Wang Pi (226-249) was one of the most brilliant Chinese philosophers. He reinterpreted the Tao-te ching and the I ching and laid the basis for an entirely new metaphysics that inspired Chinese philosophers for centuries to come.

The year 226, when Wang Pi was born, found China divided into three separate kingdoms, each straining to regain control of the entire empire. The fall of the Han, which occurred at the end of the 2nd century A.D. and gave rise to the Three Kingdoms, was a catastrophe that had its repercussions in every aspect of life in China, not least of all in philosophy. Once the imperial state had disappeared, the extraordinarily complex and complete philosophical systems the Han scholastics had compounded were seen to be what they really were: lifeless and arbitrary conglomerations of old theories and superstitions that crudely attempted to provide a metaphysical foundation for the...