Abstract
This book represents an annotated translation of one of the most important Old Chinese philosophical texts, the Book of Laozi. The translation in based on a detailed linguistic analysis of the text.
The author has analyzed all of the cca 5000 words contained in the text and under each of them he presents his own understanding of its meaning and its syntactic function in the given context. In the Preface the author explains the basic methodological principles, renders the structure of the text and gives its short philosophical characteristics.
In the main part of the book, i. e. the translation with the philological notes, every chapter is introduced with a brief summary in which the author reveals its possible philosophical message. It is followed by the original Old Chinese text with marked rhyming words and its Czech translation which reflects the text as close as possible.
Next to it is the philological commentary in which the author presents the results of his linguistic analysis in a transparent way. The appendix of this book is a vocabulary of the lexemes found in Laozi.
The material obtained through the linguistic analysis is organized into head words and word clusters according to individual lexemes and their syntactic functions. The volabulary is the first attempt of this kind as far as the identification of Old Chinese lexemes according to their syntactic paradigms are concerned.