This chapter develops an account of human agency in the Daodejing that focuses on the text’s elaborations of the ideal human agent, or the sage, broadly conceived. It focuses on the crucial attributes of responsiveness, adaptability, and alignment with the patterns and processes of the cosmos—attributes that have come to the fore in many recent discussions of early Chinese ethics more generally—and thus highlights the way in which the human agent is embedded in a web of relations with other beings and is interdependent with the world. Such attributes, it will be shown, do not eliminate the possibility of agency but represent the inescapable fact that human beings are situated in the world, and are faced with the predicament of navigating its complex forces in a way that is favorable. Moreover, the chapter emphasizes that human agency in the Daodejing is not limited to the sphere of practical action but extends to the realm of cognition as well. It argues that the Daodejing offers a robust account of agency in a cognitive and evaluative sense, forwarding an ideal vision of the human agent as one who is marked by a capacity for perspicacious understanding (ming 明) and right forms of volition. This dimension of ideal human agency is inseparable from the practical and prescriptive orientation of the text.