Taoists affirm wu wei, literally non-action, better rendered as effortless or spontaneous action, as the ideal way of living in harmony with the Tao, the source and pattern of all things. The two foundational texts associated with the idea develop it toward somewhat different ends. The Tao Te Ching, traditionally attributed to Laozi, applies wu wei chiefly to statecraft and self-governance, commending a ruler who accomplishes without contending and governs by not interfering, on the argument that officious regulation and moralizing law multiply the very disorder they are meant to correct. The Zhuangzi, a looser and more literary collection of stories and dialogues, takes the idea in a more personal and philosophical direction, using it to explore the relativity of human judgments and the freedom available to a person who stops measuring their life against fixed social standards of usefulness, success, or virtue.
This political application of wu wei had a real afterlife in Chinese history: early rulers of the Han dynasty, in the philosophy historians call Huang-Lao, blending Daoist quietism with elements of earlier Legalist statecraft, explicitly adopted a minimal-intervention style of governance associated with wu wei after decades of war and heavy taxation under the preceding Qin dynasty, treating restraint in government itself as a form of the Tao Te Ching's political teaching put into practice.