Abstract
<p style="text-align:justify; text-indent:24.1pt"><span style="font-size:12pt"><span style="text-justify:inter-ideograph"><span style="font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><i><span lang="DE" style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">Dao</span></i> <span style="font-family:"新細明體",serif">道</span><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"> is the most fundamental and most vague concept in Laozi’s </span><span style="font-family:"新細明體",serif">老子</span><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"> <i>Daodejing </i></span><span style="font-family:"新細明體",serif">道德經</span><span lang="DE" style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">. On the one hand, <i>Dao</i> is the ontological origin of the world and its regularity. </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">On the other hand, <i>Dao</i> represents a normative value that people should follow. However, it seems that a paradox arises between the ontological and normative side of <i>Dao</i>: either Dao determines everything, in which case we don’t have to require that people should pursue <i>Dao</i>, or <i>Dao</i> is a pursued or preserved target, in which case it means that <i>Dao</i> has declined or at least would sometimes or somewhere declined. This paradox seems to be an oriental problem that parallels the theodicy question in the history of western theology and philosophy. The Western theodicy question is structured by a similar paradox: either God is omnipotent, omniscient, and benevolent and rules the world and it is impossible for evil to exist in the world, or we recognize the reality of evil in the world and admit that God must not possess at least one of his three essential qualities. In this work, I will first examine whether <i>Daodejing</i> also implies the similar issue of Western theodicy. Then, we will discern whether they also cause the same paradox in <i>Daodejing</i>. After that, we can continue by attempting to apply Western solutions to overcome this paradox. Ultimately, we should aim to reconsider our understanding of the relationship between <i>Dao</i> and the world, in order to resolve the difficulty that the Western approaches have not been able to completely deal with.</span></span></span></span></p>