牟宗三先生在詮釋《老子》的基礎上提出「境界形態形上學」，但牟先生所關注的不在道是主觀的還是客觀的，而是如何說「不可說」之道。道是無，是虛，因而很難從它的客觀性去說，他另辟蹊徑，從主觀心境去說。他的詮釋質疑了把道作為實體、實物或理念的一般解說。在詮釋方法上，緊扣《老子》文本，借鑒莊子、王弼，又有西方哲學背景作為參照，很有說服力。但為了詮釋的一致性，他對《老子》中的個別文本作了「誤釋」，顯示出其詮釋進路的局限。牟先生對海德格「非對象化」概念的援引本有可能彌補其詮釋進路的局限，但他並未意識到，因為他未能完全理解海德格的現象學方法。

Mou Zong-san interprets Taoism as the “Metaphysics in the
line of vision” based on his understanding of Laozi. What he mainly
concerns is not whether Tao is subjective or objective, but how to
interpret the “unspeakable” Tao. Tao is nothing and empty, so it’s
difficult to interpret it as any objective reality. Mou Zong-san finds a
new way to interpret Tao, which is to disclose the content of Tao from
the function of the subjective state of mind. He strongly queried the
traditional interpretation which considered Tao as Substance, entity or
Idea. His understanding is convincing on the basis of Laozi and his
insights into Zhuagnzi and Wang Bi’s commentaries of Laozi, but
sometimes he had to misinterpret the text in order to make his
interpretation consistent, which reveals the limitation of his
interpretation. Mou Zong-san absorbs Heidegger’s non-objectified way
of thinking which could have made up for the limitation, but he did not
realize it for he could not fully understand the phenomenological
approach of Heidegger.