The semiotics of flourishing: unearthing a Daoist phenomenology of dynamic attunement

Abstract This paper argues that excavated manuscripts of the Daodejing (Guodian, Mawangdui, and Beida) recover a primordial Daoist phenomenology that offers a more existentially rich conception of the good life than the subsequent, dominant metaphysical reading. This study provides a semiotic analysis of Daodejing Chapter 1 to demonstrate that the text’s transmission history involves a deliberate philosophical transformation. The Huang-Lao interpretive community systematically altered key terms, replacing the immanent “Temporalizing Dao” ( hengdao ) with an eternal “Constant Dao” ( changdao ) and reframing “nothingness” ( wu ) and “somethingness” ( you ) as a cosmogonic hierarchy rather than co-present aspects of phenomena. The resulting metaphysical reading posits a good life of contemplative alignment with an ineffable cosmic principle, a stance characterized as a semiotics of absence, where signs point to an unreachable truth. In contrast, the manuscript-based phenomenological reading presents a good life of dynamic attunement, where dao is an embodied, situational pattern of skilled engagement and name/self is a fluid construct. This constitutes a semiotics of presence that finds meaning not in a transcendent beyond, but in responsive participation within the everyday world. I conclude that this phenomenological vision provides a more fulfilling path to human flourishing by embracing the vibrant, challenging flow of lived experience.