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China The Hundred Schools of Thought
The Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods, though marked
by disunity and civil strife, witnessed an unprecedented era of
cultural prosperity--the "golden age" of China. The atmosphere of
reform and new ideas was attributed to the struggle for survival
among warring regional lords who competed in building strong and
loyal armies and in increasing economic production to ensure a
broader base for tax collection. To effect these economic,
military, and cultural developments, the regional lords needed
ever-increasing numbers of skilled, literate officials and
teachers, the recruitment of whom was based on merit. Also during
this time, commerce was stimulated through the introduction of
coinage and technological improvements. Iron came into general use,
making possible not only the forging of weapons of war but also the
manufacture of farm implements. Public works on a grand scale--such
as flood control, irrigation projects, and canal digging--were
executed. Enormous walls were built around cities and along the
broad stretches of the northern frontier.
So many different philosophies developed during the late Spring
and Autumn and early Warring States periods that the era is often
known as that of the Hundred Schools of Thought. From the Hundred
Schools of Thought came many of the great classical writings on
which Chinese practices were to be based for the next two and onehalf millennia. Many of the thinkers were itinerant intellectuals
who, besides teaching their disciples, were employed as advisers to
one or another of the various state rulers on the methods of
government, war, and diplomacy.
The body of thought that had the most enduring effect on
subsequent Chinese life was that of the School of Literati
(ru), often called the Confucian school in the West. The
written legacy of the School of Literati is embodied in the
Confucian Classics, which were to become the basis for the order of
traditional society. Confucius (551-479 B.C.), also called Kong Zi,
or Master Kong, looked to the early days of Zhou rule for an ideal
social and political order. He believed that the only way such a
system could be made to work properly was for each person to act
according to prescribed relationships. "Let the ruler be a ruler
and the subject a subject," he said, but he added that to rule
properly a king must be virtuous. To Confucius, the functions of
government and social stratification were facts of life to be
sustained by ethical values. His ideal was the junzi
(ruler's son), which came to mean gentleman in the sense of
a cultivated or superior man.
Mencius (372-289 B.C.), or Meng Zi, was a Confucian disciple
who made major contributions to the humanism of Confucian thought.
Mencius declared that man was by nature good. He expostulated the
idea that a ruler could not govern without the people's tacit
consent and that the penalty for unpopular, despotic rule was the
loss of the "mandate of heaven."
The effect of the combined work of Confucius, the codifier and
interpreter of a system of relationships based on ethical behavior,
and Mencius, the synthesizer and developer of applied Confucian
thought, was to provide traditional Chinese society with a
comprehensive framework on which to order virtually every aspect of
life
(see Traditional Society and Culture
, ch. 3;
Culture and the Arts
, ch. 4).
There were to be accretions to the corpus of Confucian thought,
both immediately and over the millennia, and from within and
outside the Confucian school. Interpretations made to suit or
influence contemporary society made Confucianism dynamic while
preserving a fundamental system of model behavior based on ancient
texts.
Diametrically opposed to Mencius, for example, was the
interpretation of Xun Zi (ca. 300-237 B.C.), another Confucian
follower. Xun Zi preached that man is innately selfish and evil and
that goodness is attainable only through education and conduct
befitting one's status. He also argued that the best government is
one based on authoritarian control, not ethical or moral
persuasion.
Xun Zi's unsentimental and authoritarian inclinations were
developed into the doctrine embodied in the School of Law
(fa), or Legalism. The doctrine was formulated by Han Fei Zi
(d. 233 B.C.) and Li Si (d. 208 B.C.), who maintained that human
nature was incorrigibly selfish and therefore the only way to
preserve the social order was to impose discipline from above and
to enforce laws strictly. The Legalists exalted the state and
sought its prosperity and martial prowess above the welfare of the
common people. Legalism became the philosophic basis for the
imperial form of government. When the most practical and useful
aspects of Confucianism and Legalism were synthesized in the Han
period (206 B.C.-A.D. 220), a system of governance came into
existence that was to survive largely intact until the late
nineteenth century. Taoism (or Daoism in pinyin), the second most
important stream of Chinese thought, also developed during the Zhou
period. Its formulation is attributed to the legendary sage Lao Zi
(Old Master), said to predate Confucius, and Zhuang Zi (369-286
B.C.). The focus of Taoism is the individual in nature rather than
the individual in society. It holds that the goal of life for each
individual is to find one's own personal adjustment to the rhythm
of the natural (and supernatural) world, to follow the Way
(dao) of the universe. In many ways the opposite of rigid
Confucian moralism, Taoism served many of its adherents as a
complement to their ordered daily lives. A scholar on duty as an
official would usually follow Confucian teachings but at leisure or
in retirement might seek harmony with nature as a Taoist recluse.
Another strain of thought dating to the Warring States Period
is the school of yin-yang and the five elements. The
theories of this school attempted to explain the universe in terms
of basic forces in nature, the complementary agents of yin
(dark, cold, female, negative) and yang (light, hot, male,
positive) and the five elements (water, fire, wood, metal, and
earth). In later periods these theories came to have importance
both in philosophy and in popular belief.
Still another school of thought was based on the doctrine of Mo
Zi (470-391 B.C.?), or Mo Di. Mo Zi believed that "all men are
equal before God" and that mankind should follow heaven by
practicing universal love. Advocating that all action must be
utilitarian, Mo Zi condemned the Confucian emphasis on ritual and
music. He regarded warfare as wasteful and advocated pacificism. Mo
Zi also believed that unity of thought and action were necessary to
achieve social goals. He maintained that the people should obey
their leaders and that the leaders should follow the will of
heaven. Although Moism failed to establish itself as a major school
of thought, its views are said to be "strongly echoed" in Legalist
thought. In general, the teachings of Mo Zi left an indelible
impression on the Chinese mind.
Data as of July 1987
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