Plato, one of the greatest Greek philosophers, and Lao Zi, the founder of traditional Chinese philosophy, made their respective contributions to moral philosophy. Plato pointed out the origin of moral in terms of the citystate, successfully transplanted the virtue from citystate to individual citizen with the help of holy power, and established educational blueprint, content and strategy to develop civic morality to cultivate “the king of philosophy”, a moral example of “being saint and king”. Meanwhile, Lao Zi established individual obligatory virtue corresponding to natural hereditary virtue based on the natural character of “Tao”, continued with his theory of “nothingdoing Tao” to point out the significance of “nonspeaking education” to developing and completing morality, and finally successfully set up the sage, a moral example “following natural law”. Thus a comparison of their different moral philosophies aims to explore the theoretical origins of Oriental and Occidental civilizations.

Plato; Lao Zi; moral philosophy; comparative study