The Ontological Translation of Dao: Why Has Laozi's Dao Remained Unresolved for Millennia?

Laozi's "Dao" is widely recognized as the most central yet obscure concept in Chinese philosophy. For two millennia, commentators have either mystified it (ineffable, accessible only through intuitive insight) or pragmatized it (natural law, practical wisdom). This paper argues that both approaches share a structural blind spot: they have never asked the question before it—what kind of existence does Dao correspond to? Drawing on the Finite Agent Axiomatic System (FAAS), this paper first independently proves the rigid proposition that an infinite being necessarily lacks consciousness and lies beyond the reach of language, then anchors Laozi's "Dao" as the most precise pre-modern designation of infinite being. The paper provides a rigorous ontological translation of core propositions in the Dao De Jing, including "the Dao that can be spoken is not the constant Dao," "Heaven and Earth are not benevolent," "Dao follows what is naturally so," and "Dao gives birth to One." It then engages in sustained dialogue with the commentaries of Wang Bi, Chen Guying, Ames and Hall, and Liu Xiaogan, demonstrating that the FAAS ontological approach supplies a unified underlying logic that these interpretive traditions each lack. The paper concludes that Laozi was neither a religious founder nor a naive naturalist, but the first ontological pioneer in human history to derive the relationship between the infinite being and the finite agent through contemplative practice.