An overview about Chinese philosophy

It is said that the traditional philosophy of Chinese people stems from the two main eras of so-called the Spring and Fall era and Wars amongst States era. During these two important eras, there was period of Hundred Schools of Thought that experienced a lot of new philosophies and schools of thought in China. Having said that, it is believed that the ground or elements for Chinesephilosophy have existed far before those two eras of the Spring and Fall and Wars amongst States dating back to 700 BCE.

In spite of having a great number of philosophies and schools of thought, however, there are only seven main philosophies that have had great impacts on Chinese’ mindset and traditions until now. These philosophies and schools of thought are named as the following: Confucianism, Daoism, Legalism, Naturalists, Mohism, Logicians and Agriculturalists. In the post today, I would like to give you a brief overview about two of those ideologies and schools of thought of Chinese people – Confucianism and Daoism that are considered as the most influential ones.

The first important philosophy that have had a great impact on Chinese people is the Confucianism. Many people and historians from the other nations especially from the West even consider this philosophy of Confucianism as the national religion of China. especially, the Confucianism also has a far reaching influence when it used to be the main philosophy in some other surrounding nations of China like Vietnam, Japan and Korea. The philosophy embraces a wide range of issues like humanity, loyalty, rituality and ruling. One of the most featured concepts of Confucianism is the idea to give up the two ends and get the middle in order to reconcile the opposites and take the best of the two as the middle.

The second philosophy developed in China is the Daoism. Daoism was developed by LaoZi. The philosophy then has turned out to be one of the main religions in China. The word of Dao in Daoism means path. However, different from the Confucianism, Daoism does not talk a lot about the path for a person to become a good or moral one. Instead, the religion of Daoism focuses more on physical and natural forces that affect invisibly and mysteriously on human being and the whole universe and then find out the best ways to harmonize between men and nature. Therefore, the main point in Daoism is to live harmoniously with the nature because it is believed that the more endeavors of men to make the word better, the worse the world is.