Unit 8 · The Age of Philosophers

Around 1046 BCE (traditional dates run earlier, to 1122 BCE), the Zhou people defeated the Shang kings at the Battle of Muye. The Zhou founded a dynasty, a line of rulers from one family. It lasted until 256 BCE, longer than any other in Chinese history.

The Zhou needed to explain why they had the right to rule. Their answer appears in the Book of Documents, one of the oldest Chinese texts. It says that Heaven (tian) gives the right to rule to a virtuous family. When a ruler becomes cruel and careless, Heaven takes that right away and gives it to another.

This idea is called the Mandate of Heaven. The Zhou said the last Shang king had been cruel, so Heaven had passed the mandate to them. Later Chinese dynasties used the same idea for about three thousand years, both to claim power and to judge rulers who failed.

After the Zhou conquest, the young king was too young to rule alone. His uncle, the Duke of Zhou, ruled for him. Tradition says the duke then handed power back when the king came of age. Tradition also credits him with setting the rules of court ritual and music.

Five centuries later, Confucius looked back at the early Zhou as a golden age. In Analects 7.5 he sighs that he has not dreamed of the Duke of Zhou for a long time, a sign to him that he was growing old. In Analects 3.14 he says the Zhou learned from the two dynasties before it, and so he follows the Zhou.

Historians note that much of this picture is idealized. The early Zhou fought wars and put down revolts. But for Confucius and his followers, the early Zhou stood for ritual order and rulers who led by virtue. That ideal shaped Confucian thinking.

In 771 BCE, invaders and rebels killed a Zhou king, and the court fled east to Luoyang. From then on, Zhou kings kept their title and rituals but had little real power. Local lords ruled their own states and fought one another.

Historians divide the next centuries into two parts. The Spring and Autumn period (771–476 BCE) is named after a history of the state of Lu, the Spring and Autumn Annals. The Warring States period (475–221 BCE) is named for its constant wars among seven large states.

Over time, small states were swallowed by larger ones. Armies grew to hundreds of thousands of soldiers. Rulers needed clever advisers to plan wars, collect taxes and run their lands. That need opened the door for a new kind of person: the traveling thinker.

Tradition dates Confucius’s life to 551–479 BCE. He was born in the state of Lu, in what is now Shandong province. His family name was Kong and his given name Qiu. The title Kongzi means Master Kong; Jesuit writers in the 1600s turned the longer form Kong Fuzi into the Latin Confucius.

According to later accounts, Confucius grew up poor and worked in small jobs, such as keeping granaries. He loved learning. The Analects reports him saying that at fifteen he set his heart on learning (2.4). He held some office in Lu, though scholars debate how high.

Confucius became famous as a teacher. Tradition says he taught students from rich and poor families alike. In Analects 7.7 he says he never refused to teach anyone who brought even a small gift. His students later spread his teachings and served in governments.

Around 497 BCE, according to Sima Qian’s account, Confucius left Lu. For about fourteen years he traveled through states such as Wei, Chen and Cai. He met rulers and gave advice, but none gave him the power to reform their government.

The Analects records people who doubted him. In 14.38 (numbered 14.41 in Legge), a gatekeeper describes Confucius as the man who knows a thing cannot be done and still keeps doing it. In book 18, hermits tell his students that the world is a flood no one can stop, so why try.

Confucius was not alone. In the Warring States period many advisers moved from court to court. Rulers welcomed them because they wanted ideas that would make their states strong. Advisers hoped to find a ruler who would listen.

Much of what people know about Confucius comes from two sources. One is the Analects, compiled by his students and their students over many years. The other is a biography in the Records of the Historian (Shiji) by Sima Qian, finished around 94 BCE, about four centuries after Confucius died.

A primary source is evidence from the time being studied. For Confucius, even the Analects was collected after his death, and scholars debate which parts are oldest. Sima Qian used older records, but he also included stories that historians cannot check.

Later ages added legends: that a unicorn-like qilin appeared at his birth, or that he edited all of the Five Classics. Legends matter because they show how people honored him. Historians simply label them as legend, not as proven fact.

Why did so many philosophers appear in the Warring States period? Historians point to several causes. The old order of the Zhou had broken down, so people asked what should replace it. Rulers paid for good ideas. And writing spread beyond a small group of court officials.

The state of Qi even founded a center of learning, the Jixia Academy, around the 300s BCE. Scholars from many schools lived there on state support and debated. Mencius and Xunzi are both linked to Qi in the sources.

Thinkers argued about the same basic questions. How should a ruler govern? Is human nature good or bad? Should people follow ritual, law, love for all, or the natural Way? Their answers became the Hundred Schools of Thought. "Hundred" means many, not exactly one hundred.

The Confucians (in Chinese, the Ru, or scholars) followed Confucius. They taught that society becomes orderly when people practice ren, humane care for others, and li, ritual and proper conduct. Rulers, they said, should lead by moral example, and people should keep learning all their lives.

The Daoists are named for the Dao, the Way. The Daodejing, a short poetic book linked to Laozi, says the Dao cannot be fully put into words. It praises wu wei, often translated as "non-action" or acting without forcing. The Zhuangzi adds funny stories and puzzles.

The two schools disagreed. The Daodejing, ch. 18, suggests that talk of humaneness and rightness appears only after the great Way is lost. Confucians answered that people need learning and ritual to grow. Yet many Chinese readers later drew on both.

The Mohists followed Mozi (c. 470–391 BCE). He taught jian ai, often translated "universal love" or impartial care: caring for other people’s families and states as for your own. Mohists opposed attacking wars and spending too much on funerals and music.

The Legalists took a very different view. Thinkers like Shang Yang and Han Feizi argued that people act mainly for reward and to avoid punishment. So a ruler should make clear laws, enforce them strictly, and reward farming and fighting. The state of Qin used these ideas and grew strong.

Historian Sima Tan, father of Sima Qian, later sorted the thinkers into six schools, including Confucians, Daoists, Mohists and Legalists. Scholars today note these labels were made after the fact. Many thinkers borrowed from more than one.

The Hundred Schools did not think alone. Mencius, a Confucian, attacked Mozi’s teaching of equal love, saying it ignored special duties to one’s own father. Han Feizi, a Legalist, mocked Confucians for praising ancient kings in a changed world.

Mencius also met rulers who wanted quick gains. In Mencius 1A.1, King Hui of Liang asks how Mencius can profit his kingdom. Mencius replies that he brings only humaneness and rightness; if everyone seeks profit, the kingdom will be in danger.

Reading these debates helps you see what each school cared about most. A Confucian stressed family and virtue. A Mohist stressed fairness to all. A Legalist stressed order and power. A Daoist questioned all of their busy plans.

Mozi (c. 470–391 BCE) lived soon after Confucius. Tradition says he first studied Confucian teachings, then broke away. The book called the Mozi collects his teachings and those of his followers.

The Mozi’s chapters on jian ai, impartial care, ask where disorder comes from. Their answer: people care for themselves, their own families and their own states, and harm others for their gain. If people cared for others’ families and states as for their own, thieves, feuds and wars would stop.

Confucians disagreed. They taught graded love, starting with one’s own parents and spreading outward. Mencius called Mozi’s teaching a denial of one’s father. Mohists replied that caring for others’ parents is the surest way to have your own parents cared for.

The Mozi argues against offensive war. It points out that stealing a peach is called wrong, and killing one person is called a crime. Yet when a state kills thousands in an attack, people praise it. The book calls this a failure to tell right from wrong.

Mohists also criticized extravagance. Long mourning periods and rich funerals, which Confucians valued as ritual, wasted wealth and kept people from work. Grand court music used resources that could feed the poor. Mohists judged each practice by its benefit to the people.

Confucians replied that rites and music shape feeling and bind families and communities. The Mohists also taught that Heaven wishes people to care for one another, and that spirits reward good and punish evil. The two schools shared some ideas and argued over others.

The Mozi chapter called "Gongshu" tells a story. The engineer Gongshu Ban had built new siege ladders for the large state of Chu, which planned to attack the small state of Song. Mozi heard the news and, the story says, walked for ten days and nights to reach Chu.

Mozi first argued that attacking Song was wrong. Then he held a model contest with Gongshu Ban, using his belt as a city wall and small sticks as machines. Nine times Gongshu Ban attacked; nine times Mozi defended. The king of Chu called off the attack.

The story shows why Mohists became known as defense experts. They studied walls and siege methods to protect small states. Scholars read the tale as a teaching story. It shows the school’s ideal: care for others, backed by skill and action.

Han Feizi (c. 280–233 BCE) was a prince of the small state of Han. Tradition says he studied with the Confucian Xunzi. Yet he drew very different conclusions. His book, the Han Feizi, gathers the ideas later called Legalism.

In the chapter "The Two Handles," Han Feizi says a ruler controls officials with two handles: reward and punishment. People like reward and fear punishment, so a wise ruler uses both. Laws must be public, clear and the same for everyone, noble or poor.

Han Feizi mocked rulers who waited for a sage king. He compared them to a farmer in the state of Song. A rabbit once ran into a tree stump and broke its neck. The farmer then gave up plowing and waited by the stump for another rabbit.

In the 350s BCE, the minister Shang Yang reformed the state of Qin. He rewarded farmers and soldiers, grouped families to watch one another, and set harsh punishments. Qin grew rich and strong. By 221 BCE its king had conquered the other six large states.

The king took a new title, Qin Shi Huang, the First Emperor. His minister Li Si helped him standardize the realm: one way of writing characters, one set of weights and measures, one width for cart axles and one kind of coin. Workers joined older walls in the north and built roads.

Historians still weigh this unification. It created a single state and a shared script that lasted. It also relied on heavy labor, harsh laws and war. The Qin dynasty itself lasted only about fifteen years.

Sima Qian’s Shiji tells that in 213 BCE Li Si proposed burning histories of other states and private copies of the Songs, the Documents and the writings of the schools. Books on medicine, divination and farming were spared. Copies were kept in the imperial library for official scholars.

The Shiji adds that in 212 BCE the emperor had more than 460 scholars killed. For centuries, Confucian writers remembered Qin as the great enemy of learning. The phrase "burning books and burying scholars" became a warning against censorship.

Modern historians weigh the evidence. Some note that Han-era writers had reasons to paint Qin badly. Others point out that more books may have been lost when rebels burned the Qin palace in 206 BCE. Most agree the order was real and that it harmed the transmission of old texts.

After Qin fell, the Han dynasty (206 BCE–220 CE) lifted the ban on books in 191 BCE. Scholars set to work recovering the classics. Fu Sheng, according to Sima Qian, taught the surviving chapters of the Book of Documents. They were written down in the new clerical script of the day.

Later, Han accounts say, workers tearing down a wall of Confucius’s old house in Qufu found texts written in an older script. These became known as the Old Text versions. The versions taught from memory and newer copies were called New Text.

Scholars argued for centuries over which versions were more reliable. Some Old Text chapters of the Documents, later scholars showed, were forgeries from after the Han. This history is why careful study of manuscripts matters.

Early Han rulers borrowed from many schools. Some favored Daoist ideas of light government. Qin-style laws also stayed in use. But under Emperor Wu (r. 141–87 BCE), the court gave special status to Confucian learning.

In 136 BCE the court set up posts for erudites, official scholars, of the Five Classics. In 124 BCE it founded the Imperial Academy to train future officials in them. The scholar Dong Zhongshu urged the emperor to favor Confucian teachings, and Han histories give him credit for the change.

Historians note that the Han state stayed a mix. It used Confucian language about virtue and ritual, along with strict laws that owed much to Legalism. Some describe the result as Confucian on the outside and Legalist within.

Mohism faded as a school after the Qin and Han, though parts of its thinking lived on. Legalist methods stayed in Chinese government. Daoism grew in new forms. Confucian learning became official. But each classic still carries traces of the old debates.

When the Analects stresses virtue over punishment, readers can hear the argument against Legalism. In Analects 2.3, Confucius says that people led by laws and punishments try to avoid penalties but have no shame. People led by virtue and ritual have a sense of shame and set themselves right.

Modern readers study the rivals for their own sake too. Some compare Mozi’s impartial care to later ideas of universal rights. Others compare Han Feizi to European thinkers on power. Reading the rivals side by side shows what each school chose.

For two thousand years, writers pointed to Qin to argue that rulers should respect scholars. The Han scholar Jia Yi wrote an essay, "The Faults of Qin," saying Qin fell because it ruled by force and did not show humaneness.

Archaeology has added evidence. In 1975, Qin legal texts on bamboo were found in a tomb at Shuihudi in Hubei. They show detailed laws and careful record-keeping. The Qin was harsh, but it was also highly organized. Evidence like this helps historians test the old story.

In the twentieth century, readers argued over Qin again. Some praised the First Emperor as a unifier. Others saw a warning about state power. Studying these readings shows how history is always read through the concerns of later times.