Confucius: Ren, Li, and the Exemplary Person

The intellectual explosion conventionally labeled the Hundred Schools of Thought (Zhuzi Baijia) emerged from the prolonged political crisis of the Zhou dynasty (c. 1046-256 BCE). After the Western Zhou court lost effective control over its vassal lords in 771 BCE, China entered the Eastern Zhou era, itself divided into the Spring and Autumn period (770-476 BCE) and the Warring States period (475-221 BCE), in which regional states fought increasingly destructive wars while nominally still honoring the Zhou king. This collapse of centralized authority and traditional ritual order created both the anxiety and the opportunity that produced classical Chinese philosophy: rival thinkers and their disciples traveled among competing courts offering rulers competing diagnoses of the crisis and competing programs — ethical, political, mystical, or coercive — for restoring order. Confucianism, Mohism, Daoism, and Legalism, along with smaller schools such as the School of Names and the Yin-Yang school, all took shape within this shared context of political fragmentation, even though their proposed solutions diverged sharply.