嚴遵是四川人，西漢人，他的著作《道德真經指歸》十三卷，一至七卷亡佚，也就是論道上卷論的部份。其主要思想是在發揮宇宙生變的思想：他認為道是最高原則，天地其中的一切都是由道所出；但卻不是直接，而是透過德。嚴說：「道是無始無終，是自有的，德是從道而來，而德也是無始無終，具有無限能力，任何東西都是因他的能力而出現，而德是無形無象，不像從他所所創生的萬物，是有形有象。」為此，嚴遵也說他是至無。在萬物當中，有人的出現，人有男女有靈性，故此有理性、有思慮，也有決志，有情感，也有肉體，同時也秉有道德倫理的內在性，在與肉體構成統一性，因為有肉體必賴萬物而生活，因之有貧富，有團體生活，故而就有貴和賤。這則是由於命運，命運有好有壞，非人力所能左右，最後仍然復歸於道。 嚴遵在宇宙生發論的思想上，除了上述的形態外，還另有不同於上面的說法。他說：道生一，一是道之子，他也正是虛(即無形而為是具體物)，他是神明之母，太和之宗(祖)，太和是清濁之氣，由氣而構成萬物和人，而天地萬物在終結了的時候，則不直接歸於道，而是歸於太和，太和是否歸於神明，而最後是否歸於道，則嚴遵沒有說明。由於嚴遵主張仁義道德之故，他乃是孔老合一的思想家。

　　　　　Yen Zue lived in Si Chuan during the Western Han Dynasty. He wrote a thirteen volume work called ‘The Absolute Dao and De’. The first seven volumes dealt with the Dao, that is to say, they dealt with the origin of the universe. He considers the Dao as the supreme principle from which all things come into being. They come into being through Dao indirectly with the Dao's relationship to De. Dao is eternal. De comes from Dao. De is thus also eternal. De possesses all kinds of power, all things exist owing to this power. De is, however, without form or shape. In this way, it is unlike the beings in the world of form and shape which obtain their form and shape from the De. In the realm of the “ten thousand things”, humans appear. Humans possess unique abilities of reason and free will as well as having a soul, body and emotional states. These unique qualities put humans into the category of “moral beings”. Humans live in the world because of their body and live in a moral realm because of their spirit. This is a sort of fate. Fate can be divided into good and bad, but in the end, everything returns to the Dao. Yen Zun has other thoughts on Cosmology except for the above stated ones. He said, “Dao” gave birth to the One, the One is the son of Dao. Dao is also the nothing (that is no form and non-concrete). Dao is the mother of ‘shen ming’, the ancestor of ‘tai He’. ‘Tai He’ is the pure ‘Qi’ and ‘ten thousand things including humans are completed from thi ‘Qi’. “The ten thousand things” don't ultimately return directly to the Dao. They return first to the “Tai He”. Yen Zun neglecteo to explain whether or not the “Tai He” returned to the “Shen Ming” and then finally to the Dao. In his emphasis of Ren, Yi, Dao and De, Yen Fu can be considered a synthesizer of Lao Zi and Confucious.