dé
Also rendered: Potency (Closer to the older sense)
Reviewed · 2026-09
At a glance
Not moral goodness in the English sense. De is what something has and does by being itself — and when heaven ‘stores’ it (藏德), the point is that its efficacy is invisible rather than displayed.
Read 德 as “virtue” in the moral sense and both chapters go wrong. In Suwen 1 the uncarved people live long because their virtue is whole (德全不危) — wholeness, not goodness. In Suwen 2 heaven’s 德 is stored: its power works precisely by not showing itself.
The older sense is efficacy: what a thing gets done by being the thing it is. That is the sense these passages need.
Passages where the term does real work, with the original, pinyin and English on the same line.
Every rendering below is a decision about which reader is being addressed. There is no neutral option.
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Reading path
This term belongs to Foundations — the five core concepts, in the order the Suwen introduces them.