist influences interwoven with themes of pacifism, resistance, and revolution.This novel helped disseminate the highly political reading of the Laozi which eventually found its way into the second pamphlet. 23rucially, in the aftermath of the First World War, Wilhelm and Buber also jointly paved the way for construing the Laozi as a pacifist antidote to the ills of 'Western civilization' in German-speaking circles.Wilhelm, who had been a Protestant missionary in China, founded the China-Institut at the University of Frankfurt in 1925, where he took up the Chair of Chinese.The institute became the focal point of Sino-German activities in the 1920s, attracting international visiting scholars including the Chinese philosopher Hu Shi 胡適 (1891-1962). 24In his 1925 commentary to the Laozi, Wilhelm hinted that Laozi could offer an antidote for a sick 'Western' societycontrasting the 'satanic powers' of Faust to the 'action' of the 'Eastern magician' Laozi. 25Martin Buber, for his part, was markedly influenced by von Strauss's translation and overall approach to the Laozi, viewing it throughout the 1920s as religious and monotheistic in nature. 26He also presented the Daoist concept of 'non-action' (wuwei 無為, sometimes also rendered as e.g.'effortless action' or 'non-exertion')which he associated with what he saw as the messianic, non-coercive figure of the sage (shengren 聖人) 27 as a teaching capable of curbing Europe's will to domination over people and things following the First World War.Buber was active in German academic circles throughout the 1920s and 1930sparticipating as a discussant in the China-Institut's 1928 fall lectures delivered by Wilhelm.He joined the University of Frankfurt in 1923, and left his post following Hitler's ascent to power in 1933, before escaping to Jerusalem in 1938.Between the 1920s and the 1950s he consistently understood Daoism to offer a communitarian and anarchistic worldview, which could offer a social critique of present suffering and injustices. 2842: LAOZI AS 'ANTIDOTE' TO HITLER The Laozi, then, was commonly viewed as offering a unique answer to the ills of European societies.It is thus unsurprising that by the start of the Second World War, it would become standard to construe the Laozi as providing an antidote to the deteriorating political situation in Europe in the wake of Hitler's ascent to power.Still, it is striking that in 1942the same year the first four White Rose pamphlets were disseminateda Chinese intellectual who had fled to the US, Lin Yutang 林語堂 (1895-1976), published a book in English, The Wisdom of China and India, presenting Laozi as an antidote to Hitler: […] if I were asked what antidote could be found in Oriental literature and philosophy to cure this contentious modern world of its inveterate belief in force and struggle for power, I would name this book [Laotse's Book of Tao].[…] [Laotse] has the knack of making Hitler and the other dreamers of world mastery appear foolish and ridiculous. 29e fact that in the very same year the White Rose chose to engage with the Laozi as a basis for critiquing Hitler is unlikely to be directly related, but as we saw, the general approach to the Laozi as an anti-authoritarian antidote had been in the air in Germany since the 1910s.
There is another relevant connection which captures the evocative power that the Laozi possessed in the context of wartime Germany.About a month before the composition and dissemination of the second pamphlet, Martin Buber, now in exile in Jerusalem, published a partial Hebrew translation of the Laozi followed by a brief commentary in a newspaper with ties to a socialist political party, The Young Worker. 30He gave it the title 'Laozi on government' (Lao-tsi al hashilton ); of the eight stanzas that he included, two were the very same that the students selected for the second pamphlet. 31Among the themes that stand out are the critique of violence, the relationship between the government and its 28 He also consistently championed Daoism over Confucianism, which he took to be authoritarian and elitist.See people, and the ruler's unobtrusiveness. 32It is hard to avoid reading this work as a political commentary on the horrors of war and the destructiveness of Nazi dictatorship. 33hat a Chinese intellectual in exile, an Austrian Jewish philosopher in exile, and a group of young German resisters should all have chosen the Laozi to criticize Nazi ideology in the very same year (and in three different languages) is quite astonishing.Despite their national, cultural, and religious differences, they evidently converged in reading the text as a counterpoint to authoritarian decadence amid some of the darkest and most divisive times in global history. 34

ANCIENT CHINESE RESONANCES AND DISSONANCES
It has emerged that the Laozi had a history of being interpreted along the lines of anti-authoritarianism in the wake of the First World War and indeed well into the Second World War.What is less clear, however, is whether the original text, understood in its proper intellectual context in Warring States China (ca.453-221 BCE), 35 lends itself to such a reading.Today, the Laozi is one of the most translated works of world literatureaccording to one recent calculation, a staggering 175 translations have been produced in German alonesecond only to the Bible. 36he disparate interpretive possibilities to be gleaned from only a sample of the most authoritative English or German translations speak to the text's sheer openendedness. 37Most pertinently for our purposes, in recent scholarship the Laozi's politics have been associated with anything from anti-authoritarianism and 32 Eber, 'Martin Buber and Taoism', pp.462-64. 33Eber, 'Martin Buber and Taoism', p. 463.Buber was possibly also preoccupied with the political situation in Palestinesee Herman, 'The One Gave Birth to the Two', p. 405; Irene Eber and Kathryn Hellerstein (ed.), Jews in China: Cultural Conversations, Changing Perceptions (University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 2020), pp.213-14. 34Note that Daoist concepts were also occasionally associated with fascism.In a 1934 piece denouncing the complicity of intellectuals with fascism, the Social Democrat Wilhelm Hoegner asserted that 'Das Individuum ist im Faschismus nichts, der Staat ist alles.[…] Der Staat ist das Tao, die Bahn' ('Under Fascism the individual is nothing, the state everything.[…] The state is Dao, the way'), implying that, like Dao, the fascist state is 'mystical' and 'irrational' (Landgerichtsdirektor [i.e.Wilhelm Hoegner], Der Faschismus und die Intellektuellen: Untergang des Deutschen Geistes (Karlsbad: Verlagsanstalt 'Graphia', 1934), p. 5, see p. 7).Separately, the selfproclaimed 'superfascist' Italian thinker Julius Evola (1898-1974) was particularly drawn to the Laozi, producing two Italian translations in 1923 and 1959.As Tadd ('Global Laozegetics', p. 103) remarks, 'That such a person was drawn to the Laozi raises questions about the nature of the text, the nature of interpretation, and why the classic would resonate with this notorious man.'I discuss 'darker' readings of the Laozi (tracing to antiquity) below. 35Like most ancient Chinese transmitted texts, the latest material evidence suggests that the Laozi was written by several hands over a long period of time.The text is not attested in full (or in Laozi's name) before 200-150 BCE.We know that a complete Laozi similar to the received text circulated in the Western Han period (206 BCE-9 CE), thanks to the discovery of two Laozi manuscripts (entombed in 168 BCE) at Mawangdui 馬王堆 in 1973.Variations between the Mawangdui versions of the Laozi and the transmitted text need not concern us here since the latter formed the sole basis of European receptions through to the 1970s. 36Tadd, 'Global Laozegetics', pp.87-88, 98-99; see also Harper, 'The Early Modern European (Non) Reception of the Zhuangzi Text', p. 24. 37 For the Laozi as a 'context-dependent text', see Dirk Meyer, Philosophy on Bamboo: Text and the Production of Meaning in Early China (Leiden: Brill, 2012); for its 'polysemy', see Isabelle anarchism to authoritarianism and totalitarianism. 38In fact, rival readings divided along similar lines can be identified in the text's early reception history.Neo-Daoist interpretations evoking anti-authoritarian and anarchist sensibilities are attested in the Wei-Jin 魏晉 period (ca.220-420 CE), 39 whereas earlier receptions grounded in 'Huang-Lao' (黃老) thought and the fa tradition ( fajia 法家) of classical Chinese political theory incline toward authoritarianism. 40efore examining the basis for these competing readings in greater detail, it will be useful to consider relevant interpretive features of John Gustav Weiß's translation of stanzas 58 and 29, used by the White Rose. 41Below is a table comparing this German translation with an English translation, alongside the original Classical Chinese (transmitted) text, and D.C. Lau's celebrated modern English translation of the Chinese text.To give the reader a sense of the range of interpretive possibilities that stanza 29 of the Laozi leaves open, particularly on the issue of rulership, I also include Roger Ames' and David Hall's translation of relevant sectionswhich is informed by their anarchist reading of the text.

White Rose quotations 42
English translation of the White Rose quotations 43 Classical Chinese transmitted text 44 Lau's modern English translation 45 Ames Three interpretive choices stand out from Weiß's rendering of stanzas 58 and 29 of the Laozi, and help explain why the White Rose might have taken these passages to lend support to their political message.First, Weiß renders the classical Chinese concept of tianxia (天下) as 'das Reich', a politically loaded term which was particularly meaningful to a German audience in 1942.It is worth noting, however, that this was also how von Strauss rendered the term in 1870, 47 and it was based on this translation that Martin Buber had understood the Laozi to leave room for an Abrahamic conception of the 'kingdom [of God]'. 48This more positive religious resonance would, perhaps, have pleased Hans Scholl and Alexander Schmorell, given their strong Christian identities and the third and fourth pamphlets' suggestion that the state should exist in parallel with a divine order. 49The rendering of tianxia as 'das Reich' or 'empire'/'kingdom' is reasonable, since tianxia, literally '[all] under Heaven', very often refers, in Warring States discourse, to the realm which is to be politically unified 50as D.C. Lau's translation reflects.However, the Chinese term in this period can also be interpreted as more loosely referring to the entire known world and, in the in particular, as carrying a broader cosmic dimension.Thus Richard Wilhelm's translation, for instance, glosses the term simply as 'Die Welt' 51 an interpretation favoured by Roger Ames and David Hall.
Second, Weiß renders the Chinese term men men 悶悶 as 'unauffällig' ('unobtrusive')a term which might alternatively be translated into English as 'simple' or 'dull'.Third, he translates cha cha 察察 using charged political language, 'aufdringlich' ('oppressive').Other possible translations into English include: 'searching', 'sharp', or 'alert'. 52The issue here is not so much with Weiß's translation per se, but with the particular interpretation to which it lends itself within the specific political and rhetorical context of the second pamphlet.Indeed, the Laozi appears as a text intent on denouncing the excesses of intrusive and oppressive governments with imperialistic aspirations, like Nazi Germany.
I propose to problematize this interpretation of the Laozi in light of stanzas not mentioned by the White Rose, drawing on the darker strand of reception history mentioned above.I focus particularly on three central themes that characterize the second pamphlet before the Laozi quotations are introduced as its conclusion: the anti-intellectualism of National Socialism and the need to fight it with intellectual means; the denunciation of Hitler's deceit; and outcry at the Germans' 'blindness' and apathy in the face of atrocities perpetrated by the Nazis, denounced as complicity in guilt.
The opening of the second pamphlet declares: 'Man kann sich mit dem Nationalsozialismus geistig nicht auseinandersetzen, weil er ungeistig ist.' 53 This is nevertheless followed by an appeal that each person should enlighten the next, 'bis auch der letzte von der äußersten Notwendigkeit seines Kämpfens wider dieses System überzeugt ist.' 54 It is suggested that educating one another is the ferment of popular revolt, the catalyst for a 'wave of uproar' to rip across the country and topple the regime.Now consider Laozi 3: Not to honour men of worth will keep the people from contention; not to value goods which are hard to come by will keep them from theft; not to display what is desirable will keep them from being unsettled of mind.
Therefore, in governing the people, the sage empties their minds but fills their bellies, weakens their wills but strengthens their bones. 55ken at face value, this stanza seems to be in tension with Hans Scholl's rallying callostensibly aimed at intellectualsto educate the masses and foster popular dissent.Scholl and his fellow resisters were evidently still convinced that if professors and thinkers could be reasoned with and won over, they would react.The Laozi, by contrast, seems to question the value of instruction and scholarly learning quite broadly.The anti-intellectualist strain of the Laozi is also apparent in Laozi 65 (with echoes in Laozi 10), wherein we find the suggestion that not only the people ought to be kept ignorant, but the ruler himself ought not abide by 'wisdom' (zhi 智): Of old those who excelled in the pursuit of the way [dao 道] did not use it to enlighten the people but to hoodwink them.The reason why the people are difficult to govern is that they are too wise [zhi duo 智多].
Hence to rule a state by wisdom [yi zhi zhi guo 以智治國] Will be to the detriment of the state;

Not to rule a state by wisdom [bu yi zhi zhi guo 不以智治國]
Will be a boon to the state. 5653 'National Socialism cannot be confronted intellectually because it is not intellectual' (cited in Lloyd, Defying Hitler, p. 97).
On a rival interpretation, however, one might reasonably object that such passages ought to be interpreted not as literally targeting wisdom or knowledge in general, but as merely denouncing the rigidity of what is conventionally viewed as wisdom. 57This would be consistent with the cultivation of genuine enlightenment, associated with a 'soft', life-affirming, and adaptive approach to things (see Laozi 36, 43, 52, 76, 78).The process of 'emptying the mind' or of becoming 'without wisdom' might thus instead be read as an invitation to rid oneself of the restrictive shackles of conventional knowledge, 58 rather than as a rejection of learning tout court. 59In contrast to the first reading, this more benign interpretation is broadly in tune with the White Rose's appeal to enlighten the German people and fight the intellectual degeneracy of the (often highly educated) members of the ruling elite.The theme of deceit, however, is another possible point of contention overshadowing the White Rose's use of the Laozi.Recall that toward the beginning of the second pamphlet, Hans Scholl deplores the fact that National Socialism, even in its incipience, turned on deceiving the German people. 60He then alludes to Hitler's Mein Kampf, lamenting that Hitler himself affirmed that successful governing requires that the ruler go to great lengths to deceive the people. 61Yet certain passages of the Laozi appear to emphasize precisely the ruler's adeptness at concealing his nature from the people, skilfully covering his tracks in all that he does.This motif is especially apparent in Laozi 17: The best of all rulers is but a shadowy presence to his subjects.

When his task is accomplished and his work done
The people all say, 'It happened to us naturally.' 62 Laozi 59, in fact, we find the further suggestion that it is because people are ignorant of the ruler's 'limit' that he takes control of the state: 'When no one knows his limit | He [the ruler] can possess a state'. 63Passages like these appear to be in tension with Hans' admonishment of Hitler's penchant for deception in his drive for domination.Proponents of the more benign interpretation might however insist that these passages gesture not at the sage's covert manipulation of the people, but rather, quite the contrary, at his selfless non-interference (to the greatest degree possible) in the affairs of the people.Support for this kind of reading might be found in Laozi 66, wherein the sage-ruler's unassuming humility before the people is brought to the fore.
Finally, there remains the issue of collective apathy.The second part of the second pamphlet, written by Alexander Schmorell, gives specific indications as to the crimes committed by the Nazis in occupied Poland, using first-hand accounts provided by Manfred Eickemeyer, an architect who had lent the students his studio in Schwabing for their underground operations.This part of the pamphlet voices indignant incomprehension at the German people's inaction in the face of the atrocities ordered by Nazi leaders, decrying that 'Die Tatsache wird als solche hingenommen und ad acta gelegt' and 'wieder schläft das deutsche Volk in seinem stumpfen, blöden Schlaf', 64 allowing Nazi crimes to continue.Now consider again Laozi 3: in governing the people, the sage empties their minds but fills their bellies, weakens their wills but strengthens their bones.He always keeps them innocent of knowledge (wu zhi 無知) and free from desire, and ensures that the wise (zhi zhe 智者) never dare to act (bu gan wei 不敢為).
Do that which consists in taking no action (wuwei 無為), and order will prevail. 65 is hard to ignore the quietist undertones of this passage, which sit uneasily with the second pamphlet's rebuke of the German people's apathy.But this passage is crucial in a further respect.It describes what Laozi's notion of wuwei 無為 looks like from the ruler's point of view, and helps fill out what an 'unobtrusive' mode of governing amounts to within a Laozian framework.Here the case for the authoritarian reading is very strong indeed.Far from embodying a non-interfering approach to governance, the ruler appears to go to troubling lengths to exercise covert control over the affairs of the state and its people.He surreptitiously prevents the wise from taking action, by ensuring that wisdom is eliminated among the people.On this line of interpretation, it is this pre-emptive move which allows him not to make active interventions later on.
Consider also Laozi 64: It is easy to maintain a situation while it is still secure; It is easy to deal with a situation before symptoms develop; It is easy to break a thing when it is yet brittle; It is easy to dissolve a thing when it is yet minute.
64 'The fact is accepted as such and filed away'; 'the German people return to their dull, stupid sleep' (cited in Lloyd, Defying Hitler, p. 99). 65Trans.Lau, Lao Tzu: Tao Te Ching, p. 7, modified.
Deal with a thing while it is still nothing; Keep a thing in order before disorder sets in. […] Therefore the sage, because he does nothing (wuwei 無為), never ruins anything; and, because he does not lay hold of anything, loses nothing. 66ad in tandem with Laozi 3, an implication of this passage might seem to be that conflict ought to be stamped out by the sage-ruler before it has had the chance to emerge. 67Paternalist overtones in several passages of the Laozi also reinforce the impression that the text calls for the transformation of the people into compliant subjects, rather than providing a basis for revolt against authoritarian rule. 68We are told, for instance, that the sage-ruler cares for his people as his children, but does not consult them. 69Furthermore, he keeps the people simple like 'uncarved wood' (pu 樸). 70It is noteworthy that this ideal is echoed in a core text of the fa tradition, the Book of Lord Shang (Shang jun shu 商君書, 4th/3rd cent BCE), 71 a work whose political worldview is unambiguously authoritarian.On one possible (though by no means decisive) reading of the first line of stanza 80, the Laozi itself prescribes an authoritarian vision of society, urging the sage-ruler to 'seclude the people in small communities and (thereby) turn them into obedient subjects'. 72Among other things, this stanza describes how the people in such a society would refrain from travelling to neighbouring places or leaving the confines of their homes.
It is worth noting that a core text of the fa tradition, the Han Feizi 韓非子named after its putative author, Han Fei 韓非 (d.233 BCE)self-consciously harks back to the Laozi, borrowing its ideal of wuwei 無為 within a framework of absolute monarchy. 73This text comprises the earliest explicit commentary known to us on the Laozi 74including a discussion of Laozi 58, one of the two stanzas cited in the second pamphletand appropriates key Laozian concepts in its political theory.According to this text, the ruler ought to be secretive and inscrutable (echoing Laozi 17).In concealing his plans and refraining from directly implicating himself in everyday affairs, he cultivates the appearance of non-action and non-intervention. 75A central tenet of the Han Feizi is the idea that conflict and dissent ought to be rooted out before they have a chance to blossom, through the strict enforcement of penal law (fa 法), systematic surveillance, but also the active suppression of scholars (shi 士) and learning. 76hile one should tread carefully in tracing continuities between the Laozi and the fa tradition, 77 one cannot rule out the authoritarian interpretation which the Laozi leaves open. 78The question of how to lay hold of (and maintain) power and control over the people surreptitiously are themes that can plausibly be taken to inform the Laozi's political project.Proponents of this reading might go so far as to say that the text goes in the opposite direction to that advocated by the White Rose: that of an inscrutable sage-ruler, intent on keeping the people in the dark, curtailing their access to learning and exercising control over their minds and wills, removing all germs of dissent in the process.
The rival (and more traditional) interpretive camp would of course object that we are taking wuwei 無為 in the Laozi in entirely the wrong way.If we recall that 'emptying' the people and the ruler of wisdom can be interpreted, according to the more 74 These are the chapters 'Explaining Laozi' [ jie lao 解老]which explicitly refers to Laozi 58and 'Illustrating Laozi' [yu lao 喻老].Note that the provenance of these two chapters is contested.
75 See especially Han Feizi 5.For the paradox that 'the sovereign is at the same time the most inactive and the most active individual in the kingdom', see Graziani, 'Monarch and Minister', p. 174.Indeed, as Graziani argues, a tension underlying the Han Feizi lies in its hesitancy between two contradictory models of authoritarian rule, corresponding to two different conceptions of wuwei: the one in which the source of absolute power lies with the monarch (secured by his manipulation and deception of his ministers and people, controlling their every move and decision through rewards and punishment, and a system of total surveillance), the other with his ministers (since it is the ministers' deeds that ensure the implementation of laws and policies, and the average monarch easily becomes their puppet).In the former scenario, the monarch actively cultivates the appearance of inaction or non-interference in the service of absolute power, whereas in the latter case he is literally inactive and stripped of his powerbase.On this problem, see also Pines, 'Submerged by Absolute Power', pp.77-82; Jiang, Origins of Moral-Political Philosophy, pp.453-56. 76See especially Han Feizi 5, 8, 20, 48, 49, 50. 77Importantly, the coercive and ruthless model of rule through penal law found in the Book of Lord Shang and the Han Feizi is explicitly opposed in Laozi 57.
78 See Goldin's (After Confucius, pp.129-33; The Art of Chinese Philosophy, pp.124-28) complaint that the political implications of the Laozi (as in Laozi 65) are too often 'white-washed'.benign reading, as merely rejecting conventional modes of knowing, the emphasis here might be precisely on avoiding those modes of action that are overly constraining or coercive.Favouring this second line of interpretation is a strong undercurrent in the Laozi to the effect that the good ruler should abstain from armed conflict and unnecessary violence, refrain from acting rashly or in anger, and do everything in his power to secure peace. 79This would appear to mesh well with the message of the White Rose, and to speak in favour of anti-authoritarianism.But while there is perhaps scope for the people to stand up to a ruler who abuses his power or position (say, in acting in anger, or hastily resorting to military conflict for the sake of conquest, etc.), one wonders how compatible this message really is with the framework of the Laozi, which focuses not on how to hold rulers accountable, but rather on how to prevent any sort of troublesome situation from arising in the first place.In short, it is far from obvious that the text lends itself to a message of popular revolt against a ruler, authoritarian or otherwise. 80We should also not lose sight of the fact that the Laozi is addressed to a ruler, not the people. 81

CONCLUSION
We have seen that well into the early decades of twentieth-century Germany, the Laozi carried deeply mystical resonances, and these may in part explain why the religiously inclined members of the White Rose were drawn to the text.Antiauthoritarian interpretations of the Laozi were also strikingly common among German-speaking intellectuals from the First World War onwards, prefiguring the young resisters' use of the text in opposition to National Socialism.However, due consideration of the Laozi in its own ancient intellectual context has shown that the reading of it as a counterpoint to authoritarianism faces the challenge of a compelling rival interpretation pointing in the opposite direction.
In light of this, should the students have appealed to a different text, less ambiguous and known in Germany at the time, to support their message? 82It seems doubtful that this would have better served the students' purpose, since, at the time of the pamphlets' dissemination, the Laozi had strongly anti-authoritarian and religious resonances that other texts lacked.Moreover, it is important to recognize that the students adopted the reading of the text that was widely accepted in Thought of the Warring States Era (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2009), pp.36-44; Goldin, The Art of Chinese Philosophy, pp.124-26, 224-28.For the connection between absolute monarchy and the Daoist motif of 'non-action' (wuwei 無為) found in the Han Feizi, see Romain Graziani, 'Monarch and Minister: The Problematic Partnership in the Building of Absolute Monarchy in the Han Feizi 韩非子', in Ideology of Power and Power of Ideology in Early China, ed. by Yuri Pines, Paul R. Goldin and Martin Kern (Leiden: Brill, 2015), pp.157 (with n. 2), 174; Pines, 'Submerged by Absolute Power', pp.79-81; Jiang, Origins of Moral-Political Philosophy, pp.230-31, 453.
Home in Many Worlds: Reading, Writing and Translating from Chinese and Jewish Cultures, ed. by Raoul D. Findeisen et al. (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2009), pp.149-61 (especially p. 151).Both of Walf's studies mention the White Rose's references to the Laozi.